Most of the cloud drives the site pulled from have been permanently emptied out of material by their users.Īs I was somewhat horrified to learn on Thursday, the site operated by allowing users to type a list of cards into a text prompt, then pull potential card faces from dozens of completely public cloud drives, all of which lacked copyright lines. One of the largest sites that acted as a content hub for printable card images is, at time of writing, shut down. The reason I am addressing this at all is something those of you who follow me on Twitter may already know. Now, are you likely to get sued because you wrote Angus Mackenzie on a piece of scrap paper and forgot to add the trademark and copyright line? No. Turns out that if someone is willing to cross Hasbro, they're willing to cross you.
I really need to say that if you take nothing else from this read, every single one of the websites I've ever heard of committing this kind of copyright violation, I have also heard stories of them committing credit card or other payment fraud on massive scales using thier customers' data. Second problem is that the image used to do this violates the fourth rule of the Fan Content Policy, which is "Don't hurt Wizards." "If the Wizards IP you are incorporating into your Fan Content already has copyright notices, logos, trademarks, or other notices existing within it, don't remove them."
You aren't really any less in the legal wrong for buying a proxy than you are for selling one. Unfortunately, doing so has two huge problems: First of all, if you are giving someone money and they are giving you an unofficial card of any sort, that is a violation of the very first rule of the Fan Content Policy, which is that things be FREE. Over time, dedicated users apparently found that it was possible to slip things through the cracks, by removing the right information from a card face. They will not print anything that contains Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, or Wizards of the Coast copyright and trademark info, as this would be illegal. While I will not be naming any of them, those who pay attention have probably heard about various sites that allow you to custom print any image you upload onto a card. If an image is missing copyright info, that doesn’t mean infringement is now legal Never print, or allow your work to be printed, professionallyĮverything with WOTC IP should be printed at home, for personal use only. TheProxyGuy has been doing this a lot longer than I have and put it simply on Twitter: Selling any of them, be they mana symbols, rules text and more, is copyright infringement. But a t this point, I think we may have tunnel-visioned on that to the exclusion of other important matters. A Magic card contains lots of elements that Wizards' artists and designers made. Many new proxy-makers make the assumption that the only thing you aren't allowed to sell is exact recreations of scans of cards. Wizards of the Coast is extremely rare as IP holders go, in that they have a very cleanly defined Fan Content Policy. A lot of people who agree with what I have written so far are not going to like what I have to say next: Almost all of the high-end proxies being used by the community violate the rules regarding proxymaking. One of my Breaking the Rules articles is about a card you have to proxy to even access. Proxies of this kind can make cards whose prices are absolutely unreasonable for the average person possible to experiment with, or get to try formats they are priced out of. To many people, myself included, digital art that is printed onto blank cardstock is a great way to express themselves creatively in the casual formats they love. (I will continue to use the word proxy, as it is the term the community has settled on.) Wizards of the Coast have stated that they have absolutely no interest in cracking down on what they internally refer to as "playtest cards." provided they are being used in the appropriate contexts. While this statement would have started a fight a few years ago, I think all of us have probably decided where we stand on them, and I have no desire to argue about that.
0 kommentar(er)
