Lawsuit Man! With the Incredible Power to Sue.

For those of you who haven't seen, Marvel is suing NC Soft over City of Heroes.

According to Marvel, since players can feasibly (and to be fair from my experience with the game, often do) use the character creation tool to make close facsimiles to Marvel heroes it both violates Marvel's copyright and hurts their ability to create a Marvel-based on-line game.

While I don't think NC Soft can be blamed – they are rather strict with enforcing their terms of service, often forcing players to change copyrighted characters – it does raise an interesting point. What's the line between player artistic freedom using character creation tools and copyright laws? Should NC Soft really be sued over something that they explicitly ask their players not to do?

I'm not sure how much I dig Marvel suing NC Soft over what really boils down to fans of Marvel pretending to be Marvel superheroes without Marvel's permission. Especially considering nearly none of the characters in their relatively corny comic book or their advertising resemble Marvel heroes.

I am curious, however, to see how strict this causes NC Soft and other companies with intense character-creation tools to become.

Comments

[bowler]

I'd be interested if this even makes it to court.

There's no way to really enforce this. I mean, they'd have to ban the color green for skin and dark hair. Otherwise, hey, it's the Hulk!

[ironmonkey]

besides, it's not NC Soft's problem that Marvel can't get their poop in a group to release their own game. Love the litigation business model. "Hey! That's a really good idea that I had but never got around to developing. I know, I'll sue!!"

I wonder if when the game was in the development stage, someone from NC Soft contacted Marvel. Then for some reason, some dunderhead at Marvel choose to pass on the investment opportunity because computers are not in the strategic plan for a comic, ie paper-based, company.

Sounds like management should start paying attention to videogame companies business model.

So, from what I've just read, if you created a costume in CoH that is the same color scheme as say, Iron Man. Red and Gold, and called yourself Iron /\/\4n, someone from NC Soft would contact you and say that you must change your character?

Wow.

That's insane.

[William Huber]

I don't think it's per se insane that NCSoft would review character names: the Everquest character creation process included screening and approval for player-chosen names. I actually wish that more MMORPG's would be active about that: there are way too many (i.e., more than zero) "Sephiroth" and "Cloud" variants in FFXI, for example, and dozens of other ridiculous names.

What is ridiculous is the legal action itself. I'll go farther and say that a cultural producer like Marvel who, in a sense, effectively colonizes the subconscious of postmodernity with its names, images, and concepts cannot then balk at the ubiquity and after-life of those ideas and images. Popular culture is just that - popular, part of the daily fabric of life for all members of that society. The miserly, grasping need to control that very thing by whose diffusion you profitted so richly is absurd.