+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+
Spot
The Difference?
+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+
Yes,
there is a Major-Arcana-only deck in existence where every
single card is as similar to mine as these (mine on the left,
theirs on the right).
I
was kindly advised of the existence of the deck by some loyal
fans of this site in March 2002. I held off commenting about
the issue on the site until the company involved, Realis,
had been given the opportunity through a German copyright
agency to "do the right thing". They refused
to acknowledge liability to pay me royalties, despite
admitting getting the images "from an English site"
(I'm Australian actually, but close enough). They must have
got them from here or at least have known about this site,
as they cropped the name of my site off the bottom of the
cards and replaced it with the name of the product they sold
it as. I have always had information on this site about the
fact that the cards are my own collaged artworks for
which I own copyright, despite them being composed from public
domain sources.
My
view of copyright had been researched from the web, based
on both US and English cases, and I have since obtained professional
legal advice that confirms that view. Whether I can afford
to pursue legal action is another matter - I can't. There
is also the complication of the fact that the company published
the deck in Germany. The particular specifics of German copyright
law have to be considered therefore, as well as the logisitical
difficulties and additional expense of undertaking legal action
in another country. I know as a fact that the deck has made
it's way to other countries, however, including the US. Anybody
happen to know a lawyer in Germany? :^)
I
put three solid months' work into creating Golden Tarot v1.0
and never made a cent from it. There's also the issue of consent
- not having the opportunity to say "no" makes you
feel pretty violated. The quality of the German deck is nowhere
near the standard I would have approved, as it was printed
from screen resolution images downloaded (without permission)
from my site.
Although
they published only the Major Arcana from my deck which is
not as heavily collaged as the Minor Arcana, it still consists
of collaged images of my own creation. If you would like to
see an example showing the source
material and the collaged artwork from Golden Tarot to demonstrate
my point of originality. In version 1.0, that may not be the
case for every single card, but it is certainly true for the
majority of the deck. I now have a 'real' copy of the German
deck & book, so I can comment on specific instances where
they have reproduced works which I created (in both a practical
and legal sense).
To
the lovely people who have emailed me asking what you can
do about it, the company who have produced "Tarot Kalendar
2002" deck and book are:
Please
keep your emails to Realis as polite as possible, and
I don't condone any Hacktivism action such as clogging their
servers with robot scripts or launching denial of service
attacks. Their site is very out of date anyway (2001 yearbooks
still appear there as I write this) so I don't think they'd
care, and d.o.s attacks are illegal in some countries - I
don't agree with breaking the law, be it copyright law or
any other sort :^)
The
really sad thing is that I may never be able to put the new
version of Golden Tarot that I'm currently building onto this
site, or at least I may have to make the images very small
so that they cannot be commercially pirated. That's a real
shame, because the new version is so much nicer. If
you liked the original Golden Tarot, then you may have to
wait until the new version is
published before you get to see it in full. I may only show
a couple of cards on the site to restrict the opportunity
for piracy of my work :^(
At
least the 'real' version of Golden Tarot is being published
by US
Games Systems, so hopefully their worldwide profile will
discourage any future piracy. The new version of the deck
is so heavily collaged that my copyright is beyond question
for every single card.
Thank
you VERY much to my kind supporters for alerting me to this.
I make every attempt to answer fanmail to this site, and I
really appreciate the loyalty that such fans have shown to
me.
Kat
Black, August 2002
