Manapot Legal Issues

Bullzzeye · Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 12

Hey guys, thank you all for your great support and interest. Recently, as I see that this program will be very popular if I continue, I have been looking into the legal aspect of things.

especially: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=660559
MTGEditor site: http://mtglair.de/editor.html

I see history repeating itself...

While Wollo was unwilling to de-magify his program, I am considering it.

If anyone is able to run a server in some foreign country like....Sweden...(the pirate bay *cough*) please PM me.

thedarkness · Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 493

I have to disagree with the validity of that argument.

I did some light reading, and according to common sense, my limited knowledge of the United States legal system, and people more knowledgeable than I am, I've reached two conclusions.

One: Wizards knew about MTGE long before they "recently became aware" of it, and only -began- to have it shut down because they were essentially obligated to. It seems like Hasbro would have been fighting an uphill legal battle at best, but due to the fact that the issue was brought up at all, and PROBABLY due to the lack of funding for a huge lawsuit, the owner of MTGE decided to accept their terms.

Two: If you don't allow people to create, save, and/or publicize custom cards and/or sets, they will have no legal grounds on which to shut you down. It sounds from their letter as though they had no qualms with the program's use of real sets as created by Wizards of the Coast, but when people started making lookalikes, they stepped up to fight. Here's a passage from the letter that Wollo received from Wizards of the Coast:

We have recently become aware that you are making available on your website, www.mtglair.de, a tool called MtG Editor that allow users to create their own MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading cards. The site includes many sample trading cards, as well as entire sets that have been made using the MtG Editor. These trading cards copy the overall look and feel of genuine MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading cards and also include MAGIC: THE GATHERING® Mana and Tap symbols.

Trotsky1 · Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 941

My understanding of the american legal system is limited but i do know this, the big corperation always wins, you can get away with murder (literally) if your a millionaire, even more so if your president.

thedarkness · Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 493

Then your knowledge of the American legal system is absolutely baseless and fundamentally flawed.

The reason why the major corporations *occasionally* "win" those sorts of lawsuits is because major corporations can afford to have them, while Joe Schmoe might not have enough to afford a lawyer, and thusly might just accept his fate.

Seriously, this guy is actually concerned. Spouting nonsense with absolutely no basis in reality (such as "rich people can always get away with murder, especially the president, who isn't actually rich and probably gets paid less annually than my aunt...") should get you banned from the forums. That's just rude.

NeoFiasco · Joined: 20 Jul 2008 Posts: 19

That's dealing with creating your own magic cards though. There have already been projects like the one your doing right now (apprentice, mws, ect) and no legalities have come up in any of those so I don't see a problem.

wisdomhappy · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 16

I agree that a millionaire, or FOR SURE a billionaire could get away with murder for sure (I bet there exists at least one assassin in the whole world). I advise looking back at the gold treasure of The Central America to see how far big business will go to try to screw every penny out of you. to summarize, these MIT dudes spent the peak of their lives to invent all this crazy tech that didn't exist to get 150 million dollars worth of gold off the bottom of the ocean 8000 feet down. Then when they got back there was 39 insurance companies that had SUED them, froze the gold for 10 years of legal battles just to get like 6-8% of the money. That story may not apply here at all, the point is just that you need to remember how far people will go for each of your pennies.

Trotsky1 · Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 941

So Mr Bush did not just kill loads of people for money (oil) and OJ Simpson was found guilty of murder. Oh wait neither of thoose things happened, ban me because I have a different view to you, you don't like what Im saying, why don't you take it one step further and kill all infidels like me unless i think what you do, know what that would make you?

nico · Administrator Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 837

neofiasco: the main problem arises when the program itself uses copyrighted material, for example the manasymbols. The easiest way around it is to distribute a program that reads text based info from a spoiler file and puts that on a screen, much like apprentice, or mws without the pics.
adding the functionality to display a picture besides the text based info is just that: added functionality. The kind of picture the user wants to display, is up to him. For all i or the programmer cares you can display a picture of madonna kissing a black man on a crucifix, or you might actually want to display a pictore of an alpha birds of paradise when you look at the text entry with the same name.
It's all up to you.

Greetz Nico

Bullzzeye · Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 12

Let me restate the problem:

I want this program to be able to do tournaments and drafts. If WOTC hears that people are having FREE Magic Tournaments, they are going to come right over and try to shut the server down. Yes, your client-software will be perfectly legal if I take out all the carddata/images, but the server would be shut down.

metroman722 · Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 82

On what basis though? i guess maybe the points system would allow people to play real magic for absolutely nothing so without that you would have just a better mws with more functionality and i don't see why it would be an issue...but then again i really have no clue.

nico · Administrator Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 837

metroman: the problem he is seeing is that to enable the "buying" of cards, there needs to be a database of cards that are owned by people, else it would be too easy to cheat. The problem here is where wotc will draw the line of copyright infringements.
There would be no need to have pics on the server, so that is one problem less. I don't know if wizards will have problems with card names, but if they do, you might want to consider a unique id number for a card or something like that.

Greetz Nico

metroman722 · Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 82

so hes not allowed to have anything about magic on a server? im not questioning your answer im using this more like a learning experience.

What is the issue with the server, if he could just put the pictures in the program and give it to me. Or even the "buying" of cards?

EDIT:

I think it might be because he's not allowed to distribute the cards and likeness because he doesn't own them but why is the server any different then just like MWS uses mana symbols names and card texts?

Craze · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 5480 Location: Indiana, U

AngryClown · Joined: 02 Apr 2006 Posts: 1

regardless of the legal issues Wotcoast or Habro their parent company is going to draw the line with this program.

This is because it would give the community the same kind of power that RnD currently has a monopoly on. The power to make sets and eventually print out profesional looking cards. Imagine reprinting black lotus or its like then playing with it in a game or unsanctioned tourney. That would suck for RnD since they apparently cant think of good new cards but tend to just make overpowered versions of older cards. for example persist is like regeneration and the magus line of creatures...

Personally I think it would be great to have player created set we could play with but that is not ganna happen ne time soon

NeoFiasco · Joined: 20 Jul 2008 Posts: 19

So what he has to do is make a program based on text instead of the mana symbols already in and have patches for us to download right?