So today I was out running some errands after a long day at the office, when I noticed an unusual email in my inbox. The unusual part was that it was sent to our “legal” address at Goodsmiths. Being the curious guy that I am, I stopped in the middle of the cereal aisle (kids love cereal) to see what was so important that our support email was bypassed.

I subconsciously uttered “Whoa…”

My son, equally curious, asked me what I was reading. Then, in a simultaneously glorious-yet-disheartening series of statements, I said,

“I just got an email from Mojang” — glorious in my son’s eye’s. Mine too, really.

“Notch isn’t happy with us” — the disheartening part.

The subject of the email was “Copyright Infringement Notification”, and the body consisted of your standard “You are violating our copyright that we’ve worked very hard to build, yada yada yada… We have been instructed to pursue this matter vigorously.” Standard stuff really. Then a follow up email with roughly 50 some items that, all I can do is assume, an intern at Jinx found on Goodsmiths while doing a search for “Minecraft”.

After clarifying with my son that Notch himself wasn’t mad at us (and giving a 101 on DMCA in the cereal aisle about what it means and why it’s important), I got to thinking. Didn’t Notch himself have a somewhat similar situation with Bethesda? Why yes he did. And didn’t he, at least early on, jest-fully challenge Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament? He sure did.

Now I’m in a bit of a quandary. Do I do as we normally do and blindly take down the “offending” items? Or do we see if Notch is all talk and no action? Notch himself has built a wonderful community, mostly due to the extremely engaging game he created, but also due to his honesty and dedicated interaction with the Minecraft community. Surely he was serious when he put his offer out to Bethesda.

With that said, I’ve decided to extend an offer to Notch and the Mojang team.

I absolutely remember the scene in Game of Thrones where Tyrion chose a trial by battle in the Eyrie. Let’s do that instead!

I challenge Mojang to a game of vanilla Unreal Tournament 2004. Five of our best against five of your best. We pick a standard level, you pick a standard level, we randomize the map order and play best 3 out of 5 CTF 15 minute matches.

If we win, Mojang will commit to a single Skype chat to discuss options for building a fair and equitable revenue share on all Mojang trademarked listings on Goodsmiths (something we’ve done with other fan-based handmade items), and we will turn off the offending listings if an agreement cannot be reached.

If Mojang wins, we will immediately turn off our shop owners’ offending items. And if Mojang is interested, we will work with them to build a fair and equitable revenue share on all Mojang trademarked listings.

Regardless, we understand the importance of copyright and trademarks, and we will always take appropriate action when needed. If this goes without response for 9 days, we will remove the listings within the 10 days allocated in said email. But that’s not going to happen, right Notch?

And yes, I am serious.

– Levi