What is up with all the names?

[Techwright]

Hate bringing this up, but I have a couple of questions:

 

1. Did I miss a permissions change?  I'm seeing more flat-out copycats of licensed characters than ever before.  I'm not talking homages that have different names or altered looks, but still give you the "flavor" of the character emulated.  I'm talking straight out lifts from games and comic pages: names, powers, costumes, even the occasional biography.  Tonight, just moving from Ms Liberty to the P2W vendor I encountered 3 of them.  Last I knew, the CoC read:

 

Copyright Policy

Use of copyrighted characters and content without permission is not permitted when creating characters or Architect content. This includes characters and stories from intellectual property belonging to any IP that is not City of Heroes.

 

2. Is it considered a name violation if it reflects a copyrighted product that is not a character?  For example, if I called my character Rubik's Cube and had some sort of colorful cube-like pattern to a costume or called my 'toon Hershey Bar and had some sort of chocolate brown and silver costume going on, is that a name violation?  (Note, I made these two up.  I did however see two toons moments apart who were using food and game name brands like these.)

[El D]

No permission changes as far as I know. My best guess is, given the recent flood of new folks in the Homecoming Discord, it might be due a batch of new players. Off the top of my head, I can recall a post involving a team that was made up entirely of One Punch Men that earned a GM/dev finger-wag. >.>

Edited July 20, 2022 by El D

[The_Warpact]

Yup see them all the time, report, and move on.

[GM Impervium]

Yes, please report any copyright names/costumes/bios/etc. From in-game, use Menu -> Support. Make sure you copy/paste their name if possible to avoid weird issues with uppercase i's looking like lowercase L's and so on. Note that filter evasion/letter swapping doesn't constitute homage/parody/fair use and should still be reported.

[BastionWalls]

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

[tidge]

Some random (recent) observations:

 

1) I have definitely recently encountered (what I would consider) to be a significant uptick in the number of characters clearly on the spectrum of "this is obviously _____".

 

A few have been bluntly named precisely the comics character along with a costume that precisely matches the comic/TV/Cinematic character, I appreciate the effort, but come on. The most peculiarly ironic example was a hero toon who had a creative IMO alternate name for the character, but the bio said "____ (copyright name) was taken"... tell me what you really wanted to do without telling me what you really wanted to do. Another eye-rolling moment: "Please invite <copyright name> to team".... and of course, "copyright name" isn't the character name, it is "copyright name with laziest possible alteration" that the PUG buddy doesn't even recognize.

 

2) There have been a small number of characters that are basically skirting the established naming policies re: the pandemic. These could fall into the Gilbert Gottfried (RIP) "too soon?" category. I don't know what the intention of those players are, I certainly wasn't triggered.

[El D]

3 hours ago, BastionWalls said:

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

 

Not a Dev or a GM, but in-general my understanding has been 'so long as the name/costume/powers aren't an exact replica' it should be fine. To use some current media examples, think of Omni-Man from Invincible or Homelander from The Boys - both are obviously inspired by Superman (having similar powers, similar origins/places in their world) but due to their narrative, plot differences, and the role they play in their settings they end up as very different characters. Their outfits are also obviously inspired by Supes as well, but different enough either in color or additional themes that it's not infringing on anything.

 

Heck, Statesman is basically a mash-up of Superman and Captain America coated in a heavy dip of Greek mythology, but he's still not the same as either of them.

Edited July 20, 2022 by El D

[Thrones]

Welcome to City of Villains! Here are the rules... (that are required to operate a well functioning game and internet community)

 

Probably not a popular opinion, but pretty sure there are just friends here who get off on reporting people. I view selective reporting as a form of harassment. Just my thoughts, please continue to report violations as instructed.

 

[Naraka]

I find this reaction kind of funny.

 

I'm not going to tell you how to react to violations and what not, and better safe than sorry or whatever (I'm not running the site so it's not like I suffer for and consequences or am forced into extra labor to fix these issues)... But it's a common enough exercise to try to make characters resemble other characters. Again, it's part exercise and part just having fun.

 

You'll see it in GW2, FF14, heck even Soul Calibur. I've even made some myself that I still play lol. As character creators of games get better with more options, what do you think people would do? But yeah, I'm not going to stop you from donning your Karen badge.

[Boudicia.Dark]

I re-created a character from Death Stranding in CoH and I re-created one of my CoH characters in Elden Ring. This type of thing can be very fun, amusing, interesting. Blatant rip-offs though, those are just lazy. (Side note, the Death Stranding character turned out PERFECT, my Elden Ring character not so much)

[TheZag]

City of Heroes had legal troubles back during the retail run.  CoH won the suit but im sure the team here would prefer to avoid such issues.

 

An example would be Thor from mythology with red braided hair and Thor from the comic books with blond hair and all the other comic book features.  While it wouldnt be a violation to make Thor from mythology,  making Thor from the comics is so they blocked the name anyways just to be safe.

 

I have a character named Copyright Infringement Man (condensed to fit in 20 characters)  that has a single costume piece that would be attributed to Iron Man,  Captain America,  Wonder Woman,  Batman,  Aquaman,  Superman,  Star Wars and a few others all mashed into 1 costume.  But since no such character actually exists,  its not a violation.

 

I would encourage others to not purposefully make a character that could cause problems for the homecoming team.

[Oubliette_Red]

As others have said, report and move on. Perhaps preserve a screenie of the offender in case you need to DM a mod with it.

 

[Oubliette_Red]

1 hour ago, Naraka said:

I find this reaction kind of funny.

 

I'm not going to tell you how to react to violations and what not, and better safe than sorry or whatever (I'm not running the site so it's not like I suffer for and consequences or am forced into extra labor to fix these issues)... But it's a common enough exercise to try to make characters resemble other characters. Again, it's part exercise and part just having fun.

 

You'll see it in GW2, FF14, heck even Soul Calibur. I've even made some myself that I still play lol. As character creators of games get better with more options, what do you think people would do? But yeah, I'm not going to stop you from donning your Karen badge.

 

I'm fairly certain that the Karen Badge belongs to the ones that show up in the forums throwing a hissy fit after their character's get gen'd.

 

[Naraka]

20 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

I'm fairly certain that the Karen Badge belongs to the ones that show up in the forums throwing a hissy fit after their character's get gen'd.

 

They both can be.

 

The existence of one doesn't nullify the other.

[biostem]

2 hours ago, Naraka said:

I find this reaction kind of funny.

I'm curious - have you ever created your own intellectual property, and if so, do you have any interest in actually being able to control/own it?  If not, then carry on and I hope you never run up against anyone who actually would prosecute you, should you infringe upon theirs.

 

2 hours ago, Naraka said:

I'm not going to tell you how to react to violations and what not, and better safe than sorry or whatever (I'm not running the site so it's not like I suffer for and consequences or am forced into extra labor to fix these issues)... But it's a common enough exercise to try to make characters resemble other characters. Again, it's part exercise and part just having fun.

And yet here you are, doing just that.  But you know what *is* an actual way to stretch your creativity - create an homage to an existing character without flat-out copying them.

 

2 hours ago, Naraka said:

You'll see it in GW2, FF14, heck even Soul Calibur. I've even made some myself that I still play lol. As character creators of games get better with more options, what do you think people would do? But yeah, I'm not going to stop you from donning your Karen badge.

Are you arguing that it's ok to infringe on other people's intellectual property if the ability to do so exists?  Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you should.  There is a pretty distinct difference between a "Karen", (which I define as a person trying to enforce rules that either don't exist, or that they don't have the authority to do), and simply reporting someone who is violating a rule to the proper authorities, and letting them handle it...

[Naraka]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

I'm curious - have you ever created your own intellectual property, and if so, do you have any interest in actually being able to control/own it?  If not, then carry on and I hope you never run up against anyone who actually would prosecute you, should you infringe upon theirs.

 

 

You seem pretty defensive about this.

 

Cease and desist are usually the first course of action but ultimately, it's going to hinge on a case by case. If I create an intellectual property that someone decides to make a shirt for themselves, is different from making and selling the shirt for a profit or to promote their own brand.

 

Considering we're talking about playing a private server game for no profit (I hope), I'd gauge the severity on the low scale.

 

 

17 minutes ago, biostem said:

 

And yet here you are, doing just that.  But you know what *is* an actual way to stretch your creativity - create an homage to an existing character without flat-out copying them.

 

Are you arguing that it's ok to infringe on other people's intellectual property if the ability to do so exists?  Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you should.  There is a pretty distinct difference between a "Karen", (which I define as a person trying to enforce rules that either don't exist, or that they don't have the authority to do), and simply reporting someone who is violating a rule to the proper authorities, and letting them handle it...

 

A Karen will be the type to enforce rules that are minor and does so by hounding people in an obnoxious way. Easy example: when masking was "required" and it took violating 6ft social distancing to hound those people. 

 

I frankly don't care if you create a homage character or a copy or a unique character.  It's not my job to police if people are following their Ps and Qs unless someone is actually possible being harmed. If it turns out more outside entities are pursuing legal action against HC or other servers for creating copy characters (those that are too loud about their copy character will eventually get generic'ed so there's that avenue too) then maybe I would be more concerned. I just don't believe there are as many eyes on or fucks for CoH anymore. 

 

 

[biostem]

10 minutes ago, Naraka said:

I frankly don't care if you create a homage character or a copy or a unique character.  It's not my job to police if people are following their Ps and Qs unless someone is actually possible being harmed. If it turns out more outside entities are pursuing legal action against HC or other servers for creating copy characters (those that are too loud about their copy character will eventually get generic'ed so there's that avenue too) then maybe I would be more concerned. I just don't believe there are as many eyes on or fucks for CoH anymore. 

But in a way, you agreed to not infringe by signing up/creating an account for Homecoming.  Their reason for having that policy in place is not your concern - you agreed to it by joining, so you are bound to it.

 

12 minutes ago, Naraka said:

You seem pretty defensive about this.

When you attack the person instead of the argument, you have basically lost the argument.  I don't think people are saying to harass the person with the infringing name - only to report them and move on.  The policy against infringing has been and continues to be in place.  Report, then move along.  At the same time, if you are the one with said infringing name/character, you have no leg to stand on with regard to getting generic'd.  

[Naraka]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

But in a way, you agreed to not infringe by signing up/creating an account for Homecoming.  Their reason for having that policy in place is not your concern - you agreed to it by joining, so you are bound to it.

 

 

 

Then report me.

 

4 minutes ago, biostem said:

When you attack the person instead of the argument, you have basically lost the argument.  I don't think people are saying to harass the person with the infringing name - only to report them and move on.  The policy against infringing has been and continues to be in place.  Report, then move along.  At the same time, if you are the one with said infringing name/character, you have no leg to stand on with regard to getting generic'd.  

 

So having an opinion is attacking? If having a chuckle at our sharing a sideways inoffensive joke is going after someone's person but going after someone's creative faculties (in this thread, btw) isn't an attack, then we truly are lost.

 

But with all that said, my main point from the get go is, if you're making copy characters for fun, by all means, come at the situation knowing someone will likely report you. Just have fun with it. I just found it funny that the justification most will use to report you is lack of creativity on top of copyright infringement.

[tidge]

6 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 I just found it funny that the justification most will use to report you is lack of creativity on top of copyright infringement.

 

Where was this stated?

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Then report me.

I haven't seen you infringing, so there's no need to.

 

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

So having an opinion is attacking?

No, your little dig at me was.

 

6 minutes ago, Naraka said:

If having a chuckle at our sharing a sideways inoffensive joke is going after someone's person but going after someone's creative faculties (in this thread, btw) isn't an attack, then we truly are lost.

It's not about "creative faculties" and never has been - you are not, according to the terms of playing Homecoming, permitted to copy any existing IP, full stop.  If all you did was create a costume in the editor but never brought them into the game, no one would care.  All I suggested was how you could be safe by creating an "inspired by" character instead of a direct copy...

[Stormwalker]

11 hours ago, BastionWalls said:

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

 

If someone creates a SJ/Shield named Capta!n Am3rica, that's a copyright violation.

 

My patriotic catgirl scrapper Kitten America is an homage/parody.

 

An SJ/Shield scrapper named Captain Patriot is also an homage/parody, unless his bio is a straight copy of Steve Rogers' backstory, and then that's pushing it.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Stormwalker

[biostem]

12 hours ago, BastionWalls said:

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

It's kind of a vague "sniff test" TBH;  The first giveaway, IMO, is if the name is just a poor use of letter substitution or throwing in some extraneous characters or spaces to get the name, ("Kaptain 4m3r1c4", etc).  The second is costume, and the 3rd is powersets.  Any single one, taken to an extreme, can be enough, but usually it's some combination of all 3...

[GM Impervium]

12 hours ago, BastionWalls said:

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

 

Well, the GMs monitor this stuff, so the Devs are free to make content for everyone to play 😃

As for the rest of your comment? I'd hate to say it, but, it essentially comes down to "I know it when I see it". We don't have strict, precise guidelines, only because people would toe the line on purpose just to be annoying. And the GM staff needs to be free make judgement calls on these things. We've seen enough uninspired copycats and delightful homages to tell the difference by this point.

[Ironblade]

21 hours ago, Naraka said:

I just found it funny that the justification most will use to report you is lack of creativity on top of copyright infringement.

 

21 hours ago, tidge said:

Where was this stated?

 

I believe that would be an example of a straw man argument.

[JacksonRooks]

Welcome to City of Karens.

 

This is a bootleg server of a 20 year old game. The devs could probably allow buck naked characters with the Superman symbol tattooed on their chests, and no one would care.