Title is directly from the article, but to my mind sending in the Pinkertons seems like perhaps an overreaction to leaked Magic: The Gathering cards (although it is a month before they were...
Title is directly from the article, but to my mind sending in the Pinkertons seems like perhaps an overreaction to leaked Magic: The Gathering cards (although it is a month before they were supposed to release, which IIRC hasn't happened before). The gist of the situation was that someone got a hold of a box of card booster packs a while before release, and put a video of them opening them online. Based on the article and the original videos (now taken down voluntarily) it looks like the box (and potentially more?) were sold mistakenly. As its got a similar name to an already-released set (March of the Machine vs. March of the Machine: Aftermath), I could see that being an honest mistake.
What's stranger to me is that apparently its not the first time private investigators have been used to retrieve cards? Apparently there was another incident with Pokemon cards, also linked in the article, which makes me wonder if that's a common thing in other industries, to retrieve products that leak early
I think thugs showing up at your front door asking for the box of cards is overall less disruptive to your life than a lawsuit from Hasbro, but I may be mistaken. Either way I doubt that was...
I think thugs showing up at your front door asking for the box of cards is overall less disruptive to your life than a lawsuit from Hasbro, but I may be mistaken. Either way I doubt that was WotC's concern, they probably just wanted the cards back as quickly as possible.
Sure, but the other option wasn't necessarily a lawsuit: a cease & desist/similar takedown of the online videos (maybe the DMCA, as much as I dislike it, would be appropriate here?) and asking...
Sure, but the other option wasn't necessarily a lawsuit: a cease & desist/similar takedown of the online videos (maybe the DMCA, as much as I dislike it, would be appropriate here?) and asking them to give the cards back, for example, would make more sense to my eyes (and probably be better for from a publicity prospective). If they refuse to give the cards back, then going through the legal system to get the cards back would make more sense, but it doesn't seem like they tried that here.
On that note though, hiring any other similar company and not the actual Pinkertons probably wouldn't been better from a publicity perspective, but that's a moot point now.
This was essentially a cease and desist notice with private investigators delivering the notice and requesting the products back. They put the man in touch with wotc and brokered a compromise;...
This was essentially a cease and desist notice with private investigators delivering the notice and requesting the products back. They put the man in touch with wotc and brokered a compromise; issued an apology, took the products and offered to send him other products (likely the set he actually tried to order). Who they hired as a PI team is irrelevant. Everything they've done is the proper course of action before issuing an actual lawsuit against him. Everything else here is propaganda meant to paint wotc as the bad guy.
The fact that this is their initial response is worthy of all the criticism and painting as a bad guy by itself. It's not at all common practice for a company to send goons for something as banal...
The fact that this is their initial response is worthy of all the criticism and painting as a bad guy by itself. It's not at all common practice for a company to send goons for something as banal as a toy being sold before the street date. How many times have you heard of Mattel or Hasbro sending out armed goons to protect Barbie and Hot Wheels?
The fact that of all the possible groups they could have sent it was the Pinkertons only makes it worse. It's one thing if it's just some PI delivering some legal papers, but the Pinkertons? I mean, let's just start with their bedside manner as described in the article:
The presenter at oldschoolmtg described agents as “big heavy-hitter guys” who frightened his wife.
...
“He was very apologetic about making my wife cry first thing in the morning by sending these heavy-duty lawmen [to] come collect stuff and talk about stolen products and jail time,” the presenter said in the video.
It doesn't sound like the Pinkertons showed up with hat in hand and a charm offensive. It sounds like they were specifically sent to intimidate as well as inform. Also how often do you see a company rep apologizing for the kinds of people they've hired for a job when everything went according to plan?
This is specifically a group infamous for its extremely heavy-handed tactics for over a century now, not some small security company serving a warrant or delivering some legal papers. The infamy of the Pinkertons is not just arbitrary propaganda, they've got much more history of unethical behaviour than most law enforcement agencies.
Not to pick at nits, but: It is, in fact, Hasbro sending over the Pinkertons in this instance; they own WotC, and as near as I can tell, most of Wizards' missteps in the last couple of years have...
Not to pick at nits, but:
How many times have you heard of Mattel or Hasbro sending out armed goons to protect Barbie and Hot Wheels?
It is, in fact, Hasbro sending over the Pinkertons in this instance; they own WotC, and as near as I can tell, most of Wizards' missteps in the last couple of years have been the result of edicts from the Hasbro level. So while I don't personally know of any times Hasbro has sent mercs out for Barbie, I wouldn't say that it hasn't happened.
I don't think this undermines your overall point, but is really just something that stuck out to me as something to watch for in the future; we may actually see Hasbro sending Pinkerton out for other reasons in the future.
I don't think that's really true. It sounds like while the rep at WotC they talked to was pretty understanding, the PIs that showed up at the door made his wife cry by talking about stolen product...
They put the man in touch with wotc and brokered a compromise; issued an apology, took the products and offered to send him other products (likely the set he actually tried to order).
I don't think that's really true. It sounds like while the rep at WotC they talked to was pretty understanding, the PIs that showed up at the door made his wife cry by talking about stolen product and jail time. Not really a great PR move, and even if its just a case of WotC not passing enough context on to Pinkerton, it's still a failure by them.
[quote]talking about stolen product and jail time.[/quote] That is the contents of a cease and desist letter. Crying is her reaction, it has nothing to do with the process. Would she have cried if...
[quote]talking about stolen product and jail time.[/quote]
That is the contents of a cease and desist letter. Crying is her reaction, it has nothing to do with the process. Would she have cried if it was delivered in the same way by lawyers, by email or phone call? The best course is for wotc's PI team to directly collect all products they know the whereabouts of and not leave it for someone to further mess up and end up in an actual lawsuit.
Except there was no stolen product, just mistakenly shipped product. There was never going to be any jail time, they did nothing wrong. It was a lie to manipulate and scare her into doing what...
Except there was no stolen product, just mistakenly shipped product. There was never going to be any jail time, they did nothing wrong. It was a lie to manipulate and scare her into doing what they wanted.
Does anyone know whether WotC even have a leg to stand on here? To me this looks like the leaker did nothing wrong: They bought a thing, they own the thing now. The fact that someone whoopsied and...
Does anyone know whether WotC even have a leg to stand on here? To me this looks like the leaker did nothing wrong: They bought a thing, they own the thing now. The fact that someone whoopsied and shouldn't have sold it is not the leaker's concern. And I can't see a brand/IP angle on this one either - at least WotC shouldn't have the right to police reporting about their future cards anymore than existing ones. People can make videos about existing cards without WotC's consent, and I don't see a legal reason for why that should be different about future cards.
The only angle I can see (and it's a fact specific one) is if the goods were in fact stolen; then what WotC did might be appropriate. If all they knew was that they weren't intended to be out yet, that kind of leaves open the possibility of the cards getting out by accident. And WotC seems to have no clue how they got out. Which means that there's every possibility, at least to my understanding, that the YouTuber did nothing wrong whatsoever.
Unless they were stolen there’s probably not a legal issue with the leaker, since they did not sign any NDAs on the matter. That being said, I don’t think anything legal occurred here technically....
Unless they were stolen there’s probably not a legal issue with the leaker, since they did not sign any NDAs on the matter.
That being said, I don’t think anything legal occurred here technically. It is effectively the extreme case of hearing that there’s leaked magic cards, going to the leaker and asking for the leaked cards back. Private interactions between private individuals. The Pinkerton agents probably did lie in order to be more convincing, but you are allowed to lie to people when you talk to them. There wasn’t any actual judicial action here.
Ohh, I agree. The intimidation might've been questionable, but that's again very fact specific. I was more asking for the sake of the hypothetical situation where the leaker says "fuck you, I...
There wasn’t any actual judicial action here.
Ohh, I agree. The intimidation might've been questionable, but that's again very fact specific.
I was more asking for the sake of the hypothetical situation where the leaker says "fuck you, I don't care. Leave my property or I'll call the police."
WotC does controlled spoiler events, these cost money and generate ad revenue. Someone who obtained the cards before they should have leads them to think that products might be stolen and open an...
WotC does controlled spoiler events, these cost money and generate ad revenue. Someone who obtained the cards before they should have leads them to think that products might be stolen and open an investigation. If the goods were stolen somewhere up the line and the youtuber purchased stolen goods, wotc has rights to reclaim them. If the cards are wotc IP pre-release, wotc has rights to make a claim against the youtuber through youtube. All they would have to say is the streamer has stolen goods and youtube would remove all of his content and essentially ban him from streaming. He could appeal, but at what cost is it worth that for a small time streamer.
If the cards weren't stolen and there was simply a mix up the streamer would likely have been able to fight it and keep the cards, but likely would have lost his streaming platform in the interim and possibly banned from all sorts of wotc events. Until full investigations are complete it is unknown what rights either would have, but it is still in wotc's best interest to reclaim and take down content until after release.
I'm not so sure. The fact that they're not released yet doesn't (to my knowledge) give them increased protection. If he could do it to regular cards, he could do it to these, to my knowledge....
If the cards are wotc IP pre-release, wotc has rights to make a claim against the youtuber through youtube. All they would have to say is the streamer has stolen goods and youtube would remove all of his content and essentially ban him from streaming.
I'm not so sure. The fact that they're not released yet doesn't (to my knowledge) give them increased protection. If he could do it to regular cards, he could do it to these, to my knowledge. Also, that is not how youtube usually reacts to DMCA claims, even if we assume that the takedown of the video relating to those cards is legit.
Reading through all of wizards Terms and conditions regarding this, they encourage streamers to post their released products, and the end clause says anything not covered requires written consent....
Reading through all of wizards Terms and conditions regarding this, they encourage streamers to post their released products, and the end clause says anything not covered requires written consent. Pre-release isn't directly named as covered anywhere in the Terms.
The next closest thing was Alpha and Beta content, which was largely referred to as digital materials or games pre-released which access is only granted by wizards and certain beta content comes with agreements to secrecy.
So at best it's a grey area in the terms and wotc can easily argue that he would've needed their written consent to publish videos of pre-release content.
My source on youtube taking down all content comes from a twitch/youtube streamer and streamer community mod who has seen it happen before to other content creators. Generally it happens to just the infringing video/s but if the user violates YT terms with stolen goods, YT will take it all down so they aren't liable, Also technically wotc has the rights to all of their content that uses any of their IP and reserves the right to remove any of it at any time for any reason.
Title is directly from the article, but to my mind sending in the Pinkertons seems like perhaps an overreaction to leaked Magic: The Gathering cards (although it is a month before they were supposed to release, which IIRC hasn't happened before). The gist of the situation was that someone got a hold of a box of card booster packs a while before release, and put a video of them opening them online. Based on the article and the original videos (now taken down voluntarily) it looks like the box (and potentially more?) were sold mistakenly. As its got a similar name to an already-released set (March of the Machine vs. March of the Machine: Aftermath), I could see that being an honest mistake.
What's stranger to me is that apparently its not the first time private investigators have been used to retrieve cards? Apparently there was another incident with Pokemon cards, also linked in the article, which makes me wonder if that's a common thing in other industries, to retrieve products that leak early
I would say so.
Tis the kind of thing that should culminate in an email, perhaps a lawsuit at most. Not menacing thugs showing up at your frontdoor.
I think thugs showing up at your front door asking for the box of cards is overall less disruptive to your life than a lawsuit from Hasbro, but I may be mistaken. Either way I doubt that was WotC's concern, they probably just wanted the cards back as quickly as possible.
Sure, but the other option wasn't necessarily a lawsuit: a cease & desist/similar takedown of the online videos (maybe the DMCA, as much as I dislike it, would be appropriate here?) and asking them to give the cards back, for example, would make more sense to my eyes (and probably be better for from a publicity prospective). If they refuse to give the cards back, then going through the legal system to get the cards back would make more sense, but it doesn't seem like they tried that here.
On that note though, hiring any other similar company and not the actual Pinkertons probably wouldn't been better from a publicity perspective, but that's a moot point now.
This was essentially a cease and desist notice with private investigators delivering the notice and requesting the products back. They put the man in touch with wotc and brokered a compromise; issued an apology, took the products and offered to send him other products (likely the set he actually tried to order). Who they hired as a PI team is irrelevant. Everything they've done is the proper course of action before issuing an actual lawsuit against him. Everything else here is propaganda meant to paint wotc as the bad guy.
The fact that this is their initial response is worthy of all the criticism and painting as a bad guy by itself. It's not at all common practice for a company to send goons for something as banal as a toy being sold before the street date. How many times have you heard of Mattel or Hasbro sending out armed goons to protect Barbie and Hot Wheels?
The fact that of all the possible groups they could have sent it was the Pinkertons only makes it worse. It's one thing if it's just some PI delivering some legal papers, but the Pinkertons? I mean, let's just start with their bedside manner as described in the article:
...
It doesn't sound like the Pinkertons showed up with hat in hand and a charm offensive. It sounds like they were specifically sent to intimidate as well as inform. Also how often do you see a company rep apologizing for the kinds of people they've hired for a job when everything went according to plan?
This is specifically a group infamous for its extremely heavy-handed tactics for over a century now, not some small security company serving a warrant or delivering some legal papers. The infamy of the Pinkertons is not just arbitrary propaganda, they've got much more history of unethical behaviour than most law enforcement agencies.
Not to pick at nits, but:
It is, in fact, Hasbro sending over the Pinkertons in this instance; they own WotC, and as near as I can tell, most of Wizards' missteps in the last couple of years have been the result of edicts from the Hasbro level. So while I don't personally know of any times Hasbro has sent mercs out for Barbie, I wouldn't say that it hasn't happened.
I don't think this undermines your overall point, but is really just something that stuck out to me as something to watch for in the future; we may actually see Hasbro sending Pinkerton out for other reasons in the future.
Huh I had no idea Hasbro owned WotC. TIL.
I don't think that's really true. It sounds like while the rep at WotC they talked to was pretty understanding, the PIs that showed up at the door made his wife cry by talking about stolen product and jail time. Not really a great PR move, and even if its just a case of WotC not passing enough context on to Pinkerton, it's still a failure by them.
[quote]talking about stolen product and jail time.[/quote]
That is the contents of a cease and desist letter. Crying is her reaction, it has nothing to do with the process. Would she have cried if it was delivered in the same way by lawyers, by email or phone call? The best course is for wotc's PI team to directly collect all products they know the whereabouts of and not leave it for someone to further mess up and end up in an actual lawsuit.
Except there was no stolen product, just mistakenly shipped product. There was never going to be any jail time, they did nothing wrong. It was a lie to manipulate and scare her into doing what they wanted.
Does anyone know whether WotC even have a leg to stand on here? To me this looks like the leaker did nothing wrong: They bought a thing, they own the thing now. The fact that someone whoopsied and shouldn't have sold it is not the leaker's concern. And I can't see a brand/IP angle on this one either - at least WotC shouldn't have the right to police reporting about their future cards anymore than existing ones. People can make videos about existing cards without WotC's consent, and I don't see a legal reason for why that should be different about future cards.
The only angle I can see (and it's a fact specific one) is if the goods were in fact stolen; then what WotC did might be appropriate. If all they knew was that they weren't intended to be out yet, that kind of leaves open the possibility of the cards getting out by accident. And WotC seems to have no clue how they got out. Which means that there's every possibility, at least to my understanding, that the YouTuber did nothing wrong whatsoever.
Unless there's a legal argument I'm missing here.
Unless they were stolen there’s probably not a legal issue with the leaker, since they did not sign any NDAs on the matter.
That being said, I don’t think anything legal occurred here technically. It is effectively the extreme case of hearing that there’s leaked magic cards, going to the leaker and asking for the leaked cards back. Private interactions between private individuals. The Pinkerton agents probably did lie in order to be more convincing, but you are allowed to lie to people when you talk to them. There wasn’t any actual judicial action here.
Ohh, I agree. The intimidation might've been questionable, but that's again very fact specific.
I was more asking for the sake of the hypothetical situation where the leaker says "fuck you, I don't care. Leave my property or I'll call the police."
WotC does controlled spoiler events, these cost money and generate ad revenue. Someone who obtained the cards before they should have leads them to think that products might be stolen and open an investigation. If the goods were stolen somewhere up the line and the youtuber purchased stolen goods, wotc has rights to reclaim them. If the cards are wotc IP pre-release, wotc has rights to make a claim against the youtuber through youtube. All they would have to say is the streamer has stolen goods and youtube would remove all of his content and essentially ban him from streaming. He could appeal, but at what cost is it worth that for a small time streamer.
If the cards weren't stolen and there was simply a mix up the streamer would likely have been able to fight it and keep the cards, but likely would have lost his streaming platform in the interim and possibly banned from all sorts of wotc events. Until full investigations are complete it is unknown what rights either would have, but it is still in wotc's best interest to reclaim and take down content until after release.
I'm not so sure. The fact that they're not released yet doesn't (to my knowledge) give them increased protection. If he could do it to regular cards, he could do it to these, to my knowledge. Also, that is not how youtube usually reacts to DMCA claims, even if we assume that the takedown of the video relating to those cards is legit.
Reading through all of wizards Terms and conditions regarding this, they encourage streamers to post their released products, and the end clause says anything not covered requires written consent. Pre-release isn't directly named as covered anywhere in the Terms.
The next closest thing was Alpha and Beta content, which was largely referred to as digital materials or games pre-released which access is only granted by wizards and certain beta content comes with agreements to secrecy.
So at best it's a grey area in the terms and wotc can easily argue that he would've needed their written consent to publish videos of pre-release content.
My source on youtube taking down all content comes from a twitch/youtube streamer and streamer community mod who has seen it happen before to other content creators. Generally it happens to just the infringing video/s but if the user violates YT terms with stolen goods, YT will take it all down so they aren't liable, Also technically wotc has the rights to all of their content that uses any of their IP and reserves the right to remove any of it at any time for any reason.