Sugar coat it as much as you want, again I'll point out we're in a forum thread devoted to the discussion related to the attempt to returning the game to a playable state.
The motivation behind Paragon Chat is to get as close to that reality as possible, ie. playing the game in some fashion.
That's what this thread is about - people have used the same argument that this thread could be used as evidence previously to shoot people down (Joshex), so why is that so different now?
Legally you may have found a loophole - but it is just that, a loophole...
Sigh.
1. My post makes no mention of legal loopholes. In fact, I actually made it a point to distinguish between what the law says (and even mention jurisdictional conflicts) with what is ethically or morally reasonable, and only made that distinction because you brought the point up first.
2. Codewalker has explicitly stated that Paragon Chat is not intended to reproduce City of Heroes gameplay, and is explicitly intended to be a community chat and interaction platform that happens to be set in the familiar environment of the City of Heroes game.
3. The only reasonable thing you could be referencing with regard to Joshex was my own assertion to him that when he specifically and explicitly stated his desire to find a way to
unambiguously duplicate copyright work that we currently do not possess that because copyright infringement takes intent into account that his very statement that he was looking for a way to do so but disguise the efforts so as to reduce their congruence to copyright's legal precedent tests could be used against him in a US court. That has nothing to do with any discussion here, because regardless of your repeated attempts to either confuse or conflate the issue
using the game client is not a copyright violation.
What's mostly different between whatever it is you're trying to do, which no one seems to be certain of, is that you're intermixing lots of different previous discussions about specific issues and blending them in ambiguous or inapplicable ways, and doing so without the benefit of competency or eloquence. By your own admission you aren't solid about many of the things you're arguing around like what the actual legal issues are, by self-evident observation you aren't expressing those ideas in a way that is precise enough and coherent enough for anyone to easily navigate, and you resist counter-argument with a level of condescension that is unwarranted given your previously elucidated shortcomings. Not to mention the inevitable "I know you are but what am I" attitude.
I've had essentially the same position, albeit with the benefit of more time to think about it, since the day the shutdown was announced. Anyone who was on the forums back then can attest to the fact that I've always had a nuanced but strong opinion on what the
legal situation was, what the
customer advocacy situation was, and what the
industrial ethical situation was and is. These are complicated legal and moral minefields all of us who were and are active in the City of Heroes community have been wrestling with, and I've been wrestling with these issues even before the shutdown announcement. Strictly speaking, everything I did when I inherited Iakona's mantle was illegal on paper, as was everything he did, as was everything City of Data did. And the devs individually were aware of all of it, making all of them equally complicit. How Codewalker decides what's right, how I decide what's right, and how everyone else decides what's right and wrong conduct for themselves is a highly personal decision. That doesn't mean that decision can't be analyzed and even criticized. I'm bullet proof: if you want to see if you can find an actual legitimate issue with my moral reasoning, have at it. I've exposed a lot of my reasoning to both discussion and debate.
But simply standing back and pointing fingers saying this is hypocritical and that's illegal and that's immoral without justifying any of those statements beyond vague intimations that it ought to be obvious is insulting without intellectual purpose. You have every right to express your opinion that using the City of Heroes client is illegal or immoral, or that it is legal and moral, or even that it is only legal and moral given certain specific assumptions or beliefs. But if you're going to question anyone else's motives or reasoning, at least do so in a way that promotes discussion, by actually having something intelligent to contribute to that discussion. Give the debate somewhere to go. Just being accusatory without substance can only go one way, and I have literally decades of experience in making sure I'm not the one that gets banned.
