What I just don't understand is why people are concerned about money, the cards being sold, etc. From what I can gather, the V-Sets are solely intellectual property available to the public for free and are not intended to generate any revenue. Since the V-Sets are not being sold (and I don't think are intended to be sold) and are public material, there shouldn't be any problem whatsoever with copyright infringements or anything else like that. Now, if the V-Sets were to become exclusive to SWMGamers.com (or are they, since they have been removed from BlooMilk?), then I can see how a potential problem could arise; the sets are exclusive to one website, so some of the traffic generated by that website is only coming to the site for the V-Sets and, since traffic generates revenue because of the ads on the site, then it can be argued (in a very indirect way that really doesn't even seem valid) that the V-Sets themselves were generating revenue. In this instance, any revenue generated would still only be a byproduct of the V-Sets, not from selling or distributing the V-Sets themselves (which would still be intellectual property that is free to the public), so I still don't see how there are any legal issues here.

Someone please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

This is not true. Everyone knows the stats, especially at a tournament.

EDIT: Correction. This may be true. Currently undecided.

Right now we're thinking of having the "official" set of cards required for major tournaments such as GenCon and Regionals. We haven't decided 100% on whether to do it or not (not everyone is 100% happy with the idea to do it) but it was brought up in a podcast couple weeks back. My idea is to just make it required for the Judges to have an official card set. But there is a large worry about people altering the work and printing it out (one solution is to watermark the cards so they can't be changed easily).

I dont see a difference in the chance of someone altering the V-set cards and someone altering the official wotc cards.

So, unless they are going to change the floor rules to 'only official cards', then I dont see why it would be needed for the v-set.

This was Dean's opinion at that moment in time. I happen to think that the explanation he laid out there is inaccurate. That's my opinion. His opinion at that moment in time is subject to change and may not reflect the final solution if Dean becomes convinced his opinion at that moment wasn't accurate through discussions with the rest of the major contributors (which wouldn't include me, just for clarity) to the V-Sets.

Just out of curiosity, has there been a case of somebody altering cards? At a major tourny?

That's not really how it works. Images, characters, artwork, pretty much EVERYTHING from the Star Wars universe are the property of LFL. Technically the squad builder on this website is copyright infringement. Every single fan-based Star Wars page using Star Wars logos without permission from LFL are committing copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not anyone is making any money off of it.

Now, LFL generally doesn't care about all that. They have bigger fish to fry so to speak than worrying about every website on the internet that uses their IP. But it's always a potential problem. As Lobostele has said, the 501st get away with it because of their charity work, and because LFL hasn't really had a reason yet to shut them down. But they very easily could be shut down. Shinja could get a cease and desist from LFL tomorrow telling him to remove all infringing material from Bloomilk.

The same thing goes for the v-sets. As long as the Rebel logo is on the Rebel cards, they are infringing on LFL's copyright. Now, LFL probably won't care; as I said, they pretty much never do. If they did care they probably would have done something by now. There is also pretty good precedent with the SWTCG v-sets (which LFL is very aware of and actually communicates with, and has no problem with).

However, LFL does tend to keep an eye on exactly how their IP is being used. They usually just don't mind how it's being used. That doesn't mean they don't care. For example, there are certain things that the SWTCG Players Committee has wanted to do that has been vetoed by LFL. If they had tried to do it anyway, they would probably have gotten that cease and desist, and then gotten sued into oblivion if they ignored that.

And that brings us to Dean's wary attitude towards sharing things with Bloomilk. It's possible for someone here to do something stupid with the v-sets that gets LFL's attention (like the SWTCG PC). Dean doesn't trust that Bloomlk will appropriately respond to a reaction like that from LFL. Lets say they create a v-set card that LFL doesn't like for some reason, and it got previewed on Bloomilk. LFL tells Dean that it has to be taken down. Dean tries to get Bloomilk to remove it, but they don't (this is far from unlikely, the Bloomilk higher-ups (especially Shinja) have been very hard from Dean to get a hold of). LFL notices that it's still up, and they now shut down the entire v-set operation.

That is why the v-set is only being shared with people and places that can be very fully trusted. It's NOT public IP, it's LFL's IP, and that HAS to be respected. Bloomilk as a whole has been less than respectful a number of times, so why should they be expected to be respectful when a problem DOES arise?

Generally that's a good summary, except that LFL doesn't ALWAYS ignore fan content. I don't know the exact details, but LFL has gotten involved at least once with the SWCCG v-sets, so we cannot assume that they won't get involved with our v-sets also. That's the real worry.

I'm basing that off of what I've heard (and believe) from others. I've never personally tried to get in touch with shinja. I'm merely explaining the situation and the rationale behind it.

How can any of us call him when we don't have his phone number? I don't think the webmaster of any given website wants to give out his phone number, which is exactly why he only gave out his email address. The only way for non-administrators and non-moderators of the site to contact him right now is via BM or email.