[MUD-Dev] Re: Blacksnow revisited

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

From: "John Robert Arras" <johna at wam.umd.edu>

> If I were running things, I would give them a dump of their
> playerfiles and let them know that they now have everything that
> they "own".

It's worth noting that Blacksnow isn't claiming to own the player
files, and in fact has a disclaimer to the exact *opposite* effect
on their website:

  "Seller is only providing a service to buyer. No goods or property
  are being sold to buyer by seller."

I found this clause interesting...

  "...buyer shall take seller's place as a user of Mythic's
  intellectual property, but only to the extent permitted by
  Mythic."

Mythic does not permit this sort of transfer and never has. In
short, Blacksnow is saying that you get absolutely
nothing... because you can only have what Mythic permits, and Mythic
doesn't permit anything. This disclaimer effectively says that BSI
can just take your money and run, and you've already agreed that
this is okay.

> It's amazing that all of these lawsuits are over "ownership" of
> bits one someone else's server. Just give the people their darn
> bits and tell them that you won't store their bits anymore.

With intellectual property, you don't *have* to deliver it back to
the owner. You just have to remove it from your own possession,
often by destroying it. So under current IP law, the company can
simply delete the character.


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