In 2005 I purchased a number of role-playing ebooks from www.DriveThruRPG.com, an ebook provider whose pdfs were encrypted with Digital Rights Management (DRM). These products worked fine until I wanted to access them on our second computer. Then, I received a message “Your Adobe software could not be activated. Adobe DRM Activation error Server code 27 Fault Location 5. Client User is not an Easy Activation user and cannot be migrated to a full user.”
The idea of DRM is that it is usable by computers that share a Microsoft Passport. Since our computers did not share a Passport, and could not (for various reasons), DriveThruRPG’s customer service allowed me to download my products a second time on the other computer. Of course, this defeated the purpose of protecting them in the first place, since I now knew I could download the ebooks wherever I wanted by emailing customer service.
Over time, DriveThruRPG realized the impracticality of DRM and introduced a watermarking system – this places, at the bottom of every page of every pdf I download, a message with my name and a unique code. If the ebook is illegally distributed, they reason, they can track me down. They also limit the amount of times I can download the product, to four or five times, and only within the next 2 years.
Now, I buy my PDFs for the same price from the ENWorld GameStore. I have unlimited downloads, on any computer, and there is nothing to distinguish my ebook from anyone else’s. DTRPG lost my custom because a competitor came along who wasn’t afraid of piracy. It makes sense – most books will become pirated ebooks quickly after their release, so there’s no point alienating moral readers who are prepared to pay as long as they receive a functioning, friendly product.
Bill Browne
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