[MUD-Dev] Ebay bans character selling

[Travis Casey]

Tuesday, January 30, 2001, 5:13:06 AM, Kevin Littlejohn
<darius at bofh.net.au> wrote:
> the_logos at www.achaea.com wrote
>> On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Frank Crowell wrote:

>>> It's not clear at all that any IP laws have been violated.  There
>>> is no transfer of items -- they are database entries.  The only
>>> new property that is "transferred" is the character itself --
>>> created by the player.  Certainly the effort to create a character
>>> has more IP value than a database entry.
 
>> I agree, it's not clear. I would like to believe they have been
>> violated though as I do not believe you as a customer own the
>> database entry in their database

> Given T$R (sorry, force of habit) were able to claim IP over, um,
> everything on the 'net even vaguely related once upon a time (I was
> lucky enough to be irresponsible and at uni at the time, and have a
> box _full_ of 132-column tractor printout of every net.book I could
> find at the time - there's some seriously creative stuff in there),
> it wouldn't surprise me at all if Verant could claim IP over chars.

Claiming something and actually having it, however, are two different
things.  General consensus among RPGers who were also lawyers in the
D&D newsgroups was that TSR was claiming far, far more than they'd
have any ability to actually back up in court.  Several people kept
their D&D sites running after a "warning" from TSR, and none of them
were ever actually sued by TSR, so their claims were never put to a
court test.

(There was a case with TSR against Mayfair games, but that was before
TSR started doing their 'net claims.)

> Castle Marrach, as pointed out previously, claim that everything you
> might do on the game is theirs - including the characters, stories,
> etc.  if that idea holds any water at all, then the character you
> created on Verant's server probably _is_ Verants, and you have no
> right to sell access to it.

Note, though, that in signing up for Skotos, you agree to that, and
thus, it's a contractual issue rather than one of copyright.  To try
to claim ownership of such things after the fact is a different
thing.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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