Ex-Staff
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 961
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@azomboid, you’ve also indicated throughout this thread that PDFs can be easily pirated, and suggested that we shouldn’t try to protect against it. Simply stated, we will be doing all we can to protect our partners’ IP. Let me explain our rationale a little bit more below.
We’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but Paizo goes to great lengths to police pirating of their PDFs, and so do many other companies. This is an absolute necessity, as I’ll explain in a moment. The realities of piracy make publishers very sensitive to the subject. We’re well aware that there are known limits as to what security can be implemented through PDFs, and publishers are actually looking to achieve significantly greater protection through Realm Works’ digital sharing. Your contention that PDFs are readily shared neglects to consider that publishers want the next solution to be an improvement – not the status quo. Unfortunately, piracy is a big problem in our industry and it has a dramatic impact on the bottom-line and financial viability for virtually any company who offers their products digitally. We experienced piracy ourselves shortly after the company got started. Almost 15 years ago, we found out the DRM we originally used within our Army Builder product had been hacked. Because that hacked version was readily available, it turns out nearly 80% of our user base was using a pirated copy (based on metrics we instituted within the product to determine our exposure). That was 15 years ago, when the world wasn’t as plugged into the internet as it is now, so it’s doubtful that consumer attitudes (i.e. those numbers) have improved over time. This experience speaks to the general philosophy of many gamers in our industry – if they can get it for free, they will. Once we implemented a new DRM mechanism, our sales tripled, which clearly showed that people wanted the product and were willing to pay for it – but only if they couldn’t get it for free. It’s safe to say that without the financial success of Army Builder, we wouldn’t have had the resources to develop Hero Lab, and, without the DRM we now use, it’s unlikely that publishers would have trusted their IP with us. This experience has also made us keenly aware of the need to secure the intellectual property of not just ourselves, but also the publishers we partner with. That’s one of the reasons our partners have trusted us over the years, and why they’re willing to pursue partnering with us for Realm Works. An important goal with Realm Works is to improve content security for publishers, which will increase their sales and ultimately their ability to put out more and better material than they already do. Failing to do our utmost to protect their IP would represent an acceptance of the status quo, squander an opportunity to improve the financial health of the industry, and fail to put ourselves in the strongest position possible to court publishers. As Rob has mentioned in the past, Realm Works’ financial success relies on the Content Market, which centers on the adventures, campaign settings, and other material from publishers. We would be risking the product’s long-term viability by making choices that don’t take the needs of these key partners into consideration. That’s why we’ve chosen the path we have. |
#51 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 1,458
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I remember recommending Hero Lab and RealmWorks to a friend, and he was asking me questions about how the licensing works. He and I have both done many rebuilds, and we've been burned on not being able to reinstall software we've legitimately purchased. I told him that your licensing model for both was superb. I've done many rebuilds and license transfers since I've purchased Hero Lab, and I've never been left out in the cold. Sometimes, I've had to wait a day or two, but that was the worst of it. When publishers look for improvements, I only hope they keep in mind a balance between protecting their IP and respecting their customer base. I know this isn't on you guys. It's just a general comment. One of my coworkers is a musician, and he once bought a certain brand of digital recorder to record his live gigs. When he tried to copy those digital recordings to his computer for archiving and processing, the device would not let him, because of copy controls ... even though it was his own, original stuff that he recorded. And that's just ridiculous. I understand companies wanting to protect their IP, and I greatly respect when companies do it in a way that still respects their customers, but some people lose sight of that, and that's a shame. |
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#52 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 1,147
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I'll give the content market a chance. Once. And if it's too restrictive on how I can use the content I have paid for, I won't buy any more. LWD needs to get it right for both the publishers and the users. Or they need to figure out how to sustain themselves on cloud subscriptions alone....
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#53 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 13
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#54 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Denmark
Posts: 740
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Well, basically it comes down to the owners of the data.
LWD can't do much more than suggest solutions and hope they and the owner can find a compromise that they are both happy with. LWD is of course bound by the agreement they make with the owner. So basically we should petition the owner of our favourite game/world/movie to allow a huge degree of sharing of their content in RW - and not LWD. Vargr Deputy Calendar Champion Legend has it, that the Tarrasque is a huge fighting beast, perpetually hungry. Sleet entered History when he managed to get on the back of a Tarrasque only to be ridden out of History shortly after. Using Realm Works, Worldographer (Hexographer 2), LibreOffice, Daz3D Studio, pen & paper for the realm World of Temeon and the system LEFD - both homebrewed. |
#55 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Texas
Posts: 707
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Yep, stupid people doing stupid things means we all suffer for it. Its funny how nature doesn't seem to have this same rule. If your "stupid" your lunch.
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I suspect you know that already though. So, I really have a hard time trying to understand what it is you hope to gain by your continued reverbing of ways and means the masses choose to circumvent the protections in place for those that have rightly earned it by their creativity and willingness to share with all of us? Quote:
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D&D> Pre 1e White Box Edition, 1e, 2e, 3.5 Currently, Set in the World of Greyhawk (The first, longest running and Best Campaign Setting) Software>Extensive use of all forms of MS Products, Visual Studio 2012, DAZ 3d, AutoCAD, Adobe Products. Gaming Specific>Campaign Cartographer, D20 Pro Alpha & BattleGrounds Beta Tester, World Builder, Dungeon Crafter, LWD Hero Lab, Realm Works, Inkwell Ideas Citybuilder & Dungeon Builder, Auto-Realm, Dundjinni Contributing Writer for TSR, WOC, & Canonfire |
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#56 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 798
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I want just my data to be fully accessible and so on. Bought stuff - don't care
Join the (unofficial) Realm-Works IRC Chat: #realm-works on the Rizon Network (https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Servers) -> Browser Client: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.rizon.net |
#57 |
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
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Let's say you import some purchased content in with your own, then let's say you go in and heavily modify some of that purchased content, making it 90% your own creation. Is it yours? Or not? We could do things simply and make it an all-or-nothing thing, but lots of folks aren't going to like that. They want the parts they created to be their own. But what about a snippet that started out as purchased content and only had one word changed? Or 5 words? Or whatever threshold you want to pick? Now extend this question to every other type of content within RW and the minor to major changes that users will be able to make to purchased content. It all gets very blurry very quickly. That's the real problem that has to be solved to do this "right". And it's not something that can be done easily. |
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#58 |
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
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The bottom line is that each distinct element may or may not be considered IP, whether it's story, timeline, picture, map, or whatever. That makes the entire subject of sharing material very murky, and different publishers will often have different views on what is/isn't reasonable to share - with Disney generally being one of the more stringent. As I indicated above, it all boils down what is generally considered to be fair use. Anything that ventures outside that "safe zone" will run the risk of receiving a take-down notice from the publisher, which we would be obliged to honor. For more information on fair use, which is itself a somewhat grey area of law with regards to interpretation, I recommend starting with a Google search. There are numerous thoughts on the subject from qualified legal sources that will probably be very enlightening. The question of what is/isn't fair use is not one we'll be actively getting involved in, but we will absolutely be responsive when a publisher claims use of their IP falls outside of fair use. So it's best that you and anyone else interested in the subject understand it before running afoul of it. Important Note: For anyone worried about the ability to run a private game for their gaming group with Realm Works, that should never be a problem. The intent of the publisher when selling RPG material is that the GM be able to share that information with his players. So entering and revealing content to players over the course of a game is perfectly legitimate - it's what are already expected to do today. The issue arises when IP is shared beyond the scope of a gaming group. That's what @azomboid is seeking for us to support, and that's where we will side with the publisher by honoring any take-down notice we receive if users overstep the limits of what the publisher considers acceptable. |
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#59 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 13
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