Copyright stuff

[Shadowlynx]

G'day

Seeing I've just recently uploaded Joseph Vargo's gorgeous gothic deck, I was wondering what the policies are about posting commercial decks... Is it an absolute no-no, or are there guidelines for it? Thanks in advance. Cheers!

Shadowlynx.

[Programmer]

Hi Shadow,

Thanks for posting here as requested - it is a good question and I was planning to clarify the issue anyway.

My strong conviction is that most deck creators would be happy to have scans of their decks exchanged in this way, given that nearly all users of this progam are keen tarot deck collectors and having a sampler of the deck in Orphalese Tarot format will often prompt them to purchase the real thing. It would be desirable to try to track down the copyright holder of every deck that is uploaded here and confirm this, but given that this is not practical the assumption will be that the author does not mind until they indicate that they do.

A case in point is the Tarot of Dreams, the new deck by Ciro Marchetti which has only just been released. I have collaborated with Ciro in providing a version of the Orphalese Tarot which is supplied with the Tarot of Dreams deck - i.e. the set which is commercially available includes the physical deck of cards, plus a free, unregistered copy of the Orphalese Tarot and the Tarot of Dreams deck in Orphalese format.

Ciro has expressed the wish that the images not be available for download here, although you can get a good “teaser” by seeing the sample cards on his website www.ciromarchetti.com/ciro/t_dreams/t_dreams_about.html.

This raises a question: how is the user going to know that a deck should not be uploaded to the exchange at the request of its author? In these cases I will update the database so the deck appears in the exchange, but it will not be available for download. Everything else is the same – you can see sample images and users can leave comments on the deck. In this way, all the user has to do is remember to check the exchange for existing decks before doing an upload – which we should all be in the habit of doing anyway.

Cheers,

Richard

[Zula]

I'm a newbie, I'd like to reinforce what you said about electronic decks in Orphalese and spurring purchase of the hard copy decks. Since using Orphalese, I've purchased the Haindl, Vision Quest, and Hanson Roberts decks, all in the past month. The Golden Tarot is on my wishlist. I doubt I would have made these purchases without having used them in Orphalese.

[Shadowlynx]

You guys are NOT gonna believe this!!! About a week prior to registering with Orphalese, I bought Ciro's Tarot of Dreams!!! LOL!! I'm actually awaiting it in the mail as of now!! Is this spooky synchronicity or what!?!?

Shadowlynx.