Also report the offending parties to eBay? Honestly, that would probably lead to an actual result more than Hasbro legal getting info on yet another bootlegger.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
wotc can't even get a website taken down that copied their entire collection of 5e content while profiting via their Patreon and website ads to host it for free.
What do you think they can do about some photocopied books.
EBay takes counterfeiting seriously as it threatens the integrity of the fair marketplace that is their business model. Someone defrauding folks with reprints disrupts the pricing of legitimate vendors, from who Ebay makes their money, so I think Ebay actually has a bigger stake in this matter than WotC, who in a lot of cases the OP is alleging would simply be trying to assess right to resale (of DMs Guild material) albeit fraudulently (but copyright doesn't really give them a stake in that fight) and b. the alleged physical publishing of presumably DMs Guild PDFs may not be having a marked effect on their sales (I mean, DMsGuild stuff I don't think are revenue stream anywhere close to Magic and 5e).
Another option would be dropping a complaint with the counterfeit merchandise investigation programs within FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. You scoff, but while those sorts of units tend to prosecute the sort of person who has the keys to factory and runs off the books shifts and diverting the product elsewhere, I have seen at least HSI "take down" someone selling knock off professional sports teams jerseys and another case involving bootleg WWE merchandise. While most folks associate this activity with protecting commercial interests, in principle and in some prosecutions investigations are sometimes undertaken in the interest of protecting the rights of the consumer to not be defrauded (going back to the truth that most federal law is actually derivative of commerce laws, one could say these sorts of cases are the fed system in its purist form, no public affairs officer would tell you that unless you were the sort who'd have to field "you told them what?" from management the next day - ahem).
Anyway, it just costs you your time to drop a dime, that may not be picked up. How seriously an investigator would take the complaint would come down to any idea of how much money is being made in the fraud (technically there aren't "thresholds" for these cases, but at the end of the day it comes down to investigative manhours spent to ultimate go to a asst u.s. attorney who will say "you want me to spend grand jury time on this?" in some fed districts there's a "bigger fish to fry" attitude, others not so much.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Good info, though selling DMsGuild print on demand (printed by DMsGuild) isn't a copyright violation. And, if the OP is correct in alleging some vendors are selling DMsGuild reprints at original print prices ... that's fraud, misrepresenting a reproduction for a collector's item. And the same folks who look at this stuff criminally can work on consumer complaint, especially if you're talking about a collectors market (these are the folks who also investigate art forgery). Still, usually the IP owner is on the conference call when sussing out whether to investigate these things. I mean that HSI investigation into bootleg WWE merch? The team that was investigating that criminally bumped into a team of U.S. Marshals WWE hired out to enforce an IP protecting civil court order at Wrestlemania, "civil seizure warrant" is probably the best way to understand what they were doing in lay speak. Anyway, that was pretty indicative that WWE was going after trademark/copyright/likeness use violators by any means necessary. While Hasbro overall does protect its rights, I don't think they're as aggressive as WWE. I mean they sued the World Wildlife Fund once for basically acronym rights back when WWE was WWF (and lost because yeah, it was a stupid suit - Vince McMahon plays a crazy genius with insecurity issues on TV ... only half that characterization is correct IRL).
It's sort of odd, I've heard EBay frequently gets buzzed by WotC about Magic copyright violations ... I think again it's the scale of the loss being factored as to why DMsGuild bait and switch just isn't as aggressively pursued by WotC as Magic violations.
Since some ebayers are out here, anyone know if that dude trying to sell a Beedle and Grimm Platinum Edition of Descent into Avernus for like $8k get any luck with that? I haven't been on Ebay since I've tracked down all my wants for FFG's Star Wars books ... which ended just when Edge said their receipt of the licences in the Asmodee shuffle has been officially blessed by Disney/Lucasfilm and they'll be producing new games ... and reprints (sad trombone whenever I pick up No Disintegrations, I got good deals on pretty much everything else, but that one soaked up any "savings" I may have got and then some, though what I got was a lot more reasonable than some of the listed prices I've seen).
You would need to wizards.com for their communication channels.
Also report the offending parties to eBay? Honestly, that would probably lead to an actual result more than Hasbro legal getting info on yet another bootlegger.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
wotc can't even get a website taken down that copied their entire collection of 5e content while profiting via their Patreon and website ads to host it for free.
What do you think they can do about some photocopied books.
EBay takes counterfeiting seriously as it threatens the integrity of the fair marketplace that is their business model. Someone defrauding folks with reprints disrupts the pricing of legitimate vendors, from who Ebay makes their money, so I think Ebay actually has a bigger stake in this matter than WotC, who in a lot of cases the OP is alleging would simply be trying to assess right to resale (of DMs Guild material) albeit fraudulently (but copyright doesn't really give them a stake in that fight) and b. the alleged physical publishing of presumably DMs Guild PDFs may not be having a marked effect on their sales (I mean, DMsGuild stuff I don't think are revenue stream anywhere close to Magic and 5e).
Another option would be dropping a complaint with the counterfeit merchandise investigation programs within FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. You scoff, but while those sorts of units tend to prosecute the sort of person who has the keys to factory and runs off the books shifts and diverting the product elsewhere, I have seen at least HSI "take down" someone selling knock off professional sports teams jerseys and another case involving bootleg WWE merchandise. While most folks associate this activity with protecting commercial interests, in principle and in some prosecutions investigations are sometimes undertaken in the interest of protecting the rights of the consumer to not be defrauded (going back to the truth that most federal law is actually derivative of commerce laws, one could say these sorts of cases are the fed system in its purist form, no public affairs officer would tell you that unless you were the sort who'd have to field "you told them what?" from management the next day - ahem).
Anyway, it just costs you your time to drop a dime, that may not be picked up. How seriously an investigator would take the complaint would come down to any idea of how much money is being made in the fraud (technically there aren't "thresholds" for these cases, but at the end of the day it comes down to investigative manhours spent to ultimate go to a asst u.s. attorney who will say "you want me to spend grand jury time on this?" in some fed districts there's a "bigger fish to fry" attitude, others not so much.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You can try this https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new/
You'll want to contact Wizards. Ebay requires copyright violations to be reported by the copyright owner.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
Good info, though selling DMsGuild print on demand (printed by DMsGuild) isn't a copyright violation. And, if the OP is correct in alleging some vendors are selling DMsGuild reprints at original print prices ... that's fraud, misrepresenting a reproduction for a collector's item. And the same folks who look at this stuff criminally can work on consumer complaint, especially if you're talking about a collectors market (these are the folks who also investigate art forgery). Still, usually the IP owner is on the conference call when sussing out whether to investigate these things. I mean that HSI investigation into bootleg WWE merch? The team that was investigating that criminally bumped into a team of U.S. Marshals WWE hired out to enforce an IP protecting civil court order at Wrestlemania, "civil seizure warrant" is probably the best way to understand what they were doing in lay speak. Anyway, that was pretty indicative that WWE was going after trademark/copyright/likeness use violators by any means necessary. While Hasbro overall does protect its rights, I don't think they're as aggressive as WWE. I mean they sued the World Wildlife Fund once for basically acronym rights back when WWE was WWF (and lost because yeah, it was a stupid suit - Vince McMahon plays a crazy genius with insecurity issues on TV ... only half that characterization is correct IRL).
It's sort of odd, I've heard EBay frequently gets buzzed by WotC about Magic copyright violations ... I think again it's the scale of the loss being factored as to why DMsGuild bait and switch just isn't as aggressively pursued by WotC as Magic violations.
Since some ebayers are out here, anyone know if that dude trying to sell a Beedle and Grimm Platinum Edition of Descent into Avernus for like $8k get any luck with that? I haven't been on Ebay since I've tracked down all my wants for FFG's Star Wars books ... which ended just when Edge said their receipt of the licences in the Asmodee shuffle has been officially blessed by Disney/Lucasfilm and they'll be producing new games ... and reprints (sad trombone whenever I pick up No Disintegrations, I got good deals on pretty much everything else, but that one soaked up any "savings" I may have got and then some, though what I got was a lot more reasonable than some of the listed prices I've seen).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.