- This topic has 13 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 18 years, 8 months ago by
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As someone in work pointed out – For their next lawsuit, Marvel will be suing the makers of pens, pencils and paper because it allows people to create copies of characters that appear in their comics.
Baaad move marvel.
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Can’t Open the Link?
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Based on the info from those URLs, won’t work – bad move Marvel, indeedy.
Put it short and bluntly: they saw a MMOG game making noise and a ton of money, checked that they had an angle (bad advice, there, bad advice, whoever did the due dil’ for them), then went after a slice of the pie.
The way I see it, however (based on an admittedly very brief consideration of case and copyright law) City Of Heroes does not ‘ship’ with Hulk avatar (or other Marvel heroes), so the makers do not infringe themselves – their customers do, by their choice of designing Marvel heroes-like avatars with avatar creation tools.
Now, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Marvel comics to sue Joe customer (not enough money if any at all + too difficult to sue the lot of ’em), so they go to the source – only problem is, it isn’t an infringement of copyright to provide ‘tools’ which facilitate infringement, unless purposefully so. In other words – you don’t have EMI or the MPAA suing NEC, Mitsumi and Toshiba for manufacturing your PC CD- or DVD-burner. But, in contrast, Nintendo could have sued whoever manufactured the Doctor 64 (purposefully designed to rip N64 carts).
EMI tried it with Amstrad in the UK back in the 80s over their ‘double-tape’ VCR thingy and got nastily slammed by the House of Lords.
The MPAA has continually tried it with ISPs over in the US over P2P file sharing (same rationale: they ‘facilitate’ copyright infringement by providing ‘tools’ or ‘software’ to infringers, too numerous to sue) – again, no luck.
So I just can’t understand what Marvel’s counsel were thinking about here, other than make a quick buck when issuing the suit – unless of course City of Heroes DOES ship with Hulk-like avatars, in which case ignore my prose above…:)
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I’ve started a ‘sister’ thread on the main IGDA Forum (Business & Legal section) to try and get some input from the US practitioners who regularly post.
…and I’ve just thought, in the course of debating the suit and its implications with myself (worrying, this, debating with myself more and more these days), that success from Marvel may well signify the end of mods, whether developer/publisher-sanctioned or not, either in use or to come, for fear of infringement liability established on the basis of this case. At least US developers/publishers.
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There is no way I can see this suit being successful, so I am not worrying :-)
I’ll have a read of the IDGA thread now…
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if they ban moding they will have to ban drawing with pen and paper, cause i could draw spiderman if i wanted too on some paper with out getting premission from Marvel…..
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Priceless :D.
Didn’t know about PVP – thanks & thumbs up, kyotokid!
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:) I prefer VG cats:
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personally i like penny-arcade the most
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Federal Judge dismisses several claims in City of Heroes lawsuit
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As expected.
Originally posted by Steph
Now, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Marvel comics to sue Joe customer (not enough money if any at all + too difficult to sue the lot of ’em), so they go to the source – only problem is, it isn’t an infringement of copyright to provide ‘tools’ which facilitate infringement, unless purposefully so. In other words – you don’t have EMI or the MPAA suing NEC, Mitsumi and Toshiba for manufacturing your PC CD- or DVD-burner. But, in contrast, Nintendo could have sued whoever manufactured the Doctor 64 (purposefully designed to rip N64 carts).
EMI tried it with Amstrad in the UK back in the 80s over their ‘double-tape’ VCR thingy and got nastily slammed by the House of Lords.
[/quote:d3b4aff3b0]:)
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One of my faves…
Clicky
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