"Abandoned Games" exemption?

[Mageman]

All this talk about code and copyrights is giving me a headache. It would be so much easier if sell the game so we could enjoy it again.

As far as this "mapserver", I know that Atlas Park Revival is trying to re-create the game using a different game engine. Now if they ever complete it - and there are really only a few people working on it - the "data tables" would be similar, but different.

And from what I've read, some of the initial CDs distributed for the game's release "accidently" had some of the server code on them. Although this was not intended, it was sold to the players. Now, legally, I believe that the people that have those CDs in theory have a right to use what was sold to them. Unfortunately, I don't have the CD to look for it.

[Arcana]

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hit_Points

Worth noting, the game itself never did that, at least not directly.  Those formulas were derived by players who uncovered the formulas the devs used to create the actual hit point tables, but the way it worked in actuality is every archetype - and archetypes included critter classes like minions and bosses - had this giant what I would call table of tables that had all these numbers precalculated.  What base hitpoints were at level 37.  What runspeed was at level 3.  What max resistance for smashing damage was at level 22.  Even things that ultimately were constant by design were in those tables, like base accuracy.  Every (combat capable) entity had a class, and that class had a big table of tables, and that was used to look up what all of their attributes were for any level.

Even something like "damage modifier" was a player invention.  There was no such thing in the game.  Nowhere in the game was there a "blaster ranged damage modifier" that was 1.125. Every class had a melee_damage and ranged_damage table, and that table told the game how much damage a scale 1 attack would do at every level from 1 to 50 (or for critters, up to 55).  Net damage was calculated, of course, based on combat conditions - damage strength, target resistances, etc, as well as the actual strength of the attack in scale value.  But the relative damage of different critters and player archetypes was built into tables, not formulas (of course, it was probably formula-driven by the designers to some extent).

Its these giant tables of tables that represent obvious copyright-protected content, from which every entity in the game pulled its base attributes.  That's separate from the powers database, which of course also contains obviously copyright protected designs of powers.

One last thing about copyright.  Most people think copyright protects against unauthorized copying only.  But actually, copyright also protects against unauthorized creation of what are called derivative works.  Works that take a protected work, wrap it up in something else, and then tries to distribute the whole.  For example, if you decide to take a movie and MST-ify it by recording yourself in an overlay and then distribute that, you're clearly taking the original movie and distributing it with your own work.  You still own your own work, but you have no right to distribute the original movie with it, even if that movie is heavily altered.  More relevant to our purposes here, if you take all the data in City of Heroes, and deliberately rearrange it so that it no longer looks like the same original format, but the obvious intent is to replicate its original functionality, that would legally be considered a derivative work: you took City of Heroes, rearranged the deck chairs, and then tried to pass it off as an original work.  That would be considered a copyright violation even if there was no obvious "copying" that could be demonstrated on paper.  If they could prove you actually did take the work and transmogrify it in a way that retained its original essence - replicating the game play of the game - that would be enough to prove copyright violation.  And you'd have a hard time claiming that wasn't what you did, since it would be almost impossible for your idea to work unless you deliberately did exactly that.

[Mageman]

All those tables are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

Now the serve just sent numbers to your computer to display different actions by yourself or an opponent. Now if the tables you create aren't exactly the same, or they are in a different order, then you are not copying their information. You are just trying to get a game that doesn't work (since they shut down the servers) to work again.

[Codewalker]

All those tables are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

All those bytes in "Game of Thrones - Complete Season 5.mp4" are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

Go ahead, try it, see how far it gets you.

[Vee]

All those bytes in "Game of Thrones - Complete Season 5.mp4" are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

Go ahead, try it, see how far it gets you.

My copies of that are MKVs. Seems I dodged a bullet 

[Paragon Avenger]

All those tables are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

Now the serve just sent numbers to your computer to display different actions by yourself or an opponent. Now if the tables you create aren't exactly the same, or they are in a different order, then you are not copying their information. You are just trying to get a game that doesn't work (since they shut down the servers) to work again.

I don't know about you, but when City of Heroes comes back I don't want an injunction to shut it down.  We must do it legal like.

[Aggelakis]

All those tables are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

It's like you didn't read the single post before yours...

[Arcana]

All those tables are just numbers, and you can't copyright a number.

All the everything in a computer is just numbers.  All the text, all the graphics, all the sound.  Also all the source code for the software: just numbers.  Not only are all the everything in the computer just numbers, its all just two numbers: one and zero.  You can't copyright a number, but you can copyright collections of them that express specific ideas. 

Now if the tables you create aren't exactly the same, or they are in a different order, then you are not copying their information.

See also: derivative work.  As I mentioned previously, copyright doesn't just protect against unauthorized copying.  Copyright protects a set of rights, and one of them is the right to take an existing protected work and substantively use it in another work, even if it is transformed in some way.  Rearranging the numbers in such a way that you are very obviously trying to make them look superficially different but express the exact same thing is the very definition of a derivative work.

[Azrael]

Derivative work.  A minefield, legally.  What's original and what isn't?  We've had loads of clones over the years and many legal battles.

Games companies rip other game genres off, interfaces are identical, nominal differences in characters.  Lots of those 'fantasy' MMOs look alike to me.  Remember all those 'Pac Man' clones?  Space Invader clones?  Hard to create in a vacuum.  ?   We do get unusual things.  But there's a lot of 'herd' mentality with fashionable creativity.  The path of least resistance.  Look at the move to 'flat' interfaces rather than 'shiny' relief photographic ones.  Lots of computers look 'alike.'  So do washers.

There's a lot of corporate overreach when it comes to IP.  Then there's the individual creator who has to protect his work from 'big' companies ripping off the 'little' guy.  You get some companies who outright rip things off.  Because they have the legal muscle to do so, profit by it and drag out the court case and the damages end up being a slap on the wrist.

Technology moves quick.

Who decides what's fair.  The corporation?  Or the consumer.  Fair use?  What's that?  You can have the COX client on your computer but not the server code to make it work?  I'd argue for a middle ground as has been mentioned elsewhere.  That you're entitled to the server functionality on a single or LAN local level.  But that you can't develop the game's IP.  One is fair use for your investment the other says, 'Here and no further.  It's not your IP so you can't develop it.'  A bit of give and take in the MMO community.

CoX was a great game for the 'casual gamer' market which has exploded, ironically, with the Wii and the iPhone 'computers.'  It's not all 'hardcore' run with a gun stuff.  (But yes, I had my days playing Unreal Tourney over single player and local LAN...and that's why I'd argue that MMO companies should be able to fit in a fail safe micro server tech' for when the company servers go down...in all inevitability.  This is what I'd call 'fair use.'  It's like making a 'back up' copy of a CD for 'personal' use.  Ie.  I still have what I enjoyed for posterity, enjoyment because I feel that should be my right as a consumer.  If I don't have that right...I'd question how much 'ownership' we're ceding in the corporate/consumer tug of war.  I've played computer games on arcade cabinets, tapes for my C64 and CDs for my Mac/PC and am giving the long stare at this digital age where you have this umbilical cord which can leave you 'stranded' if you don't have an internet connection.  Games companies.  Do your job.  Provide single, LAN and MMO capability for 'those' kind of games.)

What I say maybe isn't legal yet.

But the LAW can still be an ass.    A game can be gathering dust for the sake of some server code that could be run on a local computer these days?  Or a micro server version.  Such a thing could give joy to 100K CoH players.  And many more who never got the change to play a genuine classic game.

And that's why people are pushing for abandoned games to get fair rights useable.  To hold lazy or culpable companies to account for the revenues they enjoyed all those years.  As we move into an 'all digital age' what are our rights?  Who gets to decide that?  The hubris of 200 Billion dollar companies?  Or the consumer themselves?  And gives a long stare at politicians, who he wouldn't hold his breath waiting on for help.

If we're not careful copyright (including legacy copyright and other laws) can stymy the creative pool...progress and ultimately our right to free thought.

Do the 'big' corporations want to own all IP?  ...and all content to go through them and to freeze out the little guy using 'lobbied' laws with deep pocket interests?  I hope the Internet never becomes like that.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone.

Azrael.

[Arcana]

Derivative work.  A minefield, legally.

If you actually attempt to deliberately replicate an actual work, with specificity, through obfuscation, that minefield becomes one field-sized mine.  You'll never win that case in any court anywhere.

You can have the COX client on your computer but not the server code to make it work?

The problem isn't even the code; while you can argue code (and probably lose) where you will lose with certainty is the fact that the actual content of the game in many respects, such as how missions worked, was only in data files on the server and not in the client.  We don't have that written content anywhere, and arguing that you can just steal it or ignore the copyright on it "just to make your client work" pushes fair use over a cliff and into a volcano.  The server wasn't just an enabler for the client, unlike some MMOs where the entirety of the game content is in the client, in City of Heroes the server was the only place where much of the scripted content existed.

[Mageman]

Arcana is sounding like a lawyer. I really don't care about all the "legalize", I just want to play again.

[Arcana]

Arcana is sounding like a lawyer. I really don't care about all the "legalize", I just want to play again.

But this is a thread discussing a specific legal question.  If you don't care about legalese, why read a thread dedicated explicitly to the legal limits of the Librarian of Congress' exception power within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

[Azrael]

I really don't care about all the "legalize", I just want to play again.

I sympathise with your feelings.  We all 'just want to play again.'  Alas, were it only so.

However, if our hopes are to be realised then we need to be patient beyond measure.

We've been given Icon.  We now have Paragon Chat.  (We have travel powers!  Snow.  Custom tailors.  All the zones.  Tell Chat.  Local chat.  Emotes.  A great ignore/vanish feature...heh...)  Two wonderful gifts to the community.  We can see the evolutionary trajectory of those.  They utilise the local clients many players have on their hard drive.  'Fair use.'

These are...creative solutions in the interim while creative coders find, given enough time, creative solutions to allow those clients to fully employ 'emulated' combat and 'home brew' missions at a local micro (?) server level.  I'm guessing at the latter.  Only SCoRE know for sure what can happen beyond Paragon Chat's timeline which looks set to reinstate a good many of the games features...at the local level under the wrapper of a 'chat' program.  I think that's very clever.  Again, something I'd consider 'fair use.'  At some point, Paragon Chat will 'hand over' to a 'real-time' solution (with all that implies?) to allow some form of combat PVP(?) then later NPC(?)and maybe some AE mission creator/map maker(?) if I'm reading the 'timeline,' and all it implies, for Paragon Chat correctly. 

In the mean time, Paragon Chat offers an intriguing insight into future possibilities.  To currently have something running on servers, connecting local clients of the community to 'chat' and 'tour' Paragon City in a 'legal' way should provide a good test platform for all the technical things any sort of 're-birth' needs.  I wouldn't have thought of that.  A real 'fulcrum-shift' (couldn't resist...) in thinking.

It's a journey.  I'm enjoying each bit that 'comes back.'  It's constructive.  It's passionate.  It 'does something about' the loss of CoH.  Clearly the loss of Paragon Studio and CoH to the CoH community still resonates and drives people onwards to keep its spirit alive.

If the much vaunted 'deal' comes through.  Nice.  But whether that deal comes through or not...I get the feeling that SCoRE have far more interesting things planned for the Phoenix of CoH's rebirth and for the CoH community that may track beyond the game's original features.

If that means we lose the original missions and content?  So be it.  We don't really need it.  We played it all.  Now it's gone.  If it comes back.  Fine.  But if it doesn't.  *shrugs.  CoH rebirthed as a game that is 'given' back to the community in some capacity aka Icon, aka Paragon Chat, AKA whatever comes after that...

Some may argue, 'Are our actions not just..?'

Azrael.

PS.  There's also people fighting for further rights to include MMOS in abandoneware legislation.  They should be included but gamers and voters need to pile on the pressure on games companies and their politicians.  So it becomes 'fair use.'  That's another 'ongoing' battle.

So.  It's not over.

'Not yet.'  To quote a certain someone.

[Primus1]

So.  It's not over.

'Not yet.'  To quote a certain someone.

Beautifully said.  A post like this give us hope even if the talks do fail. 
One day in the future, we'll have it back in some shape or form.

[JaguarX]

I sympathise with your feelings.  We all 'just want to play again.'  Alas, were it only so.

However, if our hopes are to be realised then we need to be patient beyond measure.

We've been given Icon.  We now have Paragon Chat.  (We have travel powers!  Snow.  Custom tailors.  All the zones.  Tell Chat.  Local chat.  Emotes.  A great ignore/vanish feature...heh...)  Two wonderful gifts to the community.  We can see the evolutionary trajectory of those.  They utilise the local clients many players have on their hard drive.  'Fair use.'

These are...creative solutions in the interim while creative coders find, given enough time, creative solutions to allow those clients to fully employ 'emulated' combat and 'home brew' missions at a local micro (?) server level.  I'm guessing at the latter.  Only SCoRE know for sure what can happen beyond Paragon Chat's timeline which looks set to reinstate a good many of the games features...at the local level under the wrapper of a 'chat' program.  I think that's very clever.  Again, something I'd consider 'fair use.'  At some point, Paragon Chat will 'hand over' to a 'real-time' solution (with all that implies?) to allow some form of combat PVP(?) then later NPC(?)and maybe some AE mission creator/map maker(?) if I'm reading the 'timeline,' and all it implies, for Paragon Chat correctly. 

In the mean time, Paragon Chat offers an intriguing insight into future possibilities.  To currently have something running on servers, connecting local clients of the community to 'chat' and 'tour' Paragon City in a 'legal' way should provide a good test platform for all the technical things any sort of 're-birth' needs.  I wouldn't have thought of that.  A real 'fulcrum-shift' (couldn't resist...) in thinking.

It's a journey.  I'm enjoying each bit that 'comes back.'  It's constructive.  It's passionate.  It 'does something about' the loss of CoH.  Clearly the loss of Paragon Studio and CoH to the CoH community still resonates and drives people onwards to keep its spirit alive.

If the much vaunted 'deal' comes through.  Nice.  But whether that deal comes through or not...I get the feeling that SCoRE have far more interesting things planned for the Phoenix of CoH's rebirth and for the CoH community that may track beyond the game's original features.

If that means we lose the original missions and content?  So be it.  We don't really need it.  We played it all.  Now it's gone.  If it comes back.  Fine.  But if it doesn't.  *shrugs.  CoH rebirthed as a game that is 'given' back to the community in some capacity aka Icon, aka Paragon Chat, AKA whatever comes after that...

Some may argue, 'Are our actions not just..?'

Azrael.

PS.  There's also people fighting for further rights to include MMOS in abandoneware legislation.  They should be included but gamers and voters need to pile on the pressure on games companies and their politicians.  So it becomes 'fair use.'  That's another 'ongoing' battle.

So.  It's not over.

'Not yet.'  To quote a certain someone.

indeed.

[Stitchified]

That you're entitled to the server functionality on a single or LAN local level.  But that you can't develop the game's IP.  One is fair use for your investment the other says, 'Here and no further.  It's not your IP so you can't develop it.'

It'd be awesome if that were to happen, maybe even have the Server Functionality brought up a notch after a set amount of time, provided no one tries developing the game's IP, thus proving that people could be trusted to not try and make a profit off the game.

Only downside is we're talking about a game's IP & Rights that's been sitting on a shelf covered in dust for the past 3 years.

On a side note, I don't understand why NCsoft has been sitting on the IP & Rights to CoH/CoV, I mean what kind of logic is there for a Company to sit on the IP & Rights to something for 3 years, causing the value of said IP & Rights to go down? I mean, that's completely counter productive, especially when said company has to renew their hold on the IP & Rights every year, thus more money down the drain.

[Arcana]

On a side note, I don't understand why NCsoft has been sitting on the IP & Rights to CoH/CoV, I mean what kind of logic is there for a Company to sit on the IP & Rights to something for 3 years, causing the value of said IP & Rights to go down? I mean, that's completely counter productive, especially when said company has to renew their hold on the IP & Rights every year, thus more money down the drain.

Copyright doesn't have to be renewed at all in most parts of the world.  Trademarks do have to be renewed, but only every ten years, at trivial cost.

Intellectual property is one of those things you just never know when it will become useful or valuable.  Companies stockpile it like hoarders stockpile Readers Digest.  If just one tenth of one percent of it ever suddenly becomes useful, it can make back many hundreds of times more than all the tiny costs of maintaining the rights to it.

[Vee]

Companies stockpile it like hoarders stockpile Readers Digest.

That's only lazy hoarders. If you're hardcore you want the full magazines RD pulls from.

[ICKool]

What if someone produced an old version of a CoH-like server... like SEGS (https://github.com/Segs/segs). The project went completely dark a year ago, but I haven't seen any legal mumbo jumbo about it?  Think that was Issue #4 from May '05. Over 10 years.

Ultimately it does come down to supplier vs. consumer rights. If all we did as consumers was subscribe on a monthly basis, then NCSoft reserved the right to shutdown the servers. But we actually bought the clients themselves, and certainly have a right to maintain client functionality on some level. Perhaps not on a 'massive' level, but on a micro/private/non-profit level? Can't think of any other product where consumers are not allowed to maintain functionality of goods once the producer ends support.

And apart from that, I remember from long ago that the Cryptic devs themselves retained rights to CoH... (and the only reason I remember is that such a maneuver was unheard of...) not sure how that factors into everything.

[Aggelakis]

And apart from that, I remember from long ago that the Cryptic devs themselves retained rights to CoH... (and the only reason I remember is that such a maneuver was unheard of...) not sure how that factors into everything.

Not true. Cryptic sold everything to NCsoft. They retained the rights to the base engine the game is built on, but the engine at sale and the engine at game-close are so different as to be completely incompatible with each other.