I know more people that purchased the 4e books after reading the PDFs and getting their interest piqued than people who got the PDFs to avoid buying the books or who got the PDFs and then decided not to buy 4e.

PDFs expand the market by making the information more affordable to more people and creating more interest and making more collectors. Think of them as marketing: you want as many eyes on your product as possible.

PDFs are a good thing, in terms of collection. Rare items gain value. Common items lose value.

Unless WOC is selling official reissues of the old modules/books, I have no prob with PDFs of out of print meterial.  I dont believe they should be sold, however.  If WOC wanted to nip it in the bud, they'd make their entire out of print catalog available in PDF and sell for a buck each or distribute free.  Collectors worrying about it destroying the market value, shouldnt worry too much.  Computer files are a poor substitute for the real thing.  

How many of you that are reporting copyright violations to WOC own a burned CD or computer game?  use or used Napster, Limewire, soulseek, or other p2p download sites?  I hope none, but I doubt it.  

Lets not fool ourselves...the underlying concern here is to protect the (your) collector value rather than to report illegal activity.   

I know its something that can never be agreed upon.  its like chevy/ford...tates great/less filling....Unearthed Arcana/Wilderness Survival Guide.  

I hope that didnt come across too Norkeresque.

Or maybe WSG


(Ford definitely - Chevys don't exist in the UK - The very few owners of such things have mothballed them due to fuel prices in the UK )

Aneoth wrote:Unearthed Arcana.
Unless the WSG is SW with the adventure Wild Things inside..........




IF I was to report anything to WOTCO (Which I would never do in the first place) then I could do so without worrying that I had skeletons in my CD closet, or any of the items you listed above.
Let them check.

I would imagine youre in the minority, Aneoth.  

Personally, Im not a fan of computer files or bootlegged stuff.  If its something I want, then I get the original item.  the existance of pdfs or MP3s or mimeographed copies of old Dragon articles wont affect what I will or will not buy... AT ALL.

How many of you that are reporting copyright violations to WOC own a burned CD or computer game? use or used Napster, Limewire, soulseek, or other p2p download sites? I hope none, but I doubt it.

I don't think anyone's going to report copyright violation of a Tsojconth to WotC...it is questionable whether any of the people there would know what you're talking about.  I don't know about others, but I don't utilize the sorts of technologies to which you're referring, but I have on occasion taped things off of the radio, which is legal in my country because we have a levy on blank media.  Canadian copyright law with respect to music is very odd.


I do disagree with the others with regards to whether rares are affected by PDFs.  I see where you're coming from -- you don't think a "serious" collector could be influenced by the existence of a PDF.  And you're right, not directly.  However, if you look at rare eBay auctions in a more holistic fashion, I think you'll see a trend.  It's quite possible you'll just say I'm off my rocker.

Unfortunately, this is as close to a "proof" as I can manage, Mike.  It isn't a proof at all, so much as a general observation, as I haven't kept detailed notes on rare auctions in several years and have no hard evidence for you.  Feel free to observe for yourself and see if it holds up, based on what you initially expect the final auction price to be vs. what it ends up being on a few rares.

We know that the final auction price ultimately comes down to the highest two bidders.  But how do they determine their bids in the first place?  (They don't throw darts.)  

Every bidder uses an internal valuation process to determine their bid, which is based on previously acquired information.  And that's the rub.  That info includes previously placed bids!  As such, the highest two bids can be influenced in a lot of very subtle ways by those bids.  It doesn't matter if you 'snipe' or not, because we're talking about affecting your internal valuation before you set your snipe, not after.  I'm not expecting disciplined snipers to change their snipe -- but we know that does sometimes occur as well.

So the next question, are they influenced?  I've observed that when there is any recent flurry of activity in regards a specific rare (or even rares in general), the final price of a given rare auction tends to be higher than I would ordinarily expect.  That's unusual.  My conclusion is that people get hyped up and edgy by the activity -- it's a competitive world.  It doesn't matter if that flurry occurs in the low end of the bidding, or even in the same auction.

I know that many people like to believe they're seasoned bidders or snipers and completely immune to that effect, but the truth is every single bid has the capacity to influence bids placed at a later point in time.  It's information.  Sometimes there's even a bit of a domino effect.  Excessive bids in the low or middle range indicate overall awareness and interest in the rare.  

What this activity seems to do is create tension in the internal valuation.  If you really, really want to win the auction, you'll mentally push up that value on a subconscious level.  All it takes is one serious collector to get a bit concerned, and usually it's more than one.  Who knows who's coming out of the woodwork to take away the rare?  So the final auction price ends up higher.  And of course, that final price does influence future auctions as well.

If you take away or reduce that flurry in any way, the price drops relative to what it might have been, because you've removed the tension.  (That doesn't necessarily mean the rare will trend downwards, but it may do so if the effect is very significant.)  

This is where cheap/free PDFs come in.  While a serious collector will not be interested or directly affected by them, I suggest to you that their internal valuations are affected by other people's opinion.  For many the PDF is enough.  If they lose interest in bidding on the original because of an affordable reasonable fascimile, the result is less tension in the auctions, resulting in a lower final auction price than if those bids were present.

You are allowed to tape anything that you can receive via "airwaves"...radio, TV, etc.... it only becomes illegal if you try and distribute and/or sell it.  At least thats what I always believed.  

I guess I assumed that folks here have a boner for reporting pdfs to WOC.  I based that on the on thread stickied to the top of the Forum about reporting to WOC, and the general outrage over PDFs Ive read in old postings.

Id imagine that WOC should have enough resources that they could hire some schlub and pay him in RPG supplies to police EBAY for them.  

SERIOUSLY

I guess this belongs in that other thread though.

Pennfarms wrote:
I would imagine youre in the minority, Aneoth.  

Personally, Im not a fan of computer files or bootlegged stuff.  If its something I want, then I get the original item.  the existance of pdfs or MP3s or mimeographed copies of old Dragon articles wont affect what I will or will not buy... AT ALL.

I'm probably in the minority also, because I mostly get pdf files of stuff I already have; ie. all the Dungeon mags (got them), DCC modules (got them), MERP items (got them); and of course D&D stuff (got it all except for the super rares).  For me these files are both an easy way to look up the modules when I'm sitting at my computer and need to answer a question, and a good safe way to back up my hard copy collection.   Also since I use my laptop while gaming it's a good way to run a module when you can refer to it on the screen.  

And I would like to add, if WOTC or anyone else is so concerned, why aren't they policing their stuff better?  They are the rights holders after all.  Any sort of effort on their part could get the violater shut down. That they themselves are extemely uncaring says volumes to me.  

And then you bring into the equation the researcher type. If I am a researcer of, say, Faulkner, I don't have to go out and buy original manuscripts and such at ridiculous prices. I go to a college library and do my research for FREE. If I want to research, say, the impact of Wee Warriors items on the eventual publication of letter modules, I am SCREWED.  The losers?  The hobby and the industry as a whole, because without our history we are nothing; the casual fan who doesn't HAVE $2000 to spend on a ST1.   The Winners?  Sellers of the items and speculators who own MULTIPLE copies of rares (cmon now, if you are just a "collector" how many copies do you need?  Is there any doubt that someday in the future the extra copies might be resold? It's paritally an investment).  

Not even considering the fact that some of this stuff will NEVER be reprinted; either due to battles with rights, or just general disinterest.  I've heard people say that ICE's MERP stuff will never see the light of day again because the particular contract they were under from the Tolkien estate was unique; is this true? That would mean besides paying astronomical prices there is no way to ever take a look at some of the stuff....except for pdfs.

The collecting field is very capitalistic on one hand...whoever has the most money will own the best stuff---and serendipitous on the other..."I walked into a used bookstore and found a ST1, whoo hoo!". I find it odd that a lot of people would think someone being wealthy or lucky is the best way to protect the history of our hobby.

Mike B.

Pennfarms wrote:So.... those here that report PDFs to EBAY...you are doing this to help protect the value of your collectibles, right?  You would not report a seller if he has PDFs of instruction manuals from Atari games, or other items that are not within your scope of collecting?

seems to me EBAY should hire some people too and tell them to search for "PDF" and start axing accounts.

Ebay doesn't care either unless someone brings it to their attention....they are making money on it, right?  Their VERO project is a joke.  I bet 90% of their takedowns of copyrighted items are generated by emails from other ebayers....we are doing their work for them in that regard.

Mike B.

Pennfarms wrote:So.... those here that report PDFs to EBAY...you are doing this to help protect the value of your collectibles, right?

No, not at all.  If this the line you want to assume, maybe we should move this to another thread and put up a poll question.  Part of the issue for me is that the seller is trying to make money without doing any work and the other part is that most sellers push them as being completely legal and sometimes Wotc/TSR authorized products (i.e. they are completely misleading the buyer).

If someone was selling DVDs of old games such as a complete Atari 2600 collection or the manuals, I would probably report them too.  However, here we do not try and police all of Ebay.  Even by limiting ourselves to the small area we deal with, I'm sure we miss most offenders.