If I did have inside knowledge, it would have been told to me in confidence, so I can only state the available facts.

My main problem with FFG's arguement is that it flys in the face of common practice of pretty much every other card game I have ever played. Imagine WOTC sending a C&D to every site that posts pictures... it would pretty much tank an entire industry. It seems strange that FFG thinks it needs to walk such a different line from its competitors.

The strangeness comes from Netrunner being a licensed game, not just a licensed IP. So FFG can't have the laissez-faire attitude that it does with other games, or that WOTC might even have with its own products. It has to show due diligence or WOTC could accuse them of violating the license agreement.

The other issue is that NRDB was not just posting pictures, it actually had code built in that made it a platform for distributing those pictures to other sites and apps. Distribution of copyrighted material is much more serious than just possession of it.

I think this is a unique situation because FFG has never before or since tried to take down any fan site, and I think it's for those two reasons.

Reiterating the point made previously: something being legally right does not make it morally right. Even still, if their actions were sound and methods reasonable, they've still poisoned the community their customers have fostered and will certainly lose some amount of sales over this. Consumers can speak the loudest to corporations with their money and I've a feeling FFG will not be making as much this quarter as they otherwise could have. The community is still hurting from this.

The fact that a bunch of people on the internet cry about it doesn't make it "morally wrong" either.

If the community is poisoned and hurting over this, it is their own fault. If the customers want to hurt a company (i.e. as bunch of people who spend their lives and careers making this for their fans/customers), because they disagreed with what are their proper rights, then the customers are a bunch of jerks and are in the wrong.

And it doesn't matter how many people on the internet agree with you, you are still in the wrong.

Well over on the X-wing side we started to get a little worried the same might happen to our favorite fan sites, but there is one critical thing is that you also need the models tiles and dials to play the game. So with a card game all you need the cards which makes it easier to pirate the game off a website. You would need a lot more to pirate X-wing from a website.