- From the look of the cards so far, UW control probably does not have what it takes to stand on its own 2 feet in Standard right now. Good thing all those dual lands and signets let us add another color (take your pick of G, R or B splashes; all are valid options - I'm intending to build UWr personally). That said, there are other ways you can go with a UW deck and there is no reason to be upset that such decks are also being supported. Personally I don't have a problem with not having to buy a new set of dual lands if I decide to take a break from playing control and run some creatures into my opponent for a while without having to play a sub-par deck.
- The basic skeleton of the UW deck has been around for some time, with the other UX guilds having given it most of the tools it was lacking from Kamigawa Block + 9th Ed already (Remand, Repeal, Telling Time, Compulsive Research, etc). It didn't need to get all the cards necessary to build the deck from this set. In fact, the UW control approach needed relatively few cards from this set, mostly being tempo-friendly answer cards (Condemn and Spell Snare) and Instant-speed card-drawing (can't have everything, I guess). Another counterspell would compete for already crowded slots in a deck that wants to run Leak, Remand and Hinder before having a good additional option in Rewind.
- The UW mechanic appears, unfortunately, to mostly be oriented toward Limited play. Likewise, limited play requires that players have enough creatures to fill out their deck. That's reality of how Wizards design their sets, folks, and having played 4th Ed / Ice Age limited I'm very glad that they do. Some of these creatures are geared toward constructed play, but I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Designing sets for Limited makes for a good Limited environment.
On specific cards:
- Augustin seems to be getting somewhat over-hyped by quite a few people. Remember, toughness 3 is a rather bad place to be right now if you cost 4 mana. There are a lot of spells capable of removing him the turn he hits play, and a control deck usually doesn't want to tap out for him that early - not to meniton wanting to run Wrath of God. That said, I expect it will show up in UW(x) control decks running Signets.
- Windreaver is certainly no Morphling and probably won't be seen in winning decks until after Kamigawa Block rotates out - there's no way it competes with Keiga, Yosei or Meloku. That said, it is a good late-game win condition for a UW deck that wants to establish a sizeable mana base. I expect that unless there's something more powerful by the time Kamigawa Block rotates out this will beat Mahamoti Djinn and Cerulean Sphinx for the UW win condition slots.
Quote from Sacred Assassin »
After playtesting some of the U/W cards they dont run as smoothly as izzet.
I noticed the same thing.
So then it becomes whats the better control U/W or U/R
IMO, just play both in one deck.
Please do not double post, next time you could be warned.
goddammit do i have to repeat myself? there is a non disclosure agreement. It says that you cant tell these cards to anyone.
[/size]
Given that I've pointed out the same thing, it would appear some people are posting without reading the entire thread, asking questions that have already been answered. *shrug* Much like most longer discussion threads on most forums.
Quote from ButteBlues18 »
One can hardly claim that RE was aware he was committing a crime if he is not under the impression a source is breaking a legally binding contract.
For all RE knows, someone could be giving him a card they made up in 30 seconds. Unless they mention an NDA or some other proof that they got a real card, RE can only make assumptions and post his assumptions.
I've covered this point already. RE would have to argue that he had reason to believe the source of the information had acquired it via legal channels and was legally allowed to disseminate this information.
Given that the cards weren't available to the public, he'd have an incredibly hard time doing that.
Quote from Random_Moniker_Redux »
But that is the best defense R_E has going for him. Unless a source specifically admitted that the cards were illegally obtained ("I just broke my NDA to send you these", "Dude, I totally robbed these from a printing sheet"), then R_E has no knowledge of the background of the card, Im sure he gets twice as many fake cards as real cards. He just fowards the info that seems legitimate to him, but without any concrete information on how the cards were obtained, he has done nothing illegal, especially the way the playtest cards were obtained.
That said, I think Wizards has just gotten out of hand with this whole situation. Keep your employees under wraps and make printers have better security and well have less leaks.
Wrong; all they have to do is prove there is no way "any reasonable person" would believe the information had come from a legal source, and RE's only defense along those lines would be to prove that there is some reason for him not to be considered "any reasonable person" (e.g. by way of insanity or low intelligence, which I seriously doubt is the case).
Now for some most likely unwelcome speculation on my part.
Fortunately I am not a lawyer so I could be wrong but as far as I can tell Star city games could violating WotC IP by running a proxy tournament.
...
The first part describes what and how to use a proxy along with the 30 dollar entry fee. They are not doing this out of charity.
The second part relays that they will be using rules formed by the sanctioning body of WotC known as the DCI.
The details of the cards that are in-print and the details of the DCI rules are in the public domain, and so IP copyright laws do not apply to these as far as proxy tournaments are concerned. There is no "company secret" about what Black Lotus does.
The most WotC could do in this case is prosecute people who photocopy cards to use as proxies, as the artwork is protected by copyright, though the fact these are not being marketed and that they are being used for personal use would make any such legal action futile.
Quote from Azerbaijan »
3) there's a better source for a definition of the word "sue."
That was my line of reasoning.
"To seek reparations for a greivance in a court of law"
[EDIT]: And I'll admit to being pedantic on this point.
hmm. I think they can't expect that we will buy something if they don't tell us what it is.
Why not? They used to.
Anyway, that's totally impossible to controll leaks. Maybe they will be able to boot out some employee now, but it wont stop the leaks. Next time people at wotc will use internet cafes to post the rumors themselves. How could wizards stop that?
As a systems administrator, I can confirm for you that the employee would either have used an external internet connection or would be a "former employee". Tracking internet use from a workplace is quite easy even without using monitoring software (proxy server logs are sufficient).
And yes they can control their leaks - it's called a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It's something every WotC employee and "Beta tester" would have had to sign. You leak info, you get fired. You try to remain anonymous in leaking that info, you discover how internet monitoring and security works.
*shrug* if that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time Australian and American legaleese differ.
Have you seen the complaint? If so, please post it for us
As I said, I was going from the press release, and thus speculating. However, there has not been any statement that they are intending to pursue damages, or if so what damages they are seeking compensation for.
In any case, I believe damages are presumed if a copyright is violated.
They would have to be able to quantify an amount of income lost or an amount of income gained by the distribution of their intellectual property.
Quantifying how much they would have made had the information not been made public would be extremely difficult (unlike, say, Napster where one can quantify how many times a given song has been downloaded and assign that a value in terms of lost CD sales), and unlike most instances of copyright violation, the person distributing their information is not making any money from it.
If the above link stops working, do this:
1. Go here: http://www.wawd.uscourts.gov/wawd/welcome.nsf/main/page
2. Click on "Civil Caselist" on the lower right.
3. Click "by Date Filed" on the mid-left bar.
4. Click 1/19/2006
5. Click C06-0095
They have taken out a civil suit against him, but they have not sued him (i.e. they aren't claiming damages, etc.)
So WotC has a mole. They shouldn't be focusing on the gamers; they should be focusing on the "threat" from within if they are smart. This threat could creep up on them and bite them in the ass, so if they are intelligent, though there is no evidence indicating that, they should focus on uprooting the mole from within their ranks. They shouldn't be going after us; this can only really decrease product sales because of boycotting.
Assuming the point of this legal action is for WotC to obtain the identity of this mole, their course of action to do so would be to acquire any usernames, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, etc. these people used when communicating with RE. To do that, they could (a) ask nicely and hope, or (b) obtain a court order for that information. One would assume that they would have looked at information they can acquire internally first before emabrking on costly legal action (their law firm isn't a cheap one).
You may note that they are not "going after the gamers"; they are taking legal action against the person distributing their proprietary information. In their press release, it says they are taking legal action against RE, not suing him (I'd love to see them try to ennumerate damages lost due to this information being public and, as far as I know, RE has not made any money off it).
They have not to this date taken any legal action against anyone other than the person most visibly responsible for receiving and distributing their intellectual property. Even the take-down order (the equivalent of our "cease and desist order") doesn't constitute legal action as long as the information is removed - as I said in my first post on this subject, this is the legal equivalent of a polite request to remove certain infringing material from the website.
I expect they aren't overly concerned about people boycotting their products given that Hasbro has products beyond Magic and that most Magic players won't take such extreme action over an extended period of time.
Quote from odradek »
Even if the law is with wotc, they are not forced upon to sue r_e or salvation.
To re-iterate, "legal action" does not imply suing someone.
yes but Hasbro doesnt know who the employee is... so they get the middle man... ie: RE
More to the point, I would expect that - given the official press release - the main point of this legal action would be to acquire the identity of the person/people giving him that information.
i know some torrent websites that operate out of europe and the rcaa and motion picture ppl can't touch them and they've survived for years while other sites in the US have been shut down...
can't this work the same way in this type of situation?
Not unless you were intending to distribute torrent seeds for people to download the spoiler from someone's computer, and not actually host that spoiler yourself.
Even in the EU, hosting other peoples' intelictual property for distribution without permission is illegal.
Quote from Username »
But then the employee is legally at fault for its release.
Yes, that employee is.
However, the person distributing that information is ALSO at fault for distributing WotC's intellectual property.
Then what is it? If I know something, say I caught my girlfriend cheating on me. She doesn't want me to know that, but since I now do, I have the right to spread it if I want to. How is this situation different, if a person knows about this information and shares it?
It's a completely different situation because your girlfriend is not intending to market the fact she is cheating on you to make a substantial amount of money (we would reasonably assume).
Now I don't support breaking in to Wizards or blackmailing information out of WotC employees, but if an employee willingly gives you information and you don't sign any legally binding documents preventing you from spreading it, then you now have possession of the information, and have legal freedom over it.
No, you don't, because the employee - who almost certainly signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement - broke the law in giving you that information.
It's like selling stolen goods is illegal (assuming that it can be proven that any reasonable person would know the goods are stolen, which in this case it has to be since the cards were not yet publicly released).
Therefore it is not a freedom of speech issue. I don't know any way to make this easier for you to understand.
R_E never USED internal sources to acquire any information. The sources of the information only gave R_E the info because they wanted to. R_E just revealed the info to the public.
You just defined "used internal sources" pretty well there.
Him/MTGS getting the info isn't the issue. Making it public is.
That is the original press release from WIzards issued on the 19th. DUH!! My question is will anyone actually address this news...you know...Rosewater or Forsythe...someone like that?
Very doubtful given that it could influence an ongoing legal case.
I'd expect to hear nothing other than official press releases until after the matter is settled (and even then I wouldn't hold your breath)
Don't worry folks... MTGS can't be shut down. Welll... the server could, but all we'd have to do is get a hosting service in, say, Swedan or Russia. The DMCA and other such totally rediculas laws don't apply there.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The European Union, to which Sweeden is a signatory, do subscribe to these copyright laws. What you're thinking of is a loophole in Sweeden's laws which allows a certain website to give people bit-torrent "seeds" to download software/movies/etc from peoples' computers without hosting that software on their own servers. Information hosted directly on a server in Sweeden will still be subject to these laws.
I don't know what you're referring to in regards to Russia.
The only thing that really makes me angry is that instead of sending a private message to Hannes, R_E, and/or any of the other admins telling them that WoTC doesn't want certain things posted first. Instead, they publically announce that they're taking LEGAL ACTION against R_E. It would have been a whole lot easier on everyone if they had just said... "Look... we don't like the leaks, but they're to our knowledge legal. But, the playtest cards, the obviously illegally obtained italian rares (what i'm guessing the other threads were) and ____ are crossing the line. We're requesting that you delete them and do not post such things again, if you do we will take legal action against you."
I seriously doubt all this fuss lately would have happened if R_E deleted some posts and said that playtest card threads and (others) will be deleted because Wizards said that they're illegal.
The problem, as I understand such things, is that if WotC were to take a gentle approach earlier on, it would hinder their ability to take a stronger course of action if there was opposition to the "polite request to remove infringing material".
In "legaleese", this is the equivalent of that polite request.
To re-iterate: a takedown notice is not the same as a person being sued or a site threatenned to be shut down.
Quote from Swordsman Boy »
there was more than 10 or 15 we got most of it done by that dude and shouldn't they be sueing him lol...
Since that person has remained anonymous, they are not able to do so even if they know how he came by that information. They are therefore taking what action they are reasonably able to take.
Quote from morgan_coke »
I view the potential of MTGS shutdown as an unhappy, but overall relatively minor issue. What I do not view as a minor issue, and that I think many people here have not considered, is the long term impact and precedence such an action would create. The DMCA is a bad law, created largely to pander to old media companies that are terrified of the internet and want to turn back the clock so that their business can continue on its old model.
*really doesn't want to get into protracted argument on this point*
Actually, the DMCA is a law designed to allow companies who want to provide their product - or information pertaining to that product- over the internet to do so themselves, without other people doing so in a manner they do not want to happen. The best example is a site that you pay them to download something having their downloads offered for free by another site.
The rest of this post showed that you need to learn about the DMCA laws before discussing their implications.
Quote from Nazdakka »
Yeah, I'd be surprised if they could enforce this if MTGS moved to a non-American server. AFAIK, the DMCA is a uniquely American bit of insanity.
There are about 40 other countries that subscribe to the DMCA, as does the EU (though there are loopholes in the laws of some Eurpoean countries, they still subscribe to the DMCA in regards to hosting the actual "offending material").
Quote from Freixa »
There isn't a clausule in the forums that says mtgsalvation isn't responsible of the contents of the posts? I saw it in a lot of forums, i dunno if it is here.
Yep, and that's why they can't be sued unless they fail to follow the order to remove the offending material. If the site was to knowingly allow it to stay up after it has been pointed out to them, however, that would be another matter.
To clarify, I'm not a lawyer and my only experience with this copyright law has been while working as a systems administrator at an ISP where one of our web-hosting customers had material in violation of this law on their site. As others have said, RE and the site's owners would be well advised to seek qualified legal counsel on this matter. If dealt with intelligently and reasonably, I would expect that there would be no serious ramifications for either party. However, as I said earlier, I'm not what you'd call "qualified legal counsel".
- From the look of the cards so far, UW control probably does not have what it takes to stand on its own 2 feet in Standard right now. Good thing all those dual lands and signets let us add another color (take your pick of G, R or B splashes; all are valid options - I'm intending to build UWr personally). That said, there are other ways you can go with a UW deck and there is no reason to be upset that such decks are also being supported. Personally I don't have a problem with not having to buy a new set of dual lands if I decide to take a break from playing control and run some creatures into my opponent for a while without having to play a sub-par deck.
- The basic skeleton of the UW deck has been around for some time, with the other UX guilds having given it most of the tools it was lacking from Kamigawa Block + 9th Ed already (Remand, Repeal, Telling Time, Compulsive Research, etc). It didn't need to get all the cards necessary to build the deck from this set. In fact, the UW control approach needed relatively few cards from this set, mostly being tempo-friendly answer cards (Condemn and Spell Snare) and Instant-speed card-drawing (can't have everything, I guess). Another counterspell would compete for already crowded slots in a deck that wants to run Leak, Remand and Hinder before having a good additional option in Rewind.
- The UW mechanic appears, unfortunately, to mostly be oriented toward Limited play. Likewise, limited play requires that players have enough creatures to fill out their deck. That's reality of how Wizards design their sets, folks, and having played 4th Ed / Ice Age limited I'm very glad that they do. Some of these creatures are geared toward constructed play, but I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Designing sets for Limited makes for a good Limited environment.
On specific cards:
- Augustin seems to be getting somewhat over-hyped by quite a few people. Remember, toughness 3 is a rather bad place to be right now if you cost 4 mana. There are a lot of spells capable of removing him the turn he hits play, and a control deck usually doesn't want to tap out for him that early - not to meniton wanting to run Wrath of God. That said, I expect it will show up in UW(x) control decks running Signets.
- Windreaver is certainly no Morphling and probably won't be seen in winning decks until after Kamigawa Block rotates out - there's no way it competes with Keiga, Yosei or Meloku. That said, it is a good late-game win condition for a UW deck that wants to establish a sizeable mana base. I expect that unless there's something more powerful by the time Kamigawa Block rotates out this will beat Mahamoti Djinn and Cerulean Sphinx for the UW win condition slots.
I noticed the same thing.
IMO, just play both in one deck.
Please do not double post, next time you could be warned.
Given that I've pointed out the same thing, it would appear some people are posting without reading the entire thread, asking questions that have already been answered. *shrug* Much like most longer discussion threads on most forums.
I've covered this point already. RE would have to argue that he had reason to believe the source of the information had acquired it via legal channels and was legally allowed to disseminate this information.
Given that the cards weren't available to the public, he'd have an incredibly hard time doing that.
Wrong; all they have to do is prove there is no way "any reasonable person" would believe the information had come from a legal source, and RE's only defense along those lines would be to prove that there is some reason for him not to be considered "any reasonable person" (e.g. by way of insanity or low intelligence, which I seriously doubt is the case).
The details of the cards that are in-print and the details of the DCI rules are in the public domain, and so IP copyright laws do not apply to these as far as proxy tournaments are concerned. There is no "company secret" about what Black Lotus does.
The most WotC could do in this case is prosecute people who photocopy cards to use as proxies, as the artwork is protected by copyright, though the fact these are not being marketed and that they are being used for personal use would make any such legal action futile.
That was my line of reasoning.
"To seek reparations for a greivance in a court of law"
[EDIT]: And I'll admit to being pedantic on this point.
Why not? They used to.
As a systems administrator, I can confirm for you that the employee would either have used an external internet connection or would be a "former employee". Tracking internet use from a workplace is quite easy even without using monitoring software (proxy server logs are sufficient).
And yes they can control their leaks - it's called a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It's something every WotC employee and "Beta tester" would have had to sign. You leak info, you get fired. You try to remain anonymous in leaking that info, you discover how internet monitoring and security works.
*shrug* if that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time Australian and American legaleese differ.
As I said, I was going from the press release, and thus speculating. However, there has not been any statement that they are intending to pursue damages, or if so what damages they are seeking compensation for.
They would have to be able to quantify an amount of income lost or an amount of income gained by the distribution of their intellectual property.
Quantifying how much they would have made had the information not been made public would be extremely difficult (unlike, say, Napster where one can quantify how many times a given song has been downloaded and assign that a value in terms of lost CD sales), and unlike most instances of copyright violation, the person distributing their information is not making any money from it.
They have taken out a civil suit against him, but they have not sued him (i.e. they aren't claiming damages, etc.)
Assuming the point of this legal action is for WotC to obtain the identity of this mole, their course of action to do so would be to acquire any usernames, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, etc. these people used when communicating with RE. To do that, they could (a) ask nicely and hope, or (b) obtain a court order for that information. One would assume that they would have looked at information they can acquire internally first before emabrking on costly legal action (their law firm isn't a cheap one).
You may note that they are not "going after the gamers"; they are taking legal action against the person distributing their proprietary information. In their press release, it says they are taking legal action against RE, not suing him (I'd love to see them try to ennumerate damages lost due to this information being public and, as far as I know, RE has not made any money off it).
They have not to this date taken any legal action against anyone other than the person most visibly responsible for receiving and distributing their intellectual property. Even the take-down order (the equivalent of our "cease and desist order") doesn't constitute legal action as long as the information is removed - as I said in my first post on this subject, this is the legal equivalent of a polite request to remove certain infringing material from the website.
I expect they aren't overly concerned about people boycotting their products given that Hasbro has products beyond Magic and that most Magic players won't take such extreme action over an extended period of time.
To re-iterate, "legal action" does not imply suing someone.
More to the point, I would expect that - given the official press release - the main point of this legal action would be to acquire the identity of the person/people giving him that information.
Not unless you were intending to distribute torrent seeds for people to download the spoiler from someone's computer, and not actually host that spoiler yourself.
Even in the EU, hosting other peoples' intelictual property for distribution without permission is illegal.
Yes, that employee is.
However, the person distributing that information is ALSO at fault for distributing WotC's intellectual property.
It's a completely different situation because your girlfriend is not intending to market the fact she is cheating on you to make a substantial amount of money (we would reasonably assume).
No, you don't, because the employee - who almost certainly signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement - broke the law in giving you that information.
It's like selling stolen goods is illegal (assuming that it can be proven that any reasonable person would know the goods are stolen, which in this case it has to be since the cards were not yet publicly released).
Therefore it is not a freedom of speech issue. I don't know any way to make this easier for you to understand.
You just defined "used internal sources" pretty well there.
Him/MTGS getting the info isn't the issue. Making it public is.
Very doubtful given that it could influence an ongoing legal case.
I'd expect to hear nothing other than official press releases until after the matter is settled (and even then I wouldn't hold your breath)
Sorry, but you're wrong. The European Union, to which Sweeden is a signatory, do subscribe to these copyright laws. What you're thinking of is a loophole in Sweeden's laws which allows a certain website to give people bit-torrent "seeds" to download software/movies/etc from peoples' computers without hosting that software on their own servers. Information hosted directly on a server in Sweeden will still be subject to these laws.
I don't know what you're referring to in regards to Russia.
The problem, as I understand such things, is that if WotC were to take a gentle approach earlier on, it would hinder their ability to take a stronger course of action if there was opposition to the "polite request to remove infringing material".
In "legaleese", this is the equivalent of that polite request.
To re-iterate: a takedown notice is not the same as a person being sued or a site threatenned to be shut down.
Since that person has remained anonymous, they are not able to do so even if they know how he came by that information. They are therefore taking what action they are reasonably able to take.
*really doesn't want to get into protracted argument on this point*
Actually, the DMCA is a law designed to allow companies who want to provide their product - or information pertaining to that product- over the internet to do so themselves, without other people doing so in a manner they do not want to happen. The best example is a site that you pay them to download something having their downloads offered for free by another site.
The rest of this post showed that you need to learn about the DMCA laws before discussing their implications.
There are about 40 other countries that subscribe to the DMCA, as does the EU (though there are loopholes in the laws of some Eurpoean countries, they still subscribe to the DMCA in regards to hosting the actual "offending material").
Yep, and that's why they can't be sued unless they fail to follow the order to remove the offending material. If the site was to knowingly allow it to stay up after it has been pointed out to them, however, that would be another matter.
To clarify, I'm not a lawyer and my only experience with this copyright law has been while working as a systems administrator at an ISP where one of our web-hosting customers had material in violation of this law on their site. As others have said, RE and the site's owners would be well advised to seek qualified legal counsel on this matter. If dealt with intelligently and reasonably, I would expect that there would be no serious ramifications for either party. However, as I said earlier, I'm not what you'd call "qualified legal counsel".