CardKitty reported it after she heard it straight from a representative. Two days later, over 100 auctions were taken down. As to the reasons why the policy was created and why it doesn't matter whether altering cards and selling them is legal or not, see my previous posts. Reading comprehension is tech.
And to make it clearer, they don't just take down every auction that gets a report made against it without looking at the content or considering the report. If they didn't, most of our auctions would still be up. They are not, which is clear proof of the blanket policy.
I was told over the phone that a new policy was implemented June 1st that disallowed altered magic cards. The reason given was that it was trademark infringement according to eBay policy.
As for reported items, I have reported so many auctions over that last 6 months, and I can say that only 1 in 20 actually gets removed. It really was a deliberate act on eBay to remove them all in one big sweep.
I was told over the phone that a new policy was implemented June 1st that disallowed altered magic cards. The reason given was that it was trademark infringement according to eBay policy.
As for reported items, I have reported so many auctions over that last 6 months, and I can say that only 1 in 20 actually gets removed. It really was a deliberate act on eBay to remove them all in one big sweep.
Thanks for that, CK. That should really end the debate on why. Now, we should look for some solution outside of Ebay.
Thanks for that, CK. That should really end the debate on why. Now, we should look for some solution outside of Ebay.
I agree that we should look into another venue to sell cards for now, but nothing we come up with is likely to match the worldwide exposure we get on ebay. We should not give up on that yet.
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Remember, magic should only consume 95% of your time and resources. Life's better when you find the right balance.
If this was a VeRO reporting issue then ebay would have listed the VeRo's contact information in their replies. This is not a result of any form of WOTC intervention.
In fact I do believe this may actually be Bristols fault.... I know for a fact he was going around reporting large amounts of listings for absolutely no other reason then his personal giggles.
Also the pulses and wraths made by that individual are indeed real wraths and pulses, they just effectively have a big sticker over the top of them with a whole cut out for the card names and casting costs.
The tokens also are not an issue.... an auction can simply list that they can be used with the MTG game but are not a wizards product...they are legit no matter what as long as they aren't on a real card aparently.
Masumune--Not all the art I use is mine, but a large portion is, and those that aren't are made by others I am in contact with who give full permission to use the work in exchange for a percentage of sales....basically you don't know what the hell you are talking about in this case.
Sleezy-- I was making magic alters more then 10 years ago... I pretty much invented the practice, monetary gain is just something that is required to keep my bills paid...
Sleezy-- I was making magic alters more then 10 years ago... I pretty much invented the practice, monetary gain is just something that is required to keep my bills paid...
You're a joke.:rolleyes:
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"When the gorilla playfully grabbed the wurm's tail, the wurm doubled back and playfully ate the gorilla's head."
This is, of course, directed at rainman. I wouldn't bring this up if I didn't think that you only do this for money, not because you care about Magic or being artistically creative. All I see is someone throwing a temper tantrum because they can't sell their crap on ebay anymore. You CAN still alter you know.
CardKitty, Yawg, Fourhoursemen, Masamune, Bigup, Bcal, Bristol, Nofingers, bleedingteddy,laura, klug and anyone else I forgot (this was hastily written), keep kicking ass. I love all of your work.
If you think that rainman is the only one crossing his fingers, toes, and every other appendage possible that this all gets resolved so that they can keep making money, you're kidding yourself.
Jump down rainman's throat about his printer alterations (and every other person selling knockoffs/sex pics/copies for that matter). I'm all for it, but ease up on the favoritism. Half of the people you just mentioned are in this strictly for the money too. The other half are not. They're all talented, sure, but your favorite artists are working just as hard to fix this. I for one side with Bcal, Bristol, Bleedingteddy, etc. and frankly don't care if alters are ever salable on eBay again. I concur, I hope the artists that are altering cards for the sake of artistic expression, keep doing it for that very reason. Should they get paid if they're talented enough and there's a market for it? Certainly, but if they don't, then tough. Fall back on a real career and go back to doing it as a hobby. Enough said.
I was told over the phone that a new policy was implemented June 1st that disallowed altered magic cards. The reason given was that it was trademark infringement according to eBay policy.
As for reported items, I have reported so many auctions over that last 6 months, and I can say that only 1 in 20 actually gets removed. It really was a deliberate act on eBay to remove them all in one big sweep.
I'd be interested in seeing that new policy. It has long been against ebay policy to allow items in violation of copyright infringement on their site. I can't imagine that they'd make a specific case of magic cards...that is really strange.
It has not been my experience that 1 in 20 items actually get removed. I've been the victim of competing sellers reporting my items while theirs remained listed (completely not related to magic). When I got the email and my listings were removed I never listed a similar item as I did not want to lose my account. I reported the seller still listed on the site and he was taken down immediately. There was no 1 in 20 situation and my many conversations with ebay representatives gave me insight into their mindless automaton system for removing listings.
I could definately see that the tokens that used MTG or Magic in their listing titles brought a lot of heat on everyone. I could also see how reckless reporting could easily escalate and cause a lot of problems for the art community.
Hopefully everyone is able to list on ebay again soon or on another website that can be advertised to the community. A lot of you do really amazing work and its really fun to check out the auctions a few times a week.
The balancing act has to be that people report the actual copyright infringements and leave the legit artists alone.
So, I know I'm reiterating what everyone else has pretty much said, but this sucks
However, I'm not comfortable with the castigation of forum posters here just because they have an opinion and feel upset over this issue. Not cool.
At the moment, I'm kind of going off of what people say here to get a stance on what this big debacle is all about. The efforts that some have gone through to get in touch with Ebay has been really great Hopefully those of you trying to reach the people who can help will get good responses
RanMn: No, those pulses were not "real". It doesn't matter if the original cardboard was a magic card, somebody printed out copyrighted material. I know at the very least the mana symbols are copyrighted. They are creating a "counterfeit", so yes, those are a huge violation of the policy. The same goes for the tokens. No matter how you word it, it still has printed out images of WotC's material.
And as far as blaming Bristol for all this stuff, thats absurd. Hell if anything this is more your fault. If somebody did go around reporting the printed cards, guess what? They had a right too because they are violating the policy! Holy ****, its not some crazy outrageous unfair policy.
Let me ask, do you print out the mana symbols on your lands? If you do, then that is copyright infringement, and you can't blame anybody else for getting your listings taken down. And Ebay is too big for a small niche to allow the changing of the rules.
Pretty much, people got on the easy bandwagon and started printing out stupid fakes, and associated it with the real efforts of the actual alters, and got us all screwed.
And if you have been doing this for 10 years, and making 2k a month on this, and whatever other ******** has come out of you, then why is this such a huge problem? Take your amazing salesmenship and sell to your buyers that you undoubtedly have from 10 years of experience...
And I also agree with what bluedeckdominates said earlier, you can't be relying on this too much as your main source of income. It's not like you were all of a sudden fired from your job. Sure I'm gonna hear the economy is tough and whatnot, but you can't rely on selling trading cards as your main source of income.
BCal--you are completely incorrect... for starters the pulses were not covering the entire card, the card name and mana symbols were cut around revealing the ORIGINAL name and mana symbols. So no they didn't print any copyrighted material...basically you could peel off their "sticker" and theres a normal pulse underneath,not some random magic card. so no it was not a "Fake card", and was no different really then someone using paint other then that it was of far far lower quality...
The tokens themselves contained ZERO copyrighted material in fact if they were not on actual magic cards they would likely still be up on the site. Making tokens for use for a game is NOT copyright or trademark infringement, those items could technically be used with any game, the use of them with mtg is simply a suggestion.
And no I do not print out the mana symbols on my printed alters, the card names and mana symbols are from the original card, they are NOT printed, and they are not fake cards, the technique I use simple gives me the abilty to leave any areas of the printed art I wish to be translucent revealing the the cards original text, or mana symbols.
Bristol went around reporting completely legitimate auctions as fakes en masse simply becuase he either didn't like them, or else viewed them as unfair competition. Either way his actions were based in ignorance, or maliciousness, and likely directed caused this result.
I first created fully altered art cards back in revised, but only recently began doing so for money rather then personal bling.
As for me utilizing Ebay as a sales outlet, I have only been doing so for about 4 months, which has managed to generate enough income to keep me from losing my house. People use Ebay as their primary source of income all the time, especially in an economy were its pretty much impossible to find a "real" job that pays anything more then ****. And as for "suddenly being fired from my job" that was indeed the case....in fact I showed up for work one day and the entire store had been removed during the night and all of the contact numbers had been disconnected....people were literally showing up for work for a week because we weren't even told that we had been layed off. Since then i have submitted over 4500 applications, with a grand total of 15 responses.... people are either not hiring, or the competition for the few open positions is so high you might as well be playing the lottery.
You are incredibly ignorant concerning this situation. You have no idea how the cards you are referring to are made, or what they even look like in person, you are completely unaware that this type of work is completely legitimate as a primary source of income for many people, and that due to a wide variety of conditions is simply better then attempting to rely on a "traditional" job. You are also incredibly ignorant concerning the status of the cards removed as only the smallest minority were actually fakes, and those cards are STILL on Ebay, as no one is going to list a "fake" card as being an "altered art" card. Those types of cards are mutually exclusive, as someone making fakes wants their cards to appear to be legitimate unaltered cards. You don't see someone making fake moxes advertising them as "Altered Art mox", because that would be unbelievably stupid. The only exception to this would be people making "proxies" of cards, but those items are obviously fake, and have their own host of issues...
You should educate yourself concerning the situation before making such comments.
Zen Viking-- adding mtg or "magic" to your listing title doesn't matter at all and is not a trademark or copyright infringment. it is simply a keyword that allows your item to be found by your targeted demographic. Its the product itself that generates the problem, although in the case of most of the tokens i have seen theres actually nothing on them that infringes anything. if they were just printed on card board and not magic cards Ebay would likely fully allow them. Its the same as selling little glass beads and adding "mtg counter" in the title then adding that they can be used as excellent counters for magic or other games.... it in no way infringes anything, and is definitely not the cause of this. Bristol I am sure is the original source of the problem, although i seriously doubt he knew what he would be causing when he did what he did... Of course alot of the blame also lies on Ebays customer support, which amplified a few small problems into a single huge one.
Legally none of the items I have seen in this sort of "altered" catagory in any way legally violate copyrights, or trademarks of WOTC. The few that potentially could violate other trademarks...such as pokemon alters and other classic character items also in no way cause a violation since places like Nintendo would never have a complaint about such a thing, and define it as "Fan Art" which is 100% legal and non infringing. In fact it is constitutionally protected under free speech as "parody".
Bluedeckdominates---sure what "career" would you suggest? If such an option was available I'm sure many would gladly take it... but just becuase someones primary source of income gets nuked for no reason, doesn't mean they are suddenly going to be offered a nice comfy job out of the blue. It must be awful nice to still have your job when 12% and climbing of the United states does not.
If this was a VeRO reporting issue then ebay would have listed the VeRo's contact information in their replies. This is not a result of any form of WOTC intervention.
In fact I do believe this may actually be Bristols fault.... I know for a fact he was going around reporting large amounts of listings for absolutely no other reason then his personal giggles.
Also the pulses and wraths made by that individual are indeed real wraths and pulses, they just effectively have a big sticker over the top of them with a whole cut out for the card names and casting costs.
The tokens also are not an issue.... an auction can simply list that they can be used with the MTG game but are not a wizards product...they are legit no matter what as long as they aren't on a real card aparently.
Masumune--Not all the art I use is mine, but a large portion is, and those that aren't are made by others I am in contact with who give full permission to use the work in exchange for a percentage of sales....basically you don't know what the hell you are talking about in this case.
Sleezy-- I was making magic alters more then 10 years ago... I pretty much invented the practice, monetary gain is just something that is required to keep my bills paid...
OK... After reading over the entire thread and discussion back and forth I have come down to conclusion...
YOU have NO CLUE on what your even talking about. Please just Shut up. Your turning this into a personal fued...
Also some people seam to not understand that items can be auto removed via a series of processes:
1) Severe reports - if an item is reported enough times It can be removed before someone checks it.
2) Keywords - COME ON GUYS... Its the bloody 2009.I think by now they have the abilitys to do a keyword sweep.
3) Human error of not caring - See report.. click on remove without checking link... You be surprise how much that happens.
And in all seriousness if this crippled your cash flow I think you then relied too much on this. As much as I love the arts SOME of yous do it should never have become a primary cash flow.
As a person who buys altered cards, I wish you all the best of luck getting back on ebay. If you guys come up with a "alternate" solution if ebay doesn't pan out, I'll keep an eye on this forum and send people here.
Bristol went around reporting completely legitimate auctions as fakes en masse simply becuase he either didn't like them, or else viewed them as unfair competition. Either way his actions were based in ignorance, or maliciousness, and likely directed caused this result.
I don't know where you got this idea. Yes, I reported every printed proxy or printed card that was obviously in violation of copyright laws. CK just said that they did the same - where's your campaign against them?
It was giving the rest of us a bad name. The idea that kids out there were spending actual money on what they thought were cool, legit cards and then received instead some poorly printed & glued piece of crap is upsetting to me. So I did what I could about it, but I have never reported any legitimate auctions or sellers, so you can go ahead and quit saying that I did.
Sapphire tri--must be awful nice NOT being layed off in an economy were every job opening has 1200+ applicants....
Currently if you can't find a way to make money WITHOUT a job, then you might as well buy a tent and move out onto the street now. This just so happened to be a way for talented individuals to keep their homes, individuals who are not going to be able to get any other form of income in the foreseeable future unless they just get crazy lucky.
Bristol--Such problems as people receiving a card not as advertised is easily solved by ebays feedback policy.... mine was at a 100% buyer satisfaction btw... Those types of items were in no way "giving other alters a bad name" in most cases they were of the highest level of quality rivaling that of hand painted items, while often being far far cheaper. basically saying these weren't things that people were getting in the mail and being upset about. You simply saw what you viewed as competition, decided to be an ass and ended up nuking yourself, and everyone else in the process because you didn't stop to think that the items you were massively reporting were in no way different then the items you yourself were selling. If CK and Yawg were doing the same thing then they have no one to blame but themselves for this, as it was the definite original source of the current issue.
@ Rainman: Interesting... where do you see the connection between what I said and the cards you sell on Ebay? I was talking about the proxies.
Also, it's funny that you mention competition. You know how many altered cards I've put on Ebay in 2009? Five. And they all got taken down in the sweep.
Zen Viking-- adding mtg or "magic" to your listing title doesn't matter at all and is not a trademark or copyright infringment. it is simply a keyword that allows your item to be found by your targeted demographic. Its the product itself that generates the problem, although in the case of most of the tokens i have seen theres actually nothing on them that infringes anything. if they were just printed on card board and not magic cards Ebay would likely fully allow them. Its the same as selling little glass beads and adding "mtg counter" in the title then adding that they can be used as excellent counters for magic or other games.... it in no way infringes anything, and is definitely not the cause of this. Bristol I am sure is the original source of the problem, although i seriously doubt he knew what he would be causing when he did what he did... Of course alot of the blame also lies on Ebays customer support, which amplified a few small problems into a single huge one.
Legally none of the items I have seen in this sort of "altered" catagory in any way legally violate copyrights, or trademarks of WOTC. The few that potentially could violate other trademarks...such as pokemon alters and other classic character items also in no way cause a violation since places like Nintendo would never have a complaint about such a thing, and define it as "Fan Art" which is 100% legal and non infringing. In fact it is constitutionally protected under free speech as "parody".
.
So, selling glass beads as "Magic the Gathering Counters" isn't copyright infringement? I'm pretty sure that's the 100% the opposite of a true statement. You would be making money by using a trademark in your marketing. Ever notice how many times athletes are in commericals with generic jerseys when they are selling cellphones or fast food? That's because the team would need to get paid in order for them to wear their real jersey. The only one who can legally sell "Magic the Gathering Counters" is WotC.
I assure you that if you started creating and selling "fan art" prints of planeswalkers and started selling them on t-shirts and posters that you'd get hit pretty hard. You make a good point about how "parody" fits into copyright laws, but it's a pretty sketchy area. If a guy was making his house payments by painting Super Mario on basic mountains and I owned Nintendo I'm pretty sure that I'd have a pretty solid case.
Bristol went around reporting completely legitimate auctions as fakes en masse simply becuase he either didn't like them, or else viewed them as unfair competition. Either way his actions were based in ignorance, or maliciousness, and likely directed caused this result.
proof?
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"When the gorilla playfully grabbed the wurm's tail, the wurm doubled back and playfully ate the gorilla's head."
Bristol-- you just said that you reported anything that you thought was "printed" Obviously proxies are not legitimate at all...
Zen-- Selling beads and saying that they make excellent magic the gathering counters is absolutely fine yes. Selling beads as "Official magic the gathering counters" on the other hand is not.
And yes Nintendo 100% supports fan art, they even run yearly and monthly contests paying big money prizes for such items.... They would in no way mind at all concerning your Mario scenario.
Bristol-- you just said that you reported anything that you thought was "printed" Obviously proxies are not legitimate at all...
Zen-- Selling beads and saying that they make excellent magic the gathering counters is absolutely fine yes. Selling beads as "Official magic the gathering counters" on the other hand is not.
And yes Nintendo 100% supports fan art, they even run yearly and monthly contests paying big money prizes for such items.... They would in no way mind at all concerning your Mario scenario.
He admitted to reporting proxies, not legitimate alters. And as he mentioned, he doesn't regularly sell alters. If you've regularly read the forums, you'll notice he doesn't even post his altered art all that often.
You just dislike him because he calls you out on your ****.
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"When the gorilla playfully grabbed the wurm's tail, the wurm doubled back and playfully ate the gorilla's head."
bristol--so "painted" and in obvious violation of copyright laws is just plain oky doky in your book
A copyright law can only be violated if the owner of the copyright registers a complaint about it, if they do not it is not violating such laws. This type of thing should be left to the individuals who actually own the copyrights...otherwise apparently we end up with situations like this ebay fiasco....
Out of every 400 applications I submit I get back a single reply, and I'm one the absolute best in my field with a fully visible and documented sales record that blows most people out of the water. I would hate to see the difficulties of what a lesser skilled person must be experiencing...
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Quote from ranMn »
Since then i have submitted over 4500 applications, with a grand total of 15 responses
That's a big jump in just what, a day? Which is it? If you meant the first post as a ratio, it's still not exactly right. More like every 300 applications you get 1 response buddy! So nyyaaahhh. Either way the whole thing is moot. You're saying you've submitted 4500 applications since you were laid off. 4500. I don't know if there's an obsessive compulsive disorder for applying to jobs, but it sounds like you have it. In my entire lifetime I don't expect to put in that many applications. Honestly, it sounds like you're desperate for work. If you are, why not consider the military? Weekends off, holiday, stable income, and unbeatable retirement. Sure, you might die by getting sent off to Afghanistan, but you know what, you might die driving out to get groceries tomorrow too. I don't know. All this talk about being the "best in the field" and blowing your competition "out of the water". Something isn't adding up. It sounds to me like you might be that lesser experienced person based on your own difficulties. Put that on top of the fact that I don't believe for one second you get everyone's permission to re-print their original artwork for a percentage of sales, yea right. But I don't know what I'm talking about. That seems to be all you can ever say to anyone. But gosh, 4500 applications. Really? And 15 responses, yet of those, you only managed to land a job with Wal-Mart for $8.50 an hour. Bravo. News: If your numbers are the least bit factual, then your circumstances are NOT the economy's fault.
I prefer the days when you never posted anything at all, save for the occasional visit into the altered art thread to literally say "hi, check these out!" and drop some free advertisement that made people look twice because of how suspiciously perfect it all looked. Fast-forward to today. eBay shuts your scheme down and wow! Suddenly you're up to 400 posts a day. Excuse the exagerration. I meant 4,500. Save it pal, you're a fraud. If not your "artwork", then definitely you as a person. If the auto sales industry won't even buy into your spectacular talent, did you honestly think we would?
I was told over the phone that a new policy was implemented June 1st that disallowed altered magic cards. The reason given was that it was trademark infringement according to eBay policy.
As for reported items, I have reported so many auctions over that last 6 months, and I can say that only 1 in 20 actually gets removed. It really was a deliberate act on eBay to remove them all in one big sweep.
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Thanks for that, CK. That should really end the debate on why. Now, we should look for some solution outside of Ebay.
RRR Buy some of my art! Prints! RRR
I agree that we should look into another venue to sell cards for now, but nothing we come up with is likely to match the worldwide exposure we get on ebay. We should not give up on that yet.
Remember, magic should only consume 95% of your time and resources. Life's better when you find the right balance.
-Dancingdragon
Click hereto see my cards for sale.
In fact I do believe this may actually be Bristols fault.... I know for a fact he was going around reporting large amounts of listings for absolutely no other reason then his personal giggles.
Also the pulses and wraths made by that individual are indeed real wraths and pulses, they just effectively have a big sticker over the top of them with a whole cut out for the card names and casting costs.
The tokens also are not an issue.... an auction can simply list that they can be used with the MTG game but are not a wizards product...they are legit no matter what as long as they aren't on a real card aparently.
Masumune--Not all the art I use is mine, but a large portion is, and those that aren't are made by others I am in contact with who give full permission to use the work in exchange for a percentage of sales....basically you don't know what the hell you are talking about in this case.
Sleezy-- I was making magic alters more then 10 years ago... I pretty much invented the practice, monetary gain is just something that is required to keep my bills paid...
You're a joke.:rolleyes:
If you think that rainman is the only one crossing his fingers, toes, and every other appendage possible that this all gets resolved so that they can keep making money, you're kidding yourself.
Jump down rainman's throat about his printer alterations (and every other person selling knockoffs/sex pics/copies for that matter). I'm all for it, but ease up on the favoritism. Half of the people you just mentioned are in this strictly for the money too. The other half are not. They're all talented, sure, but your favorite artists are working just as hard to fix this. I for one side with Bcal, Bristol, Bleedingteddy, etc. and frankly don't care if alters are ever salable on eBay again. I concur, I hope the artists that are altering cards for the sake of artistic expression, keep doing it for that very reason. Should they get paid if they're talented enough and there's a market for it? Certainly, but if they don't, then tough. Fall back on a real career and go back to doing it as a hobby. Enough said.
I'd be interested in seeing that new policy. It has long been against ebay policy to allow items in violation of copyright infringement on their site. I can't imagine that they'd make a specific case of magic cards...that is really strange.
It has not been my experience that 1 in 20 items actually get removed. I've been the victim of competing sellers reporting my items while theirs remained listed (completely not related to magic). When I got the email and my listings were removed I never listed a similar item as I did not want to lose my account. I reported the seller still listed on the site and he was taken down immediately. There was no 1 in 20 situation and my many conversations with ebay representatives gave me insight into their mindless automaton system for removing listings.
I could definately see that the tokens that used MTG or Magic in their listing titles brought a lot of heat on everyone. I could also see how reckless reporting could easily escalate and cause a lot of problems for the art community.
Hopefully everyone is able to list on ebay again soon or on another website that can be advertised to the community. A lot of you do really amazing work and its really fun to check out the auctions a few times a week.
The balancing act has to be that people report the actual copyright infringements and leave the legit artists alone.
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However, I'm not comfortable with the castigation of forum posters here just because they have an opinion and feel upset over this issue. Not cool.
At the moment, I'm kind of going off of what people say here to get a stance on what this big debacle is all about. The efforts that some have gone through to get in touch with Ebay has been really great Hopefully those of you trying to reach the people who can help will get good responses
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And as far as blaming Bristol for all this stuff, thats absurd. Hell if anything this is more your fault. If somebody did go around reporting the printed cards, guess what? They had a right too because they are violating the policy! Holy ****, its not some crazy outrageous unfair policy.
Let me ask, do you print out the mana symbols on your lands? If you do, then that is copyright infringement, and you can't blame anybody else for getting your listings taken down. And Ebay is too big for a small niche to allow the changing of the rules.
Pretty much, people got on the easy bandwagon and started printing out stupid fakes, and associated it with the real efforts of the actual alters, and got us all screwed.
And if you have been doing this for 10 years, and making 2k a month on this, and whatever other ******** has come out of you, then why is this such a huge problem? Take your amazing salesmenship and sell to your buyers that you undoubtedly have from 10 years of experience...
And I also agree with what bluedeckdominates said earlier, you can't be relying on this too much as your main source of income. It's not like you were all of a sudden fired from your job. Sure I'm gonna hear the economy is tough and whatnot, but you can't rely on selling trading cards as your main source of income.
The tokens themselves contained ZERO copyrighted material in fact if they were not on actual magic cards they would likely still be up on the site. Making tokens for use for a game is NOT copyright or trademark infringement, those items could technically be used with any game, the use of them with mtg is simply a suggestion.
And no I do not print out the mana symbols on my printed alters, the card names and mana symbols are from the original card, they are NOT printed, and they are not fake cards, the technique I use simple gives me the abilty to leave any areas of the printed art I wish to be translucent revealing the the cards original text, or mana symbols.
Bristol went around reporting completely legitimate auctions as fakes en masse simply becuase he either didn't like them, or else viewed them as unfair competition. Either way his actions were based in ignorance, or maliciousness, and likely directed caused this result.
I first created fully altered art cards back in revised, but only recently began doing so for money rather then personal bling.
As for me utilizing Ebay as a sales outlet, I have only been doing so for about 4 months, which has managed to generate enough income to keep me from losing my house. People use Ebay as their primary source of income all the time, especially in an economy were its pretty much impossible to find a "real" job that pays anything more then ****. And as for "suddenly being fired from my job" that was indeed the case....in fact I showed up for work one day and the entire store had been removed during the night and all of the contact numbers had been disconnected....people were literally showing up for work for a week because we weren't even told that we had been layed off. Since then i have submitted over 4500 applications, with a grand total of 15 responses.... people are either not hiring, or the competition for the few open positions is so high you might as well be playing the lottery.
You are incredibly ignorant concerning this situation. You have no idea how the cards you are referring to are made, or what they even look like in person, you are completely unaware that this type of work is completely legitimate as a primary source of income for many people, and that due to a wide variety of conditions is simply better then attempting to rely on a "traditional" job. You are also incredibly ignorant concerning the status of the cards removed as only the smallest minority were actually fakes, and those cards are STILL on Ebay, as no one is going to list a "fake" card as being an "altered art" card. Those types of cards are mutually exclusive, as someone making fakes wants their cards to appear to be legitimate unaltered cards. You don't see someone making fake moxes advertising them as "Altered Art mox", because that would be unbelievably stupid. The only exception to this would be people making "proxies" of cards, but those items are obviously fake, and have their own host of issues...
You should educate yourself concerning the situation before making such comments.
Zen Viking-- adding mtg or "magic" to your listing title doesn't matter at all and is not a trademark or copyright infringment. it is simply a keyword that allows your item to be found by your targeted demographic. Its the product itself that generates the problem, although in the case of most of the tokens i have seen theres actually nothing on them that infringes anything. if they were just printed on card board and not magic cards Ebay would likely fully allow them. Its the same as selling little glass beads and adding "mtg counter" in the title then adding that they can be used as excellent counters for magic or other games.... it in no way infringes anything, and is definitely not the cause of this. Bristol I am sure is the original source of the problem, although i seriously doubt he knew what he would be causing when he did what he did... Of course alot of the blame also lies on Ebays customer support, which amplified a few small problems into a single huge one.
Legally none of the items I have seen in this sort of "altered" catagory in any way legally violate copyrights, or trademarks of WOTC. The few that potentially could violate other trademarks...such as pokemon alters and other classic character items also in no way cause a violation since places like Nintendo would never have a complaint about such a thing, and define it as "Fan Art" which is 100% legal and non infringing. In fact it is constitutionally protected under free speech as "parody".
Bluedeckdominates---sure what "career" would you suggest? If such an option was available I'm sure many would gladly take it... but just becuase someones primary source of income gets nuked for no reason, doesn't mean they are suddenly going to be offered a nice comfy job out of the blue. It must be awful nice to still have your job when 12% and climbing of the United states does not.
OK... After reading over the entire thread and discussion back and forth I have come down to conclusion...
YOU have NO CLUE on what your even talking about. Please just Shut up. Your turning this into a personal fued...
Also some people seam to not understand that items can be auto removed via a series of processes:
1) Severe reports - if an item is reported enough times It can be removed before someone checks it.
2) Keywords - COME ON GUYS... Its the bloody 2009.I think by now they have the abilitys to do a keyword sweep.
3) Human error of not caring - See report.. click on remove without checking link... You be surprise how much that happens.
And in all seriousness if this crippled your cash flow I think you then relied too much on this. As much as I love the arts SOME of yous do it should never have become a primary cash flow.
As a person who buys altered cards, I wish you all the best of luck getting back on ebay. If you guys come up with a "alternate" solution if ebay doesn't pan out, I'll keep an eye on this forum and send people here.
Best wishes and good luck
I don't know where you got this idea. Yes, I reported every printed proxy or printed card that was obviously in violation of copyright laws. CK just said that they did the same - where's your campaign against them?
It was giving the rest of us a bad name. The idea that kids out there were spending actual money on what they thought were cool, legit cards and then received instead some poorly printed & glued piece of crap is upsetting to me. So I did what I could about it, but I have never reported any legitimate auctions or sellers, so you can go ahead and quit saying that I did.
RRR Buy some of my art! Prints! RRR
Currently if you can't find a way to make money WITHOUT a job, then you might as well buy a tent and move out onto the street now. This just so happened to be a way for talented individuals to keep their homes, individuals who are not going to be able to get any other form of income in the foreseeable future unless they just get crazy lucky.
Bristol--Such problems as people receiving a card not as advertised is easily solved by ebays feedback policy.... mine was at a 100% buyer satisfaction btw... Those types of items were in no way "giving other alters a bad name" in most cases they were of the highest level of quality rivaling that of hand painted items, while often being far far cheaper. basically saying these weren't things that people were getting in the mail and being upset about. You simply saw what you viewed as competition, decided to be an ass and ended up nuking yourself, and everyone else in the process because you didn't stop to think that the items you were massively reporting were in no way different then the items you yourself were selling. If CK and Yawg were doing the same thing then they have no one to blame but themselves for this, as it was the definite original source of the current issue.
Also, it's funny that you mention competition. You know how many altered cards I've put on Ebay in 2009? Five. And they all got taken down in the sweep.
RRR Buy some of my art! Prints! RRR
So, selling glass beads as "Magic the Gathering Counters" isn't copyright infringement? I'm pretty sure that's the 100% the opposite of a true statement. You would be making money by using a trademark in your marketing. Ever notice how many times athletes are in commericals with generic jerseys when they are selling cellphones or fast food? That's because the team would need to get paid in order for them to wear their real jersey. The only one who can legally sell "Magic the Gathering Counters" is WotC.
I assure you that if you started creating and selling "fan art" prints of planeswalkers and started selling them on t-shirts and posters that you'd get hit pretty hard. You make a good point about how "parody" fits into copyright laws, but it's a pretty sketchy area. If a guy was making his house payments by painting Super Mario on basic mountains and I owned Nintendo I'm pretty sure that I'd have a pretty solid case.
proof?
Bristol-- you just said that you reported anything that you thought was "printed" Obviously proxies are not legitimate at all...
Zen-- Selling beads and saying that they make excellent magic the gathering counters is absolutely fine yes. Selling beads as "Official magic the gathering counters" on the other hand is not.
And yes Nintendo 100% supports fan art, they even run yearly and monthly contests paying big money prizes for such items.... They would in no way mind at all concerning your Mario scenario.
RRR Buy some of my art! Prints! RRR
He admitted to reporting proxies, not legitimate alters. And as he mentioned, he doesn't regularly sell alters. If you've regularly read the forums, you'll notice he doesn't even post his altered art all that often.
You just dislike him because he calls you out on your ****.
A copyright law can only be violated if the owner of the copyright registers a complaint about it, if they do not it is not violating such laws. This type of thing should be left to the individuals who actually own the copyrights...otherwise apparently we end up with situations like this ebay fiasco....
to...
That's a big jump in just what, a day? Which is it? If you meant the first post as a ratio, it's still not exactly right. More like every 300 applications you get 1 response buddy! So nyyaaahhh. Either way the whole thing is moot. You're saying you've submitted 4500 applications since you were laid off. 4500. I don't know if there's an obsessive compulsive disorder for applying to jobs, but it sounds like you have it. In my entire lifetime I don't expect to put in that many applications. Honestly, it sounds like you're desperate for work. If you are, why not consider the military? Weekends off, holiday, stable income, and unbeatable retirement. Sure, you might die by getting sent off to Afghanistan, but you know what, you might die driving out to get groceries tomorrow too. I don't know. All this talk about being the "best in the field" and blowing your competition "out of the water". Something isn't adding up. It sounds to me like you might be that lesser experienced person based on your own difficulties. Put that on top of the fact that I don't believe for one second you get everyone's permission to re-print their original artwork for a percentage of sales, yea right. But I don't know what I'm talking about. That seems to be all you can ever say to anyone. But gosh, 4500 applications. Really? And 15 responses, yet of those, you only managed to land a job with Wal-Mart for $8.50 an hour. Bravo. News: If your numbers are the least bit factual, then your circumstances are NOT the economy's fault.
I prefer the days when you never posted anything at all, save for the occasional visit into the altered art thread to literally say "hi, check these out!" and drop some free advertisement that made people look twice because of how suspiciously perfect it all looked. Fast-forward to today. eBay shuts your scheme down and wow! Suddenly you're up to 400 posts a day. Excuse the exagerration. I meant 4,500. Save it pal, you're a fraud. If not your "artwork", then definitely you as a person. If the auto sales industry won't even buy into your spectacular talent, did you honestly think we would?