Concerns about the new EULA

Having your parents enter into a contract on your behalf (which is essentially what is happening here if you're under 18) is not against the law. All of the other things you just listed are either illegal for under 18s to engage in or would fall under exactly the same restrictions as the EULA (in the case of most credit agreements).

It's only a violation of your privacy and civil rights if you don't agree to it and they do it anyway.

That said I don't like it. I understand they want to watch out for botting which is rampant in another NC Soft game where the botters/goldselllers have destroyed that game's economy. That led to a violent round of purges of the innocent and guilty alike, resulting in there only being 4 servers left and the game not even on the market 2 years yet. It's a fun game, but the economy stinks and the paranoia level is deservedly high among the playerbase.

I would rather there be a clear line about only watching for purposes of the game and not my financial information, political views, etc. Game employees have been known to do shady things. There's nothing to say a fired employee won't just start up a new goldselling business using customer lists, now he may decided to skip the marketing and go straight to your bank account if the EULA's tools include a keylogger.

Zwil posted earlier that they won't and are _not_ doing this. That is the whole point, if they aren't doing this they don't need carte blanch legalese saying they can.

shakes head in amazement at the shear density.

Because the EULA is them asking your permission to do X. If you don't agree to it then you don't sign in and play. It is that simple. You are granting them permission by the signing in. One of it's purposes is to avoid the asking every single bloody time the release an update to anything.

Hello ... The entire document is unenforceable on everyone. And yes they know this but the point isn't the enforceability of it but instead that by agreeing to it you theoretically have read it and thus can't turn around and sue them for doing something covered by it. A EULA is essentially a bit fat CYA document.

Hyper, you completely do not understand the context of my post that you quoted. As a result, what you replied with was irrelevant and, because of the condecending way in which you posted incorrect info, pretty dumb. You can go back and figure that out or not, I don't really care, but don't expect further effort on my part to explain it to you. The info you need to figure it out is right there in plain text.

Yeah, I don't. I was responding to someone who said something about websites. Jesus.

Simple. If you think that NCSoft will do things that you don't want them to do then don't play any of their games.

Really it is that simple. If you don't trust them then why the #$@$ are you playing their game in the first place? The game itself is running on your computer and could in theory be doing anything it wants to including turning on your webcam and streaming the images from it to Zwillinger's desk.

{Note I don't claim that it is doing any of the above just that it could if someone wanted to bother to program it to.} [So if you want to be paranoid about it fine but sheesh.]

Insults really don't advance your argument at all.

Here's the entirety of your post.

You're talking about how you have never seen a EULA that makes claims that this one does.

In short, you haven't read a lot of EULAs.

You then assert that it's not possible to enforce/do without installing software.

In which case YOU have ALREADY installed the software for them.

And, in addition to reading the EULAs on various websites, go look at the EULAs as presented inside various games. Actually READ them.

Then tell me what I do and don't understand.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

in that case it was. As several others pointed out in detail what he/she was asking for was not at all thought out in any way shape or form.

Right we have notice that you might be cheating so we want to watch you in game and see if you are? Do we have your permission? No? Fine your account it terminated.

Your saying that wasn't a badly thought out idea and point to try and make?

If you expect to profit off of an original character or otherwise keep sole ownership of it, then it's best if you don't introduce it into City of Heroes. That's been the rule of thumb since day one.

That said, the clause in question primarily is there so that NCSoft doesn't have to pay you a license if you've published the character in another medium and they decide to use it in a story or promotional material or something. Remember how Ascendent showed up in an issue of the Top Cow comic and Amberleigh(?) and the others in the Blue King comics? I'm sure that those players were thrilled to get a guest shot and had no ideas about profiting from their appearances in the CoH comics, but that EULA clause insured that NCSoft didn't have to worry about it.

Basically, if you want to keep all possible rights to your character then keep it out of the game.

I'm saying that insulting your opponent casts you in a poor light, not your opponent.

Thanks for posting this response, Zwillinger. I still don't like the wording in the EULA, but I appreciate the detailed response to concerns about it.

and I don't, despite how very much I'd like to play characters like Lusca Kraken or Naiki Semezou

No, that's an oversimplification of something that, yes, is not very complicated, but by oversimplifying it you're creating a kind of strawman position.

Look, I want to play their game, because I like their game. I don't want the terms playing their games to allow them to do things I don't want them to have the right to do. Giving up your protections on the basis that no one is currently abusing that access is just asking later people to take advantage of the protections you gave away.

I understand fully that, say, for NCSoft to use these EULA terms to install a keylogger, find my banking login, and steal money from my bank account is clearly illegal. The EULA would not even begin to protect them if they did something like that. On the other hand, using their malware/bot detector or some diagnostic tool to find every piece of software I have installed on my PC or my browsing history is not illegal, but it's an invasion of my privacy.

Even if they do nothing overtly illegal with information gleaned from my PC, they could potentially sell it to folks who desperately want to try to monetize such personal data. Zwil tells us they would never do such a thing, and I take his word for that, but the EULA does not disallow it, so someone later on could change NCSoft's direction regarding it. Such data, once obtained, is theirs forever. Even if they don't sell it, it might be stored on an unsecure server and then stolen by hackers, to be sprayed all over the internet. See Sony's recent joys.

To which some posters here will probably be all like "oh, NOES! Not a list of installed software!" And for most people, that's probably a fair (if IMO naive) response. Preserving privacy is often about a lot of "what if" scenarios, and its very easy to dismiss the whole bag if you think none of those "what ifs" happen to apply to you. I like to err on the side of safety, and greater privacy. Maybe I don't know what the "what ifs" that apply to me actually all are. Maybe there are other people out there with more applicable "what ifs" than me. If I don't give away my right to privacy, I don't have to think of everything, and if my privacy is invaded, I can fall back on "hey, I never gave you permission to do that!"

I think people who live in wealthy, safe countries are often complacent about their privacy (among other things) and waive control of it too readily. There's a notion often trotted out that you have to live in a cave with no electricty to try and be smart about this stuff, but that's not true at all. But keeping on top of it takes effort, and people are lazy. Giving up our protections is convenient, unfortunately.

Because, as I've explained, I mostly trust them to not do what's overtly illegal, but not everything that is both legal and permitted under the EULA is something I want to grant them permission to do. Something doesn't have to be illegal or somehow overtly evil for me to not want them to do it. This EULA grants them permission to perform extraordinary, non-illegal invasions of privacy. If they later change their minds about how they use this permission, they're protected by the EULA unless they actually do violate a law.

I don't want to give them such permission, but I want to play the game. Because I want to play their game, I don't want to have to choose to not play the game in order to avoid granting them this permission. Therefore, I find it preferable to have a less onerous EULA than to stop playing the game. Is that really so hard to grasp?

If this type of privacy discussion is foreign to folks reading this, do some searching about user user website tracking and the debates around it. There are people who object to the notion of companies like Google (and many others) tracking uniquely identifiable individuals across the websites they visit. Bear in mind, these systems don't directly identify the users; they say "user X went to foo.org and bar.com", not "user X is John Smith". But it turns out that determined people are really good at using that sort of data to figure out that user X is John Smith. There's enough concern about this sort of thing that laws are being enacted around being able to opt out of this sort of tracking in the EU, and laws like that are at least being discussed in the US.

Now, in light of people not wanting their website visitation patterns to be tracked by third parties, even if the tracking data cannot (directly) identify the person being tracked, do you really think it's that big a stretch that people would not want to permit a service provider open access to their computer's memory and storage?

FFS, read what you quote.

I was responding about websites.

Uh, what about Brian Clevinger's Atomic Robo or Mercedes Lackey's Invasion? There's precedent that as long as you don't use City of Heroes trademarks (like the 5th Column or Rikti) that there won't be much, if any, push back.

Edit: I found this quote from Atomic Robo's artist, since I definitely remember teaming with Atomic Robo on Pinnacle back in the day:

So if you have an idea and make it in City of Heroes, it doesn't magically become NC Soft's.

It's true. Part of playing an MMO should be accepting that the thought police will ban you if you say bad things about them. That's why I'm The Foo here, and something else other places.

Yeah, because, you know, the logical extreme is the only place that could go, right?

You seem like a sober and rational fellow.

Like Eddie Valiant's brother?