Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[Admiral Caine]

Power Cards - Dugeons & Dragons 4th Edition | D&D 4e Powercards

4epowercards.com is going down


Unfortunately, the people at Wizards of the Coast have served me with a Cease and Desist letter. While I respect Wizards, and love almost all of their products, I am still disappointed. We can only hope Wizards will offer a service simliar to that provided by 4epowercards.com.

In the near future, once I'm done clearing out all the offending copyrighted materials, I will provide the source code used to drive this site. I hope it can be of benefit to someone out there.

Regards,


Ryan Paddock

I'll refrain from editorial comment in this first post. My apologies to the Moderators if this has been covered in another post that I have overlooked, or in another sub-board. I did do a quick skim before posting.

 

[davethegame]

A very interesting development for sure... since as far as I'm aware, that site did not charge anything for its use, unlike Ema's.

 

[Byronic]

Well, this poster gives WotC 2 thumbs down for that action.

 

[avin]

I saw that coming from miles.

Wotc is going to sell their own power cards.

 

[Zaukrie]

Any site that posts actual content from the game that WotC charges for should expect this to happen. If I sold a book, and people were extracting it's content and giving it away for free, I'd want them to stop.

 

[Admiral Caine]

I agree with Dave Chalker, it is interesting. Because there are a lot of Power Cards posted right here at EnWorld.

So while I don't expect an offical comment from WOTC, I am curious about the reasoning. So that I can understand what their perceived boundries are, if nothing else. What makes a "safe" power card and what constitutes a percieved infringement on their IP.

Without letting fire rush to my head, it strikes me as unreasonable to attack the concept of a 3rd party power card. People need to jot down how their abilities work in order to expedite play.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Any site that posts actual content from the game that WotC charges for should expect this to happen. If I sold a book, and people were extracting it's content and giving it away for free, I'd want them to stop.

This. x2.

 

[Scribble]

What did the site do?

Did it simply have powercard templates? Or did it generate powercards based on the powers in the PHB? Or did it generate powercards with whatever you put on them?

Or something else?

 

[Morrus]

I agree with Dave Chalker, it is interesting. Because there are a lot of Power Cards posted right here at EnWorld.

Could you report any posts where anyone's distributing chunks of WotC's IP on EN World? I know it's talked about a lot here, but I haven't personally seen any copyrighted material actually hosted here, although 'm the first to admit it could have skipped me by; but if it's here, it'd help us immensely if you'd point it out.

 

[Admiral Caine]

Any site that posts actual content from the game that WotC charges for should expect this to happen. If I sold a book, and people were extracting it's content and giving it away for free, I'd want them to stop.

This is not an attack on you Zaukrie, I merely want to draw this out for the purposes of discussion and to understand where you're coming from.

So, by extension of this position, you would agree that all Power Cards not made by WOTC (or made 100% entirely by the individual for their own sole personal use) is a violation WOTC's rights?