DTRPG/DRM, Mongoose, Paranoia.

[Funksaw]

Crossposted to the main forum on the Mongoose board and the Paranoia Live forums.

It should come as absolutely zero surprise that I'm both against DRM and DTRPG - that Mongoose has chosen to join DTRPG in peddling crippled PDFs is sad.(ly disheartening.)

Then again, I'm not much of a Mongoose customer. You have one game line I adore, but mostly focus on stuff I'm not really interested in.

That line is Paranoia, and I think it's a bit significant to bring it up.

Paranoia's newest incarnation points out many of the problems with Digital Restrictions Managament. (more on this later.) It basically does nothing to deter the pirates, but it does make it more inconvienient for the user and seems to be a way to wring out more dollars for "licencing" the product rather than selling it.

It's silly because the pirated copy has become the *better* copy. It's possible to compete with "free but unethical" by offering an "ethical and reasonably priced" product, but for many people, myself included, supporting DRM is *less* ethical than piracy. (I do not mean to say that RPG piracy is ethical - simply that it is a lesser sin than locking consumer choice and "licencing" the product.)

I know that alot of publishers are out there thinking: "Who the hell cares what this guy thinks, how dare he claim to know more about our product than we do." In this case, sadly, that's just the case. DRM is not just unworkable, it's also unethical. I really can't support a company that uses DRM - this is why I've had to give up on several of my favorite (and money-draining) game lines, Exalted, Buffy/Angel, and Tri-Stat.

On the plus side, this has generally meant that I can afford a lot more Paranoia stuff, HERO suppliments, and Atlas Games stuff.

I hesitate to throw around the word "hypocritical" - but when Mongoose puts out Paranoia - a satirical look at many of the nasty things occuring in the technical parts of our society - including, specifically, DRM, it's had to suggest that Mongoose be taken seriously. That said, I did notice that there were no Paranoia products available on DTRPG.

I'm hoping that this was a concious choice. So long as Paranoia products are excluded from DTRPG, I'd feel much better about picking them up. Not entirely better - because Mongoose is still supporting DRM, but better.

What I'd like to hear is some sort of official assurance that the Paranoia line will not be DRMed if it is ever published in an electronic format.

Thank you.

-- Funksaw, Brian Boyko.

 

[Funksaw]

"Sad" in the above context means "disheartening," not "pathetic."

 

[GamerDude]

It should come as absolutely zero surprise that I'm both against DRM and DTRPG - that Mongoose has chosen to join DTRPG in peddling crippled PDFs is sad.(ly disheartening.)

what is DTRPG and DRM

How do you 'cripple' a PDF?

 

[mthomason]

what is DTRPG and DRM

How do you 'cripple' a PDF?

DTRPG = drivethrurpg.com , a site selling DRM-protected PDFs of RPG material.

DRM = digital rights management, a system intended to prevent the illegal copying of files. Unfortunately, it also makes life more difficult for the intended user to a degree.

"Crippling" a PDF basically means to remove some of the functionality available, such as copy/paste, printing the entire document at once, etc.

Hope that helps

 

[cjfodel]

Get over it, I have gotten many things through DTRPG, and have not had on problem in moving them to other systems, or printing them out. The publisher has a right to protect their property, fro evil smucks that would steel them. If you don’t like the DRM, then get a hard copy.

The only people a that I have herd this argument from are the evil smucks that want to pirate the stuff, so I do believe that it is working.

Charles
:twisted:

 

[GamerDude]

Thanks mthomason, I appreciate that.

 

[mthomason]

Get over it, I have gotten many things through DTRPG, and have not had on problem in moving them to other systems.

I've heard from some who don't have internet access on their second PC, and are therefore unable to register their DRM software with Adobe.

If you don’t like the DRM, then get a hard copy.

The main reason I buy PDFs is for books that are out of print. A Print-on-Demand system from DTRPG (such as the one RPGNow has) would be good here. I wanted to check to see if they had one before posting but their site was down, so apologies if they already have one.

The only people a that I have herd this argument from are the evil smucks that want to pirate the stuff, so I do believe that it is working.

Generalizations such as that can offend others on the board very easily.

The problem is that there is a very fine line between making a PDF usable for those who want to take it to an offline machine, and being able to make illegal copies. The current protection mechanism by Adobe just prevents both. There are alternative mechanisms available - the best I've heard of so far is the one where the PDF is password protected with your own credit card number, which you have to type in each time you open it. Another alternative would be some form of authorisation from Adobe that could be done over the phone to activate DRM on an offline machine (in the same way Microsoft offer for Windows and Office)

 

[Anonymous]

This ought to interest you,

DTRPG.com is making an altenate copy protection scheme available to publishers. In this new scheme, the purchase information is watermarked in small print at the bottom of every single page of the document purchased. It's otherwise a fully functional pdf, no limitations to printing or copying, can be used with any reader of 6.0 and above pdfs, even the Mac and Linux ones. Can it be shared? You bet. But unless someone takes the time to hack the file and erase the watermark off the document page by page, it is ridiculously easy to find out whose purchase has popped up all over kazaa. A much more elegant solution than the old scheme - I sincerely hope it is embraced by users and publishers alike.

Kudos to DTRPG for actually listening to people who don't want to hear the DRM.