How Selling Magic Cards Might Land Me in Jail
Economics forum
Posted on June 2, 2015, 12:53 p.m. by Rasta_Viking29
TCGDiscount, a commercial card vendor that sells on magiccardmarket.eu, is suing a private seller over some nonsense.
What do you guys make of this? Personally I find the vendor's lawsuit preposterous and would be agitated if my communities resources were wasted on something so petty. Hopefully Tobias prevails, preferably awarded damages, and sets precedent to deter any future malicious and money-grubbing lawsuits like this one.
Servo_Token says... #3
Nice click bait. Forum approved. Will comment again after reading article.
EDIT: I need to read things before posting.
Regardless, seems interesting.
June 2, 2015 1:03 p.m. Edited.
I don't really know how German law works, but here said lawsuit would be tossed into the garbage by any judge, I mean WTF, why wouldn't someone be allowed to resell something he bought? the only exception being agreeing not to resell in the terms and conditions of said purchase.
June 2, 2015 1:14 p.m.
Servo_Token says... #5
Ok, so if this were to happen in the US, TCGDiscount would be torn to shreds in a second. I'm also unfamiliar with German law, but if there's any sense of reasoning behind it, buddy guy here wins 9 times out of 10. If someone sells an object regardless of the platform, once it is no longer in their hands and they have received payment for it, it should not be up to them what happens to it. If it is resold at a higher price, they need to have the foresight to know that this could happen if they wish to prevent it. Otherwise, you just let anyone with a business title monopolize the market by kicking out anyone who stands to compete with them.
Also, this guy is being sued over a playset of Chromanticore, WotC; this card is too good. Nerf or ban plz.
June 2, 2015 1:18 p.m.
I don't know how german law differs from law here in the US, but as buying and selling Magic cards is a mass market with no monopoly, this shouldn't have even happened. Tobias isn't forcing anyone to buy the cards at those prices. If someone doesn't like the price, they could look elsewhere. This whole thing doesn't make any sense. If I went to my local game shop, bought a box of Zendikar for like $250, and decided to sell it for $300, that is perfectly legal. It's not like that game shop has any right to dictate what I do with what I bought from them. That is exactly what's happened here, and I have no idea how this ended up as a lawsuit. It's absurd.
Anyway, I signed the petition.
June 2, 2015 1:27 p.m.
They issued a statement and basically said that since the player in question bought cards to make a profit he is acting as a business and as such should declare himself as a business.
That said, it's still BS and they still should get fucked.
June 2, 2015 1:29 p.m.
Servo_Token says... #8
I recently bought a pound of beef to make myself a hamburger. Everyday, McDonalds buys several tons of beef in order to make hamburgers. Therefore, I am acting as a business. Should I also declare myself as a business?
This whole story is so full of shit.
June 2, 2015 1:40 p.m.
TCGDiscount's response from reddit (buried under a ton of negatives):
"Hi. First of all i have to apologize that my english is not very good and i will do my best to explain, what happened in our opinion and why we "sued" Tobias.
As everyone can see in our mkm and ebay reputation, we are a Powerseller on both market places with nearly 100% feedback in each category.After reading all comments here on Tobias Post, we recognized that most people are afraid that we sue our customers or players. That is not what has been the case here. In our opinion, Tobias is not (only) a "customer" like a regular player. Instead he is doing business via mkm and is hiding this business behind a private account.
Let me explain: If a player buys cards for his deck, having a good time the next tournament and decides to sell the cards the next day its his decision.If the price got higher now, the player makes some wins in selling, its perfect for the player. We dont care about such cases. Every player should be able to buy cards for his collection or sell cards from his collection on platforms like mkm.
The crucial question: Is Tobias a professional reseller or a private seller who sells parts of his collection? If you check his account, it says he is a private member. But thats just a part of his story.
He said, he bought chromanticores to resell them for a higher price....well, thats acting like a reseller, and making profit was the intention.
He also buys cards for speculating, so he wants to make profit out of the cards he thinks are available too cheap.
That also is a typical reseller activity, again under the intention of making profit. This kind of behavior now has nothing to do with the game itself and is by no means necessary for being able to play. This last week Tobias profile showed more than 150 (!) trades that month, so he had more than 5 per day, that is pretty much. One might now think: Maybe he is selling his entire collection!?.
Well let us check that theory. All his items have an advertisement. If you check cards from DTK, they show "Fast and Fair! Fullstock from Theros to Takir". Why is someone offering a full stock and sealed products? How can he sell several full stocks of the same series at once? Why is he buying low and reselling high? Why is he speculating? Because he is trying to make some profit. And thats why we see him clearly for what he is, a professional reseller.
Now, if you are a reseller, that acts out of an interest, to do lasting and even profitable business, it is mandatory to do so openly. This requirement has a basis in law and in morality.
And so also Tobias should be open and honest and act in the way the rules and laws here apply. If he had opened a business account on mkm, we wouldnt have cared anyway. Were not shy of competitors.
But acting like a professional reseller while hiding behind a private account in which he does not give his true name and address is in our opinion - dishonest as well as illegal. Especially when Tobias is thus able to withhold customer rights like the right of rescission (Widerrufsrecht) from an online transaction.
Tobias activities showed us that he is a more or less professional reseller but does not openly state it. So we sent him a written warning (which is the way German law requires to do such things) not to hide behind a private account any longer and asked him to promise that in a legally binding fashion. We did not want to escalate the matter, hence the written warning. But Tobias lawyer send us a very clear letter, that Tobias will not stop doing what we warned him about. So he forced us to bring this to court, to get a clear decision.
In our opinion, every reseller should be open and honest and work under the same rights and obligations instead of hiding himself. The district court of Bochum which we asked for a decision in this case, is of our opinion. Had it not the court would not have released the decision against Tobias (file number/Aktenzeichen: Landgericht Bochum I-12 O 69/15) .
Our only aim is to get fair and honest competition in our market, nothing more and nothing less. We hope to have made our understandable.
regards & ty for reading
TCGDiscount"
Do you agree or disagree?
TL:DR: They say Tobias is acting as a business because he's trying to make profit, but using a private seller account to hide that fact.
June 2, 2015 1:43 p.m. Edited.
Servo_Token says... #10
So my counterpoint here is 'Why should they care?' private seller accounts still aim to make a profit, otherwise what is the point of having an account at all? friend here isn't trying to move 1000 booster boxes a year, he's just selling off his (albeit impressive) collection, and doing so in a matter that it will get sold (IE "Using advertisements"). They as a business do not need to bring someone to court to "bring them out of hiding" because this person using a private seller account doesn't infringe on any terms of service. If anything, Germany should be the ones suing because as a PS, he may be exempt from large taxes that a business account may have to deal with. I'm not sure what the whole scenario is on that, but that could be the one thing that is making this into a big deal on either side.
Basically, it's a large misunderstanding and a very immature way of handling things on the side of TCGDiscount.
June 2, 2015 1:53 p.m.
I think there's a very fine line here that the business clearly thinks Tobias has overstepped, and that Tobias believes he has not. If it's true that he has made over one hundred and fifty transactions in a single month, then it's clear he is, in fact, acting as a business.... but only if this happens consistently. As in, every single month. If that's the case, then this makes much more sense.
Intrinsically, buying cards low to sell high for a profit does not make you a business. Everyone wants to do this, player or retail store, and if TCGDiscount defines it this way, they are probably going to lose. It has to do with volume, but it also has to do with consistency.
An example would be, if someone bought 100 Chromanticore's at $1, and sold em all, each a separate transaction, at $3, then that does not make him a business. If he consistently does this, every single month, in order to make extra cash on the side... then yes, it does make him a business, and by not declaring himself as one, he is avoiding taxes.
June 2, 2015 1:53 p.m. Edited.
It sounds like TCGDiscount is a local store in the area that Tobias lives, or in a area close to him. If that is the case, then Tobias might be making them lose money, if people go to Tobias instead of them. This in itself is not an issue, as long as Tobias is an actual business. Because that's fair business trade. However if Tobias is doing this on the side, as often as TCGDiscount has made it seem he is, then if he hasn't declared himself a business, it is illegal. He is avoiding business taxes, first of all, and secondly it is not fair trade. Which is also illegal.
June 2, 2015 1:56 p.m.
I have a solution. All cards should have a "Not for resale" label on them and should no longer be allowed to be sold. This way ppl have to buy packs or trade or make illegal sales. Get rid of the reserved list and stop turning a game into a lame stock market.
June 2, 2015 1:58 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #14
Scary. I'll put this with all the letters I get from my ISP about downloading Game of Thrones.
June 2, 2015 1:59 p.m.
But I do agree that TCGDiscount handled this in a very immature manner. They did some very basic research into his selling patterns and immediately made the assumption that he is trying to hide a business instead of talking to him first. That has caused outrage and is what is sparking this whole "controversy".
No one will really know who's in the right here, it could be either of them, but TCGDiscount did themselves no favors by handling it this way.
And squire1 that is a terrible idea. There would no longer be a competitive mtg scene as no one could consistently make decks. Secondly, the reserved list is never going away and that isn't something to be arguing about on this particular thread.
June 2, 2015 1:59 p.m.
RoarMaster says... #16
ThatJunkMage you would be considered a business if you sold the hamburgers you made out of the beef, yes. McDonalds buys the beef and resells it, something you are not doing(selling anything) in your example.
June 2, 2015 2:01 p.m.
Servo_Token says... #17
How about no. That actually just ruins the entire game for everyone.
June 2, 2015 2:01 p.m.
How does putting the game back to where it started (no resellers) make it worse for everyone. This is just children playing at economics that they don't actually understand and in a more volatile market than stocks. This whole money aspect of the game is crazy. WOTC should just put out quality cards. Hell they reprinted cards just recently because they cost too much. not because they made sense in the set. The cost of cards actually prohibits them from reprinting some things because it is like printing money. This whole garbage market has caused nothing but inflation.
June 2, 2015 2:07 p.m.
UrbanAnathema says... #19
Perhaps TCGDiscount has a setup for selling to dealers and resellers, and he is skirting that setup by representing himself as an individual customer rather than a dealer/reseller. The solution would seem to me that they simply refuse to continue doing business with him rather than sue. I don't see how they can claim damages of any kind.
June 2, 2015 2:09 p.m.
What RoarMaster said is an accurate analogy.
kyuuri117 look back at early tournaments when there were almost no resellers. Even though there was no net to deck from generally speaking, ppl all played similar decks and made it competitive.
June 2, 2015 2:10 p.m.
I buy/trade for cards all the time for the purpose of expecting them to go up in value... I then turn around when(/if) they go up and trade again... it's what collectors and players do.
The real question then becomes... does selling those cards on this site constitute a 'business'? - Unfortunately, that will be determined separately from one country to another.
But, if it is a 'business' in Germany, then they will have no way to determine if the average joe is selling as a business, or just to sell their collection. - Everyone selling so much as a single card will have to have a 'business' account.
If I go to my LGS and trade for 100 Serum Visions expecting them to go up... not buy them from vendors on MKM... and then sell them on MKM, how could either side prove/disprove my intentions. - I could very easily be intending on using any 'profits' to buy more cards for my collection. This just means I took cards I had, and found a path that let me use those cards to increase the value of my collection.
June 2, 2015 2:16 p.m.
@squire1 - My LGS sold singles as early as Unlimited.
Scry Magazine had a monthly card list with prices and conditions.
The only difference is the scale... sales and resales existed from day 1.
June 2, 2015 2:23 p.m.
Wizards is perfectly aware that if they put a "do not resell" label on their cards, their game would be boycotted until it was removed.
June 2, 2015 2:28 p.m.
I started playing in Alpha and the cards were tossed around and noone cared about them. Day 1 is a bit earlier then you are reporting with Unlimited. Scry was also super limited in use for prices and but was used for decklists. The difference is not scale. scaled changed the rate of the fluctuations not the fact that things fluctuated. competative play existed and will exist regardless of resellers.
You realize that in most cases, this individual or those like him (speculators) would be guilty of a crime in this country too? I doubt he paid any taxes. Do you realize that every time you sell a card for more than you purchased it for, or traded for an increased extrinsic value, you have to pay taxes on it? or report it as income anyway. You only have to pay taxes on it if your income exceeded the certain amounts. So anyone that is not a business in the USA that is making money off MTG is breaking the federal law.
June 2, 2015 2:32 p.m.
kyuuri117 - that is a naive and sweeping statement for you to make on behalf of a company that you clearly work for. :)
June 2, 2015 2:33 p.m.
...I do not actually work for wizards, and nor is it a naive statement to make. The game is not, at all, the same game it was back in alpha. No, no it's not. Sorry.
There are so many more people playing now than there were then. The game has an actual global presence. There are people who play this game professionally, who spend an actual work week of 40+ hours tuning deck lists for themselves and others who play this game. They live off of the income they make from tournaments and being gold/platinum and being hired by places like SCG and Chanelfireball.
If you tagged a "do not resell" label on these cards.... it would all be over. People would have to play what they owned, not what they wanted. The best cards would quickly be found out, written about, and hoarded like no one's business. And you know what? They would still be sold. But instead of paying $7 dollars for a siege rhino, you'd be paying $50. Because people would have had to crack many more boxes to find what they their playsets, and would need to charge more for the extras to cover their up-front costs.
I'm sorry if you are living in nostalgia, or are just too idiotic to see this would capsize the entire game, but that isn't my issue. I'm not going to argue this further.
June 2, 2015 2:43 p.m.
I think this case is far more interesting than it would first appear.
People don't actually technically have resale rights once they buy an item. I'm not saying that's right or wrong but that is the case.
June 2, 2015 2:45 p.m. Edited.
Atrocissus says... #28
If you look at the numbers of sold Articles() between him and the "Powerseller", it looks like this:
He(claims to be private Seller): 14364
"Powerseller": 36816
Other Businesses and Powersellers: 9000-700.000
Given volume and frequency of his Sales he can't really claim to be a Private Seller anymore. Especially after the claims of:
"Ive always wanted to have a real, big Magic collection, and I thought this was a good way to acquire the funds necessary to do it."
"So whenever a new set came out, I began to buy cards when I thought that they might be underrated and destined to go up in price."
That is very much conducting business with the intent of making money. If he makes alot of or any money at all doesn't matter, because he hurts actual businesses by taking their potential customers on a regular basis without having their drawbacks (Taxes).
As I see it, it is likely for him to lose the lawsuit. Even though I agree that it could have been handled differently by TCGDiscount.
June 2, 2015 2:58 p.m.
They might not have resale rights in your country, in fact my country does not regulate online purchases, as long as you are not dealing in illegal products you are good to go, you can even sell stuff that you are not usually allowed to sell as a physical person, like tickets for sport matches, you can't sell them on the street, but it's perfectly legal to sell them online.
June 2, 2015 2:59 p.m.
It's generally the case that people think they can due to common law, but in reality that actually shouldn't be. CDs are a really good example. No-one's stopping you from a selling a CD on ebay but /technically/ you can't.
Edit: there are cases where this is legal and cases where this is very illegal.
June 2, 2015 3:03 p.m. Edited.
Also the example I gave is a bit shaky because the law on CDs was overturned just a few years back.
June 2, 2015 3:08 p.m.
Atrocissus says... #32
Unless he can prove that most of his sales are Winnings from GPs and such, in which case selling them should be legal, because they are a Winning from a luck based Game.
(As in luck not being business. But we do tap into the grey area of how much of Magic is luck and what is skill. Because if he is very skilled and uses that to gain prizes to sell, it would be business)
June 2, 2015 3:10 p.m.
It also doesn't apply to all countries, different countries have different laws, we can sell CDs here, no problem, but we have something called "digital canon" which is an extra tax on all electronic material meant to compensate authors for copyright infringement.
But that's because in my country we have the "right to private copy" it allows you to copy anything you legally own and distribute it for free.
June 2, 2015 3:14 p.m.
I don't know, I feel like even if they have the right to ((I know very little about law here in the states, none the less Germany)) I feel like this is one of those easy 'We could, but it'd be far smarter for us not to' cases. I nearly sure what they were losing from this guy, if even anything, is far less than what they're going to lose by the diminished reputation. I know for myself that If I lived over there, I'd never go within a 50 ft pole of them now.
June 2, 2015 3:15 p.m. Edited.
VampireArmy says... #35
The way I look at it is the same I look at a situation that arose with Deckbox.org a while ago (year or two?) Technically what this doing isn't 100% right but he was left alone until a business felt threatened. They decided to remove him before he became a bigger threat. TCG did sort of the same thing to deckbox. They were using TCG's price algorithms and technically you can't do that. Hell even this site isn't technically supposed to do it. Deckbox was issued a cease and desist from TCG directly and they had to go about getting their own and became a seller's marketplace rather than just a traders.
How does this relate? Well he became a threat the same way deckbox did. These big companies tend to leave the little guys alone up until a point. Hobby markets are just brutal the same as everywhere else. Larger companies will use whatever means to remain bigger than you.
TLDR: The people suing him aren't wrong, they're just assholes protecting their business :)
June 2, 2015 3:16 p.m.
PepsiAddicted says... #36
well thats a f*cked up story. i hope it turns out well for him.
i cant read all the comments right now so it might have been explained already but in german law if you buy from a professional seller or shop online (experimental english from this point on, not really what i normally talk about) you automatically get a warranty that guarantees save shipment and that its the right item etc... you can send back ANYTHING you buy from any professionel seller or shop without stating any reason and they basically have to give you the money back. as a private seller this doesnt apply and it can get tricky to get back your money if you recieve a damaged or wrong order or if you didnt recieve anything and dont have payed for tracking etc..so in a nutshell, tcgd has to pay for the savety of your shipment while a private seller doesnt HAVE to (in theory)... and this is why this whole thing is redicoulus: if tobies channel was going that well i am pretty sure he used pretty much every thing in the book to provide the best and savest service otherwise ppl wouldnt buy his stuff. so all i can see is some1 probing his possibilites. thats actually not so unsual in germany. like 1-2 years ago hundreds of thousands of users of the porn portal redtube were sued in a very similar way (yeah because not just magic can land you in jail, apparently fapping can too).
i think tcgd had a bad week and saw tobis channel go boom and was really butthurt and that caused him/them to fuckup like that.
i have been to court in ger 2 times and every1 always goes crazy about minor things and then it gets thrown out by the judge because he thinks its a stupid claim or w/e. most of them are very verry verrrry smart ppl. its just the majority of all the other ppl in the system suck pretty much
(source: im german)
June 2, 2015 3:16 p.m.
PepsiAddicted says... #37
oh forgot to add theres no law that says you ever have to be an official seller. you can always be a private seller there are just limits on how much money you are allowed to earn every year and you are really fucked if you have more (even as a private seller you still have to pay einkommensteuer ... lol take that englishspeakers). he can sell 500 or w/e cards every weak for the rest of his life that doesnt automatically mean hes a professional.
if such a rule exists then its a mkm house rule. and really whats mkms position on this, any1 know?
June 2, 2015 3:30 p.m.
I like the way germans combine several words to make a new one instead of creating a completely new word.
June 2, 2015 3:34 p.m.
On the one hand, threats of litigation is pretty sleazy. On the other hand, MtG is a COLLECTIBLE trading card game. Not a stock exchange.The end-goal as far as Wizards is concerned is for a long-term collector to sit on the card in a binder for an extended period of time, and the speculator isn't really adding value to the equation for either Wizards or for the end-collector. Can you say "bubble?"
Speculation can (and probably will) cause the magic economy to break--it's happened to Wall Street so many times it's not even funny.
I'm not saying people shouldn't ever speculate, but I am saying you should anticipate the consequences for your actions, and this is a pretty obvious one which will blindside a lot of people for all the wrong reasons.
June 2, 2015 6:23 p.m.
I feel like there's more to this story. Specifically, an online retailer probably doesn't want to go through court and risk being counter-sued.
We've only seen Tobias' claims and a rebuttal from the other party in question. And honestly: this looks like tax evasion and/or trying to set-up a horizontal monopoly. It also creates a precedent where a store's employees could list themselves as "private sellers" and then use their profiles to buy large volumes of cards from competitors.
If I'm a large online retailer (like SCG), I'm jumping up and down praying for Tobias to win so my employees can buy large volumes of other stores' stock and we can make buyouts easier.
Maybe TCGDiscount really are scumbags. But they could also be thinking "Why do we have to follow a set of arbitrary rules and laws because we're a store of several people, but this other guy doesn't just because he's one person? Despite the fact he buys/sells almost as much as we do?"
Granted, I think it's really shitty of them if they asked for money be paid to them in the first letter. That just seems like bullying.
June 3, 2015 2:10 a.m.
From a legal perspective it's justified what TCGDiscount does. There is nothing illegal about it and I would even say he has very good chances to win this case. Tobias went a bit overboard with his selling activities, according to German law you need to register a business if you want to buy and resell goods for profit. This is handled differently by each judge, there is no clear limit in Germany. It's a terrible system that is very easy to abuse by denouncers and shady lawyers, but right now it's just the way it is.
But that doesn't mean TCGDiscount is a nice guy. Because...
He's a denouncer. He's the kind of person who would call the police when he sees your car in a no-parking zone, even if the car doesn't bother anyone (including himself, from a rational point of view at least). He has zero advantages from sending a cease and desist letter to Tobias other than making his own miserable life feel a little bit better. On MKM there are more than 100k users and he's just a very small fish in a huge pond, even a very 'active' private seller like Tobias is a grain of sand on the beach compared to all those people buying and selling cards on that site. The biggest sellers around there are 100x as large as TCGDiscount, that's where the real competition is. But he can't do anything about those big sellers so instead he chooses to bully (relatively) small private sellers where he knows he will most likely win.
The compensation sum asked for in the cease and desist letter is ridiculous. In Germany the lawyer has the right to set the 'amount in dispute' (hope that's the correct English term) all by himself until the case goes to court. And from that amount the lawyer's fees are calculated, which in turn the recipient of the letter has to pay (again, unless he goes to court). This is an extremely crappy system originally meant to protect small companies and private individuals who can't afford a lawyer, but it's getting abused all the time by shady lawyers and it's subject to many discussions in Germany. If he would have chosen a reasonable amount in dispute he would have ended up with a fee of maybe 100 Euros. But instead he chose to be greedy and asked for 750 Euros. Keep in mind that all the lawyer has to do is to fill in a blank form, put a stamp on it and...cha-ching. So what option did Tobias have? Pay 750 Euros, which is probably more than he ever earned by selling Magic cards? Only to satisfy a greedy lawyer and a denouncer? I know I wouldn't have done this either.
TCGDiscount could have sent Tobias a PM. Or an email. Or a letter. He could have called him on the phone. Why did he choose to send him a cease and desist letter asking for 750 Euros instead? I only know one answer to that question and I won't post it here.
Somewhat related to the first point, but what is it TCGDiscount wants to achieve? Bullying a single private seller out of business will do absolutely nothing. There are still thousands upon thousands of private sellers on MKM selling Magic cards. Will TCGDiscount sue all of them? If TCGDiscount thinks there is something fundamentally wrong with the system on MKM they should sue MKM and not private sellers. But they don't. Simply because there is a good chance they would lose that case and would have to pay a lot of money for nothing, possibly ruining their whole business. So instead of trying to change the system they look for a helpless scapegoat and beat him to death just to feel good for a day or two. Nice attitude.
June 3, 2015 4:03 a.m.
insertcleverid says... #43
TCGDiscount has responded to the original reddit thread
The post offers very interesting new information which I cannot verify because I am not a member of the website. Apparently Tobias advertises that he has entire sets for sale. That's impressive for a private speculator.
I think the best perspective on this case can only be had by those that are experts in German Law. I'm not that guy, but there is a lot of talk about the moral superiority of either party. As the story unfolds it's the ethics of the participants behavior that really interest me.
As a modest private speculator (I use pucatrade), I would love to do 5 trades a day. When I first started, that was easy. Now that a lot of the most popular items are gone from my binder I struggle to do 5 a week. For me to keep up that pace I would have to treat it like a business, but I do it for the fun and challenge, to fund new decks and stay up on trends. I collect cards via drafts and the occasional fat pack or booster box. Trying to imagine the amount of time and $$$ I'd have to spend to acquire full sets to flip makes me doubt very much this is as simple as my earlier comparison of an ISP sending a warning to a Torrent user.
There are hundreds or thousands of totally anonymous ebay sellers that move similar volume, and I don't see any issue with that. From my perspective, the only issue with what Tobias is doing is the alleged deception about the scope of his trade. Even if he is a professional masquerading as a private trader, I can still give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he dedicates a LOT more of his life to the game? Maybe he's working towards transitioning from private speculator to professional? These could be growing pains a more experienced business professional might have known to prepare for. If the only way for a person to know its time to upgrade the business is when a competitor sues you, then German law has a doughnut-hole to address. On the other hand, maybe Tobias is cognizant of this gray-area and is trying to take advantage of it. Just like how wealthy self-employed Americans manipulate their business spending to limit their tax liability below what a wage-earner earner would pay, you can't really fault him for taking advantage of the system as long as no laws were broken. Often in American, outside of lobbying your local representatives, the only way to expose problems with a law is to sue over it in court. Usually, however, I think the plaintiff would be suing the state, not the little guy.
If this is the case, however, Tobias is totally at fault for attempting to sway public opinion. Its clearly an attempt to play up David and Goliath, to threaten and tarnishing TCGDiscount's reputation and profits, hoping to make the situation go away before the spotlight lands on him.
June 3, 2015 11:46 a.m.
Atrocissus says... #44
@insertcleverid The German law defines business as planned activity over a longer time period to gain money. If you sell things you bought because you don't need them, that is fine. But buying something cheap to sell it when it is expensive on a regular basis is business.
So you have to register as a business as soon as you do this constantly and with things you bought less than a year ago.
I strongly suspect he just didn't think about consequences if I'm honest.
June 3, 2015 12:20 p.m.
insertcleverid, I firmly believe that Tobias isn't trying to sway public opinion. I think he is (or was...) just a bit naive. He started speculating with a few cards and he realized it was a nice and easy way to make some money to buy new cards for his collection. He sold more and more cards and eventually it got out of hand when he started buying and selling hundreds of cards. The problem is that in Germany it's not quite clear at which point you have to register a business. It's decided on a case by case basis. Plus MKM doesn't say anything about it, there is no warning or anything like that when you register on the site or if you sell a lot of cards in a short amount of time.
From a legal point of view TCGDiscount may be right, but from a moral point of view see my post above.
June 3, 2015 12:38 p.m.
libraryjoy says... #46
Just wanted to throw out a response to ChiefBell's comments about resale - in the US it's called the Doctrine of First Sale, which is hugely important to libraries. It applies to nearly everything you purchase that is a legal copy of a copyrighted work. On the other hand, it does not apply to items that are licensed to you (such as computer programs, ebooks, digital music, etc.) The case of CD's is pretty specific, and there's a link to an article about it at the bottom of the article I link below:
Here's a link to the American Association of Law Libraries' article on the subject
June 3, 2015 12:45 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #47
@Phitt I don't know if I can accept 'it got out of hand' to describe the action of selling hundreds and hundreds of cards. Meth gets out of hand. Magic trading takes time, effort, research and most of all resources. But do we even know that he trades hundreds of cards? I only know what I read, that he describes himself as a private speculator and that TCGDiscount says his advertising suggests the opposite. As for public opinion, I refer back to the post from TCGDiscount. It had something like 152 downvotes when I last looked. Even if it wasn't his intention, its clearly the outcome. If they had to pick jurors from Reddit TCGDiscount wouldn't have a chance. My point is maybe they have a point. I just don't know because...
@Atrocissus I think that the definition of a business is exactly the issue. A detailed description would be great, but I haven't seen one. You are probably right that Tobias didn't think things through, because what is the mechanism that was supposed to inform him since MKM doesn't seem to address the issue? A cease and desist letter from a competitor might actually be the correct option. But why does it fall on TCGDiscount to be the cop? Doesn't Germany have cops that cop businesses? I definitely think the $750 or whatever charge was demand is just bullying, even if the excuse used was that it was to pay for the legal costs for sending the letter.
June 3, 2015 1:58 p.m.
Atrocissus says... #48
@insertcleverid The problem really is that the German law defines business by planning and general structure and not volume or income, meaning every case like this has to be ruled over by court.
Yes, we have cops, but of course they can't control every transaction made. Therefore businesses are allowed to sue if they suspect illegal action.
But even if they wanted to do this privately they couldn't, because if they just send an e-mail themselves he can safely ignore it. So they have to use some sort of legal institution to make a claim. Tobias can then decide if he pays the fee, which really pays the lawyer and not the corporation, and accepts their terms.If he doesn't pay they are allowed to take matters to court.
This was introduced so things could be decided without involving a court everytime.
(If he had filed himself as a small business and demanded a tax exemtpion due to small sales and income, everything would have been fine.)
June 3, 2015 3:06 p.m.
squire1 The only way to legitimately eliminate the secondary market would be to eliminate boosters and the random aspect to the game, and that's part of magic's appeal to a lot of folks. People like playing the lottery. They like cracking packs. They like the collectible aspect to the game. You can't take these things away and still have magic. If you take them away you end up with a different game. Take a look at Fantasy Flight's LCGs if you want a good idea of what that would look like. I've been playing their Lord of the Ring's LCG for like 3 or 4 years now. There is no secondary market because there are no booster packs. Everyone plays with the same cards. It's a good time, but it's not magic.
And as for my 2cents on this whole debacle, I think businesses suing customers is practically always a death sentence for the business. All the other customers are going to see what happened and get leary. Every magic player I've ever known has speculated and messed around with cards at some point in time. The amount of bad press they're getting for this is going to kill their company. I know I would never buy from a company if there was even the remotest chance they were going to sue me. It was a horrendous idea.
ChiefBell says... #2
I find this instinctively preposterous but I know little about actual trade law.
June 2, 2015 12:59 p.m.