DriveThruRPG and watermarks

[apastuszak]

I started a discussion on reddit about how I really don't like how DriveThruRPG watermarks PDFs, and how I prefer to buy my PDFs from the publisher of Humble Bundle/Bundle of Holding, because they don't have watermarks.

DriveThruRPG has certain advantages that I don't get from the publisher, however. I get email updates when a new version of the PDFs gets released. Their desktop app, will let me download my purchases en-masse and then will show me which ones have new versions. And their mobile app is kind of nice.

When I brough this up on reddit, @MongooseMatt replied to my thread and said he was not "tied to the idea of requiring watermarks."

This discussion happened probably 6 months ago and is lost in my conversation history on reddit now. So, I thought I would bring the conversation here. I'm sure anyone involved in the conversation back then has long forgotten about it.

Has Mongoose given any more thought to removing the watermarks from files on DriveThruRPG? IMHO, they don't really serve their intended purpose, and none of the books sold on the Mongoose website have watermarks.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Watermarks as such don't bother me but watermarks with that put my wallet name in plain sight bug the hell out of me.

 

[apastuszak]

DriveThruRPG watermarks have your full name and your order number.

 

[Fresnel]

Watermarks as such don't bother me but watermarks with that put my wallet name in plain sight bug the hell out of me.

But only you get to see these pdfs so...

 

[FreeTrav]

I don't find the DTRPG watermarks offensive, and I'm not going to participate in illicit copying of them, so it's not a problem. It's intended as a mild, non-obtrusive deterrent, and it's quite frankly easily circumvented if your ethics are weak enough. I find it more acceptable than what often happens with Kindle e-books, where I _must_ use their app to access it, even if I like a different app better, and/or where I have to re-purchase it after I've had _x_ devices fail on me catastrophically because I can no longer "unregister" the book to the dead device(s). (That's why I buy most of my SF e-books from Baen. They don't assume that their customers are criminals.)

 

[ottarrus]

I have handed out pertinent portions of watermarked pdfs to players, but they already know my name so that isn't a big deal to me. I don't supply the whole document however. Mostly I find watermarks to be a reasonable way to protect an author's work.

 

[apastuszak]

I have handed out pertinent portions of watermarked pdfs to players, but they already know my name so that isn't a big deal to me. I don't supply the whole document however. Mostly I find watermarks to be a reasonable way to protect an author's work.

It doesn't really offer protection. It's more of a nuisance, at least for me. It's possible to "tag" a PDF so that if someone shares you can trace it back to the *sshole that did it without putting a visual indicator on every single page of a document.

Right now, if I really don't want the watermark, I can buy directly from Mongoose or remove it using a PDF editor. My only problem with that is that Mongoose does not send out any notification (at least that I have seen), that they updated a digital product that I bought. This problem is not unique to Mongoose. I bought a TON of PDFs for Castles and Crusades and they don't send updates when they update their PDFs either. I have some Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds stuff I got at Christmas-time. We'll see if Chaosium or Pinnacle offer notifications.

If could get notifications of purchased PDF updates from publishers, then I'd just buy direct and this would solve my problem.

 

[Vormaerin]

The purpose of watermarks is not to stop actual criminals. There isn't really a practical means to do that. Just like residential locks don't deter pro burglars. They just discourage casual illegal entry.

The point is to remind the average person that this isn't to be freely shared with the public. So an invisible tracker wouldn't actually accomplish the purpose. That doesn't mean full name needs to be part of that watermark.

 

[apastuszak]

The purpose of watermarks is not to stop actual criminals. There isn't really a practical means to do that. Just like residential locks don't deter pro burglars. They just discourage casual illegal entry.

The point is to remind the average person that this isn't to be freely shared with the public. So an invisible tracker wouldn't actually accomplish the purpose. That doesn't mean full name needs to be part of that watermark.

The same can be done with one page containing PII, including your name, your account name and order number in a very large font. You could even add more PII that you can in a watermark, including their street address. The average person will not know how to delete that page, and it will offer the same level of deterrence as a small watermark on the bottom of each page for the average person.

Years ago I went through a DriveThruRPG purchase in Adobe Acrobat Pro and found many interesting things:

1. Order number and full name on the outer bottom corner of each page. This one we all know about.
2. Order number and full name OFF THE PAGE completely on the right side. And the text was completely transparent. I only found it because I searched for my order number and I got more than double the matches of my page count.
3. Your order number (and maybe your name) is also in the metadata somewhere.
4. Once I removed my order number no longer showed up in a search, I opened the PDF in a text editor and when I searched for my order number; it was still there in one spot.

I do not know if the current process that embeds watermarks still goes through this much effort.

I posted about this on another forum about a decade ago, and said I removed all this information and saved the file, including putting all ×'s in the order number I saw in a text editor. And I got a PM from someone that told me I did not get it all. There's still PII left in the document. But like I said, that was a decade ago. Who knows what has changed?

I get that digital presents a challenge with publishers. But there has to be a way to curtail "casual lending" without me needing to put up with an ugly watermark on the bottom of each page.

 

[Vormaerin]

Probably. But someone needs to spend money on devising it and convincing people it is worth using instead of the current system. Which means that publishers need to face enough outrage from their customers to feel like a change is warranted. And I don't think that outrage exists. Most people probably only notice the name/order number footer if they are copy/pasting across a page break.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

DriveThruRPG watermarks have your full name and your order number.

I don't share PDFs. So the watermark is perfectly fine.