[MUD-Dev] Intersection of Fanfic & Participatory Content

[Christopher Allen]

There is an interesting intersection between Brian's Fanfic thread, and my
Participatory Content thread:

Brian 'Psychochild' Green wrote:
> To start, I can sympathize with the desire to protect intellectual
> ("IP").  I may wax philosophical when talking about the online medium,
> but the creative side of me realizes the value in IP.  We spend
> considerable time and effort making an internally consistent story with
> all sorts of interesting twists and turns.  When someone takes that hard
> work and twists it in unacceptable ways (especially if it's just to make
> a quick buck), it can really be upsetting.
...
> So, we bring players to our games and show them our wonderful stories.
> We encourage them to learn the names of our NPCs, to take note of the
> gods in our fantasy lands, to put life into a character and add life to
> our games.  The players use our IP to play the game and have fun.  Yet,
> when players enjoy our world so much that they wish to write about their
> character outside of the confines our world, we rebuke them?
>
> Something is not right here.
>
> This argument seems familiar.  Ah, the old specter about ownership of
> the game appears again.  Once players populate the game, who really owns
> the game?  Unfortunately, all this wrinkle does is complicate matters.

Travis Casey wrote:
> All fine, IMHO.  These are things that players should want to do.
> However, what's wrong with requiring Punzel to ask Viola and Martel
> permission to publish or circulate poems featuring them, or for Tara
> to ask people's permission to create sketches and portraits of their
> characters?
>
> In every mud I've been on, people would be begging others to write
> about them or draw their characters -- especially if the people doing
> it have any talent.  I don't see a good reason why Skotos needs to
> step in and *require* people to give their permission for others to do
> such things.

I see a direct parallel here between Verant and Mystere's stories, and
Skotos and it's fansites.

Skotos has a concept called "Participatory Content":

>From the Skotos Terms of Service:
> As part of our
> interactive approach, Skotos provides you with certain opportunities to
> submit your own ideas, text, graphics, plots, characters, feedback and
other
> materials while you participate in the Games, bulletin boards, chat rooms
> and other activities in the Site or Services (collectively, "Participatory
> Content")."

We have this as it has always been Skotos' intent to encourage and support
our customer's creating stories, poetry, artwork, etc. in our games. We have
in-character bulletin boards, and are beginning to incorporate fan artwork
in the game. As far as fan sites, this also has been quite fruitful, with
only a two months since beta started we have half-a-dozen fan sites. We are
working on having the ability for the fansites to be actually hosted at our
site if players desire.

Yet Travis brings up the issue:

Travis Casey wrote:
> Here's another question for you, since this document is meant to
> protect you -- what if I create a character (let's call her Black Mary)
> and run her as a somewhat roguish, freewheeling sort?  Someone else
> (let's call him Togrish) decides to write a story in which my
> character is a slut who throws herself on everyone around.  His story
> becomes popular, and people start reacting to me in the game as if I
> were the character in his story -- which is only loosely based on me.
>
> I, getting fed up with this, decide to contact a lawyer to see what
> can be done.  The lawyer decides that Togrish has libeled and
> slandered me, through his publication of an untrue version of my
> behavior.  Now, Togrish turns out to be some 14-year-old kid who
> doesn't have a dime to his name... but *Skotos* licensed Togrish to
> use my character, and therefore, might potentially be held responsible
> for what he chose to do with it.  And Skotos does have money to
> possibly gain from a libel and slander lawsuit...

So if Travis is right, how much of Verant's desire to squelch Mystere is due
not to a concern about content infringement, but instead due to concerns
about potential liability should some parent or women sue Verant on some
specious issue, and offer as additional evidence the "atmosphere" created by
having Mystere's content. I know that "atmosphere" now happens with
discrimination cases, will it happen with others?

I know that the new Millenium Copyright Act has some stuff in it about
content providers -- is Verant acting in accordance to something in the
small print in that that we don't know about?

So how does a company like Verant or Skotos both encourage participatory
content, yet protect itself from oddball lawsuits? In Skotos' case, we have
a requirement that our games are only for 18 and older, so that protects us
from some issues. But does that protect us enough?

-- Christopher Allen

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