Why The Closing of COH is art theft

[Lydiastar]

Hey everyone..I wrote an article about the closing of COH. I think it's interesting and I hope that some of you will read it and get something out of it. I wrote it Friday night when I was beside myself that I couldn't be on. I just... needed to understand within myself why it hurt so much...since I was sitting alone clinging to a laptop watching twitch.
I think what came out is pretty respectable.

I hope it doesen't come off as shameless promoting, it's just the medium where I wrote it.

Plz read it, send it along to friends, tweet it, share it...Thanks everyone! http://www.readingbetween.com/2012/11/30/why-the-closing-of-coh-is-art-theft/


As a side note,  It's on a new website I'm starting with some friends about general geekery. Writing, painting, music...all medium is acceptable and we can create a whole subplace of COH stuff if there's enough content. If anyone else want's to participate in readingbtween, PM me or email me at Syntaxically@gmail.com . We intend to release content every week.  There are 3 articles up, and my first article is about COH closing.
<3
PS, I debated between putting this here and in general discussion. Mods, plz move it if I chose wrong.

[chaparralshrub]

A couple of months ago I posted the idea of a country called Defiancia ruling that setting up a private CoH server would be completely legal under their IP laws, and that NCSoft would have no grounds on which to sue them to keep it from happening.

This is what I was thinking: that abandoning and destroying a work of art like this would be grounds for loosing the rights to the IP under Defiancian law...

 

 

[Lydiastar]

that's....brilliant.

[faith.grins]

Loved the article.  Not entirely sure I draw the same conclusion as you do, but I get where those thoughts and feelings come from.

DFTBA

[downix]

Intellectual Property theft, if you want to be technical. And if you check the EULA, it has a specific area dedicated to IP issues, which may be of help to you.

[ukaserex]

The only problem with the premise of declaring our created characters as protected art is that with such a designation, no company would risk the investment of creating the environment with the understanding that they would have to continue maintaining the servers infinitely.

However, I do see where you're coming from, and particularly liked your perspective of love in that bit at the bottom of the page.

[houtex]

Interesting article.  Some of it is good, and others... well, I got a problem of my characters being extensions of me, in that the female ones were... not. I just made them for the story I came up with for them, the powers they'd use, that sort of thing.  The one I would say I identified with most was a big ass hulking brute that beat the crap outta everything he was mad at... aka a 'hulk', but not the same, no sir.

The rest, well... Just playin' concept art.  But art, indeed so.

---

RE: IP and you.  I had this all laid out, in the... gosh, this feels weird to say... old forums.

Basic boildown:  CoH's character creator, and the ID for Biographical information, the AE mission builder, were all tools and materials you buy at a hardware, craft, or art store.  What you made with the tools/materials was YOURS.  You get to keep it, and use it, and even protect it.

The technicalities of HOW this worked in CoH versus a hardware store is this:  The game held pieces like the mentioned-in-the-article Lego pieces.  What you constructed, while still an assembly of pieces, you made.  The list of parts is the protected for you IP.  NCSoft does not own the list you put together, you do.  Still do.  Which is why the Sentinal extractor was important.  Your character's make up is stored there.  It is yours.  Not NCSoft's.

If you made an AE mission, ALL OF IT is yours.  The words, the character lists, whether you made them or just used generics, the way it was put together, all that creation is yours.  You own it.  NCSoft does not.

The way you created your base, where you put things, the layout, all that?  That's yours too.  You made that.

What you do NOT own is this:  The artwork to skin the parts.  The mesh that makes the parts.  And the client to make these parts come together.  NCSoft owns all artwork, all pieces, used to make the things you made, and make it work.

The problem, then is this: It's a symbiotic relationship, in that, NCSoft wanted us to create things in their little universe, and we needed to make them for our own needs.  If one goes, the other can't survive.

Oh, we can have a copy of the makeup of our character, and all it achieved... but... kinda useless to look at an .XML file and say "Yeah.  Totally see how that worked."  Just not quite the same.

Anyway, that's the IP argument.  The artwork isn't stolen.  It's just not usable in it's currently owned-by-us state without a client that runs it.

[Colette]

While I question whether any of our indivdual contributions may rightly be considered culturally significant and worthy of preservation, I have no doubt that, in its eight years of existence and the accretion of input from both the developers and the fanbase, CoH transcended mere commercial art and is now culturally significant.

Here lies the prime source of my antipathy toward Mr. Kim personally. Business decisions are business decisions, and if he wants to focus on a market he understands, that's good business. But the willful destruction of art, whether you purchased it or not, is a crime against humanity.

Sadly, NCSoft sees MMOs as mere widgets. And being Koreans, they fail to understand why western audiences respond passionately to the "superhero."

If within the next year NCSoft sells CoH to more enlightened caretakers, I will wish them success and gladly forget about them. But until then, I must consider Mr. Kim in the same category as the vandals who dynamited the Bamiyam Buddhas. I would not want fifty thousand people thinking of me as a Philistine who would idly throw a Vermeer into the fireplace.

History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or a lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value, which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again. -- Dr. Carl Sagan

[ROBOKiTTY]

Not sure if this angle has been considered yet, but the original Lineage is still running in Korea. NCsoft are probably aware that in their home country, if they pulled the stunts they kept getting away with in the West, they'd see severe backlashes.

We should be reaching out to Korean MMO communities. I think they'd be quite alarmed at what NCsoft have been doing internationally.

[faith.grins]

The one I would say I identified with most was a big ass hulking brute that beat the crap outta everything he was mad at... aka a 'hulk', but not the same, no sir.

TIL Houtex identified most strongly with Brawling Humiliator out of all his characters...

[AeternalDreamer]

Actually, it said in the rules you agreed to to play the game each time you log in, that they own the rights to all characters you make in the game. I actually deleted a character in game as I wanted to one day use her backstory in a novel I plan on writing.

[corvus1970]

Actually, it said in the rules you agreed to to play the game each time you log in, that they own the rights to all characters you make in the game. I actually deleted a character in game as I wanted to one day use her backstory in a novel I plan on writing.

THis has been brought up before, possibly on this very forum. That sort of thing is easy to declare, but hard to enforce OR successfully defend in court.

[downix]

Actually, it said in the rules you agreed to to play the game each time you log in, that they own the rights to all characters you make in the game. I actually deleted a character in game as I wanted to one day use her backstory in a novel I plan on writing.

I checked, no, they have a limited license to those characters. They do not own them.

There are novels published which use characters originally created in CoH.

[Victoria Victrix]

I checked, no, they have a limited license to those characters. They do not own them.

There are novels published which use characters originally created in CoH.

Yep.  They have a limited license to use them in advertising and promoting the game.  All other rights are yours.

[mikoroshi]

My antivirus is blocking the OP's site.

Can someone with less anal security post the contents of the article here?  Thanks.

[ROBOKiTTY]

How many players do you imagine are still playing the game? Less than 100K (which is the number of CoX players according to VV)...

If its less than 100K, then they must be getting *reamed* in terms of game price, because Lineage was still bringing in roughly 20x the amount of money that CoX was....

Whoops, looks like I mixed up the numbers. Please ignore the low player count argument.

[Lydiastar]

Loved the article.  Not entirely sure I draw the same conclusion as you do, but I get where those thoughts and feelings come from.

DFTBA

DFTBA!

[Lydiastar]

Interesting article.  Some of it is good, and others... well, I got a problem of my characters being extensions of me, in that the female ones were... not. I just made them for the story I came up with for them, the powers they'd use, that sort of thing.  The one I would say I identified with most was a big ass hulking brute that beat the crap outta everything he was mad at... aka a 'hulk', but not the same, no sir.

The rest, well... Just playin' concept art.  But art, indeed so.

---

RE: IP and you.  I had this all laid out, in the... gosh, this feels weird to say... old forums.

Basic boildown:  CoH's character creator, and the ID for Biographical information, the AE mission builder, were all tools and materials you buy at a hardware, craft, or art store.  What you made with the tools/materials was YOURS.  You get to keep it, and use it, and even protect it.

The technicalities of HOW this worked in CoH versus a hardware store is this:  The game held pieces like the mentioned-in-the-article Lego pieces.  What you constructed, while still an assembly of pieces, you made.  The list of parts is the protected for you IP.  NCSoft does not own the list you put together, you do.  Still do.  Which is why the Sentinal extractor was important.  Your character's make up is stored there.  It is yours.  Not NCSoft's.

If you made an AE mission, ALL OF IT is yours.  The words, the character lists, whether you made them or just used generics, the way it was put together, all that creation is yours.  You own it.  NCSoft does not.

The way you created your base, where you put things, the layout, all that?  That's yours too.  You made that.

What you do NOT own is this:  The artwork to skin the parts.  The mesh that makes the parts.  And the client to make these parts come together.  NCSoft owns all artwork, all pieces, used to make the things you made, and make it work.

The problem, then is this: It's a symbiotic relationship, in that, NCSoft wanted us to create things in their little universe, and we needed to make them for our own needs.  If one goes, the other can't survive.

Oh, we can have a copy of the makeup of our character, and all it achieved... but... kinda useless to look at an .XML file and say "Yeah.  Totally see how that worked."  Just not quite the same.

Anyway, that's the IP argument.  The artwork isn't stolen.  It's just not usable in it's currently owned-by-us state without a client that runs it.

This is fascinating.

Unfortunately I didn't get Sentinel data on any of my characters. But from what you are saying...I'd be able to make them all again if I had it and a client/skin. That's really cool, and I didn't know that!

[Lydiastar]

If within the next year NCSoft sells CoH to more enlightened caretakers, I will wish them success and gladly forget about them. But until then, I must consider Mr. Kim in the same category as the vandals who dynamited the Bamiyam Buddhas. I would not want fifty thousand people thinking of me as a Philistine who would idly throw a Vermeer into the fireplace.

History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or a lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value, which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again. -- Dr. Carl Sagan

Also, the person who is closest to me who's been playing COH since I2 said this "COH hasn't been about superheroes in a long time"

[Lydiastar]

We should be reaching out to Korean MMO communities. I think they'd be quite alarmed at what NCsoft have been doing internationally.

I agree. Could we do this? Does anyone know Korean?

[houtex]

TIL Houtex identified most strongly with Brawling Humiliator out of all his characters...

Close! But I was actually voicing about Thing of Bigness.  BH is a close second though.

[houtex]

Actually, it said in the rules you agreed to to play the game each time you log in, that they own the rights to all characters you make in the game. I actually deleted a character in game as I wanted to one day use her backstory in a novel I plan on writing.

I simply must tell you this directly.  NOWHERE does it say they own your character, and as a matter of fact they actually make it very clear that they can USE your creations any way they want in exchange for allowing you to play the game.  But it is blatantly clear they know that they can NEVER own YOUR creation.  They can own the Lego, but your awesome space station creation is YOURS.

I took my time in reading the EULA line by line, paragraph by paragraph, so I'm very well versed on what is and isn't ours, as I was going to persue a Cease and Desist order against NCSoft... but realized it was futile, as per the very things I've posted here, in that I can 'enjoy' my characters offline, just not very well. :p
 
Edit: I see I am late to voicing this, but I just had to say it... Now that I continued reading, I see that I might have needed to just keep reading and letting it go.   Ah well, I ain't deletin' or whatever.

[houtex]

Also, the person who is closest to me who's been playing COH since I2 said this "COH hasn't been about superheroes in a long time"

I... can see that argument.  But I also think it's disingenuous to say that as well, as the Superhero theme is what makes it 'go'.  For what is a superhero than an extraordinary hero that can do More(tm) than an 'average' hero, such as a really awesome cop or firefighter?

But splitting hairs, I suppose, is the name of that game.