WotC may have sent the Pinkertons to a magic leakers home. Update: WotC confirms it and has a response.

[Clint_L]

A lot is turning on the word 'illicit' here. 'Illicit' and 'illegal' and 'accidentally released ahead of embargo date' are not the same thing. WotC, much as they would like to, have no power to chuck someone in the slammer simply for leaking a Magic card early, or for being the recipient of a leaked Magic card. How the leak happened, matters. What does 'illicit' mean here, exactly? Cos if it's 'something that WotC sold to someone else and doesn't want you to have yet because it doesn't suit their marketing strategy', then so what? WotCs commercial preference does not decide what is or is not 'illicit'

I don't think there's been any serious allegation of actual theft by anyone, am i correct there? If so, we can rule out this being a criminal matter, and in that case, the reported threats of jail time were waaaay out of line, if they occurred.

More likely is that someone in the supply chain either goofed and broke embargo by accident, or else broke embargo on purpose for clout or for $$, and this youtuber somehow found out or got notified of it, and saw his opportunity to get a bunch of eyes on his channel. Now, this almost certainly a breach of contract on the part of the leaker, and there could well be consequences in civil court over that, should WotC choose to pursue that option, But the YouTuber is a different matter. He has, to the best of my knowledge, no contractual arrangement with WotC, so he can't be sued for breaking it. He has, to the best of my knowledge, made no agreement to respect WotCs embargo. If he'd offered inducements to the leaker to break the contract then he might be more firmly on the legal hook (dunno whether it'd be civil or criminal), but what, if anything, has he done wrong if he's capitalising on a leak that's already happened?

I am aware that "illicit" is a general term; that's why I chose it. WotC has stated that there was "unauthorized distribution" (i.e. illicit) of "embargoed product." In other words, they don't yet know how it got out there, but it is not authorized to be out there. The word "unauthorized" is very important here, and Snarff or another lawyer obviously knows a zillion times more about it, but in general you retain ownership rights even of an object that you misplace. So even if it was sent out by a mistake in the shipping department, it still belongs to them, and they are legally within their rights to claim it back. And should do so, given the stakes involved!

WotC doesn't have the power to chuck anyone in the slammer over anything, so I don't really understand your point here. They are part of a corporation, not part of the justice system. But they certainly have the right to hire investigators and lawyers to defend their legal interests, as do we all. Interests like retrieving a very valuable item that may have been stolen or misplaced.

If the leaker, as seems the case from his earlier statement, intentionally sought out this material knowing that it was not supposed to be "in the wild" and was not intentionally sold by WotC, he has no legal claim to it, and could be in possession of stolen property. In fact, even if he unintentionally purchased it he still had no legal claim to it, since the person who sold it did not own it.

Example: if I drop my phone (my bad!), you pick it up and then turn and sell it to someone else, they do not suddenly have legal rights to my phone. It is still my phone, and when I claim it I do not have to reimburse them for the money they paid to you. They should not have been buying a phone from someone who didn't own it. If we went to court over it, the judge would tell them to give me back my phone and stop buying things without a proof of ownership (and would probably admonish them that they must have had a pretty good idea that the phone did not belong to the seller).

WotC was retrieving their property from someone who had zero rights to it (and probably knew it). And had he refused to return it I am very confident that they could have, in fact, initiated legal proceedings against him, though Snarff and others can say more. However, they behaved very reasonably under the circumstances by retrieving their property and replacing it with the items that he (now) claims to have intended to purchase. They did not have to do the latter; that was purely generosity (unlikely) or PR (likely).

 

[Clint_L]

addendum: and yes, I am aware that there are circumstances under which you can eventually claim ownership of found objects. I do not believe that any of them are remotely relevant to what we know of this situation.

 

[Parmandur]

If they could find out where he lived and dispatch people to that location, they could've found out what his phone number and other contact information was and had their legal department send a missive (this isn't a hypothetical - I used to skip trace people and it's dead simple to find this information). They didn't need to send hired muscle to the guy's house to intimidate him into handing over the cards. And they probably should've been more concerned with finding out how the guy got the merchandise in question, rather than dispatching hired muscle to secure the cards (I've also worked in PhysSec for more than a decade, including on government contracts, and this would've been where I focused my attention). How they handled this, from both a risk management and PR standpoint was not good.

WotC apparently tried direct contacts, and didn't get a response.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

I'm not sure WotC did anything wrong here. If the Pinkertons threatened someone with jail, okay, that's on the Pinkertons, and by extension, I guess some of that's on WotC as well for hiring them. But I'm not sure that's what happened.

I don't think they even threatened him with jail. There was a mention of potential jail, but that could have been an informational statement that he could face jail time if the cards were stolen. From the OP's linked article, "In the video, oldschoolmtg said that the agents also mentioned “jail time” while they were speaking to him and his wife." Pretty sure that goes for anything stolen. I think most states, if not all states, have laws against knowingly receiving stolen goods.

There also seems to be this idea that the Pinkerton employees were somehow using aggressive tactics. I don't see anywhere in the article, or the video, which i watched out of curiosity, were he says they physically intimidated or even had a weapon on them. They showed up after he finished recording some videos. His dogs started barking because they were knocking on the door. His wife answered. They requested the cards. He gave them up. They requested he delete the videos. He even states others should delete the videos if they are using clip from his videos. Furthermore, he even says he didn't give anyone permission to use clips from his videos.

It seems the writer's word choice colors the actual occurrence in a less than positive light.

 

[humble minion]

I am aware that "illicit" is a general term; that's why I chose it. WotC has stated that there was "unauthorized distribution" (i.e. illicit) of "embargoed product." In other words, they don't yet know how it got out there, but it is not authorized to be out there. The word "unauthorized" is very important here, and Snarff or another lawyer obviously knows a zillion times more about it, but in general you retain ownership rights even of an object that you misplace. So even if it was sent out by a mistake in the shipping department, it still belongs to them, and they are legally within their rights to claim it back. And should do so, given the stakes involved!

WotC doesn't have the power to chuck anyone in the slammer over anything, so I don't really understand your point here. They are part of a corporation, not part of the justice system. But they certainly have the right to hire investigators and lawyers to defend their legal interests, as do we all. Interests like retrieving a very valuable item that may have been stolen or misplaced.

If the leaker, as seems the case from his earlier statement, intentionally sought out this material knowing that it was not supposed to be "in the wild" and was not intentionally sold by WotC, he has no legal claim to it, and could be in possession of stolen property. In fact, even if he unintentionally purchased it he still had no legal claim to it, since the person who sold it did not own it.

Re: chuck in the slammer - the youtuber claims that the Pinkertons threatened him with jail. That's where that whole reference is coming from. If there's actual theft involved in this stuff getting out into the wild then yes, jail time might theoretically be involved (I suspect very unlikely, but still possible), but if this is a matter of a contractual breach then it absolutely would not and Pinkertons and WotC were wrong to claim otherwise and doing so was an act of naked and deceptive intimidation. Most likely, they don't even know who the leaker is or how the leak occured, and are resorting to threatening the youtuber with the worst possible consequences because a) that's more likely to get them their cards back, and b) Pinkertons (and increasingly WotC) seem to have 'high-handed bullying' as one of their default methods of corporate operation.

And as i was saying, all that depends on how the leak happened, and where the leaked material came from originally.

Re distribution: I'm not terribly informed over how these things work, but my assumption is that WotC had already sold the product to a wholesaler, or a retailer, under an embargo, and that it was this NEW owner of the material who had released it ahead of the embargo that they'd agreed to in their contract with WotC. Generally, an embargo is an arrangement that a company imposes on an external party in exchange for getting stuff early, hence my assumption that it was an external party who'd done the leaking. You don't impose an embargo on yourself, after all. But such an embargo absolutely does not bind the youtuber who did not enter in to it or agree with it. As i was saying - it depends on the precise ownership status of the material. If it was owned by WotC at the time it leaked, then it absolutely could be deemed stolen goods. If ownership had been transferred to someone else (a retailer, a reviewer, etc etc) under condition of an embargo, and then leaked against the terms of that agreement, then no theft occured, only a breach of contract between WotC and the leaker which is a civil matter and which I believe does not implicate the youtuber legally at all. The youtuber presumably DOES know who the leaker was and how they got hold of this stuff, so he might be better informed on which of these possibilities is the actual one. But I'm not sure anyone else is.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

@Henadic Theologian @Alzrius


WotC has a leak, they want to plug it, so please tell me which company you think they should have gone with.

Anyone other then something like the Pinkertons, they've engaged in "allegedly" murder, union busting, kidnapping, tax evasion, assualt, harrassment, and more. I mean WotC may have as well have used the Hell's Angels.

 

[Zardnaar]

Anyone other then something like the Pinkertons, they've engaged in "allegedly" murder, union busting, kidnapping, tax evasion, assualt, harrassment, and more. I mean WotC may have as well have used the Hell's Angels.

Hells Angel's have better PR. Didn't they do Woodstock?

 

[eyeheartawk]

Ol' Hasbro is batting a .1000 in the PR department.

Nothing like threatening a person who paid money for a product, happened to get the wrong product and made a video about it. He didn't sign an NDA or anything.

Remember kids, Hasbro will never love you.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Hells Angel's have better PR. Didn't they do Woodstock?

Altamont, and they killed someone there.

(No apostrophe in Hells Angels.)

 

[Dausuul]

If they could find out where he lived and dispatch people to that location, they could've found out what his phone number and other contact information was and had their legal department send a missive (this isn't a hypothetical - I used to skip trace people and it's dead simple to find this information).

According to their statement, they did. He didn't respond.