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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

I get that the youtuber just wanted no trouble, but he may have really screwed himself by not insisting on a waver of liability, agreement that the existing videos can stay up (or, alternatively, compensation to replace the lost income from them), and compensation for his costs at a minimum.

Handing WOTC's paid thugs the material probably didn't do anything to reduce his risk and took away the little leverage he had -- they could even try to spin his willingness to hand it over as an admission that his possession was unlawful.

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Easy to say from your armchair and not when the gestapo are at your door. If thugs appear at my door demanding a $50 item or else, yeah....I will probably just give it to them. See if I can claw it back later.

  The Pinkerton employees on the other hand, were less cordial to the YouTuber. Cannon told Kotaku over email that they had threatened to get the county sheriff involved if he did not return the MtG cards. They cited statures with punishments such as a $200,000 fine and up to a decade of jail time.

> If thugs appear at my door demanding a $50 item or else

If thugs appear at my door for any reason, that door gets slammed shut and I'll be on the phone to get the actual police.

Yeah, man, I wish that YouTuber had been you or an "Am I free to go?" style Libertarian

I would have loved to see a video of him slamming the door in some Pinkertons' faces and possibly calling the actual cops

> Easy to say from your armchair and not when the gestapo are at your door. If thugs appear at my door demanding a $50 item or else, yeah....I will probably just give it to them.

Close the door and call the police if they don't go away.

I didn't intend it as a criticism but more of a "if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you may want to consider!".

The YTer had this dropped in his lap, he didn't have a chance to get advice or even consider it fully-- presumably strategic on the part of WotC. Any remotely reasonable response would be blameless in my eyes.

(and if I were determined to find fault, clearly the fault would be answering the door in the first place! :) )

They could try, but all he has to do is mention the intimidation factor of Pinkertons at the door while under oath and I doubt a jury would find him liable for anything.

Plus, at that point, he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations.

Wizards already has a PR issue from this happening in the first place. They'd be civilly negligent toward the Hasbro shareholders to push it any further.

From the comments it sounds like their "threats" were threats of legal action-- that isn't likely to count as intimidation... and if he's gone far enough in court to end up in front of a jury he would probably already be financially ruined. Now, if he asked them to leave and they didn't that would be something else.

Unfortunately when you're not very wealthy the question if you'd ultimately win or not isn't very important. That's why it's important to get bright line clarity such that if they brought any claims your odds of getting a summary dismissal would be very good.

Your point about the threat being limited by the specter of damage to their brand is a good one except if that were the motivation they wouldn't have opened with an in personal physical confrontation against a party with a highly visible public platform.

> he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations

I doubt it. Sometimes that happens, but often people just blame the victim because there is always a never ending list of nitpicks ("Why didn't he tell the pinkertons they were tresspassing, ask them to leave and send a letter", "why didn't he insist on a release from the company", "he had to know this would happen when he put the video up in the first place!"). And even when the lawyers paid for, nothing can compensate you for the time, disruption in your life, and stress of being targeted.

>that his possession was unlawful.

There is no law being broken so it does not matter what he said or did.

While that may or may not be true, it's very easy to say things like that and much much harder to deal with the situation in a "rights above safety, to eternal ends" and "perfect world" perspective when in the situation as a flesh-and-blood version of ones self.

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