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lokiare wrote:

I'm sure someone with more time than me could find several surveys and studies that prove not releasing PDFs does not in any way curb pirating. If we can get this information to WotC maybe the can use it as an argument to Hasbro to get their PDFs reinstated.

Actually it increases piracy. Because it doesn't effect the people that are currently pirating it as they will simply revert to scans of the book. And those who wanted to purchase it legally no longer can so they are forced to pirate a copy.

At most all this does is delay the release of the pirate PDF by a few weeks giving someone time to scan it and post it on the net.

Making something illegal doesn't actually stop it from happening or being produced. In fact in many cases I've seen studies that show the opposite is true. Because of the old laws of supply and demand. When something becomes illegal at first it does become a bit scarcer but soon after thanks to it being illegal they can charge outrageous prices for it. So soon a ton of people looking to make quick money with no regard for the law join in. And because black market economies work slightly different due to limited number of distributors things tend to work more like a monopoly as they can charge whatever they want. But the overall supply is not as effected as many would like us to believe.

Now some may say there is no money in PDFs on torrent sites so this is not an accurate comparison. Well first off it is more to show the faulty logic behind you can stop trading by making it illegal. And secondly it does still apply to PDF and torrents because there is money in torrenting.

The money from torrents comes in the same way TV stations make their money, from advertising. Almost every site on the net now a days has ads and torrent sites would be no exception. I've even heard some charge subscription fees which is yet another way they could make money.

So with people unable to purchase their PDFs they start visiting more torrent sites looking for the PDFs. This increases the site's ad revenue because it has more viewers. As the potential for ad revenue increases more people wanna get in on the hosting of their own torrent sites. Thus both the consumers and suppliers of torrented PDFs increases and thus overall piracy increases.

lokiare wrote:

Yes, but can you actually throw some links up to those studies? that way WotC has some numbers they can look at?

Honestly, I doubt that it would matter. If there was a genuine question of how all of it affects the business, I'm sure someone at Hasbro has numbers they could share. I admit I'm doing some armchair-lawyering, but I'd wager this is part of the legal strategy involved in going after the "worst offenders".

"Your honor, it was so bad, we had to just shut down all pdf sales. That alone increases our economic damage by $X."

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see a "reading room" kind of program as a part of DDI once this blows over. Maybe a service similar to what Marvel does with its digital comics.

lokiare wrote:

Yeah, but checking for printscreen button hits and clearing the clipboard right after is not.

Okay, then someone writes a hook for the OS that catches the printscreen key, copies the page, and deletes the keypress from the buffer. Then someone automates it. Boom, instant digital copy.