http://newsarama.com/forums/showthread. ... adid=21377
"According to a report from the Associated Press, Marvel has filed suit against the producers of the popular super-hero MMORPG, City of Heroes, NC Soft and Cryptic Studios Inc. The suit claims that the game violates Marvel’s trademark characters. Marvel is seeking unspecified damages as well as an injunction to force the two companies to stop using its characters.
While the game does not have, or feature Marvel characters, Marvel claims that the game’s character-creation engine allows players to create characters which are virtually identical to its characters, such as a giant, green ‘tanker’ style character whose powers are science based, which would be similar to the Hulk; or a mutant-based characters whose powers and costume could be seen as being nearly identical to Wolverine.
Marvel also claims that the game allows players to name their characters after its characters, though, according to the City of Heroes rulebook, players are not allowed to name their characters after copyrighted characters, and doing so is a violation of the game's Terms of Service; though quasi-identical variations would be able to get through the name system - for example, the City of Heroes Official Strategy Guide (licensed by Prima, and approved by NCSoft and Cryptic Studio) includes a comic strip where three characters that look like Marvel's Wolverine, calling themselves Wulferine, Wolvereen, and Wulverine, joke about who's the "real" character.
While Marvel claims that NCSoft and Cryptic Studios are responsible for what is on their servers where player play the game, at issue is also whether or not the companies can be held responsible for what players wish to do, and whether or not NCSoft and Cryptic should be acting as de facto agents for Marvel in actively protecting Marvel’s copyrights.
Also mentioned in the suit is Marvel’s allegation that the ability of players to create characters so close to Marvel characters has disrupted its business prospects for seeing its own MMORPG based on Marvel characters, which has been in development at Vivendi for years.
If the suit does go to court, pundits are already pointing out that it will be a landmark case in the matter of electronic rights.
From the AP Article by Alex Veiga:
”The Marvel lawsuit appears to be the first to raise this question in the scope of an online game. But early copyright infringement lawsuits brought by recording companies against pioneer file-sharing service Napster successfully argued Napster was liable for its customers' sharing of music online because they could do so only by accessing the company's computer system.
”The argument can still be made that "City of Heroes'' is only empowering users to the same degree that an establishment like Kinkos enables customers to make paper copies of copyrighted material, said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the virtual world or is that fair use?'' von Lohmann said. "This is really untested ground in the courts.''
The move is in line with Marvel's previous actions, specifically in June of 2003, when Marvel shut down a site that provided skins (designs for characters) resembling Marvel characters for Freedom Force. In that instance though, Marvel went after the producers of the skins (who were not doing it for profit), rather than Irrational Games, the studio which produces Freedom Force. With City of Heroes you cannot import skins which are external to the game, rather all characters, from look to powers, must be created using the game's tools."
Oh fer...
i'm not speaking of you good players, i'm speaking of those neat little twelve-year-olds that think of the game as their own personal a$$hattery grounds...... sorry, i'm a little impassioned about this subject.....
