Note sometimes cease and desists like this include a hiring for the party to start working on a similar product for the company so it could be good news potentially.
Note sometimes cease and desists like this include a hiring for the party to start working on a similar product for the company so it could be good news potentially.
If this were the case, I think we'd have a real client for mtgo by now, and not the pile they've been shoveling at us for years.
This is just a case of them protecting their property.
Because conservative bias is a far, far worse thing. Liberal bias doesn't, statistically speaking, make people stupid. Conservative bias (or at least Fox's version of it) does.
it is/was a drafting simulator, complete with card images.
There you go. If there's anything they're gonna go after, it's the card images. I don't think they care so much what you're doing with them - if you're using them for something they aren't approving, you're breaking the law.
In theory, a text-only draft simulator could get around it.
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Note sometimes cease and desists like this include a hiring for the party to start working on a similar product for the company so it could be good news potentially.
Hopeful, but perhaps a little too much. I would like to see a better draft sim by wizards, but until they realize that the easiest way for new players to draft is to learn on the internet. I dont think i would have ever gotten enough courage to draft at my LGS if it weren't for magicdraftsim.com. Well maybe, but certainly not as early as i did.
If this were the case, I think we'd have a real client for mtgo by now, and not the pile they've been shoveling at us for years.
This is just a case of them protecting their property.
I'd agree it's likely not going to be a "positive result" like I said is a possibility, but for those that want to look at it cup half full it's an unlikely possibility of good.
However, if they just hired them the MTGO client changes that they would be part of would likely just be starting though.
Corporate greed at its finest. Saw this last night and was speechless.
It'd be understandable if Wizards had a decent draft simulator of their own, but theirs is pathetic just like this forced closure. This isn't like their app monopoly where they've wanted to have an official product stand: That is grounds for protection.
Unless something's on the horizon this is bullying by picking on an easy target.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
That site was really helpful prepping for MTGO Cube a couple of weeks ago - 'tis a shame it closed. The fact that images are on the cards makes it much easier to use than a text-based draft, for recognition purposes.
Suffice to say I played more drafts online and hence bought more event tickets from WoTC thanks to Magic Draft Sim... sigh.
the site was great for practicing before prereleases, and the "average pick" really helped me to get a sense of what other players considered to be good. (I know it wasn't perfect, but some information is better than none)
Corporate greed at its finest. Saw this last night and was speechless.
It'd be understandable if Wizards had a decent draft simulator of their own, but theirs is pathetic just like this forced closure. This isn't like their app monopoly where they've wanted to have an official product stand: That is grounds for protection.
Unless something's on the horizon this is bullying by picking on an easy target.
Richard move, Wizards.
__________________
WotC has an online draft simulator. It's called MTGO, and it costs $10-15 per draft. Complain all you want, but this is the reason that WotC shut this site down, and I'm pretty sure it was completely in its rights for doing so (although, I'm not a lawyer). Personally, I hate MTGO, but that doesn't change the facts.
It's what they pay their lawyers to do, I suppose. Really shoddy PR, however - the site does nothing to hamper their bottom line and promotes a large part of the MTG culture.
For everyone saying that magicdraftsim didn't compete with wizards: How are you going to practice drafting now?
by drafting. With actual cards. That you paid for. I highly doubt anyone (or any signifcant number) of people are going to quite drafting now that htey can't practice. And some people will practice by acutally drafting.
For everyone saying that magicdraftsim didn't compete with wizards: How are you going to practice drafting now?
by drafting. With actual cards. That you paid for. I highly doubt anyone (or any signifcant number) of people are going to quite drafting now that htey can't practice. And some people will practice by acutally drafting.
Quitting drafting is actually what I plan to do. And I used to do it once every week or two. So that's several hundred dollars a year that WotC just lost.
While I'm bummed that it's gone, I understand the move by WOTC. Many people (including myself) did unlimited free drafts on this for practice instead of paying for drafts on magic online. You can argue that it gave people the confidence to draft online or that it actually helped WOTC but you can also argue that the sky is red. In either case, you're wrong regardless of how much you want to believe it.
For someone like me who has a macbook, they have killed my best option to online draft since they don't support mac os (at least not without running some windows emulator and screwing up your computer).
For everyone saying that magicdraftsim didn't compete with wizards: How are you going to practice drafting now?
by drafting. With actual cards. That you paid for. I highly doubt anyone (or any signifcant number) of people are going to quite drafting now that htey can't practice. And some people will practice by acutally drafting.
Or we don't draft. People use draft sims for practicing and/or teaching, not to circumvent actual drafting. If people feel comfortable doing something (by being able to practice before hand) they are that much more likely to go out and spend money to participate.
I myself have never drafted before. I use sites like magicdraftsim to learn the format and practice; I'm not likely to want to go spend money doing something I'm not comfortable with first.
Or we don't draft. People use draft sims for practicing and/or teaching, not to circumvent actual drafting. If people feel comfortable doing something (by being able to practice before hand) they are that much more likely to go out and spend money to participate.
I myself have never drafted before. I use sites like magicdraftsim to learn the format and practice; I'm not likely to want to go spend money doing something I'm not comfortable with first.
Same here (though I have actually been drafting. Not as heavily as some people, but still). I'm a pretty newbie drafter. I don't want to be forced to pay my way through a few drafts to get comfortable with it, especially as new sets come out. I think I've done enough DII and drafts to be comfortable, but when Avacyn Restored comes out, I can't guarentee I'll be doing many drafts of it, and I'm even less likely to draft when M13 or Return to Ravnica drops.
i wonder how long before they shut down www.mtgdeckbuilder.net hahahah. that site is amazing cause they have every card and you build and simulate your own decks
Because they have to protect their trademarks. I'm going to assume most of the people in this thread don't have an understanding of copyright and trademark laws. If you let one place use your trademarks without permission, it becomes harder to shut down other places that are using your trademarks. There's a reason a site like this doesn't use the mana symbols in its logo or have a magic art as the banner.
Does it suck? Yes. Was it inevitable? Yes. Its the same reason all the 3rd party apps were shut down as well.
I strongly disagree with this argument. Magic does not need copyright law. The bulk of the prices of cards and packs comes from the value of playing in sanctioned events. Sanctioned events have rules requiring players to play with cards printed by Wizards. To break these rules, you have to counterfeit. You have to produce an automated contract (represented by a card) to do certain things within a corporate-created game, even though the other party (the corporation) has not actually approved this contract. This is a very straightforward application of contract law. Counterfeiting cards is not legally different from forging a check. My point, here, is that Wizards does not need copyright law in order to maintain the value of cards and packs.
Contract law (and the desire to play in sanctioned events) is the reason buy cards and packs produced by Wizards. To play with fake cards has obvious, severe consequences that are not enforced via copyright laws. Wizards even talks about fake cards with the language of forgery and counterfeiting, and not the language of copyright law.
The same argument applies to MTGO. Players use that service because it's sanctioned. There are many ways to play Magic without (directly or indirectly) paying WotC. Wizards has done nothing about the vast majority of these. Indeed, according to other posters, they often use copyright enforcement to shut down one service, but not others that are virtually identical.
To me, it's apparent that they are using copyright enforcement selectively to punish websites for reasons that have nothing to do with maintaining intellectual property value. Otherwise, there would be an obvious (and consistent) public and legal campaign against websites like magicdraftsim. If magicdraftsim is hurting Wizard's business in a way that is justly enforceable through copyright law, then so is every other drafting website.
If Hasbro believes that there are legitimate IP management concerns with magicdraftsim, they would also be trying to shut down other draft sites. Therefore, Hasbro does not believe that their IP value is at stake, and they are attacking magicdraftsim for some other reason, selectively applying copyright law (as far as we can tell) in order to enforce the (likely legally unenforceable) issue they have with magicdraftsim.
I strongly disagree with this argument. Magic does not need copyright law. The bulk of the prices of cards and packs comes from the value of playing in sanctioned events. Sanctioned events have rules requiring players to play with cards printed by Wizards. To break these rules, you have to counterfeit. You have to produce an automated contract (represented by a card) to do certain things within a corporate-created game, even though the other party (the corporation) has not actually approved this contract. This is a very straightforward application of contract law. Counterfeiting cards is not legally different from forging a check. My point, here, is that Wizards does not need copyright law in order to maintain the value of cards and packs.
Contract law (and the desire to play in sanctioned events) is the reason buy cards and packs produced by Wizards. To play with fake cards has obvious, severe consequences that are not enforced via copyright laws. Wizards even talks about fake cards with the language of forgery and counterfeiting, and not the language of copyright law.
The same argument applies to MTGO. Players use that service because it's sanctioned. There are many ways to play Magic without (directly or indirectly) paying WotC. Wizards has done nothing about the vast majority of these. Indeed, according to other posters, they often use copyright enforcement to shut down one service, but not others that are virtually identical.
To me, it's apparent that they are using copyright enforcement selectively to punish websites for reasons that have nothing to do with maintaining intellectual property value. Otherwise, there would be an obvious (and consistent) public and legal campaign against websites like magicdraftsim. If magicdraftsim is hurting Wizard's business in a way that is justly enforceable through copyright law, then so is every other drafting website.
If Hasbro believes that there are legitimate IP management concerns with magicdraftsim, they would also be trying to shut down other draft sites. Therefore, Hasbro does not believe that their IP value is at stake, and they are attacking magicdraftsim for some other reason, selectively applying copyright law (as far as we can tell) in order to enforce the (likely legally unenforceable) issue they have with magicdraftsim.
You don't really seem to know or understand anything about IP law. It has nothing to do with laws against forgery or counterfeiting, or contract law.
Also, Wizards has the right to go after who they wish for copyright issues and to not go after who they wish for the same issues. And just because a site hasn't been taken down doesn't mean Wizards approves of it or has even noticed it. They felt the site infringed on their copyright, they sent a cease & desist, the owner of the site complied. That's all.
Like I said before, I don't think it was because it was necessarily a draft simulator, I think they just don't like the use of card images in such things.
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As someone who doesn't draft because 1) it costs money and 2) it's a daunting format for beginners and 3) you don't get to keep all the cards in your pack, I was using the simulator to practice and get familiar with the format.
I've been using the simulator for the past 3 weeks, practicing and building up confidence for an actual draft. I was actually going to try one this Friday night.
WotC actions, while understandable, has an adverse affect on someone like me. I wasn't terribly interested in draft before, I'm certainly not going to play it now that I can't practice it.
I think this could have a lot to do with their new android/apple app. If you want to sell it, you have to push out the free competition. If draft sims are not already a feature I expect they will be included in the app in the not too distant future. Have to protect your IP to sell it.
Dunno why wizards did such thing... after all there are a plenty of sites to draft, this is the one I use more often: http://tappedout.net/
Because they are legally required to vigorously defend their trademarks and intellectual property. If they didn't they marks would fall into the public domain and the profit motivation for Hasbro's shareholder to maintain the game would no longer exist.
It's the same reason why companies keep long propriety names to try and prevent the dilution of their brand to prevent it from being lost- see Xerox, Lego, etc. Here's an example from Adobe that they use to try and protect the viability of the Photoshop trademark. http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html
Long story short, they're legally required to do this, lest they lose all rights to the brand.
Unfornately, this does lead to situations where they will get PR black eyes, but they have to do it... and I highly doubt that any draft sim site would be willing to pony up all the money it would take to deal with the licensing issues- or if Wizards would even allow it to be licensed.
Because they are legally required to vigorously defend their trademarks and intellectual property. If they didn't they marks would fall into the public domain and the profit motivation for Hasbro's shareholder to maintain the game would no longer exist.
It's the same reason why companies keep long propriety names to try and prevent the dilution of their brand to prevent it from being lost- see Xerox, Lego, etc. Here's an example from Adobe that they use to try and protect the viability of the Photoshop trademark. http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html
Long story short, they're legally required to do this, lest they lose all rights to the brand.
If that were really true they'd also have to go after sites like this one. It has "mtg" in the name, after all.
Trademarks falling into the public domain is extraordinarily rare and the chance of it happening to MTG is pretty much nil.
You don't really seem to know or understand anything about IP law. It has nothing to do with laws against forgery or counterfeiting, or contract law.
You misunderstand me. IP laws and laws against forgery and counterfeiting are clearly legally seperate. I don't mean to imply that one overrides or obsoletes the other. I am saying that, in this case, one is stronger and more relevant to defending the company's business interest in maintaining the value of their products.
If the U.S. Federal government could hold copyrights, should it sue money counterfeiters for copyright infringement? It does have the right, but anti-counterfeitting laws are stronger. If I copy a contract a business is using in a deal with someone else, planning to claim whatever value is inherent in such an agreement, should the business, as legal copyright holder of the language of the contract, sue me for intellectual property infringement? Clearly no. The potential loss from the lie underlying this forgery is much more important than the loss of the labor value in the legal writing of their lawyers (which I have stolen, by any common reading of copyright law). Indeed, the loss from forgery is so much more substantial that the business wouldn't even bother to water down their chances of winning a lawsuit with a petty claim against my copying of a couple paragraphs of legal prose.
In Wizards' most recent statement about counterfeiting, they don't even talk about intellectual property. In related court cases, they get the defendants to agree to an injunction against infringing on copyrights (and intellectual property, in general), but they only specifically charge the defendants with counterfeiting.
In fact, they apparently succeeded in this case by obtaining a warrant that ultimately showed that the defendants uploaded videos about how to counterfeit Magic cards. This sort of action would not be relevant in a case about copyright infringement, where the specifics of how to make a believable fake are not important: the consumer to whom you sell the fake in a copyright violation case knows, or doesn't care, that they aren't getting their goods from the copyright holder; making a convincing fake is irrelevant. This also shows why charging counterfeiters with counterfeiting is better than charging them with copyright violation. First, it is easier to prove counterfeiting, since it involves a manufacturing process that leaves more evidence. Second, counterfeiting is a more serious offense, since counterfeiters defraud their own customers along with all those might who accept the counterfeit as real (including DCI and Wizards).
In conclusion, copyright law is unnecessary to maintain the value of cards. Wizards can (and, effectively, they do) control the supply of cards solely through the enforcement of anti-counterfeiting, anti-forgery, and anti-fraud laws. Controlling the supply of cards is as much as Wizards can get out of their copyright of them. So when they use threats of copyright litigation to shut down a website that does not interfere in their control of the supply of cards, they are overstepping their rights as copyright holder.
You misunderstand me. IP laws and laws against forgery and counterfeiting are clearly legally seperate. I don't mean to imply that one overrides or obsoletes the other. I am saying that, in this case, one is stronger and more relevant to defending the company's business interest in maintaining the value of their products.
If the U.S. Federal government could hold copyrights, should it sue money counterfeiters for copyright infringement? It does have the right, but anti-counterfeitting laws are stronger. If I copy a contract a business is using in a deal with someone else, planning to claim whatever value is inherent in such an agreement, should the business, as legal copyright holder of the language of the contract, sue me for intellectual property infringement? Clearly no. The potential loss from the lie underlying this forgery is much more important than the loss of the labor value in the legal writing of their lawyers (which I have stolen, by any common reading of copyright law). Indeed, the loss from forgery is so much more substantial that the business wouldn't even bother to water down their chances of winning a lawsuit with a petty claim against my copying of a couple paragraphs of legal prose.
In Wizards' most recent [URL="http://www.wizards.com/WPN/News/Article.aspx?x=20111214_CounterfeitAnnouncement"]statement[/URL] about counterfeiting, they don't even talk about intellectual property. In related [URL="http://seattletrademarklawyer.com/blog/2012/1/15/seller-admits-to-counterfeiting-cards-in-wizards-of-the-coas.html"]court cases[/URL], they get the defendants to agree to an injunction against infringing on copyrights (and intellectual property, in general), but they only specifically charge the defendants with counterfeiting.
In fact, they apparently succeeded in this case by obtaining a warrant that ultimately showed that the defendants uploaded videos about how to counterfeit Magic cards. This sort of action would not be relevant in a case about copyright infringement, where the specifics of how to make a believable fake are not important: the consumer to whom you sell the fake in a copyright violation case knows, or doesn't care, that they aren't getting their goods from the copyright holder; making a convincing fake is irrelevant. This also shows why charging counterfeiters with counterfeiting is better than charging them with copyright violation. First, it is easier to prove counterfeiting, since it involves a manufacturing process that leaves more evidence. Second, counterfeiting is a more serious offense, since counterfeiters defraud their own customers along with all those might who accept the counterfeit as real (including DCI and Wizards).
In conclusion, copyright law is unnecessary to maintain the value of cards. Wizards can (and, effectively, they do) control the supply of cards solely through the enforcement of anti-counterfeiting, anti-forgery, and anti-fraud laws. Controlling the supply of cards is as much as Wizards can get out of their copyright of them. So when they use threats of copyright litigation to shut down a website that does not interfere in their control of the supply of cards, they are overstepping their rights as copyright holder.
[url=http://seattletrademarklawyer.com/storage/Wizards%20of%20the%20Coast%20v.%20Redmore%20-%20Complaint.pdf[/url]Did you read the complaint?[/url]. It most assuredly is a copyright case. The suit was for copyright infringement and trademark infringement. There is no law against making counterfeit Magic cards specifically, the law is that a Magic card's design, artwork, and what-have-you is a copyright and/or trademark of Wizards of the Coast and you need their permission to use it.
Monetary loss or the value of the cards or whatnot doesn't have anything to do with your copyright. Even IP not worth anything is covered by copyright (a short story or poem I write up has no value, but copyright law protects it). Maintaining actual control of production doesn't matter. All that matters is you need their permission to use the card art and design.
There are exceptions to copyright law, the most famous one being fair use. "They're not losing money", however, isn't a fair use justification.
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Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
If this were the case, I think we'd have a real client for mtgo by now, and not the pile they've been shoveling at us for years.
This is just a case of them protecting their property.
There you go. If there's anything they're gonna go after, it's the card images. I don't think they care so much what you're doing with them - if you're using them for something they aren't approving, you're breaking the law.
In theory, a text-only draft simulator could get around it.
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Hopeful, but perhaps a little too much. I would like to see a better draft sim by wizards, but until they realize that the easiest way for new players to draft is to learn on the internet. I dont think i would have ever gotten enough courage to draft at my LGS if it weren't for magicdraftsim.com. Well maybe, but certainly not as early as i did.
I'd agree it's likely not going to be a "positive result" like I said is a possibility, but for those that want to look at it cup half full it's an unlikely possibility of good.
However, if they just hired them the MTGO client changes that they would be part of would likely just be starting though.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
It'd be understandable if Wizards had a decent draft simulator of their own, but theirs is pathetic just like this forced closure. This isn't like their app monopoly where they've wanted to have an official product stand: That is grounds for protection.
Unless something's on the horizon this is bullying by picking on an easy target.
Richard move, Wizards.
__________________
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.
Suffice to say I played more drafts online and hence bought more event tickets from WoTC thanks to Magic Draft Sim... sigh.
Trades.
Decks
RWU Zedruu the Greathearted EDH RWU
WotC has an online draft simulator. It's called MTGO, and it costs $10-15 per draft. Complain all you want, but this is the reason that WotC shut this site down, and I'm pretty sure it was completely in its rights for doing so (although, I'm not a lawyer). Personally, I hate MTGO, but that doesn't change the facts.
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
meat's Trade Corner
by drafting. With actual cards. That you paid for. I highly doubt anyone (or any signifcant number) of people are going to quite drafting now that htey can't practice. And some people will practice by acutally drafting.
Quitting drafting is actually what I plan to do. And I used to do it once every week or two. So that's several hundred dollars a year that WotC just lost.
For someone like me who has a macbook, they have killed my best option to online draft since they don't support mac os (at least not without running some windows emulator and screwing up your computer).
Or we don't draft. People use draft sims for practicing and/or teaching, not to circumvent actual drafting. If people feel comfortable doing something (by being able to practice before hand) they are that much more likely to go out and spend money to participate.
I myself have never drafted before. I use sites like magicdraftsim to learn the format and practice; I'm not likely to want to go spend money doing something I'm not comfortable with first.
Same here (though I have actually been drafting. Not as heavily as some people, but still). I'm a pretty newbie drafter. I don't want to be forced to pay my way through a few drafts to get comfortable with it, especially as new sets come out. I think I've done enough DII and drafts to be comfortable, but when Avacyn Restored comes out, I can't guarentee I'll be doing many drafts of it, and I'm even less likely to draft when M13 or Return to Ravnica drops.
I strongly disagree with this argument. Magic does not need copyright law. The bulk of the prices of cards and packs comes from the value of playing in sanctioned events. Sanctioned events have rules requiring players to play with cards printed by Wizards. To break these rules, you have to counterfeit. You have to produce an automated contract (represented by a card) to do certain things within a corporate-created game, even though the other party (the corporation) has not actually approved this contract. This is a very straightforward application of contract law. Counterfeiting cards is not legally different from forging a check. My point, here, is that Wizards does not need copyright law in order to maintain the value of cards and packs.
Contract law (and the desire to play in sanctioned events) is the reason buy cards and packs produced by Wizards. To play with fake cards has obvious, severe consequences that are not enforced via copyright laws. Wizards even talks about fake cards with the language of forgery and counterfeiting, and not the language of copyright law.
The same argument applies to MTGO. Players use that service because it's sanctioned. There are many ways to play Magic without (directly or indirectly) paying WotC. Wizards has done nothing about the vast majority of these. Indeed, according to other posters, they often use copyright enforcement to shut down one service, but not others that are virtually identical.
To me, it's apparent that they are using copyright enforcement selectively to punish websites for reasons that have nothing to do with maintaining intellectual property value. Otherwise, there would be an obvious (and consistent) public and legal campaign against websites like magicdraftsim. If magicdraftsim is hurting Wizard's business in a way that is justly enforceable through copyright law, then so is every other drafting website.
If Hasbro believes that there are legitimate IP management concerns with magicdraftsim, they would also be trying to shut down other draft sites. Therefore, Hasbro does not believe that their IP value is at stake, and they are attacking magicdraftsim for some other reason, selectively applying copyright law (as far as we can tell) in order to enforce the (likely legally unenforceable) issue they have with magicdraftsim.
You don't really seem to know or understand anything about IP law. It has nothing to do with laws against forgery or counterfeiting, or contract law.
Also, Wizards has the right to go after who they wish for copyright issues and to not go after who they wish for the same issues. And just because a site hasn't been taken down doesn't mean Wizards approves of it or has even noticed it. They felt the site infringed on their copyright, they sent a cease & desist, the owner of the site complied. That's all.
Like I said before, I don't think it was because it was necessarily a draft simulator, I think they just don't like the use of card images in such things.
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I've been using the simulator for the past 3 weeks, practicing and building up confidence for an actual draft. I was actually going to try one this Friday night.
WotC actions, while understandable, has an adverse affect on someone like me. I wasn't terribly interested in draft before, I'm certainly not going to play it now that I can't practice it.
Because they are legally required to vigorously defend their trademarks and intellectual property. If they didn't they marks would fall into the public domain and the profit motivation for Hasbro's shareholder to maintain the game would no longer exist.
It's the same reason why companies keep long propriety names to try and prevent the dilution of their brand to prevent it from being lost- see Xerox, Lego, etc. Here's an example from Adobe that they use to try and protect the viability of the Photoshop trademark. http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html
Long story short, they're legally required to do this, lest they lose all rights to the brand.
Unfornately, this does lead to situations where they will get PR black eyes, but they have to do it... and I highly doubt that any draft sim site would be willing to pony up all the money it would take to deal with the licensing issues- or if Wizards would even allow it to be licensed.
If that were really true they'd also have to go after sites like this one. It has "mtg" in the name, after all.
Trademarks falling into the public domain is extraordinarily rare and the chance of it happening to MTG is pretty much nil.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
You misunderstand me. IP laws and laws against forgery and counterfeiting are clearly legally seperate. I don't mean to imply that one overrides or obsoletes the other. I am saying that, in this case, one is stronger and more relevant to defending the company's business interest in maintaining the value of their products.
If the U.S. Federal government could hold copyrights, should it sue money counterfeiters for copyright infringement? It does have the right, but anti-counterfeitting laws are stronger. If I copy a contract a business is using in a deal with someone else, planning to claim whatever value is inherent in such an agreement, should the business, as legal copyright holder of the language of the contract, sue me for intellectual property infringement? Clearly no. The potential loss from the lie underlying this forgery is much more important than the loss of the labor value in the legal writing of their lawyers (which I have stolen, by any common reading of copyright law). Indeed, the loss from forgery is so much more substantial that the business wouldn't even bother to water down their chances of winning a lawsuit with a petty claim against my copying of a couple paragraphs of legal prose.
In Wizards' most recent statement about counterfeiting, they don't even talk about intellectual property. In related court cases, they get the defendants to agree to an injunction against infringing on copyrights (and intellectual property, in general), but they only specifically charge the defendants with counterfeiting.
In fact, they apparently succeeded in this case by obtaining a warrant that ultimately showed that the defendants uploaded videos about how to counterfeit Magic cards. This sort of action would not be relevant in a case about copyright infringement, where the specifics of how to make a believable fake are not important: the consumer to whom you sell the fake in a copyright violation case knows, or doesn't care, that they aren't getting their goods from the copyright holder; making a convincing fake is irrelevant. This also shows why charging counterfeiters with counterfeiting is better than charging them with copyright violation. First, it is easier to prove counterfeiting, since it involves a manufacturing process that leaves more evidence. Second, counterfeiting is a more serious offense, since counterfeiters defraud their own customers along with all those might who accept the counterfeit as real (including DCI and Wizards).
In conclusion, copyright law is unnecessary to maintain the value of cards. Wizards can (and, effectively, they do) control the supply of cards solely through the enforcement of anti-counterfeiting, anti-forgery, and anti-fraud laws. Controlling the supply of cards is as much as Wizards can get out of their copyright of them. So when they use threats of copyright litigation to shut down a website that does not interfere in their control of the supply of cards, they are overstepping their rights as copyright holder.
[url=http://seattletrademarklawyer.com/storage/Wizards%20of%20the%20Coast%20v.%20Redmore%20-%20Complaint.pdf[/url]Did you read the complaint?[/url]. It most assuredly is a copyright case. The suit was for copyright infringement and trademark infringement. There is no law against making counterfeit Magic cards specifically, the law is that a Magic card's design, artwork, and what-have-you is a copyright and/or trademark of Wizards of the Coast and you need their permission to use it.
Monetary loss or the value of the cards or whatnot doesn't have anything to do with your copyright. Even IP not worth anything is covered by copyright (a short story or poem I write up has no value, but copyright law protects it). Maintaining actual control of production doesn't matter. All that matters is you need their permission to use the card art and design.
There are exceptions to copyright law, the most famous one being fair use. "They're not losing money", however, isn't a fair use justification.
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