Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
I'm not the other single vote - that voted in favor of drm over watermark - but against the general trend here that's my opinion too. If you think you should protect your files then do it "as properly" as possible and not some half-hearted way. Maybe I have come to this opinion because I've made better experiences with drm than with watermarks. At the moment, we can manage drm, but the word of "watermark" brings back worst memories of pdf files similar to these lines:
|
Wowio.com and Drivethrurpg both use watermarks (dtrpg only on some books) on their PDFs. Wowio puts a customer number on the left quarter-inch of the PDF; it doesn't interfere with the text (but may interfere with reflowable PDFs in ereaders, but their books have weird other encryption too); DTRPG puts a small line at the bottom of each page indicating the buyer and order #.
These don't interfere at all with reading on a computer, but could interfere with reading on a mobile screen. They're also locked PDFs--uneditable--which means you can't crop out the margins etc to fit them on small pages.
I wind up stripping the lock and manually removing the watermark when I want to read them on an ereader. I suspect that most people don't have the tech skills or the patience for this; the watermarking, with the buyer's name/ID clearly visible, will prevent them from being widely shared on filesharing sites. They may get handed around among friends, but gaming groups have *always* shared books; that's not a drastic change from the pre-ditigal business model.