MArcomage

Yesterday we received a letter from the Wizards of the Coast claiming that 22 of our card pictures are taken from their sources which are their copyrighted property. We will comply with their request, so we need to find replacement pictures for cards listed below. Any card picture replacements are welcome, however please try to find free sources.

- Elemental Storm
- Flood
- Ivory tower
- Minaret
- Ogre
- River thief
- Searing Fire
- Wall shift
- Crystal golem
- Beastmaster
- Burglars
- Dragon golem
- Elven scout
- Elven marksman
- Forest hunter
- Gnome thief
- Knight
- Mystic strike
- Undead cavalry
- Urk's tribe
- Vampire
- Word of power

Are you comfortable with posting the letter you received publicly? I'd be interested in seeing what they sent you.

Also, I suggest that you replace each of those pictures with a blank image for the time being, while replacements are being found.

Making them blank won't be necessary if we replace them within the day. This shouldn't take terribly long.

I can probably guess how the letter reads. I got a C&D from Nintendo once concerning something I had on a personal website more than a decade ago.

Undead Cavalry
I'm not sure if it's copyrighted or not. I tried searching the picture in several card-games and a few pc-games and didn't find it anywhere. The place I got it from was here:

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7414.0

in a hypothetical thread of what you can do with a horse and what's the best horse to ride in a fantasy world

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Dragon Golem

This is the picture for Dragon Golem used in Might & Magic 4. Since 3DO was dissolved a few years ago, I don't think there's any copyright problems for it.

Otherwise we can use:
http://img1.cdn.crunchyroll.com/i/spire3/06faad703fab9691d4c71669ff6714211230338686_full.jpg

which is a picture a guy created for fun in a site concerning dragons

When a company dissolves, its assets are quite often auctioned off or bundled and sold to other companies. It is entirely possible that WotC owns their art folio.

I don't think it's worth challenging their claim to these pictures. It's far easier to comply and move on.

Burglars

This is a picture a friend of mine has drawn for the game Thief (not used in the game, it's just fan art). I've asked him permission to use it.

EDIT:
@DPsychotrue, so we can use the second one for dragon golem. Undead cavalry has still not returned any hits for any game.

Huh. For any picture we use where we have both the consent of the artist and his/her assurance that said work was not sold, commissioned, or licensed to anyone, and if it doesn't use characters or draw inspiration from a copyrighted work, then I guess we would have a case. It would be up to Mojko to reply to them with the details AFTER complying with the remaining requests.

I'm still going to push for a section on the card information page with image source information. Ideally, we should get to a point where all the images are confirmed to be from publicly-owned or permitted sources.

EricHerboso wrote:
Are you comfortable with posting the letter you received publicly? I'd be interested in seeing what they sent you.

Sure, I have no problems with that. They also didn't state that the email is confidential so here it is:

Dear Messrs Fendek and Stujber:

We are counsel for Wizards of the Coast LLC (“Wizards”), the owner of the copyrights and trademarks for the MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading card game and the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® role-playing game and related merchandise and publications, including books. We emailed you on February 21, 2011 regarding the fact that Wizards recently became aware that you have created an online fantasy turn-based card game called MArcomage at http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Webpage and has identified many instances where your cards have included images of copyrighted artwork from either its MAGIC: THE GATHERING® cards, or from DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® publications. Below is a list of the infringing MArcomage cards and the corresponding Wizards’ copyrighted works that they are copied from:

MAGIC: THE GATHERING®

"Elemental Storm" is Æther Storm by Mark Tedin. Art ID 1445

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=497

"Flood" is Academy Ruins by Zoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai. Art ID 97477

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=158

"Ivory Tower" is Tolaria West by Khang Le. Art ID 102453

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=191

"Minaret" is City of Brass by Mark Tedin. Art ID 316

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=537



"Ogre" is Bloodthirsty Ogre by Thomas M. Baxa. Art ID 80924

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=46

"River Thief" is Merfolk Looter by Austin Hsu. Art ID 122145

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=559

"Searing Fire" is Flamebreak by Trevor Hairsine. Art ID 52054

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=248

"Wall Shift" is Illusionary Wall by Mark Poole. Art ID 1222

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=249

“Crystal golem” is Glass Golem by Glen Angus. Art ID 88711 http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=396

“Beastmaster” is Beastmater’s Magemark by Brandon Kitkouski. Art ID 91879 http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=323

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®

Burglars [Drizzt, Regis, and Wulfgar]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=260

Could not locate art ID, but it is from the original cover of the novel Streams of Silver, by RA Salvatore.

Dragon Golem [cropped image of dragon statue from Dragonlance art]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=92

Larry Elmore Art ID: 12745

Elf [Tanis Half-Elven with no beard]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=122

Clyde Caldwell Art ID: 12376

Elven Marksman [elf ranger from D&D art]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=545

William O'Connor Art ID: 111111

Forest Hunter [elf hunter from Dragonlance novel cover] http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=140

Brom Art ID: 12912

Gnome Thief [Tasselhoff Burrfoot]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=160

Larry Elmore Art ID: 12356

Knight [female knight on unicorn image from Forgotten Realms book]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=7

Could not locate art ID, but it is from the original cover of the D&D book Forgotten Realms Adventures (published by TSR)

Mystic Strike [magister from Forgotten Realms D&D book]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=37

Could not locate art ID, but comes from FR4 The Magister, a D&D book (published by TSR).

Undead Cavalry [either from FR book or an image of Lord Soth from DL]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=485

Keith Parkinson Art ID:12594

Urk¹s Tribe [orc and tribe from Forgotten Realms D&D art]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=598

Could not locate art ID, but comes from FR5 The Savage Frontier, a D&D book (published by TSR).

Vampire [Ravenloft image of Strahd]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=28

Clyde Caldwell ART ID: 12733

Word of Power [Fizban casting fireball]

http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=280

Larry Elmore Art ID: 12381

As we advised you previsouly, your unauthorized copying, display and distribution of cards containing images copied from the MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading cards and the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game constitutes copyright infringement in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501.

On behalf of Wizards, we therefore demand that you immediately remove the MArcomage cards identified above from your website and anywhere else they may appear, cease and desist from any further use of Wizards’ MAGIC: THE GATHERING® and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® artwork and assure us that you will make no future unauthorized use of Wizards’ intellectual property.

Please confirm to me within five business days your written agreement to the above. This letter does not purport to be a complete statement of the facts or the law and is without prejudice to Wizards’ legal and equitable rights.

Sincerely yours,

Carin G. Reynolds
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-6710

It seems that they contacted us earlier, but both emails (for me and umage) got lost in spam. Anyway, no need to panic. Their claims are questionable, because US law does not apply here in Slovakia. However as DPsycho mentioned, it's not worth to challenge their claim. We will comply and change these pictures as requested.

Thanks for help guys. I will be updating those pictures as soon as I have all the replacements.

No, but they can ban your site in the US, so our US players won't be able to play

Somehow I sensed this would be happening sometime. I remember the discussion at one of the concept cards earlier.

andi wrote:
Somehow I sensed this would be happening sometime. I remember the discussion at one of the concept cards earlier.

Well, we changed the pictures that were mention earlier, just to be sure. Still, it's kind of weird that they care if we use low-res parts of their pictures. We don't make money out of it and they aren't losing any.

yay, wizard of the coast aknowledges us, it's a big achievment.
Too bad for urk's tribe and river thief, I found those two picture but I didn't check their origins (but I'm quite sure I've taken them from deviant art).
tomorrow I will help in finding the missing pictures

Mojko wrote:
Wizards recently became aware that you have created an online fantasy turn-based card game called MArcomage at http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Webpage and has identified many instances where your cards have included images of copyrighted artwork from either its MAGIC: THE GATHERING® cards, or from DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® publications.

How did they became aware? I hope we don't have a rat in here...

Anyway, I don't understand what WotC could possibly make out of this. They'd fine us? How much money do WotC make every year? Million dollars? Billions?

They'd put us in jail? lol I guess stupidity rules. Well done WotC.

If they set a narrow deadline for this, I can settle with blank images too.

Can't you find some kind of independent artwork studio there in Slovakia to make some imagery in order not to have such kind of things in the future? Personally, I'm willing to even pay for this.

it's funny to think that they had to study all the card database (but not the concept page )looking for their cards.
Probably in the next magic's expansion there will be biakko, lookout tower or other funny card we have.
anyway if there is any magic developper reading this forum you are welcome in the comunity

I think it's great that they mentioned, when applicable, the artist and title of the individual works. Wish they'd do that for our entire card database. =D

@dimitris: such a feat, finding a personal imaging studio, would be great but it would put a restraint on concept cards and on updates, i.e. when are we having updates, how often etc.

I think we should contact WotC and any other company that we use their pictures from and ask them if they would be willing to allow us to use the pictures in the game, clarifying that it's a free project, with credits to them on the Welcome page, along with maybe free banner commercials for their products as well.

Otherwise we should contribute our own images (or that of friend artists we have) to the game and see how it goes from there

dimitris wrote:
Can't you find some kind of independent artwork studio there in Slovakia to make some imagery in order not to have such kind of things in the future?

Well, I would really like that. And not for cards only, I would like to add pictures in the novels section as well. However, I don't know anyone who could do it for free.

Heh, my initial thought was that somebody spent hours making that list. But since we live in the future and they are owned by Hasbro, I am assuming that they have some huge database of all licensed artwork - ID, author name, products it appears in. And that they have a tool that matches their database of images to images found online - either via some agreement with Google, or via their own private web crawler. That would be consistent with the fact that we implemented anonymous access to the cards list only recently. It's sweet that they can give a detailed and comprehensive list like that. (Although, some of the 'could not locate art ID' notes indicate otherwise, in which case it would be a pretty impressive feat).

Regarding the other stuff, we will be implementing some sort of source attribution policy. Basically, when you upload a card concept picture, we'll ask you to include the url/info on the original file. And when adding new card images we'll shove the source information directly into the png files' metadata. That way we won't have to keep some separate list (although, we might want to back up the original artwork in case we want to re-process the image at some point).