D&D handbooks subject of lawsuit

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Dungeons---Dragons-Spurs-Suits/story.xhtml?story_id=10300BOV1DVB&full_skip=1

Dungeons & Dragons & lawyers, oh my -- eight people face accusations they illegally posted the pioneering role-playing game's newest handbook for download on the Internet.

Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., is seeking unspecified damages in three copyright infringement lawsuits naming a total of eight defendants in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

More than 2,600 copes of "Player's Handbook 2," released March 17 with a suggested retail price of $39.95 a copy, were downloaded from Scribd.com, and more than 4,200 copies were viewed online before the material was pulled from the document-sharing site at Wizards' request, according to two of the lawsuits.

[rug]

1. Hurling a curse at them would have been cheaper.

[Mojambo]

2. They better make that save. n/t

[arbusto_baboso]

3. If this is 4th Ed stuff, no wonder they filed suit.

People stopped buying their shit after 3rd Ed was modified and changed YET AGAIN. Planned obsolescence is something that people catch onto after awhile. If a product works, just stop fucking with it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Speaking of which, I found this the other day:

Anyone else remember it?

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2009/05/dungeons-and-dragons-coloring-book-1979.html

[flying rabbit]

6. I used to have that

now its gone, damn.

[KamaAina]

5. "Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc."

That's the whole problem right there. :(

[Mojambo]

7. Truth. n/t

[Hayabusa]

8. What really ticked me off

was their reaction to this: pulling all of their legal PDFs from sale in several stores online, cutting off many's chance to actually acquire what they had purchased, or access the backups that they were promised by the stores. Now, the only way to get the old material in a digital format, such as 1st and 2nd Edition modules, is to pirate them. Good going, Hasbro...

[Orrex]

9. I'm aware of at least half a dozen sites that still host that file and many others like it

arbusto got it exactly right: the cynical campaign of planned obsolescence is the proximate cause of this kind of backfire. I don't advocate piracy of intellectual property, but there are times when it's clear that a company's policies drive its customers to take files into their own hands.