[MUD-Dev] Ebay bans character selling

[Frank Crowell]

rayzam wrote:

> Out of curiosity or ignorance: does it truly, in a legal sense
> violate intellectual property rights? would that stand up in a
> court? Or are those auction sites trying to avoid a mess?

Excellent question and one that a lot of the posters in the pro/con
section of the website dealing with the law suit have missed.  There
is clearly a lot of emotion and even some misinformation about the
issue.  However, take a look at Paul Robinson's posting.  He is
informed on commerce code and IP issues.  I wonder if his domain
paul.washington.dc.us may be a tip that maybe he has spent more than 2
minutes thinking about these things.  I am particular fascinated with
the concept of "character ownership".  Think about that for a minute.
Under current copyright laws, everything except raw data is subject to
automatic copyright --even this email. So if I name a character,
describe the character, and mold the character's abilities and skill
levels, then can that be consider property convered by copyright law.

 http://www.gravityspot.com/classaction2/Pro.asp

It that big block of text -- sort of hard to get through but worth
reading.  Paul gets off the track a little bit in the middle, but I
could help him with the details if he plans to get involved with this.

Oh rayzam, the short answer: Ebay and Yahoo don't want trouble.  They
will go the path of least trouble.

frank

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