License sharing and related account sanctioning Q
By
Amanita,
Posted on: 2009-07-18 01:40 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
While technically you aren't allowed to have your friend in on your account to try the game out, or otherwise take control of an account that isn't yours, that's not the sort of the GMs would come down on.
If, however, someone logs in to your account and starts throwing racial epithets or otherwise brings the GMs down on his head and your account gets suspended or banned for it, you can't take the defense "but it was someone else using my account!".
This extends to any other reason your account would be banned/suspended (like abusing the AE, for example). The act of letting someone borrow your account isn't wrong, but you have to be prepared to wear the consequences of anything they do while logged in to your account.
@Morac | Twitter
Trust the computer. The computer knows all.
In a word, yes.
The license specifically states:
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You may not (a) sublicense, rent, lease, loan or otherwise transfer the Software or the Service
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Since the "Service" is, by definition, "massively multiplayer subscription-based comic book hero and villain role-playing game(s) service and fee-based additional features including..." your friend is loaning you his account (for whatever purposes) and thereby breaking the terms of service. He is actually at fault.
Of course, I doubt the GMs will actually do anything about it unless they feel that you've actually done something that merits it. In general, I've seen that a large portion of the User Agreements for various MMOs include an exceeding large portion of specific situations that are quite easy to break within the terms of service, but it's not all that easy for them to actually tell if you're doing so. Most of the time, this is simply the lawyers simply saying, even though you don't actually own this account (which you don't and they're all rather explicit about this; you use the account to access the service that you are functionally renting), if you let someone else access it or do anything to it, it's your fault. They're pretty much excluding themselves from responsibility for keeping the account secure while simultaneously saying that you have no rights to the account beyond what they're willing to give you at any time.
You'd be amazed at everything that the User Agreement (and that most User Agreements and EULAs) actually say. Most people never bother to read them (even when they have to do the scroll-to-the-bottom thing) and are amazed to learn how few rights they actually have concerning the account that they presume to own when they actually come to a GM with a grievance. The 10 points of member conduct are actually quite interesting if you read them (especially the 4th, it's like they just went through a thesaurus looking for words synonymous with "jack-[censored]").
What about married couples?
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What about married couples?
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Good question but arnt they like legally joined and that makes up for it?
Although that may be only certain states...
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What about married couples?
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I'm not entirely up-to-date on marriage law (nor was I ever particularly, my only real exposure was the overview on parental custody law I read when I was 12 for the area I lived in), but I believe that married couples are still viewed as distinct from each other where this kind of stuff is concerned.
Once again, it's not like the GMs are going to ban you just because you loaned your account out to someone you trusted, even in the unlikely event that they could actually prove it. It's more like "we told you not to do this and it's not our fault that you let someone that was going to do something stupid onto the account we let you use". The only things that are likely to get you banned are actual visible infractions that are easy to record and significant enough that not punishing you would actually be detrimental to their own business (re: you broke the 6.d Member Conduct Rules involving interaction without other people or got into the game code).
Technically against the rules (the same as with married couples and family members).
However, the wording of the warning seems to be much more "People have been trying to say someone else was on their account and got them banned. Please be aware this excuse won't let you off".
In reality, there is absolutely no way for them to tell if more than one person uses an account. Even if you post here, saying that you do!
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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In reality, there is absolutely no way for them to tell if more than one person uses an account. Even if you post here, saying that you do!
[/ QUOTE ]Really? I thought that everything on the internet was true! My world has been shattered! *cries*
@Morac | Twitter
Trust the computer. The computer knows all.
I share my account with everyone I know.
For PL's!
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I share my account with everyone I know.
For PL's!
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The fact that you still have one implies that either you know very few people or are incredibly lucky. 
(Yeah, i know you're joking, but really the prohibition against allowing others to use your account is like a number of traffic laws: the odds of you being penalized for it alone are almost nil. However, it's also the exact opposite of a defense if your account is penalized for things other people do while using it. 
)
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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However, the wording of the warning seems to be much more "People have been trying to say someone else was on their account and got them banned. Please be aware this excuse won't let you off".
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This summarizes it well. My figuring is that it's aimed once more at the gold sellers/PL services - if you give someone your account info so that they can get you inf or level you, don't say it isn't your fault when they send off a couple thousand in game emails advertising and you get banned as a spammer.
Cool, thanks for the reply all. I feel less paranoid. 
Less... 
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Storylines:
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I actually got into this game because a friend let me make a few characters on his account and play with them when I came to his place to visit. He sat right there with me and walked me through the low levels of the game, telling me things that weren't in the tutorial. However, I did not abuse his trust by acting like a donkey's butt in game or otherwise bringing him trouble.
That was about 40 months ago, and I am still here
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I have a question about this and not sure where to post it so I thought this would be a good place.
It deals with this:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13769897
Now as you can see from this:
www.justiceknights.net
I make a comic book series using CoH.
I have an SG mate help me with this. In the helping, he sometimes lets me use his account. My use his account, it means log into it and do one of a few things:
1. design a toon. Afterwards he logs into that toon and stands in the right places I need him to stand in.
and/or
2. I use a toon of his and place him where he needs to be and take the shots, fully controlling it myself.
Does this break the rules?
Also, if I let my friend try out the game by logging into my account and trying stuff out, does this break the rules then too?
I thought this was dealing only for when you pay someone to do something like farm or pl your toon up. Like those annoying spam emails we all keep getting but the way its worded and sounds, it sounds as if what i said above and possibly even more are ban-able offenses.
Am I misunderstand this? A Dev official response would be great and lay any fears I and my friend (that helps me do the comics) has on the subject.
Thank you.
-Sin
Need help making your own CoH comics or read other's comics at cohcomicindex.com
www.jkcomics.com for Justice-Knights comics series and more!
Storylines:
Introductions, Obey,