Copyrighted Generics Issues

[SwitchFade]

Hi.

 

My name is SwitchFade. I like pie.

 

Also, please stop beating the coffin of my dead horse. It's loud.

 

I can't sleep.

 

And...

 

Nerf Regen.

[SwitchFade]

34 minutes ago, altaholic said:

Ok, so lets just see if we can get a bit of clarity from this pool of opinionated posters here. So, you make a character, you give him SS/Invul abilities, you make him large and green and call him "Mike" -  is that a generic-able offense?

Mike might be mad at you for making him SS.

 

He can't rage properly. He wants to... He wants some double eRage goodness...

 

But Lo! The crash!

 

Also, Click-It or Ticket people, it's the law!

[altaholic]

Ah...so its the mood and vibe we are dealing with. Clairvoyance is part of the CoC prerequisite?

[ShardWarrior]

7 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Nerf Regen.

I second this!

[Blastit]

Just now, altaholic said:

Ah...so its the mood and vibe we are dealing with. Clairvoyance is part of the CoC prerequisite?

If you act in good faith and accidentally make a costume that gets deleted, the worst that will happen is that you have to make a slightly different costume. There's no algorithm, no flowchart you can follow.

[Jimmy]

While the rule itself has been discussed at length already, there is one point I wanted to provide some clarity on:

5 hours ago, Jaegernault said:

I propose that if a Violation is found, the offending party is contacted via their contact email that they HAVE to have given to access the server. This report details the issues with the character and gives them 48 hours to correct it from the next time the account logs in. This would also allow appeals as currently there is no oversight that we can see as to what constitutes it.

While this is in theory a good idea and in an ideal world I would support it, unfortunately it's simply not practical right now. All of our GMs are volunteers, and dealing with copyright issues is only one of many responsibilities that they have. This would at least double the amount of time it takes to deal with each individual incident, and that's time that would be taken away from helping players with other issues, such as stuck missions.

[Alchemystic]

"Homage" - an expression of high regard or tribute to a certain subject matter
"Parody" - an imitation intended for comic effect, or to ridicule.
"Plagiarism" - to steal or falsify the ideas of another as one's own.

Too many of you are thinking they're all one in the same to try and make a point that you're being targeted by this rule when you really aren't.

Only if you directly copy (aka plagiarise) an existing character will you be in breach of the terms and conditions, because even though this is an unofficial server, we are still susceptible to copyright infringement.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Tyrannical

[MunkiLord]

People wanting clearly defined rules are not going to get what they want, it is literally impossible for this topic. Copyright and trademark infringement cases are decided by the courts or other legal body set up specifically for that. Everybody else, rights holders, lawyers, me, you, HC, are just making judgment calls. 

 

People telling others to simply be more creative are being extremely ridiculous. If it were that easy we wouldn't have a use for IP laws in the first place. It's much easier said than done.

 

The HC team is not the problem here, the problem is organizations like Disney, the RIAA, MPAA, Writer's Guild, John Deere, Oracle, Mosanto(though that's patents), etc perverting the intent of IP laws for pure profit and greed. It is absolutely in the HC team's best interest to err on the side of caution. Deciding this stuff in the courts and with lawyers is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people and organizations. 

 

If you don't want these type of issues to become worse, pay attention when companies and politicians go after Section 230 of the CDA. If that goes away we'll all be in a much more restrictive environment as it will be significantly easier to sue platforms and games that host user created content.

[SwitchFade]

32 minutes ago, altaholic said:

Ah...so its the mood and vibe we are dealing with. Clairvoyance is part of the CoC prerequisite?

I'd be willing to wager snarkiness isn't.

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

If you don't want these type of issues to become worse, pay attention when companies and politicians go after Section 230 of the CDA. If that goes away we'll all be in a much more restrictive environment as it will be significantly easier to sue platforms and games that host user created content.

This is an important thing to remember, in addition to here in the USA where copyright is not necessarily intended to be held in perpetuity.

[MunkiLord]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

This is an important thing to remember, in addition to here in the USA where copyright is not necessarily intended to be held in perpetuity.

Exactly. Though the CDA is law in the United States, our politicians and corporations consistently push and force other countries to change their laws to match close to what we do. People in other countries should care about this too as it very could have a significant impact on them. Plus a lot of industry lobbying groups are involved in the trade agreement process directly and indirectly.

[biostem]

29 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

People telling others to simply be more creative are being extremely ridiculous. If it were that easy we wouldn't have a use for IP laws in the first place. It's much easier said than done.

Except that if you wanted to make money from an existing IP, creativity isn't your goal.  Why try to market and develop a new character, if you can just churn out any number of guys in blue and red with logos on their chest, who are super strong and invulnerable?  Telling someone creating a character for a game to be more creative with said characters is not the same as someone who is just out to make a buck by using someone else's idea/concept.  There is no legitimate reason to, for instance, create a huge green-skinned super-strong character wearing just shorts, here in CoH, especially if it is named some variation of "hulk".

Edited April 22, 2020 by biostem

[Oubliette_Red]

1 hour ago, AerialAssault said:

Just saying, I don't see anyone volunteering to write this metaphorical list of can's/cant's of character creation.

It would be much easier for someone to create a list of characters that are now in the public domain and would not be at risk of genericing due to IP infringement.

 

[MunkiLord]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

Except that if you wanted to make money from an existing IP, creativity isn't your goal.  Why try to market and develop a new character, if you can just churn out any number of guys in blue and red with logos on their chest, who are super strong and invulnerable?  Telling someone creating a character for a game to be more creative with said characters is not the same as someone who is just out to make a buck by using someone else's idea/concept.  There is no legitimate reason to, for instance, create a huge green-skinned super-strong character wearing just shorts, here in CoH, especially if it is named some variation of "hulk".

I stand by my statement. The response to tell people to be more creative is extremely ridiculous. It's not easy, and quite frankly not possible for everyone. Especially those times people really mean original when they say creative, being original isn't really a thing since we're all building off the ideas and works of those that came before. Yes, there will always be people trying to make a quick buck, doesn't change anything I said.

 

  

1 minute ago, Oubliette_Red said:

It would be much easier for someone to create a list of characters that are now in the public domain and would not be at risk of genericing due to IP infringement.

 

Perhaps, that depends if that character is still protected by trademark.

Edited April 22, 2020 by MunkiLord

[ShardWarrior]

8 minutes ago, biostem said:

There is no legitimate reason to, for instance, create a huge green-skinned super-strong character wearing just shorts, here in CoH, especially if it is named some variation of "hulk".

I think we need to be cautious with making statements like this.  I have seen large, green skinned characters with Super Strength designed to be more similar to Trolls or Orcs with names like "Hulking Behemoth".  

[biostem]

Just now, MunkiLord said:

I stand by my statement. The response to tell people to be more creative is extremely ridiculous. It's not easy, and quite frankly not possible for everyone. Especially those times people really mean original when they say creative, being original isn't really a thing since we're all building off the ideas and works of those that came before. Yes, there will always be people trying to make a quick buck, doesn't change anything I said.

If you can't create a character different enough from an existing one to pass a cursory examination, then either hit random a few times until you find something acceptable to you, or don't create the character.

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I think we need to be cautious with making statements like this.  I have seen large, green skinned characters with Super Strength designed to be more similar to Trolls or Orcs with names like "Hulking Behemoth".

And if they are different enough to pass examination by a dev, then you should be fine.  Or, better yet, choose another word besides "hulking", just to be safe.  Heck, not all depictions of trolls or orcs are green, anyway.

Edited April 22, 2020 by biostem

[Oubliette_Red]

52 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

"Homage" - an expression of high regard or tribute to a certain subject matter
"Parody" - an imitation intended for comic effect, or to ridicule.
"Plagiarism" - to steal or falsify the ideas of another as one's own.

Too many of you are thinking they're all one in the same to try and make a point that you're being targeted by this rule when you really aren't.

Only if you directly copy (aka plagiarise) an existing character will you be in breach of the terms and conditions, because even though this is an unofficial server, we are still susceptible to copyright infringement.

 

This. ☝️

I've seen "homage" used in multiple threads, when what they were really complaining about was that their IP-infringing costume got gen'd.

 

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, biostem said:

And if they are different enough to pass examination by a dev, then you should be fine.  Or, better yet, choose another word besides "hulking", just to be safe.  Heck, not all depictions of trolls or orcs are green, anyway.

That is not what you had said though.  You said;

 

18 minutes ago, biostem said:

There is no legitimate reason to, for instance, create a huge green-skinned super-strong character wearing just shorts, here in CoH, especially if it is named some variation of "hulk".

 

[Bossk_Hogg]

Ahh, good ol' forum busybody squawking about copyright protection on a stolen game. So dripping with irony I hope we don't drown. 

 

This is, and has always been, about sad people flexing their innner hall monitor just to enjoy pissing people off. 

[MunkiLord]

4 minutes ago, biostem said:

If you can't create a character different enough from an existing one to pass a cursory examination, then either hit random a few times until you find something acceptable to you, or don't create the character.

Yes, thank you for the obvious answer, it's also irrelevant to my point. There are ways to not recreate other characters, again obvious and irrelevant to my statement. My point is telling people to be more creative is an extremely ridiculous response. It's also very dismissive of others. I'm not really sure what you're arguing here or what your point is.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

That is not what you had said though.  You said;

 

 

Don't put them in just shorts, for instance, (especially if said shorts happen to be purple).

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Ahh, good ol' forum busybody squawking about copyright protection on a stolen game. So dripping with irony I hope we don't drown. 

 

This is, and has always been, about sad people flexing their innner hall monitor just to enjoy pissing people off. 

You don't see the irony in your statement, do you?

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

My point is telling people to be more creative is an extremely ridiculous response. It's also very dismissive of others.

You forgot "in your opinion".  They are perfectly valid points - telling someone not to rip off someone else's character/IP is legitimate feedback.

[ShardWarrior]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

Don't put them in just shorts, for instance, (especially if said shorts happen to be purple).

Why not?  They are not the Hulk.