FFG goes GW: Orders Netrunner fansite to shut down

Grudunza wrote: I think this is also different from GW in that these sites allow you to actually play the game, without having purchased any of the cards.

No, no, NetrunnerDB didnd't allow you to play the game! It only allowed you to put a decklist and discuss it.

Erik Twice wrote: They are also in their legal right to blacklist reviewers or force out all the Arkham Horror content out of BGG. The problem with this is not legality, but that they are shutting down a fansite for their own product and making it harder for everyone to enjoy it.

The problem is that there's no logical reason why they would blacklist reviewers or remove Arkham Horror content. There is a logical reason why they would shut down a site that competes with a site they paid good money for. The more logical a response the less reason people have to be upset.

Shellhead wrote:

I'm not an attorney or any other legal expert, but it was my understanding that a company can't selectively protect its intellectual properties. It must either consistently protect them or not at all.

U.S. laws deal with different forms of IP in different ways. Trademarks have to be defended, or they can be lost. Copyrights, however, don't need to be defended in the same way. In either case, FFG is well within its rights. Is the C&D letter smart? I have no idea.

Virtually no one is dwelling on the "did they have the right?" in the fallout from this--plainly they do, no one could credibly claim otherwise.

Things get a little murkier on the "was this a good idea?" front. NetrunnerDB had a thriving community, and for my purposes, its UI was fantastic. In comparison, CardGameDB is a hot mess of an interface, is borderline unusable on tablets/mobile, and the "scene" there is downright moribund in comparison to what NRDB had. With last year's acquisition of CardGameDB, I'm hardly surprised that FFG wants to clamp down on competitors in this space. But when the net result is that people are left with a noticeably inferior tool that doesn't get updated with new cards in a timely fashion, I'm also not surprised that a large slice of the player community feels aggrieved.

Still, in the grand scheme of things, they are selling so much ANR product that I doubt pissing off a few hundred of the most vocal online participants in the community is going to move the needle at all. People will adapt to the new slightly shittier reality and we'll all move on with our lives.

Most people seem to be ignoring the Jinteki.net angle, though. This was a new website that was creating the ability to play the game online, and they were using images owned by FFG and hosted on NetrunnerDB.

It's entirely possible that NRDB got caught in the overarching legal swoop of shutting down Jinteki.net. Now, you'd think they'd let NRDB delete their pictures and carry on, but who knows. As far as I know, they didn't send a C&D to the meteor deckbuilder, after all.

Erik Twice wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I'm not an attorney or any other legal expert, but it was my understanding that a company can't selectively protect its intellectual properties. It must either consistently protect them or not at all.

There are hundreds of Magic: The Gathering sites like NetrunnerDB so I'm sure there was no legal need to shut it down.

Yeah, I don't know about "hundreds of sites", but while gatherer.wizards.com is the official Magic: the Gathering database, magiccards.info is an extremely popular (and cleaner-looking) alternative that even has a "Print Proxies" button that is labelled as such (as well as a few other extra features that Gatherer doesn't) and makes it extremely easy to hit print and proxy up an entire deck, AND they make money by linking to prices at online stores. But I've never even heard a whisper of shutting them down.

Sounds like FFG bought the wrong web site.

This is baffling. This is the kind of garbage that happened 15 years ago with Metallica and Harry Potter. Why would a company take such a heavy handed approach in interacting with a watering hole for your paying, loyal customers?

charlest wrote: The more logical a response the less reason people have to be upset.

The thing is, I don't think there's anything logical about shutting down a fansite and community hub for one of their products. Given that logic they should also shut down other forums because they "compete" against their own forums on the game. They are more than able to, the Spanish forums have "NetrunnerLCG" in the title.

It also matters little if it isn't logical if Barnes is still blacklisted by FFG and the sites GW killed are still dead.

phandec wrote: Most people seem to be ignoring the Jinteki.net angle, though. This was a new website that was creating the ability to play the game online, and they were using images owned by FFG and hosted on NetrunnerDB.

According to Alsciende (NetrunnerDB admin) the C&D letter was not related to Jinteki.net or the API, they simply wouldn't let them use the images or even the card names.

I know he's not a neutral party, being the administrator and all but if it were about the images or such the site would have simply removed the content, dunno.

FFG might be able to put a better spin on this if they make an effort to load upcoming sets early into their deckbuilder site, so that fans can get a preview and start planning out new decks early.