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How is this a player question?
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The player in question is doing okay. I have to wait till Tuesday to hear back. The character was removed from the server.
On that note, I would like to thank all the haters out there that stuffed my e-mail box full of hate mail. Also the jerk that came in and wrote ugly comments on my virtueverse page. You must be feeling really empowered now. All items have been erased.
As for the "proof in pictures" of my being talked to there are none. I did not think to take any at the time due to the fact I was so angry. I am waiting to hear back in PRIVATE e-mail as to what was done with my character. I WILL NOT be posting anything since it is a PRIVATE matter and would get me kicked off the boards.
Electroboobies!
[ QUOTE ]
You're right, he doesn't have to. But he does because he doesn't want to tick anyone off. Most artists have been good humored about it and said yes. A few, like Prince, have said no, and he's respected that.
[/ QUOTE ]
If an artist really didn't want him to, it wouldn't be a slam dunk case. Fair Use does have limits, and one of the considerations of a court about whether something is a Fair Use parody or not is the commercial nature of it. Weird Al makes money off of his parodies, which muddies the waters a little bit. There was a case 15 years ago where 2 Live Crew was sued for parodying Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman." In the end, 2 Live Crew won because the court decided that the parody was a critical commentary on the original, and thus it didn't consider the commercial nature of the work in making its decision as an important enough factor. However, it did specifically mention the commercial nature of works as a factor in making such judgments, and noted that such cases have to be handled, no pun intended, on a case-by-case basis.
Personally, I think he'd win any lawsuit. But it's not an automatic win. At any rate, Weird Al has said that he always gets the artist's permission as a courtesy, so it's probably a moot point. When he released "Amish Paradise," a parody of Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise," apparently Coolio's "people" had told Weird Al it was okay. After the song came out, though, Coolio said something in an interview about how it was crap, and he shouldn't have been allowed to release it. (Which, incidentally, was pretty damn stupid, considering the Coolio himself had swiped "Gangsta Paradise" from Stevie Wonder's "Pasttime Paradise.") Once Coolio found out that he had given permission, albeit indirectly, they kissed and made up. (Figuratively, as far as I can tell.)
About the Prince thing, I'll never forget an interview I saw with Weird Al once. He mentioned that Prince wouldn't give him the okay to parody his songs. Later, the interviewer asked him what the difference between a Weird Al concert and a Prince concert was. Without missing a beat, Weird Al told the interviewer that they were actually a lot alike, except that his (Weird Al's) are intentionally funny. Ouch!
Needless to say, I'm a huge Weird Al fan. 
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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On that note, I would like to thank all the haters out there that stuffed my e-mail box full of hate mail. Also the jerk that came in and wrote ugly comments on my virtueverse page. You must be feeling really empowered now. All items have been erased.
[/ QUOTE ]
Report them. Harassment is actionable. I think you were wrong, and the OP is way out of line for posting here, but I'm also of the "two wrongs don't make a right" philosophy. "They deserved it" is not a legitimate excuse for harassing someone.
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As for the "proof in pictures" of my being talked to there are none. I did not think to take any at the time due to the fact I was so angry. I am waiting to hear back in PRIVATE e-mail as to what was done with my character. I WILL NOT be posting anything since it is a PRIVATE matter and would get me kicked off the boards.
[/ QUOTE ]
...And again, good call, and I'm not being facetious. This is the best avenue for you to take. I do hope you get it resolved.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
[ QUOTE ]
As for the "proof in pictures" of my being talked to there are none. I did not think to take any at the time due to the fact I was so angry. I am waiting to hear back in PRIVATE e-mail as to what was done with my character. I WILL NOT be posting anything since it is a PRIVATE matter and would get me kicked off the boards.
[/ QUOTE ]
Two questions which you don't have to answer but which will give you an answer.
Question one: Was the person who told you that your character would be deleted visible as an object or npc from the game or were they invisible or a normal character?
Reason for question. GMs never appear as a normal character. They can select any object or npc from the database to use (pretty much anything that we can use from the MA).
Question two: Was their name GM_(name)?
Reason for question: Only employees can have the underscore in their name, and the GMs always do. If the person demanding the deletion of the character didn't have the underscore in their name then it was another player pretending to be a GM. Incidentally a player who does that will be banned from the game themselves.
Question three (yeah I know I said only two but what the heck eh?) Do you have logs enabled? If you don't know, or even if you are fairly sure you don't, check anyway. It will be in your city of heroes game folder. There will be a subfolder called "logs" and then in that folder there will be one called "games". If chat logging is on then there will be a copy of the conversation.
Considering that there has never been a case of GM harassment like this, and considering that there have been cases of people impersonating GMs, I would say this is almost certainly a case of somebody who has your account information pretending to be a GM and then deleting the character.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
Well, I truly hope if everything is legit and all that the player gets their character back (Not sure about the costume, I'd have to see the current costume and whatnot, and it's not my place to judge that really anyways). Does anyone have a reason why the name would even be any problem? I'm just curious.
For two reasons I'm quoting Celestial Fury's first post in here:
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I have a character named Amazing Amazon and she once got genericed. But i did not give up and brought the issue at support, i complained at Castle and ExLibris, i did everything i could think of to get the attention of authorities and/or influent people in CoX.
Finally, i won my case! I got my name back after 2 weeks of generication.
But you know what? If a moron petitioned my char again, i woudl have to do all again the whole thing. It sucks like that.
Lighthouse once told me that they had taken the whole thing about the naming policy way too far and that things were supposed to smoothen a bit in the future. They were supposed to cut some slack to players and stop the witch hunt. I guess he was wrong.
Anyway, OP has my sympathy and i pray for his good fight.
[/ QUOTE ]
First off, that's one of the most useful replies in here for the player going through this issue. Hopefully this can also give you a little hope.
Secondly...
I had actually heard about your case through a friend!
We were dumbfounded that your character had been Genere'cized and I never heard any more about it.
I just wanted to say that I am truly glad it was settled positively and you got her back.
That was pretty ridiculous.
Mistakes happen and all... That must have sucked to have that happen though.
Just everyone try and remember... there are worse things... So, just go through the process, stick to it, and hopefully everything turns out right.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
If I was a GM, I'd be removing the Hamidon enhancements from your HO build that you spent 4 years trying to create instead of renaming your toon to Generic 120 234 234.
This is how it would go down:
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Change your name and descriptions, which I could remove myself, OR IMMA FIRIN MUH LAZER! (That is code for delete your character) P.S. Tell your family I said hello.
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+1
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thay cannot be sued by US copyright laws for someone having a character that looks SIMILAR to a copyrighted name/face/character/fart smell this si teh same reason people cannot sue Wierd Al for the songs he makes, or comapanies for making iPhone clones. All this is, is NCSoft taking draconion measures to "protect" themselves from now non-existant copyright lawsuits.
[/ QUOTE ]
Dude, Marvel and DC can /sue/ NCSoft for carp like this any time they please.
The question is whether or not the comic book companies would win. After NCSoft blows through a rather large amount of cash they don't have to pay their lawyers.
Jeebus, people.
Ya'll aren't lawyers. Don't offer up legal advice.;
[ QUOTE ]
Ah, roleplayer drama.
...why the heck would a GM be threatening to ban a character? That sounds incredibly fishy.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, same here. I'm gonna go ahead and call bullpucky on this one. The GMs have no reason to demand a character be deleted. Generic the name and costume. And, if they needed to go as far as have the character outright deleted ( which is just ridiculous to believe that they would. As I said, no reason for it ), they could do it themselves. No need to threaten a ban here.
Trademark violations are not a bannable offense. Sorry, Star, but either you're lying or your friend is.
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
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Well, maybe I can get the player to post the emails back and forth between the GMs & her. Proly just be an excuse to ban both of us and dlete this post however
The generic-ing is bad enough. 76% of the toons out there havea passing resemblance to SOMEBODY in comics. I respect coptright protection, but there are griefers on Virtue in particular that use this tactic to harrass people that they dont like, are jealus of a better tribute toon or just want to steal the idea themselves.
[/ QUOTE ]
"Passing resemblance" isn't enough to get a generic. If it was generic'd, there was more than a passing resemblance going on there. And Capt Marvel isn't exactly an obscure character, either. It takes more than just someone reporting a costume/name to get it generic'd. The GM has to decide that it is an offense. So, no, someone reporting it wasn't "all it took". And, no, it doesn't matter if the name/costume had been around for 5 years. If it's a violation, it's a violation. Just because it slipped under the radar for so long doesn't make it okay.
People who report violations aren't "griefers", so you can shove that drivel back up the orifice it came out of, too. Little reminder: Cryptic got dragged into court to fight a long battle with Marvel over trademark violations. I'm betting that was a rather massive financial drain and probably has more than a little to do with the fact that there was a skeleton crew working on the game for so long before it was handed over to NCSoft.
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
[ QUOTE ]
It's a clear clone, open and shut case. Stop the protest and let everyone get back to their ERP with that cute little cat"girl".
Does it suck that there are quislings that feel the need to report clones? Sure.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, yeah. Totally sucks that there are people who care enough about the game to not want to see the devs dragged into court again. *eyeroll*
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Doing a Google search for Nexus Argos came up with full bio page with photo.
https://www.virtueverse.com/index.ph...;printable=yes
The character is almost an exact clone of Captain Mar'vell, even the bio. The kicker? at the bottom of the page it reads "Character influenced by Captain Mar-vell from Marvel Comics "
[/ QUOTE ]
INFLUENCED BY, not a direct rip off, doesnt even look anything like captain marvel.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nexus Argos
Captain Marvel
Nooo, no resemblance there at all. Well, except for...the entire costume, mask, and hairstyle. Other than that...well, okay, most of the background. But other than that....He might be a little taller! So totally different!
[ QUOTE ]
thay cannot be sued by US copyright laws for someone having a character that looks SIMILAR to a copyrighted name/face/character/fart
[/ QUOTE ]
Nope, you're right, they can't be sued by US copyright laws for it. Trademark laws, however... And, guess what? Marvel did just that a few years back. 'course, a lot of their claims were thrown out due to the methods they used to gather their "evidence"...
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
[ QUOTE ]
Two questions which you don't have to answer but which will give you an answer.
Question one: Was the person who told you that your character would be deleted visible as an object or npc from the game or were they invisible or a normal character?
Reason for question. GMs never appear as a normal character. They can select any object or npc from the database to use (pretty much anything that we can use from the MA).
[/ QUOTE ]
GMs most certainly do appear as "normal characters" - they don't have to but I've had a couple appear with just the generic costume (male/athletic/defaults on costume bits, random colors). It's not a "it'll never happen" situation, and I've had them show up as a "normal character" more often than something like a police drone.
But they will always be GM_(something).
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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+1
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Doing a Google search for Nexus Argos came up with full bio page with photo.
https://www.virtueverse.com/index.ph...;printable=yes
The character is almost an exact clone of Captain Mar'vell, even the bio. The kicker? at the bottom of the page it reads "Character influenced by Captain Mar-vell from Marvel Comics "
[/ QUOTE ]
INFLUENCED BY, not a direct rip off, doesnt even look anything like captain marvel.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nexus Argos
Captain Marvel
Nooo, no resemblance there at all. Well, except for...the entire costume, mask, and hairstyle. Other than that...well, okay, most of the background. But other than that....He might be a little taller! So totally different!
[/ QUOTE ]
Ok, I've been lurking and watching this for a while now, but I have to say something at this.
The costumes are a passing resemblance.
Nexus uses red and blue. Marvel uses red and black.
Nexus uses solid blue pants with starshot pattern, and blue boots. Marvel uses super black underwear of doom on the outside, red pants with no pattern, and black boots.
Nexus uses a V pattern to bring the blue onto his chest. Marvel has a straight over-the-shoulder block of black.
Nexus has a cape and brooches. Marvel doesn't appear to have a cape.
Nexus has flared gloves and folded boots. Marvel's costume is smooth.
There are not enough good male hairstyles to fault Nexus's choice, nor compare it to Marvel, because then a large quantity of male characters are also guilty.
There are cowls that are a closer match to Marvel, yet Nexus uses the very common "ruin" style.
Now, I am not commenting one way or the other about the GMs decision to generic, as that is completely between the GM and Nexus. I am simply commenting, from an artist's perspective, that the costumes are in fact not immediately similar.
If people are reporting and GMs are generic'ing at this level of semblance, then every female character that uses the plant pieces should be generic'd as a clone of Poison Ivy. Every male character that uses a hat and a gas mask should be generic'd as a clone of the Sandman. Every male character that uses a hat and the reaper mask should be generic'd as a clone of the Shadow. Every male character that uses blue, red and yellow as a color combination should be generic'd as a clone of Superman.
As a matter of fact, let's just generic everyone because I'm sure that most characters could possibly bear a passing resemblance to something trademarked, and if passing resemblance is enough to get generic'd, then a vast majority of characters are at risk.
Again thank you to the haters out there. I enjoy your letters. I enjoy erasing your letters. In fact, the next person who harasses me is going to get a letter themselves. With a notice about their harassment. So think about.
As I said I am not going to handle this out in public or put anything up for the trolls to read. The character is gone. End of story. I've taken the actual advice that the rational people here have given. If you want to continue to hate on myself, my friends or my characters I will look at you each sadly and walk away.
Thank you to those who have been a voice of reason here. I appreciate it.
[ QUOTE ]
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[ QUOTE ]
Doing a Google search for Nexus Argos came up with full bio page with photo.
https://www.virtueverse.com/index.ph...;printable=yes
The character is almost an exact clone of Captain Mar'vell, even the bio. The kicker? at the bottom of the page it reads "Character influenced by Captain Mar-vell from Marvel Comics "
[/ QUOTE ]
INFLUENCED BY, not a direct rip off, doesnt even look anything like captain marvel.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nexus Argos
Captain Marvel
Nooo, no resemblance there at all. Well, except for...the entire costume, mask, and hairstyle. Other than that...well, okay, most of the background. But other than that....He might be a little taller! So totally different!
[/ QUOTE ]
Ok, I've been lurking and watching this for a while now, but I have to say something at this.
The costumes are a passing resemblance.
Nexus uses red and blue. Marvel uses red and black.
Nexus uses solid blue pants with starshot pattern, and blue boots. Marvel uses super black underwear of doom on the outside, red pants with no pattern, and black boots.
Nexus uses a V pattern to bring the blue onto his chest. Marvel has a straight over-the-shoulder block of black.
Nexus has a cape and brooches. Marvel doesn't appear to have a cape.
Nexus has flared gloves and folded boots. Marvel's costume is smooth.
There are not enough good male hairstyles to fault Nexus's choice, nor compare it to Marvel, because then a large quantity of male characters are also guilty.
There are cowls that are a closer match to Marvel, yet Nexus uses the very common "ruin" style.
[/ QUOTE ]
The alterations you list are actually fairly minor. Combine the similarities PLUS the mention in his bio that his character was inspired by Captain Marvel, and the similarity is far more than passing. Even without that mention, the resemblance is INSTANTLY noticeable. That's more than "passing".
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
[ QUOTE ]
That picture on the bio is about four years old and the virtueverse page has been up for a long time. I haven't done anything with page for awhile except put in certain relevent events in his life. The character changed to having a cape and some other minor changes so he would not be exact. The character was INFLUENCED BY and NOT Mar-vell
As for the biography itself is original. Marvel was never a prince from an evil empire run by his family. He was not distilled down to component energy to be a battery for a starship after inciting an intergalactic rebellion. He never met a girl in Ireland and plucked the idea on how Earthlings looked from her mind. He never went on the run when his family sent people to retrieve him, helped a media mogul as a bodyguard, became a member of the LoT or the PK:HB, inherited a large fortune from a late employer. And lastly he did not have a wife named Liberty Girl in which they held a large wedding about four years ago on the Virtue server attended by a large amount of people.
And I'll not be publishing any letters. All letters are between myself and the GM's so do not expect to see any here. As it is the character was erased last night after I went offline. So I hope the troll who generic'd me is happy, they won.
I do not know what I did to you to make you so angry to the point of wanting me removed permanently. I have been with this game for technically six years if you count the old pre-beta boards. My character has been around for that long too. He had even won in game costume contests with GM's standing right there.
The basic nature of the costume should be looked at since it is a relatively standard super hero suit. Unless its now a crime to make costumes with underwear on the outside and tights for male characters. Red and blue combinations are a common color scheme on a lot of characters.
My thanks everyone who turned out in support last night in Atlas.
[/ QUOTE ]
so, reading this thread i see that a group named Fawcet Comics has at least a similar character. this is from your bio
"Nexus is living off the money given to him by his late employer Mr. Fawcette and Alexa travels the world as a high class fashion model. "
maybe the costume being so close, the "influenced by" and then a reference to fawcet was too much.
just a thought
[ QUOTE ]
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INFLUENCED BY, not a direct rip off, doesnt even look anything like captain marvel.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nexus Argos
Captain Marvel
Nooo, no resemblance there at all. Well, except for...the entire costume, mask, and hairstyle. Other than that...well, okay, most of the background. But other than that....He might be a little taller! So totally different!
[/ QUOTE ]
Ok, I've been lurking and watching this for a while now, but I have to say something at this.
The costumes are a passing resemblance.
Nexus uses red and blue. Marvel uses red and black.
Nexus uses solid blue pants with starshot pattern, and blue boots. Marvel uses super black underwear of doom on the outside, red pants with no pattern, and black boots.
Nexus uses a V pattern to bring the blue onto his chest. Marvel has a straight over-the-shoulder block of black.
Nexus has a cape and brooches. Marvel doesn't appear to have a cape.
Nexus has flared gloves and folded boots. Marvel's costume is smooth.
There are not enough good male hairstyles to fault Nexus's choice, nor compare it to Marvel, because then a large quantity of male characters are also guilty.
There are cowls that are a closer match to Marvel, yet Nexus uses the very common "ruin" style.
[/ QUOTE ]
The alterations you list are actually fairly minor. Combine the similarities PLUS the mention in his bio that his character was inspired by Captain Marvel, and the similarity is far more than passing. Even without that mention, the resemblance is INSTANTLY noticeable. That's more than "passing".
[/ QUOTE ]
I was speaking strictly of the costume, and it's not as obvious as you're making it out to be, for the reasons I listed. When you consider the inherent similarity of some of the costume pieces available to players (Steel Helm, for example) I think this costume is a good example of NOT being similar.
[ QUOTE ]
Again thank you to the haters out there. I enjoy your letters. I enjoy erasing your letters. In fact, the next person who harasses me is going to get a letter themselves. With a notice about their harassment. So think about.
As I said I am not going to handle this out in public or put anything up for the trolls to read. The character is gone. End of story. I've taken the actual advice that the rational people here have given. If you want to continue to hate on myself, my friends or my characters I will look at you each sadly and walk away.
Thank you to those who have been a voice of reason here. I appreciate it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah. Sorry but I find it highly unlikely that anyone here is sending you hate mail. If you have recieved any PM's that you find offensive then you should petition them to the mods. Threatening to send a nasty letter back if you get anymore lowers you to their level.
I also question your definition of the word hate. Disbelieving accusations of highly suspect behaviour without evidence to back it up doesn't come anywhere close to being hate. If the letters contain more than that you will need to provide proof.
It's easy to make accusations and refuse to provide proof that doesn't exist. If you honestly wanted to keep this out of the public eye you never would have posted in this thread in the first place.
You got caught doing something wrong and you were held accountable for it. If you want to fight that decision you have been told what steps to take.
I think the issue here is, after 5 years this guy expects some sort of special treatment.
[ QUOTE ]
I think the issue here is, after 5 years this guy expects some sort of special treatment.
[/ QUOTE ]
He should know better.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Again thank you to the haters out there. I enjoy your letters. I enjoy erasing your letters. In fact, the next person who harasses me is going to get a letter themselves. With a notice about their harassment. So think about.
As I said I am not going to handle this out in public or put anything up for the trolls to read. The character is gone. End of story. I've taken the actual advice that the rational people here have given. If you want to continue to hate on myself, my friends or my characters I will look at you each sadly and walk away.
Thank you to those who have been a voice of reason here. I appreciate it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah. Sorry but I find it highly unlikely that anyone here is sending you hate mail. If you have recieved any PM's that you find offensive then you should petition them to the mods. Threatening to send a nasty letter back if you get anymore lowers you to their level.
I also question your definition of the word hate. Disbelieving accusations of highly suspect behaviour without evidence to back it up doesn't come anywhere close to being hate. If the letters contain more than that you will need to provide proof.
It's easy to make accusations and refuse to provide proof that doesn't exist. If you honestly wanted to keep this out of the public eye you never would have posted in this thread in the first place.
You got caught doing something wrong and you were held accountable for it. If you want to fight that decision you have been told what steps to take.
[/ QUOTE ]Pretty much exactly my reaction.
And the "I'm right, and anyone that disagrees with me is a troll!" attitude only makes the feeling that you're just out for attention even stronger.
+1
Positron's i13 letter: We are trying to make PvP more accessible to new players, while giving experienced PvP'ers the advantage that comes with formulating tactics around the new systems we're putting in place. PvP from now on will be on our priority list. If something isn't working out, we'll be in there tweaking it and making it work, for the entire future of the product, not just Issue 13.