Legal push for the release of the IP

[Ironwolf]

I believe you to be wrong on that Blue Pulsar, I played directly with Jim Butcher on his Harry Dresden character.

He would never in a million years do that if it left him open to a 3rd party using his creation freely. I beleive NCSoft had the right to using your character IN GAME - however they wished. Making them an NPC, Main Hero/Villain, making posters with you in them and so on - but they do not own creative rights to the character. Very similar to how a radio station can play your song to highlight a broadcast but not change your song and call it something new.

There is USE and then there is Creative license.

[Twisted Toon]

It happened rather abruptly from what players and even the devs can tell. We can speculate that it was a decision made a long time ago, and maybe even be right, but we have no proof of it. Which is why I said "from what can be told" and not "it's 100% certain."

Paragon Studios was blindsided by the decision, yes. The Execs at NCSoft took some time to think things over. They just didn't tell Paragon Studios until it was time to execute the decision that was already made.

[Codewalker]

Paragon Studios was blindsided by the decision, yes. The Execs at NCSoft took some time to think things over. They just didn't tell Paragon Studios until it was time to execute the decision that was already made.

In order to successfully prove fraud, however, you have to have hard evidence of that. Internal memos, recorded conversations, etc. It can be surprisingly difficult to prove willful fraud in court. Their defense will most likely be to place blame on Paragon for making those offerings without verifying with the parent company that they intended to continue operating the game.

One interesting tidbit is that if we do eventually get a community server, and hypothetically if NCSoft filed suit against the operator, discovery in civil suits works both ways. So that could potentially open the door for us getting our hands on all sorts of internal documents they might not want us to see.

[srmalloy]

Same goes for legos. It'd be hard to enforce, but a company could conceivably put a license agreement on ANYTHING, stating you can only use it for X number of years. And if you get caught with it after that date, you're in big doodoo.

What's really scary is, if nanotech could ever be made efficiently and cheap enough, this could actually become possible. Imagine every hammer having a tiny RF chip that doubles as a motion sensor. And if it gets swung into something after a certain date, it starts emitting a wi-fi signal to notify the business of a license violation.

...at which point the manufacturer receives a bill from the purchaser in the amount of a hundred times the cost of the hammer for charges incurred during the process of disposing of the hammer in an ecologically-safe manner.

Amazon has received a patent for creating artificial scarcity -- a process for putting controls on reselling and lending used digital goods -- that would allow publishers to control transfer to other hardware. For example, restricting an e-book to only allow it to be put on three devices, or prevent resale of downloaded music.

[TimtheEnchanter]

Amazon has received a patent for creating artificial scarcity -- a process for putting controls on reselling and lending used digital goods -- that would allow publishers to control transfer to other hardware. For example, restricting an e-book to only allow it to be put on three devices, or prevent resale of downloaded music.

Darn, for a minute I thought that was something else. Somewhere I read that the newest incarnation of the SOPA/PIPA war, was actually widening the definition of piracy. The entertainment industry allegedly wants to make it illegal to resell ALL PHYSICAL MEDIA.

[Joshex]

Be straight with me, (redirect this message to whom it concerns I don't care if it takes more than the normal support response time so long as I get an official reply)

What are your terms for potential buyers of the Intellectual property to City of Heroes/Villains?

do not reply with "we are not selling"

be realistic, if you were to consider selling what would the terms be?

Hi Clifford,

NCsoft does not plan to make City of Heroes available as open source or to sell the rights to use it.

then, if you have no plans to make the game available for sale, then why?

what is the purpose of keeping the rights? do you have definitely plans to use them? or are there some legal matters involved?

no matter the issues your company is facing regarding this, I would like an answer as to; why wont you sell the Itellectual Property rights of City of Heroes/Villains?

again take your time and give me an official answer.

right now I'm trying to get answers, rather than sit here wondering why and thinking up thier probable reasons I must find out why from thier own mouths.

if I know thier reasonsing we might be able to construct a case.

Hi Clifford,

Our last reply is the most information we can provide you in regards to your request. In regards to further details about our decision, we can not discuss this information as it is internal only.

Sorry that we could not help in the way that you wanted,

hmm.. only internal eh? very well we will see just how internal it is... I will now go consult the spam emperor

I'm sorry, But I must insist.

as the fans of the game we have a right to know why. you can give this email to your boss and let him answer it.

Hi Clifford,

Your ticket has been escalated to me as a supervisor for NCsoft Account Support.

Please understand that you're contacting the NCsoft Support Team and our purpose is to provide assistance to our players for active game accounts or billing issues. While I would like to address all of your questions for City of Heroes, we simply don't have any answers for you since the NCsoft Support Team is completely uninvolved in making any such decisions for the game. It is possible there are legal complications involved with selling City of Heroes servers or source codes but such information is not disclosed to the support team so we can't give you any definite information about it.

At this time, if you are interested in purchasing City of Heroes, you can submit a complete business proposal to webmaster@ncsoft.net for consideration. Please be advised that you may not receive a direct reply in regards to your submission.

Additionally, you might be able to obtain more information about this issue from our corporate headquarters, here is our corporate website: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/

[srmalloy]

He would never in a million years do that if it left him open to a 3rd party using his creation freely. I beleive NCSoft had the right to using your character IN GAME - however they wished. Making them an NPC, Main Hero/Villain, making posters with you in them and so on - but they do not own creative rights to the character. Very similar to how a radio station can play your song to highlight a broadcast but not change your song and call it something new.

Not just in-game; one of the rights you ceded was the right to use of the image for related purposes -- so, for example, they could use screenshots that included your character, or take the likeness and use it in one of their trailers, whenever they wanted.

[Blue Pulsar]

I believe you to be wrong on that Blue Pulsar, I played directly with Jim Butcher on his Harry Dresden character.

He would never in a million years do that if it left him open to a 3rd party using his creation freely. I beleive NCSoft had the right to using your character IN GAME - however they wished. Making them an NPC, Main Hero/Villain, making posters with you in them and so on - but they do not own creative rights to the character. Very similar to how a radio station can play your song to highlight a broadcast but not change your song and call it something new.

There are a lot of things that people wouldn't do if they knew what was at stake. The EULA specifically states that they can use your character as they please. Now, this never happened as far as we know, but they had the right. It was what we agreed to every time we logged in. By using their medium to bring your creation to life, you gave them the right to also use it. Simply throwing the name of Jim out there doesn't change things. Now, since he copyrighted it in The Dresden Files, he has more weight, but could have gotten in trouble with NCSoft for using copyrighted material, but who knows.

[Blue Pulsar]

Not just in-game; one of the rights you ceded was the right to use of the image for related purposes -- so, for example, they could use screenshots that included your character, or take the likeness and use it in one of their trailers, whenever they wanted.

Basically this.

[TimtheEnchanter]

We own the rights to our characters. All NCsoft can do is use our characters if they so wish (highly unlikely since they see no value in Americanized superheroes), without owing us anything. Big difference from NCsoft suing us if we profit from doing something with our characters.

[Joshex]

I am an idiot, I was pursuing a case that was 'iffy at best' it would have been hard to sue on these grounds.

My Subconscious however is a %$#@ing genius, it suddenly hit me with the perfect way to sue NCSoft, it turns out NCSoft did actally commit a crime by shutting down City of Heroes, a big crime that we can all tack in on with a class action lawsuit.

so bassically, I have found flawless legal grounds to sue NCSoft on.

for now I will keep the topic silent, though I have already talked with legal professionals about it and they are certain we have a winning case. however while talking with them I explained the situation but didn't name any companies. so for right now no one but me is sure what the case is and who I am sueing.

I will be getting a final opinion on the case from the BBB again without mentioning a company name just merely stating the facts.

I will elude however to the point of the suit to you; NCSoft made claims in thier ToS that were not legal for them to make as they violate certain laws, ergo we actually have grounds to sue on that the terms of service say we can't.

that is all I can say for now.

We can definitely sue to force NCSoft to let CoH to live agian (whether in thier hands or others) and we can sue for some monetary gains, more monetary gains can be sued for if they have met certian conditions (which will be forcefully extracted in court). and of coarse as always with this sort of lawsuit we can sue for compensation for court time/lawyers.

before I actually make this suit official (while I am still doing the final research) what does everyone say to this?

[Blue Pulsar]

We own the rights to our characters. All NCsoft can do is use our characters if they so wish (highly unlikely since they see no value in Americanized superheroes), without owing us anything. Big difference from NCsoft suing us if we profit from doing something with our characters.

I don't think anyone here was insinuating that NCSoft could sue us. The original debate was if we could sue NCSoft. My point has been, since the beginning of this thread, that, according to the EULA we "agreed" to when we logged in the game, they have the right to use our characters as they wish. For profit even. We also have the same right. Now, we have two things on them. We are the creators and we can copyright them. Other than that, they have as much liberty with our characters as we do as long as we put them on their servers.

But, I agree with you wholeheartedly that they care little to nothing about Americanized superheroes.

[Aggelakis]

before I actually make this suit official (while I am still doing the final research) what does everyone say to this?

All I have to say is don't put this up as a Titan Network effort, nor really should you do your groundwork commentary on this forum. I'm posting a topic to the admin area to get some sort of consensus, but I have a feeling we won't want to be involved, as we've already said we're not going to go after NCsoft and won't assist players going after NCsoft.

[MindBlender]

Can NC Soft just delete all of our data (toons, achievements) everything?  Is it not their "right" to do so?  Any talk of a lawsuit in a forum could lead to that.  Not saying we should not look into it, but lets keep it on the down low lest our stuff on their harware suddenly disappear. By our, I mean as individuals not Titan.

[TonyV]

As Agge said, the Titan Network probably isn't the best place to round up support for a lawsuit. Personally, it's impossible to say whether I would support such an effort or not without knowing exactly what angle you have on the situation. If you really feel like you've got a case, I'd suggest following up on it and posting what you find out. If you want to drum up support for it, I'd suggest looking into starting a blog or Facebook page or something. One thing you should at least mentally prepare yourself for is the fact that a number of people here probably wouldn't want to associate themselves with a lawsuit even if it were airtight just on principle that whether it's moral or not, NCsoft should have the legal right to do what they want with their IP. And whether or not I personally agree with your tack on the legal situation, I'm not going to shut down people expressing that opinion. (Unless, of course, it violates other forum rules. I'm just saying that people saying "you're wrong!" isn't inherently trolling.)

[Blue Pulsar]

I'm with Agg and Tony on this. Pissing NCSoft off in anyway is not really what this forum is all about, and it could be a not-so-good practice. I mean, I know no one here is going to want to kiss up to them, but remember this: They have something we want that is very, very, VERY important to us. Think about that for a bit.

[Zerias]

Can NC Soft just delete all of our data (toons, achievements) everything?  Is it not their "right" to do so?  Any talk of a lawsuit in a forum could lead to that.  Not saying we should not look into it, but lets keep it on the down low lest our stuff on their harware suddenly disappear. By our, I mean as individuals not Titan.

More than likely this purge has already occurred; and it likely included Source Code, Art Assets, and the Character Database.

[Mysterious J]

before I actually make this suit official (while I am still doing the final research) what does everyone say to this?

Even if the ToS included unenforceable claims (e.g. by agreeing to these Terms of Service you grant NCSoft an irrevocable right to your first-born child), they would simply be severed from the rest of the ToS.... to a service that is no longer being sold.  There's no way that a court would order as a remedy for defective ToS that anybody be required to re-institute and perpetually run any service, or even to spend the money and effort to turn over the code and IP to any other party.  I don't think any lawyer worth his salt would tell you that you have a winnable case (in this or any other manner) without going over the specific details, so I'd be really wary of somebody who offered to represent you in this without knowing the names of any of the other parties to the case.

IANAL, etc., etc.

[Codewalker]

More than likely this purge has already occurred; and it likely included Source Code, Art Assets, and the Character Database.

There are certainly backup copies of all three.

[Joshex]

I'm trying to contact the BBB to get thier take on this, and no noone said they'd represent me just that what I was saying was illegal for a company to do.

basically we are able to ignore the ToS because it's fraudulent in the area of our law suit. I know the titan network doesn't want to go this road, and honestly I'd rather not go to this trouble either.

but we're going to have a hard time getting a company to buy the IP if every company we contact goes to talk with NCSoft and NCSoft shuts the door and acts like no one is home.

we really need to force them to consider selling the IP and actually according to certain laws we have every right to do so, what NCSoft did was illegal.

I'll send a PM to Tony V regarding this.

this isn't a matter of us being facetious or annoying, this is a matter of NCSoft doing something illegal and we are the only ones who can call them out on it.