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

[Clint_L]

Actually in the US if Amazon accidentally sent you a TV that you never ordered you would own it. As per the FTC it's considered a gift and you legally don't have to return it. There is info about it on the FTC's website:

What To Do if You’re Billed for Things You Never Got, or You Get Unordered Products

Billed for products you never ordered, or for products you ordered but never got? Federal laws protect you. Here's what to do.

consumer.ftc.gov

If this was legally purchased by the Youtuber from a distributor who legally purchased the product from WotC and the distributor sent him the wrong product he is legally entitled to keep it. It doesn't matter that the set was not supposed to release for a few weeks. That's an issue between the distributor and Wizards of the Coast. This Youtuber didn't sign anything with WotC saying he wouldn't purchase the product early.

If this Youtuber received this by having a distributor accidentally send him the wrong set and he is not under any sort of NDA with Wizards (which I don't believe he was based on what I've read and the size of his channel) he owns the product and is fully within his rights to open up the boxes on Youtube.

I want to be cautious here because maybe the laws are different where you live, but in Canada, you cannot be billed for unsolicited goods, but you are definitely required to return them, at the sender's expense, if sent to you by accident. In fact, I've had this happen when a company accidentally sent me a much more expensive standing desk than the one I ordered. They were gracious enough to offer me a discount on the one I had actually ordered, though they were not required to.

 

[Clint_L]

Is it the word "Pinkerton" that is the crux of the issue? If the investigators happened to come from a different agency, would the issue be different? Setting aside what happened a century or more ago (as Snarff pointed out, if your ethical reservations go that far back there are MUCH bigger fish to fry that you will run into a lot more often than Pinkertons...like my VW Golf!), are other large investigative firms qualitatively different than Pinkerton today? What firm are we suggesting they use to retrieve their lost IP?

 

[MGibster]

This is obviously a Delta Green operation. The agents posed as Pinkerton agents to recover playing cards with hypergeometric semiotics that would prove disastrous if introduced to the public.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I find it odd to think people only have a duty to consider others if they signed something. Maybe I'm the odd one doing things like being back the extra bag of groceries the bagger put in my cart by accident, pointing out if they missed ringing something in, and giving back whatever extra change they gave to me. Even if it's at a big store and not a mom and pop one

A duty to others?

Yeah, sure.

A duty to a multi-billion dollar megacorp that doesn't care about you and has shown disdain to their own customer base numerous times now?

Naw.

 

[Ryujin]

A duty to others?

Yeah, sure.

A duty to a multi-billion dollar megacorp that doesn't care about you and has shown disdain to their own customer base numerous times now?

Naw.

There's also that duty to yourself, to not become what you despise.

 

[Maxperson]

PLEASE, IF YOU ONLY TAKE ONE THING FROM ALL OF THIS, IT'S THIS- DO NOT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE OR RELY ON THINGS FROM THE INTERNET YOU DON'T FULLY UNDERSTAND.

But if I don't send this email to 300 people within the next 10 minutes, I won't live to be 100!!

 

[eyeheartawk]

There's also that duty to yourself, to not become what you despise.

I don't think there's much of a chance for me to become a corporate behemoth and then send Pinkertons to intimidate people I don't like.

But true, I don't know that for sure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also, can we ease up on private investigators all being jack-booted thugs, including everyone who works for Pinkertons?

I work at a school. You know what we do before we hire anyone to work with our kids (or even let them volunteer with our kids)? Investigate them. Through investigators who know what they are doing and do so legally. We check their criminal records and sometimes social media, job history, etc.. If we didn't, we would be hideously liable.

My best friend is a partner at Canada's largest law firm. They work with investigators all the time. They would be seriously incompetent if they didn't. And they choose reputable companies, yes like these, so that they know investigations and related services (like tracking down missing IP!) will be conducted legally and professionally. Because that is extremely important to law firms.

I don't think anyone is saying there is no place for Private Investigations. I've known plenty of private investigators and I have nothing against it as an occupation or as a resource when it is needed. They are saying Pinkerton has a reputation and that hiring and sending agents to a person's house, with the tacit threat of legal action, over what might just have been a seller not abiding by a contract or some other mix up that led to an early release, seems like massive over kill. And who knows, maybe these were somehow illegally obtained (from what I am seeing the main concern seems to be the early release). I just don't think people like the idea that WOTC might send agents to your house over something like that.

And again to be clear, reasonable people can disagree. This happens all the time on these issues, so I am in no way saying you finding it not to be a problem says anything about you, or that it is some kind of bright red line. I just personally do not feel at all comfortable with WOTC taking this kind of action (especially when it could have been handled so many different way)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Is there something in copyright law that lets you share others artwork online by default? (Can I open a new book and show all the pages one at a time?).

I do youtube videos and have a podcast. If they are worried about anything pertaining to copyright, all they have to do is file a copyright claim on youtube, and the video will essentially automatically come down. You can challenge them, but it is not usually a good idea to challenge as a youtube creator (the risks to your channel go up when you do it, and the process involves you giving all of your personal information to the person who filed the claim, while having virtually no information about them). So if this was their worry, the youtube policy on copyright is heavily in their favor.

On the book thing, I would imagine if what you are doing is reasonable most publishers wouldn't care. On the other hand if you are literally holding up each page to be read, maybe they would care (I don't know how many people are going to actually consider youtube views of pages an adequate replacement for the pleasure of reading a book or looking at art). But again this would really come down to whether the copyright holder or any other interested party decides to file a complaint (which is very easy to do). But in terms of other media, stuff gets taken down all the time for way less sharing than that. I've used five second clips of public domain bumper music (like classic pieces that were recorded in the 40s and both the music and the recording are in the public domain) and because there are copyright trolls, scammers looking for personal information and legitimate copyright holders using software to find music that is copyrighted, it is very easy for a public domain recording to get mistaken for another recording and a complaint to be filed. I even got a strike on my blog once for putting up the movie poster to a film that was the same one that was on wikipedia (and it was for a positive review of the film and the blog wasn't monetized).

 

[darjr]

I don't think there's much of a chance for me to become a corporate behemoth and then send Pinkertons to intimidate people I don't like.

But true, I don't know that for sure.

Some day when you can afford my fee of $100 grand I’ll tell you if you have become a corporate juggernaut.

Or when you send the Pinkertons to threaten my wife and I.