COH Mythbusters

Myth: Hearing people from the defender forum ***** and moan about healers is always welcome, and doesn't get old at all.

Well, again I have no experience with Seeker Drones, and the -to hit would certainly help you survive the return fire (I won't call it an "alpha" any more). However I was responding to the comment that you could drop two Trip Mines on an enemy spawn, instead of one Time Bomb. That first Trip Mine is going to scatter them around and, unless it is a very small spawn, some of the return fire is going to hit you and interrupt. I guess you could place it while they are being knocked back and let it go off as they all run back to melee you.

Anyway, it is an interesting power and maybe I'll get a chance to play Traps one day.

to add to this one:
defenders have been buffed lately... i hate myself.

I wonder if Ascendant had to sign anything when they put him in the civilian chatter or the CoH comic

I'm sorry, but you're actually wrong. I don't know what else to tell you but you gravely misunderstand copyright law.

I used to own a small record label, and I had to deal with IP law all the time. Copyright protects a specific work and that work only. It doesn't protect a design, concept or idea. It certainly doesn't protect a name or word. Names and words cannot be copyrighted. The FAQ on the LoC's website says this explicitly.

Your context is incorrect. A collage is not protected by copyright unless you own the copyright on the works in the collage. Which in CoX you do not.

No it's not, because any character you make in the character creator is using artwork that you have no copyright to. You have a license, in the EULA, to use that artwork for a specific purpose. But outside of that purpose, you cannot just appropriate NCSoft's art and call it your own because you assembled that art in a particular way. That's not even a grey area.

No, it doesn't. I've read all IP law very closely from 1936 onward. I've had to defend some IP from people in the past. I know very clearly what it does and does not cover.

Actually, the 1976 ruling made copyright law more restrictive, not less.

Which is exactly what I said. Thank you for acknowledging I was right. It has to be a SPECIFIC WORK. Like "THIS picture" not just "A picture".

Any picture made with the character creator is using copyrighted art, Copyright NCSoft, and therefore you cannot afix a copyright to any image you make with NCSoft's tools.

True. But again, they're very different branches of law.

[quote]Trademarks are just that: they are marks intended to identify a particular business or trade. Trademark protection *doesn't* protect against copying or usage per se: it protects against anyone else using the mark for commercial purposes within the same basic business or field.

Sort of. Trademark law is very complex. A public school in Florida (a not for profit government agency) created some unique artwork of disney characters to put on it's walls. It was successfully sued by the Disney corporation to remove those images, based on trademark, as it implied that Disney endorsed their school. This is called Dilution.

To prove Dilution, you do not need to prove that the violator is using your work commercially. You just need to prove that it in some way reduces your branding capability. If I create a Star Wars website that ends up very popular, even if I make no money on it, LucasArt can (and does) require that site shut down based on Dilution.

Since that's private, obviously they wouldn't know. But Trademark law requires companies to defend their trademarks in the public arena or lose them. If a company ignores a public trademark violation, they risk losing the trademark. This is called Abandonment.

Actually, you technically are, but since it's not in the public domain, it doesn't matter from a legal perspective. You don't need to be doing it commercially. If you draw a picture of Batman and put it on your personal non-commercial website, DC Comics can ABSOLUTELY assert trademark rights and require you to remove that picture.

In the second case, you're likely in violation of both.

And the Trademark is the right you keep and grant NCSoft a license to according to the EULA, not the copyright. Because you own no copyright on any character made with NCSoft's copyrighted artwork. You only own a copyright on any text you type into the character biography. The artwork isn't yours, you have a limited license to use it to create a character, but you have no copyright on that character. Ergo, if you create Amazing Man with Face 3 and using the Vines costume set, and I make Mister Amazing using Face 3 and using the Vines costume set, I did not violate your copyright. You HAVE no copyright on the combination of Face 3 and the vines costume set, since face 3 and the vines costume set is 100% copyright NCSoft and we both created our characters using our limited license.

He has no rights over the specific character artwork in the game, in that case, unless he created the component artwork himself. Or unless NCSoft transfered the copyright to that character image to him. The specific "Castle" image in the game is copyright NCSoft.

Now, Castle may own the trademark of the character. Which is different. So he could re-create that character in another medium. But he couldn't use the specific artwork form in-game in another medium, since he doesn't own that artwork.

Again, unless he created the artwork for the in-game Castle, copyright has nothing to do with it and wouldn't come into play. Unless you are referring to the backstory, which of course could certainly be copyright.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Correction:

Fact: The most effective teams are the ones who have players who don't suck.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

It'd stop if they did their job and healed people properly! ;-)

He didn't, but the contract he did sign forces him to wear a replica Castle costume when at the office and when attending CoH/V related events. I hear the most annoying part is having to spirit gum on the goatee every morning.

A character is considered a "specific work", the name can't be copyrighted on it's own but just like a song gets copyrighted and it's title is part of the copyright the name of a character will be part of a character copyright.

I think the entire point here is you undermine what a "character design" consists off. If you don't take them seriously and just think about what you can do with the character designer, then we can say you are right. You can't copyright that design. However, go ALL the way through the designer and there is more than just a costume design. You have name field, you have biography field, you have origin field, and you have power selections.

The compilation of: Name, Origin, Biography and abilities are the real character design here. The costume is just an extension that visualizes said character and off course, you can stamp a trademark on the name itself for further protection (and this protection is not copy protection but to avoid confusing the consumer.)

I still do. And I'm sorry but its you that are misunderstanding copyright law. The fact that you can state that a collage is a "derivative work" and "cannot be copyright protected" is trivial proof to me. By definition derivative works are copyright protected by copyright law. The only question is whether the person making such a work had the original right to incorporate the individual elements. If they did not, they would be in violation of the copyright protection of the elements.

As a legal matter: if it cannot be copyright protected, its not a derivative work because its basically not a "work" within the context of copyright law.


Wrong in two ways. First, a collage does not require copyright ownership in the underlying works, only permission to use which I have: the EULA grants that permission to use the works to create characters.

Second, even if I *didn't* have permission, that's irrelevant to the question at hand. Well established precident states I nevertheless own the copyright on the elements of the work I created that still exist in tangible form, and the specific choice and arrangement of the character creator elements is both separate from them and fixed in tangible form. "The aspects of a derivative work added by the derivative author are that author's property, but the element drawn from the pre-existing work remains on grant from the owner of the pre-existing work." Stewart v Abend, Justice O'Conner writing for the Supreme Court.

In that case, the author did not have permission to use the underlying work, but still has rights in their derivative work. In this case, the collage as the unique artistic arrangement of the elements is copyright protected, but the collage author has no copyright to the individual elements within the collage.

What I don't own is the copyright on the entire derivative work including the character creator artwork as a whole, but that was never in dispute because you can't use NCSoft's intellectual property outside of the game without permission either way, and that wasn't the issue. The issue was whether you can reuse your characters minus the artwork and without referencing protected elements of the game backstory. And the answer is still yes.

And I'm getting tired of quoting precident and basically hearing "nuh uh." This case cites a Supreme Court of the United States decision, and it cites the opinion of the court in reference to a case where the author of a derivative work did not, ultimately, have the underlying rights to elements contained within the work. Under those circumstances, the statement that the author of the derivative work nevertheless has rights to their own contribution in that specific case is not just relevant, its essentially legally definitive.

This discussion is quickly becoming boring, because there are no actual relevant legal points being brought up to argue against. Just statements of opinion that are in direct contradiction to the law.


Also:

I'm well aware of the legal principle of dilution. That is why I was very specific in my example to pick one where dilution was not an issue. Profit or revenue is not the issue, and that is not the sense in which I used "non-commercial" but rather in the sense of not being venture exposed to any member of the public. The school has lots of opportunities for dilution. My bedroom does not.