Offline Character Designer

Most of us are aware that an offline character creater/designer was released in Asia a while back, but the official download is no longer avaliable.

Well, anyway, my question is that is it illegal to have it downloaded on your computer? I've got it downloaded and I have translated the Asian text to English; so it's all good

Is it illegal, though? If so, I'll send it to my recycle bin a.s.a.p

EDIT: Just before this occurs, please don't send a PM requesting where I downloaded it from. I will not give you the information for possibly obvious reasons

I wont send u a PM, i G**gle it...a while ago...

*dons his "pure speculation" hat*

Possibley yes, the reason you won't find an english version of that program is because Marvel would throw a hissy fit at NCsoft for releasing such a thing that could potentialy be used to make wolvereen and co. breaching thier copyright yadda yadda.

Diferent copyright laws over in asia lets them get away with such things there. At the worst you'll probobly get a cease and dissist order if marvel find out about it.

*removes hat*

Either way I wouldn't want it on my machine. Just incase.

Not got it, don't want it.

My response to Marvel would be screw you. Providing I'm not releasing stuff for others to see and not attempting to make money off anything. They haven't got a leg to stand on.

What he said... its not illegal and there is no reason for it to be illegal. It is software that was released and as far as i knew was just decommissioned after the whole korea thing failed. I had and probably still have it on my old machine and wouldn't think for a second to remove it especially over something so silly.

It was legal when released theres even less reason for it to be anymore illegal now enjoy your fun!

Why would you want it anyway? It's massively out of date, hasn't even got the CoV costume pieces let along all the new ones released since then, and buggy as all hell...

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Why would you want it anyway? It's massively out of date, hasn't even got the CoV costume pieces let along all the new ones released since then, and buggy as all hell...

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Considering I rarely play red side anymore, that's not much of a problem

Yeah, I must admit, it has a fair amount of bugs. They haven't been occuring much for me, though.

I have got someone to assist me with adding the more recent costume pieces to it.

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Not got it, don't want it.

My response to Marvel would be screw you. Providing I'm not releasing stuff for others to see and not attempting to make money off anything. They haven't got a leg to stand on.

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they do, NCsoft has an agreement that the whole program has to stay inside asia and that the program has to be off the internet.
as long as this agreement exists, no one has a leg to stand on but marvel, so it's kinda the other way around.

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Not got it, don't want it.

My response to Marvel would be screw you. Providing I'm not releasing stuff for others to see and not attempting to make money off anything. They haven't got a leg to stand on.

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they do, NCsoft has an agreement that the whole program has to stay inside asia and that the program has to be off the internet.
as long as this agreement exists, no one has a leg to stand on but marvel, so it's kinda the other way around.

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Actually they don't.

Marvel cannot do anything to me because I am not breaching any of their copyrights... or if I was they would have to prove it. As I said in my original comment if I'm not actually doing anything they can see with it then it would be nigh impossible to prove anything.

Marvel could say to NCSoft you aren't stopping people using this software. But there is nothing Marvel can do.

Now potentially NCSoft could have a hissy fit at me, but again they'd have to find out that I was using it... bearing in mind I have a current client and a paid account so even if they thought I was using it I could turn round and say "I'm using the in game version thanks."

Lastly Marvel could have a poke at NCSoft, but as far as I know the only downloads now (not even looked so this is a guess) are from people downloaded form the Asian sites. The program is unsupported and fairly buggy (broken?) so its unlikely that a)Marvel will do anything and b)That NCSoft will make any concerted effort to stamp out its use.

Now if a fan made version or update came a long then I suspect there might be repercussions for that... but that would be a different matter.

There actually is a fan-made version. IIRC, it even contains the Valkyrie costume pieces (from the Mac Pack).

Something occured that had made him/her remove the download link from the website, though.

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There actually is a fan-made version. IIRC, it even contains the Valkyrie costume pieces (from the Mac Pack).

Something occured that had made him/her remove the download link from the website, though.

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hint hint, marvel, like i already said

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Not got it, don't want it.

My response to Marvel would be screw you. Providing I'm not releasing stuff for others to see and not attempting to make money off anything. They haven't got a leg to stand on.

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they do, NCsoft has an agreement that the whole program has to stay inside asia and that the program has to be off the internet.
as long as this agreement exists, no one has a leg to stand on but marvel, so it's kinda the other way around.

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Actually they don't.

Marvel cannot do anything to me because I am not breaching any of their copyrights... or if I was they would have to prove it. As I said in my original comment if I'm not actually doing anything they can see with it then it would be nigh impossible to prove anything.

Marvel could say to NCSoft you aren't stopping people using this software. But there is nothing Marvel can do.

Now potentially NCSoft could have a hissy fit at me, but again they'd have to find out that I was using it... bearing in mind I have a current client and a paid account so even if they thought I was using it I could turn round and say "I'm using the in game version thanks."

Lastly Marvel could have a poke at NCSoft, but as far as I know the only downloads now (not even looked so this is a guess) are from people downloaded form the Asian sites. The program is unsupported and fairly buggy (broken?) so its unlikely that a)Marvel will do anything and b)That NCSoft will make any concerted effort to stamp out its use.

Now if a fan made version or update came a long then I suspect there might be repercussions for that... but that would be a different matter.

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Actually it is a bit more complicated than that.

In a nutshell NCsoft is guilty of copyright breach each time you recreate a copyrighted character with the CoX character generator.
Now, with online character creation only NCsoft can put up a successful defense against Marvel or other third parties, because they can claim that potentially illegal user-created content is under their supervision and that sufficient measures are taken to keep those copyright breaches to a tolerable minimum.
Publishing an offline character generator would weaken or even defeat this defense (depending on the possibilities it offers) since this would rob NCsoft of the possibility to control user-created content and punish EULA violators... and we both (and NCsoft) know that people would proudly publish their copyright breaching creations via Youtube, homepages or similar portals each giving their respective copyright owners plenty of ammunition to use against NCsoft at court. And from there things can get quite expensive without proper defense.
If I were a manager for a software publisher I would rather have my testicles chewed off by a toothless goat rather than invite financial disaster like that.

True. But what I said and maintain Marvel can do nothing to me. ((Or perhaps to say that there is no realistic way for them to find out that I use it and even if they did it is seriously unlikely that they would try and sue a user and not the creator.))

Or as I originally stated Marvel being idiots and suing NCSoft over the chance of infringements wouldn't frighten me away from using the creator if I wanted to.

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There actually is a fan-made version. IIRC, it even contains the Valkyrie costume pieces (from the Mac Pack).

Something occured that had made him/her remove the download link from the website, though.

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hint hint, marvel, like i already said

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Far more likely NC soft or Paragon Marvel can only get involved if either there copy rights are breached (and even then for them to have a good strong case you would have to be making some kind of profit from the copies or passing them of as your own work)

or if the software was in direct violation of the Marvel/NC soft agreement but as no one except those involved in the agreement know whats in it its impossible to say.

But if the software was fan made its more likely NCsoft

I should add that there's nothing legally stopping NCsoft or Paragon releasing a character creator the agreement reached between Marvel and NCsoft was just that. basically it was a case of we wont take you to court if you police your self.

either party could probably brake that deal then it would be up to the courts and that's where things get iffy on one hand NCsoft could in theory be made to heavily censor the costume creator but on the other Marvel could be loose which would weaken there IP. So the other option is a agreement which allows both companies to move forward with there respective IPs.

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Or as I originally stated Marvel being idiots and suing NCSoft over the chance of infringements wouldn't frighten me away from using the creator if I wanted to.


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Exactly. Which is just the problem NCsoft faces concerning such an offline character creator. People do things, NCsoft gets sued over it and can do entirely nothing against the ones responsible since what happens offline is quite impossible to police. Not a good thing for NCsoft.

But the question if something is legal is not entirely the same as the question if you can get away with it.
Since technically NCsoft is considered the offending party when it comes to copyright issues there is no question that you can get away with it as far as lawsuits go. And if you never use the offline character generator for re-creations of copyrighted characters there is no legal case to begin with. (Just like when Marvel tried to sue NCsoft a few years back and it came out that the copyrighted characters Marvel had documented ingame had all been created at Marvel's disposition. No actual copyright infringement, no case. )
Now, if we are talking about EULA breach or no that is a bit different. Possession alone can hardly be a problem since the utility was a download from an official source. But for the same reason it is considered part of the "game" as defined in the EULA. So, tampering with that utility (e.g. translating the Korean text to English) is probably a EULA breach (although I am not even 100% sure about that since Korea is a special case).
Well, I would not expect NCsoft to send a SWAT team your way over something like that.

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I should add that there's nothing legally stopping NCsoft or Paragon releasing a character creator the agreement reached between Marvel and NCsoft was just that. basically it was a case of we wont take you to court if you police your self.

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Evidence pls,

Seriously, last time I checked the full details of the actual agreement had never been released so we can't confirm anything.

Which is exactly my point the agreement was made out of court largely because of marvels stupidity in using the creator to create there characters and then using that as a base for there claim in fact had it went to court it could have went really bad for marvel as if you read the EULA it states something along the lines of

"you grant NCsoft full rights to do what ever the hell they want with the characters they create"

and some one at Marvel agreed to that and then created marvel owned characters in the game that's a pretty large doh moment.

but of course I'm only guessing at what the agreement says because as it never went to court its not available to take a look at but it makes since that its something along the lines of we wont sue if you police your self as that's basically whats happening marvel aren't suing and NC are policing the infringements.

PS

I wonder if we'll see marvel go after Cryptic for champions or if the agreement that was made included any future games developed/published by the involved parties.

When Marvel tried to take NcSoft to court, claiming copyright infringement, because the character creator gave people the ability to create Marvel characters i'm sure it was laughed at by NcSoft.

NcSoft's argument was that Marvel would then have to sue every pencil and pen manufacturer as those items also give people the ability to draw the exact same Marvel characters but without any kind of policing.

I was told this by Rockjaw and Bridger at a player meet and unless Marvel tried to sue NcSoft twice (once for the in-game creator and once for the offline one) then i would be inclined to say they have no actual agreement with Marvel about the offline creator... They probably just removed it because it's not worth the hassle. Plus that would be another program they'd have to update.


On a side note, player created ones will probably be taken down because of NcSoft's IP not because of Marvel.

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On a side note, player created ones will probably be taken down because of NcSoft's IP not because of Marvel.

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I wonder if they would they seem quite happy to ignore mids and its predecessors and things like paragon wiki which all yous images and icons from the IP some of the stuff on paragon wiki is even removed from the game files (and we all know how they view interfering with the game files) so maybe if some one did create a functioning offline creator it would get ignored (cant see it being endorsed) by NC.

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On a side note, player created ones will probably be taken down because of NcSoft's IP not because of Marvel.

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They don't mind us using the IP as long as we don't charge for it. More likely its to do with the fact that to make a working costume creator you need at some point to reverse engineer the game.

We can't be treading too cautiously when it comes to IP violation. With regards to the Korean offline character tool, I believe it is not meant to be used outside Korea but I'll have to get a confirmation on that.

If you are thinking of using or creating a similar tool that requires reverse engineering the game source, then I have to advise against it as it does go against our User Agreement (see section 3. LICENSE TO USE).

I know this is something that some of you would love to see us providing support for but right now I'm afraid this is just not feasible.

The whole thing with Marvel is that they like to growl at anyone who even looks like violating their IP. I don't imagine that they really want an expensive court battle but they know that being seen to be publicly willing to do so might discourage anyone else from "messing with their stuff".
Its kind of hard to see how the character creator could really have threatened Marvel. Lets face it, if you're going to seriously try to stop someone from creating images of your characters how are you going to stop someone with an art package or just a bunch of coloured pencils? They just want to make sure that no-one is under the impression that COH is in any way an "official" Marvel product. Which is why the cossie creator has a distinct lack of spider chest emblems or bats for that matter.

To be fair to marvel (provided im remembering correctly) they don't have much choice but to growl at every one who even looks like they mite be infringing on there IP as to maintain there IP rights they have to actively defend them.

Its partly to do with US law though. From recollection if a US company allows someone to use their IP without challenge at some later point they challenge it they can lose due to not challenging immediately.

If FreeBee Comic Company start releasing a wolverine comic (even if they don't charge) which is clearly not a fanfic (where you assign copyright to the original owner of the character). Yet Marvel do nothing to them.

Ten years later NotFree Comic Company do the same but start to charge. Marvel tries to sue NFCC due to IP infringment.

However when it gets to court the judge could easily throw Marvel out because they failed to protect their IP before. So Marvel (indeed any company) have to be quite fierce and protect their IP even when its not really being threatened because it might be one day and they don't want to lose it because they let people do stuff with it before.

IIRC one of the reasons Blizzard took the Glider program (a WoW bot) to court was to protect their IP, if they hadn't it could have led to other people not only making bots in the future but Blizzard not having any control even though the bots were making use of their code.