NCSoft Declines More Interviews from Increasing Gaming Press Requests

Plan Z is for us to attempt to create some kind of player made and sun online superhero experience as a new home for our unique community - some early work for it has been going on since pretty soon after the closure announcement.

We can blame Nexon

Actually, i think it's the other way around...they give you the right to use but do not relinquish ownership of any content associated with the IP in Section 6 of the EULA

They also defined content as anything related to the game that isn't software or service and software being software provided by NCSoft including those installed on your computer.

I guess Character ID is the name of your characters also.

I think they also give themselves a provision to go after anything that exports those content like copying costumes to a third party. Whether or not they do anything about that is up to them. They probably won't.



There's also something about emulating the software in section 7...section 2 has something about agreeing not to reverse engineer.

I love that you guys are spending your final hours on the Titanic arguing if liability for damaged luggage is covered by the shipping company's insurance policy or the customers...

People, the luggage is going down with the ship... Now either sink or swim but stop worrying about the bloody claim policy!

Except that's complete bunk.

17 U.S.C. § 103 states that the copyright of a derivative work -- at least the portion of the work that was uniquely created by you -- rests with the creator of the derived work. This happens automatically.

17 U.S.C. § 204(a) states that a transfer of copyright ownership requires a written and signed contract to be valid. Click-throughs may not apply, better luck next time.

17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(1) states that "A derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after its termination, but this privilege does not extend to the preparation after the termination of other derivative works based upon the copyrighted work covered by the terminated grant."

Translation: If they grant you a license to use their IP like backstory and costume pieces in order to create your character, which they have to do either explicitly or implicitly for you to be able to play the game at all, then even once those rights are terminated you may continue to use them in the context of the character that you created. You can't create any NEW characters with that IP should they explicitly revoke the license, which also requires written notification, but they can't stop you from using your existing ones.

And they know it, too. If you really could sign away IP by clicking a button, then there would be no need for the lines AFTER that part:

i.e. "In case the above text is preempted by actual law, you grant us a license to use your IP."

EULAs are all about throwing as much BS as you can at somebody to see what sticks. Half the stuff in there is unenforceable and they know it, hence the contingency after contingency:

Actually, the IP license might have to be modified in any event. I'll have to double check but I'm fairly sure that you can't actually grant an irrevocable license.

Yes, 17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(3) codifies in law a termination option 35 years after the publication of the work. Sure it's 35 years, but it's yet another part of the EULA that is illegal. So everybody make sure to mark your calendars to send NCSoft an official letter if they're still around in 35 years.

Seems very Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to me.

I wasn't suggesting you can't contest it, just that it's there and allows them to take action.

And clickwrap agreements are getting traction as far as being enforceable.

Link

Full disclosure...i sort of already switched ships shortly after Freedom. I'm just looking at this as, like always, possible opportunities to gain information.

I already got a lot more links added to my collection.

When there are no life boats (after the captain has graciously given us passengers a few hours to live after purposefully hitting an iceberg) arguing about travel insurance is as valid as anything else.

Ogi wins.

And with the Post of the Beast, no less.

Time for some Iron Maiden.

Gratuitously ignoring the fact that the lack of lifeboats is due to the cheapskate passengers...

I'm sure what I paid for my state room covered a few of the people down in steerage.

The for-profit element had nothing to do with the actual legal grounds for judgment. The statement implies that the judgment was primarily based on 17.12, 1201: "Circumvention of copyright protection systems." The WoW private server actively bypassed copy protection systems built into WoW to prevent WoW clients from running on unauthorized servers.

City of Heroes has no such protections to break.

Contract law is always superceded by statutory law. Copyright law isn't just silent on the matter, it explicitly states that copyright cannot be transferred except in one way only: by a written signed document that explicitly names the work being transferred. Saying "we own everything you make" would be an attempt to make playing a game into a work for hire relationship as far as US law is concerned, which is blatantly illegal.

Moreover, judges tend to note legislative history in interpreting the law. This clause was put into Copyright law explicitly for the purpose of preventing authors from being coerced into signing their rights away in the manner the EULA requests.

In other words, even if the EULA was theoretically enforceable in the matter of authorship rights, it would *still* be overridden by Copyright law which explicitly covers this situation.

You can grant irrevocable licenses. What you cannot ordinarily do is grant irrevocable ownership rights. The right NCSoft grants to itself in the EULA is a non-exclusive license. This means to the degree I own anything, I'm free to use it elsewhere (I'm not free to use IP that NCSoft owns outside the context of the game). Because this license is non-exclusive, its not an ownership right as defined by Title 17.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I didn't say it was. I mentioned it since that adds to incentive for pursuing litigation to cite damages.



Heh, like i said in what you quoted...i didn't say you couldn't contest it.

But there are precedents of enforcing clickwrap agreements. I'm having trouble looking for cases specifically for character creation but not much luck. All i keep seeing is referencing user generated content or Second Life, but that might be a bad example since i think they allow users to retain ip rights somewhat...unlike many mmorpg EULAs.

I did see this blurb though that mentions a case that could be used for precedent but can't find the original court docs...maybe since it's in Korea.

Maybe someone can help dig that court doc up...that blurb doesn't give much detail.

A copyright claim like this will likely be tossed out the court automatically (one that attempted to claim ownership of some one's IP just based on an ELUA.)

Some people have a bit too much of a phobia to lawsuits, but not all lawsuits get to court. I'm not exactly sure who is in charge, or the exact process, but once you file most types of lawsuits some one will look over it and decide if there is a valid case.

Even if some one contested it, this is one of those cases that would be so easy to win, you can safely say "bring it" and counter-sue for all court costs and lost time.

Just to make this bit clear:

I own Starsman, his concept, backstory (that has zero dependencies on the CoH universe) and general appearance.

I can not, however, extract his 3D model and use that 3D model freely, that model is made with NCSoft owned art assets. I can do whatever I want with it in my computer, though. Just not distribute any material generated with those assets.

I can, however, sit down in blender and model my own Starsman, or go to Champions and create the closest thing their tools allow me to create.

The enforceability of clickwrap agreements is not at issue. Contracts cannot override Copyright law under any circumstances whatsoever in the US. The precedent in question would not be applicable to a copyright case in the US, as Korean law is different than US law and does not have jurisdiction over my authorship rights within the US.

Let me put it this way. US Copyright law forbids me from transferring my copyright rights through an EULA even if I want it to. I'm not even allowed to voluntarily do so. The law was designed to make it impossible for me to do this, even if I have a gun to my head, because the law concluded many authors in the past had that figurative gun to their heads by virtue of their extremely untenable negotiating position.

In other words, the law doesn't just say NCSoft can't take my rights this way, it says the stronger thing that I can't even given them away this away even if I want to, and the law doesn't recognize any such attempt by me to do so. I can only transfer rights through the method proscribed by Copyright law, and no contract (except for the work-for-hire exception noted in the law) can alter that requirement under federal law.

Also, the article itself suggests that Korean law has similar protections afforded to creators:

(emphasis mine)

I'm not as knowledgeable about Korean law, so I cannot confirm those, but I mention them specifically to suggest that the earlier passage mentioned ("...A recent judgment by the Seoul District Court...") in context appears to refer to the question of the tangibility of game constructs, and not the intellectual property related to them.

basically.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Sounds like normality for here since at least i6.

Just replace the subject with any subject and that sums up the average convo.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!