Is This Legal?

Kilted Kat said:

The anti-semite is referring to my Forum.

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I don't get this. I know there was the reference to it, and to your posting cards. As I said.

I am still interested in why someone who can spend that much (allegedly) on developing a programme wouldn't spend the bit extra to commission decks for it - as the Orphalese creators did.

It says a lot that the Master would take the trouble to spam users of Orphalese..... It says even more that most people's e-mail programmes recognised the e-mail as spam.

Moderating Note

Please stay on topic folks.

OMG... I never checked this far for this thread... thanks for the person who pointed me out.

I shouldn't even bought this software if I only knew that they were copyright issues. But the price I paid was $35 on 1/19/2009. Yesterday I checked, yes it went to $250!!

Too late I can't return this software. Oh, btw.... Customer Support DO NOT EXIST.... tried emailing then many times... No Response so far. Maybe I have to learn to write Russian...


EDIT... opps.. just checked again.. they lowered their price to US$55.00

tarotlyn said:

ETA: made changes in my wording...because I have changed my thinking
about this Visual software...they are rip offs because they changed their
price from $35 to $250 usa dollars...overnight!!!

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...so unstable
...they are totally unbelieveable...and that is what I thought... that they went
from $35 to $250 OVERNIGHT...and now to $55 what is going on with them anyway?

I was going to purchase it, but decided to just stick with Matrix which has
good support, etc. and Matrix was able to get permission for all of the decks
they use in their wonderful software, the same way that Orphalese did as gregory mentioned earlier...

...anyway, Mercury is still regtrograde...so by Feb 1st when it goes direct again,
I wonder what their price will be then??!! lol
tarotlyn

Hi all,

Sorry I'm late to the discussion!

I happened to stumble onto visualtarot.com from a link on a Brazilian blog while looking up tarot-terms in Portuguese (my new iPhone App version of Touchstone Tarot will be available in Spanish and Portuguese).

Annnyway, I saw Touchstone on the front page of his site as an 'update' (along with Tarot of Prague, Housewives Tarot and a bunch of other copyrighted decks).

I asked him to remove it, and told Kunati about the copyright breach. I also emailed the site's hosts (in Canada) and also various reputable software-download sites on which the software is advertised (eg PCworld, softpedia). Kunati sent a threatening Cease and Desist letter.

Seems to have done the trick to some extent - at least he's removed the deck off the front page today.

I also advised USGS, Llewellyn and Lo Scarabeo but it seems they've ignored me as their decks are still all over his website.

After finding this thread, the 'I use less than 10%' justification cracked me up. How is using a whole deck 'less than 10%'? Because it's so small you can only see 10% of the image? lol

Also, he didn't buy and scan my deck, he just stole images off http://78friends.com/touchstone - so he's lazy and too cheap to even buy a copy of the deck, in addition to being a pirate trying to profit off the work of others.

If he's reading this thread...

Mr Lapshin, you are a fool (and I don't mean in the 'beginning your tarot journey' kind of way). Your claims to understand international copyright are complete rubbish.

Why not just use public-domain decks such as the RWS version that appears on wikipedia, or find some unpublished decks and make agreements with the artists, as Orphalese did. And while you're at it, why not get a graphic designer to redo your website and your Program interface? For a program called Visual Tarot it's butt-ugly.

I have been stalking this thread for a couple of days.
I can't believe he's still not taken the site down - in my experience, when boycotted/emailed/contacted, the owner will take fright and within a day or two, the site vanishes.

This guy is clearly not doing this innocently or without realising what he's doing wrong - he's organised this.

I mean, look at his header image.
"Grand masters and professional readers worldwide use visual tarot."

Right.
9_9

And why does he keep capitalising the word "You"?

And why does he keep capitalising the word "You"?

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Probably trying to make a statement, you know? 'Bout you are God and you can do anything and coincidentally anything happens to include buying my software, if you'd be so kind.

Cryin' shame people using things like that to get money. Even worse people buying it. I discovered Tarot with a 100 page notebook, a pen, and a book and deck I got from a friend. All put me back about six dollars. Hell, even if you bought the deck yourself it would only about thirty or so, unless you got all fancy with it. Point is, I DIDN'T need to spend 250 dollars for a VIRTUAL version of that exact thing.

Damn thing's a ripoff.

The situation is in fact far worse than that.

They have again (about the sixth time) defaced tarotpedia with their crap.

After a couple of nice emails asking them to cease to spam tarotpedia, I am frankly getting to the point where I am considering further action.

But don't assume that they are simply 'too lazy', nor that they are not making any money from such. The whole thing smells of a money scam...

...consider the following.

According to their own site, their bank account is the following (in case you want to make a direct e.payment):

Account Holder/Beneficiary: Digital River GmbH
Bank: Dresdner Bank AG London Branch
IBAN: GB82DRES23540520444400
Account Number: 20444400
Sort Code: 235405
SWIFT / BIC: DRESGB2L
Beneficiary Address: Vogelsanger Str. 78, D-50823 Cologne, Germany

Click to expand...

Note the name of the account: Digital River BmbH

This is a company that appears to be phishing for credit card and PayPal information, and the Tarot Communities appear to be fair game.

Do a search for the company and see for yourself. Here are three top returns:

* RipOff Report;
* Complaints Board; &
* e.Bay.

Thank you for that info & links jmd.

Yes ladies & gentlemen, there are sharks out there in them there waters........

They don't only poach & sell images, they also snaffle freeware programs and then charge a fee for the download! (I'm still very miffed about this - a couple of the programs were mine).

I had previousely downloaded the Visual Tarot - to check it out - not impressed. Lots of self-promoting babble. There are similar *freeware* programs available.

However, here's a toast to the decent persons who ask permission to use your stuff.

Bee

...and the spamming and damage to tarotpedia continues (and I get to waste my time fixing it back)...

the characters at visual tarot are actually going to the trouble of registering using different IPs in order to by-pass their blocked IP and usernames, so their spamming is quite intentional (in case it was somehow thought otherwise).

Looking through their sites, it seems that the only other details I can find is with registration of the 'programmer' behind the software (who also seems to be casting his spamming to as many download sites as possible).

It's important to at least try and make others aware that this visual tarot software is likely malware, given some of the previous discussion and their intent on continuing to damage tarotpedia.

...as to more details, this is what I obtained from http://visualtarot.com/pad_file_lite_en.xml :