Not letting people make characters that resembles other IP is insane.

[TheFounderUtopia]

I would love to hear someone try to justify this. You give us access to a character editor that can be used to make almost anything, and then when we recreate characters we already know and love, you forcibly delete the names and costumes? 

Look, the whole idea behind IP protection is to stop other people profiting from it. This is why DC comics doesn't try to sue everyone who makes bloody fan art. Because using your own creativity to recreate something you love *OBVIOUSLY* isn't the same thing as saying "I own this IP and therefore my pencil drawing of Batman entitles me to a chunk of their company".

A character editor is that. It's just a digital box of coloured pencils, and some of us like using it to essentially make fan art. The idea that you're going to click a button and erase hours of work enforcing a rule so silly that the same reasoning also would make felt tip pens illegal... is beyond absurd. There is no danger to you or your server from this. There is no danger to the community. All this accomplishes is a huge waste of someone else's time who was using your server and supporting your efforts because of the love of this game we all share.

Rules shouldn't exist for the perverse pleasure of filling empty margins in a rule book. They should exist because there is a good reason for them. Not only are we not making money somehow from having these fan art characters (like, how would we even?) which means there cannot - CANNOT - legally be any violation of IP, but taking away our ability to use a blank canvas how we see fit is the same as not having one in the first place.

In my opinion this rule is absolutely senseless and does nothing but alienate players. I'd love to hear some other thoughts on this. I remind you again, nowhere, nowhere on the planet, not even North Korea, has laws so stupid that using a digital art medium to create something that some GM INTERPRETS to be a fan art image could be grounds for any conceivable legal action.

If there is no good reason for a rule to exist, then it should not exist. 

Edited March 16 by TheFounderUtopia

[FupDup]

The reason is because the HC team doesn't want to potentially get sued by the big comic companies, which did actually happen to the original devs back on live (but the devs won). The problem is that the "target audience" you need to convince of this argument isn't HC, it's those big companies that get overzealous about IP protection, because they are the ones who caused this rule to come into being. 

 

On the bright side, we can still do "homage" or parody characters as long as they're different enough from the source material. It can be an interesting creative exercise to try to walk that fine line between being based on an existing character but still having some plausible deniability. And I say this as somebody whose first toon on HC was a straight carbon copy of an existing character (Reaper from Overwatch, but I generic'd him after the rule announcement just to be safe). 

[TheFounderUtopia]

I'm aware of that history, which is also what protects this server. It means there is legal precedent for this exact case.

I don't think that a server hosting what is, let's be honest, a not exactly *legitimate* copy of some other company's defunct game, should be taking such a bold stand on this issue. If other companies were to come after them I think there would probably be bigger legal issues to chew through before the issue of someone making a character that someone could conceivably interpret to be an homage to another character is even raised.

And hey, if it gets raised, then sure. Enforce the rule then. When it's an ISSUE. I hardly think this server is on anyone's radar, do you? They went after NCsoft because at the time CoX was one of the most popular MMOs in existence. They were after an easy pay day and even that didn't work. No one is going to come after some tiny legacy fan server for an ancient game because a character had goggles that look like spiderman or whatever. You can't pretend that this policy isn't absolutely risible. 

I'll say it again, if there is no good reason for a rule, then it shouldn't exist. I'm sure we all agree with that. And I think I've fairly addressed the explanations presented and explained why they are not, in fact, good reasons. No one is going to sue this bloody server. Well, maybe whoever owns NCsoft IP now, but no one cares that someone made a character in this game that looks like another character. It's actually ludicrous to think they would. And how embarrassing is it that even NCsoft were more willing to fight for us on this issue than a server ran by people who supposedly came together because of a love for the game.

Just let us make the characters we want.

Edited March 16 by TheFounderUtopia

[TheZag]

Its because if a company reasonably believes that their IP is being infringed upon and does nothing to stop it,  they will forfeit their claim to the property.

 

Its like when Disney sued the daycare that had mickey mouse painted on the wall or the school fundraiser that played a disney movie for the kids - it wasnt mickey mouse daycare or mickey mouse fundraiser but money was being made and disney stuff was (barely) involved.  If they didnt sue,  or at the very least send a cease and desist,  they could have lost their rights to their own characters.

 

I assume the actual legal threat to homecoming is low but that doesnt mean we should wave red flags in front of sleeping bulls either.

 

[Luminara]

35 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

Rules shouldn't exist for the perverse pleasure of filling empty margins in a rule book.

 

This rule exists because copyright law says it has to.  If you'd like to dispute its validity or necessity, feel free to contact all of the governments in the world and take it up with them.  You'll find no ground given here, the HC team has made their position very clear: they follow the law.

 

@GM Impervium, you know what to do.

[TheFounderUtopia]

12 minutes ago, TheZag said:

Its because if a company reasonably believes that their IP is being infringed upon and does nothing to stop it,  they will forfeit their claim to the property.

Two problems here. First: No they won't. That's not how copyright works. There is no "use it or lose it" doctrine. Otherwise everyone infringing your copyright behind closed doors and you never found out about it would magically inherit your company. Come on.

Second: This isn't IP infringement. As I already explained, a character editor is just a digital art medium. What you're saying is that every kid drawing scribbled images of Wolverine into his math textbook actually is infringing copyright. No they're not. That's silly. 
 

Disney didn't sue that daycare because they had to, they did it because they wanted to. Just like Nintendo clamps down on streamers not because they have to, but because they choose to, and they're easing up on that now they're starting to realise how truly ridiculous it is they have been stemming a flow of free advertising for their product for years. What happens is these big companies hire lawyers to protect their assets, and it's the LAWYERS who feel they have an obligation to hunt down any possible case to pursue, to justify their continued employment. 

Now one could make an argument that THIS is an issue that could endanger this server. But it isn't. A: Because we have already established a legal precedent for this case so the issue is essentially solved already, and B: because nobody knows about this server and as I said above, even if they did, I hardly think what your avatar resembles is a high priority for everyone. No one has legal scouts employed to sift through all the members of this server looking to see if a 90's kid has put bat ears on a dark costume.

We need to stop treating this as it is even remotely an actual issue. It isn't. It wasn't even an issue when it WAS an issue for the actual game.

Edited March 16 by TheFounderUtopia

[TheFounderUtopia]

7 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

This rule exists because copyright law says it has to.  If you'd like to dispute its validity or necessity, feel free to contact all of the governments in the world and take it up with them.  You'll find no ground given here, the HC team has made their position very clear: they follow the law.

 

@GM Impervium, you know what to do.

You're wrong. It doesn't have to, copyright law doesn't say it has to, and this isn't even a copyright issue. This argument is already refuted.

[Gobbledygook]

I made Wolverine, except his name is Spyneshank, like the NuMetal group (Spineshank), and he looks more like Sabertooth. He has costumes that are vastly different from either character though.

Of course, I made changes to his background to fit into the world of Paragon City.

Yep.

Wolverine.

[TheFounderUtopia]

20 minutes ago, Gobbledygook said:

I made Wolverine, except his name is Spyneshank, like the NuMetal group (Spineshank), and he looks more like Sabertooth. He has costumes that are vastly different from either character though.

Of course, I made changes to his background to fit into the world of Paragon City.

Yep.

Wolverine.

According to the response I got, even aesthetically resembling Wolverine means your character breached the same rule. 

[Lines]

Let's say HC follows your advice, but then it turns out that you were wrong, would you mind footing the legal bill?

[TheFounderUtopia]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

Let's say HC follows your advice, but then it turns out that you were wrong, would you mind footing the legal bill?

Even hypothetically saying that is entertaining a scenario so ludicrous the moon in that world would be made of cheese. But say someone DID contact them with a cease and desist that would mean they need to add a rule to the server saying don't do this. In other words, literally nothing would need to change.

You don't just get magically teleported into a courtroom the second some other company decides to pick on you. They have to go through certain legal steps first. All that would happen is we end up back in the situation we are currently in, only with it being slightly less unjustified. And again, YOU KNOW, as well as I do, that this isn't going to happen. It just isn't.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

According to the response I got, even aesthetically resembling Wolverine means your character breached the same rule. 

To the best of my understanding of the situation, that isn't true. The appearance+powers+name+background is what defines Wolverine for instance. Though the background is less a concern since that is optional for players to use. So if you make a character named Wolverine, there is no problem. If you use the claws+regeneration power sets, there is no problem. If you have a similar background, there is no problem. The problem arises when you make a character that looks like Wolverine, has the same power sets, and uses the same name. If it can be argued that you are making Wolverine, rather than a character that may be similar, that is the problem. Companies take their intellectual property very seriously, but they can't really say much if someone comes up with something similar. Hence, characters that are clones are renamed to something else when reported. Characters that are reported as being clones and a quick look by the devs shows it is not, do not get renamed. I had this problem back on Live. I made a character named Darkwatcher. A feline contact that granted missions in AE. The character got reported. I was notified it was under investigation. The character got left alone.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

Even hypothetically saying that is entertaining a scenario so ludicrous the moon in that world would be made of cheese. But say someone DID contact them with a cease and desist that would mean they need to add a rule to the server saying don't do this. In other words, literally nothing would need to change.

You don't just get magically teleported into a courtroom the second some other company decides to pick on you. They have to go through certain legal steps first. All that would happen is we end up back in the situation we are currently in, only with it being slightly less unjustified. And again, YOU KNOW, as well as I do, that this isn't going to happen. It just isn't.

Homecoming is technically a pirate server. The devs don't need any unnecessary headaches.

[Parabola]

39 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

We need to stop treating this as it is even remotely an actual issue. It isn't. It wasn't even an issue when it WAS an issue for the actual game.

Regardless of any reasoned arguments (which are clearly pointless) this simply isn't your decision to make. We play in homecoming's playground. They make the rules.

[Shadeknight]

No thanks.

You clearly don't understand how easy it is to get in a lot of trouble. Disney does not play around and anyone with even a lick of search-fu would understand this.

Just because you can't be original does not mean HC needs to suffer.

[TheFounderUtopia]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

To the best of my understanding of the situation, that isn't true. The appearance+powers+name+background is what defines Wolverine for instance. Though the background is less a concern since that is optional for players to use. So if you make a character named Wolverine, there is no problem. If you use the claws+regeneration power sets, there is no problem. If you have a similar background, there is no problem. The problem arises when you make a character that looks like Wolverine, has the same power sets, and uses the same name. If it can be argued that you are making Wolverine, rather than a character that may be similar, that is the problem. Companies take their intellectual property very seriously, but they can't really say much if someone comes up with something similar. Hence, characters that are clones are renamed to something else when reported. Characters that are reported as being clones and a quick look by the devs shows it is not, do not get renamed. I had this problem back on Live. I made a character named Darkwatcher. A feline contact that granted missions in AE. The character got reported. I was notified it was under investigation. The character got left alone.

If that were the case they wouldn't have needed to reset both my character's name and appearance earlier, just one of them. They specifically added a notice saying not to use that same arrangement of costume features or things would become "more serious" for me. So with regards to your understanding of the policies of this server, you seem to be wrong.

With regards to the law, assuming you're not just playing devil's advocate, you're definitely wrong. Again, this isn't a copyright issue. Copyright relates to situations where someone is profiting from someone else's IP. No one is making profit here. You can't just CALL something a copyright issue and then analyse it only with that lens. This is not, by definition, a copyright issue. 

If there WERE some law that would be violated by this, and again, it would not be a copyright or IP protection law, because that's not how those work - but let's imagine that some new form of IP law were invented where replicating a character from someone else's IP for your own entertainment were somehow a violation. That means fan fiction is now illegal. Parody is illegal. Homages are illegal. Any time anyone even acknowledges a work of fiction publicly - that's illegal.

But it's actually worse than that, because according to the backwards arguments being used to justify this policy, it isn't even the user that is supposedly infringing this fictional, impossible to enforce law - it's the ART MEDIUM ITSELF. That's what a character editor is. If a painting is a sophisticated drawing, and digital art is just a sophisticated form of painting, and 3D digital modelling is just a sophisticated version of that, then a character editor is legally, ethically, and even pragmatically indistinguishable from a box of pencils.

What you are arguing is that a kid drawing superman fan art should be considered a criminal by the same logic being used here. My character was just a sophisticated crayon drawing, and people are acting like it's not insane to say that means I was declaring myself to be the IP holder of a multinational entertainment corporation. Can we stop just make believing that this even could be an issue, because it's silly. There isn't even a hypothetical situation where this isn't stupid.

[El D]

As other posters have said, the 'Don't make copyrighted characters' a CYA ruling for Homecoming and the safety of the server. Whether or not it's likely that any IP or copyright holders would go after the server isn't the point - it's to ensure that none of them have any standing to do so in the first place. Also, frankly, the game would be boring as Hell if players were allowed to run around as their favorite characters from comics/movies/video games. The point of CoX is to make your own characters and build a story of your own, not to do online cosplay as someone else's creations. If that's the experience you want, Fortnite has that in spades.

 

'Change the rules to risk shutdown and legal action so I can play as Superman/Wolverine/Batman/Spider-Man/etc.!' never held water during Live and it doesn't hold water now.

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

With regards to the law, assuming you're not just playing devil's advocate, you're definitely wrong. Again, this isn't a copyright issue. Copyright relates to situations where someone is profiting from someone else's IP. No one is making profit here. You can't just CALL something a copyright issue and then analyse it only with that lens. This is not, by definition, a copyright issue. 

If there WERE some law that would be violated by this, and again, it would not be a copyright or IP protection law, because that's not how those work - but let's imagine that some new form of IP law were invented where replicating a character from someone else's IP for your own entertainment were somehow a violation. That means fan fiction is now illegal. Parody is illegal. Homages are illegal. Any time anyone even acknowledges a work of fiction publicly - that's illegal.

But it's actually worse than that, because according to the backwards arguments being used to justify this policy, it isn't even the user that is supposedly infringing this fictional, impossible to enforce law - it's the ART MEDIUM ITSELF. That's what a character editor is. If a painting is a sophisticated drawing, and digital art is just a sophisticated form of painting, and 3D digital modelling is just a sophisticated version of that, then a character editor is legally, ethically, and even pragmatically indistinguishable from a box of pencils.

What you are arguing is that a kid drawing superman fan art should be considered a criminal by the same logic being used here. My character was just a sophisticated crayon drawing, and people are acting like it's not insane to say that means I was declaring myself to be the IP holder of a multinational entertainment corporation. Can we stop just make believing that this even could be an issue, because it's silly. There isn't even a hypothetical situation where this isn't stupid.

And yet there are notices declaring that use of IP even if not for profit are subject to full legal recourse. Don't believe me? Run a movie and read the legal disclaimers. You don't have to be making a profit for copyright to kick in and slap you down.

Edited March 16 by Rudra
Edited to remove "no".

[TheFounderUtopia]

13 minutes ago, Parabola said:

Regardless of any reasoned arguments (which are clearly pointless) this simply isn't your decision to make. We play in homecoming's playground. They make the rules.

First of all, I resent you implying I am not amenable to reason, when I have taken the time and care to fairly address every single comment and argument therein.

Secondly, this is a discussion. Not a decision. I'm sure you think you're being curt, but the remark didn't make any sense, since I obviously wasn't declaring myself to be the decision maker, and was obviously inviting a discussion on whether we agree that this SHOULD be a rule. You can always discuss whether things ought to be the way they are. Saying "but it isn't" is nonsensical.
 

[Oubliette_Red]

1 hour ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

I would love to hear someone try to justify this.  <snip>

 

There are numerous thread with responses explaining the reason, none of which will convince you because you have already made up your mind.

 

[Shadeknight]

Oh that makes sense on why this got made. You got generic'd and you got upset at being generic'd.

O-kay then.

[TheFounderUtopia]

12 minutes ago, El D said:

As other posters have said, the 'Don't make copyrighted characters' a CYA ruling for Homecoming and the safety of the server. Whether or not it's likely that any IP or copyright holders would go after the server isn't the point - it's to ensure that none of them have any standing to do so in the first place. Also, frankly, the game would be boring as Hell if players were allowed to run around as their favorite characters from comics/movies/video games. The point of CoX is to make your own characters and build a story of your own, not to do online cosplay as someone else's creations. If that's the experience you want, Fortnite has that in spades.

 

'Change the rules to risk shutdown and legal action so I can play as Superman/Wolverine/Batman/Spider-Man/etc.!' never held water during Live and it doesn't hold water now.

I respect your opinion but that's all it is. You're expressing your preferences, you feel the game would be boring if people did that. I respectfully disagree. I do this in every game with a good character editor, in a way it's a unique art form. I've made Thanos builds on Elden Ring, Devil May Cry characters on Archeage. You might as well be complaining at someone's deviant art page that they aren't original enough. Maybe not, but you do you, boo. I'm here to have fun, and this is what I find fun.

As for your copyright stuff, this is already refuted. It's not an issue. It *can't* be an issue, and if people were watching them closely for IP infringing characters that don't actually infringe IP because that's not how the law works, I think the fact that this is basically a pirated game would be noticed first. Someone having a character that looks vaguely like Zelda isn't going to be death knell of this server, and anyone who thinks it even could be is massively, hilariously misinformed.

Edited March 16 by TheFounderUtopia

[TheFounderUtopia]

6 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

There are numerous thread with responses explaining the reason, none of which will convince you because you have already made up your mind.

 

That's exactly why I asked for a justification, not a reason. I already know the reason. The reason is wrong. Objectively. I have explained why multiple times. It's not an issue and it literally can't be an issue, and the absolute worst case scenario if it somehow, by some dark miracle, became an issue, is they would THEN have a good reason to have the rule. They are capitulating to pressure that doesn't even exist yet, and alienating people because of it.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, TheFounderUtopia said:

That's exactly why I asked for a justification, not a reason. I already know the reason. The reason is wrong. Objectively. I have explained why multiple times. It's not an issue and it literally can't be an issue, and the absolute worst case scenario if it somehow, by some dark miracle, became an issue, is they would THEN have a good reason to have the rule. They are capitulating to pressure that doesn't even exist yet, and alienating people because of it.

Uhm... what? The reason is the justification.... The reason for the rule being in effect, which is a holdover from Live when they implemented the rule to get Marvel off their backs, is the justification for why the rule exists. How can you ask for a justification and then say that the already given reasons are not a justification? That is some seriously broken logic.

[TheFounderUtopia]

9 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Oh that makes sense on why this got made. You got generic'd and you got upset at being generic'd.

O-kay then.

Is it not reasonable to be a bit irritated when literally hours of work you just put into something gets deleted because of a rule which seems to be completely irrational? I think it's kind of cheap to essentially say "let's dismiss this guy because he's upset". What's wrong with being upset?