This happened to another company, not to me, but I was wondering how best I shjould deal with it should it happen to me.

As you know, Guardians of Order just put their Tri-Stat dX core rules, the heart of their proprietary game system, up on RPGNow as a promotional effort. Instead of charging for the book 9the hardcopy sells for $10), they placed advertisements for the rest of their product line among the pages in full-color. It looks pretty darn good.

Along comes this guy who decides "This is a great book, but it would be too much hassle to print". He seems oblivious to the fact that the hardcopy is only $10. So he does some editing on the PDF, removes all the ads and anything else he sees as extranmeous, and posts the results to a yahoogroup's file section.

However innocuous his intent might have been, he succeeded is really pissing me off. If hecan do this to a "free" PDF that isn't his property, he can do it to anybody's books. He can do it to mine. he can do it to yours.

Needless to say, I wrote Guardians and told them what had happened -- even forwarded the download link to them. I hope the list owner doesn't get into too much trouble, but there are limits to fair use and this guy has, IMO, stepped WAY over the line. I was actually offended at his gall. I hope I did the right thing letting GOO know about this.

Now if this had been one of MY products, what should I have done?

THere is a simpkle solution to stopping people from altering your PDF. Once you've made the PDF resave it using Acrobat Writer and password protect the editing features. You can also prevent people from printing the PDF.

,Matt Gwinn

Michael Hopcroft wrote: Now if this had been one of MY products, what should I have done?

Matt Gwinn wrote: THere is a simpkle solution to stopping people from altering your PDF. Once you've made the PDF resave it using Acrobat Writer and password protect the editing features. You can also prevent people from printing the PDF.

Well, all I can say is that if someone wants to pirate your game they will find a way. I once saw a 600 page word file of the entire D&D3E players guide. That's some serious time wasted.

Even non PDF games are victims of piracy and the more popular your game is, the more likely it will get pirated.

,Matt

Reimer Behrends wrote:

Matt Gwinn wrote: THere is a simpkle solution to stopping people from altering your PDF. Once you've made the PDF resave it using Acrobat Writer and password protect the editing features. You can also prevent people from printing the PDF.

The problem is that it is downright trivial to remove protection from a PDF file, since PDF security is just an obfuscation mechanism.

Matt Gwinn wrote: I once saw a 600 page word file of the entire D&D3E players guide. That's some serious time wasted.

Matt Gwinn wrote: Even non PDF games are victims of piracy and the more popular your game is, the more likely it will get pirated.

Well, my streetcred inthe business may have taken a nosedive.

The person who laterede the PDF I mentioned decided to post a message to the company's message board which consited almost entirely of an attack on my personal integrity. he basically said that everyone was a pirate, whether they were willing to admit to it or not, and that saying something about someone else's actions is the worst for of hypocrisy.

I'm trying to defuse the situation, but I don;t think I dare post to that board again. Or, for that matter, this voard (which the guy had apopoarently read even though he has never posted here).

So I'm left holding the bag, knowing I did the right thing and now I must face the reality that no good deed goes unpunished....

That's bullshit, Michael. Let the guy rant and steam all he wants for being a pirate -- in fact, you're doing exactly what he wants by withdrawing and worrying about the situation.

It's like worrying about the personal attacks a thief levels at you for calling the cops on him, saying you've caused him irreprable financial harm by destroying his business, that you're a hypocrite for telling on him, and so forth: "I'm mad because you told on me for doing something illegal! You should have just let me get away with it!"

Sheer idiocy. Don't listen to it because the vast majority of intelligent, reasonable people won't, either.

Greyorm pegs it precisely. The right response to swiping is this:

1. Act promptly and courteously. Do not make threats. Point out the rights of the situation - "This is my stuff, and I don't recall giving permission for it to be reposted", or "This is X's stuff; did you get their okay to tweak it and put it up this way?", or whatever's appropriate.

2. If you get a suitable response, yay! You're done. If not, proceed only as long as you can keep cool and courteous. When you can't, stop.

3. Stop.

There will always be someone to take umbrage. Always. It is not possible to satisfy everyone's desires. What matters most in responding - or choosing not to - is tone. Tone impresses almost everyone more than specific details do. If you conduct yourself with composure and good will, you win the support of bystanders. The same is true if you realize you've lost it and admit it and apologize and then stop. People will give you credit for meaning well and not persisting in bad stuff.

You cannot stop piracy. Harlan Ellison can't. Stephen King can't. The RIAA can't. You aren't going to be more abusively persistent than Ellison, more widely respected and doggedly good-natured than King, more horrendously crocked than the RIAA. Piracy is a fact of life, and you will have to live with it. What you can do, if you handle it well, is build sympathy for your concerns and make hardcore pirates of your work look like prats. The members of their subculture will just boast the more, but you can make it so that everyone else thinks they're just twits. You also provide an opportunity for the not-hardcore folks to look good too, if they can say "oh, golly, I didn't mean to do anything wrong" and stop doing it and start doing good things. This is good all around.

It is very unlikely that you are actually going to lose any significant number of sales to pirates. The pirates' subculture values the accumulation of stuff for its own sake, whether or not it actually gets used. Many of them don't actually know what's in a lot of the games or books or music they're hoarding, and that's not the point for them. Conversely, people who actually have an interest in your work will tend to buy it at almost any approximation of a reasonable price. Particularly when it comes to the gaming small press (as with the genre fiction small press, which wrestles with this as well), real readers don't resort much to piracy.

Matt Gwinn wrote: THere is a simpkle solution to stopping people from altering your PDF. Once you've made the PDF resave it using Acrobat Writer and password protect the editing features. You can also prevent people from printing the PDF.

rpghost wrote:

Matt Gwinn wrote: THere is a simpkle solution to stopping people from altering your PDF. Once you've made the PDF resave it using Acrobat Writer and password protect the editing features. You can also prevent people from printing the PDF.

That's also the fastest possible to piss of a true customer and not get any return business from them. I can't stress enough, DO NOT LOCK your PDFs. A good portion of the PDF buying market is from people who want to use features such as cut and paste.

James