twoflower: Legal Tomfoolery

Stefan Gagne (

twoflower) wrote,
@ 2008-04-02 09:34:00

Legal Tomfoolery
Checking through the linden blog for details on the H4 rollout, I noticed this:

Introducing the Second Life Brand Center / Guidelines for Using Linden Lab's Trademarks

It amazes me, the depths of fail the Lindens are capable of. Okay, I understand the legal need to defend trademarks, but we're talking about them demanding things that are not technically possible or put a financial onus on people. Best example, if your blog/game/whatever is called "SL Foo" you are in violation. If it's "SL Foo Bar" you're OK. Huh? Why are two words fine and one word not? And let's say you have www.slfoo.com. Is Linden Labs (oh, I'm sorry, that's a violation; I meant Linden Lab™) going to pay for your domain name registration changes? After all, without the community of builders, they have nothing going for them. Their attempts to bond with Big Corporate Media have largely gone ignored in favor of community content (see Armidi vs. Armani). Continually urinating on your only real source of income is not wise.

My faith in SL (I'm sorry, I meant InSL™) has dropped considerably in recent weeks. I have no intention of starting any more in-depth projects InSL™ anymore. When I feel like working on them, I'll extend my current ones (arcade/fish), and I'll build new stuff for my own use like my DJ gear or maybe a void sim build, but damned if I'm gonna whip up any NEW franchises or bold new concepts. The platform is unstable, codewise and lawwise. It's not worth the headaches to try and be innovative when your mandatory business partners have all the common sense of an emu on acid.

So. What else is going on in my life, other than whining about SL™..?

Very little. Enjoying Rock Band, as usual. Shootan people in TF2. But mostly, trying to relax and rest, reading comics, doing low-key stuff. I've been poking around forums and websites, trying to ignore Fanboy Rage and just find the neat things about net culture I appreciate... like this funny outtake reel from the Muppet Show. (You'll wanna watch that soon before Henson Corp yanks it from youtube, I think.)

Between frustrations before and after the work bell, I need some very sparse and simple activity to unwind with. (And a good blog to express the angry bits, so I can vent.) My hope is that in a month's time this mess will be behind me and I can find something else to focus on.

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	demota 2008-04-02 01:56 pm UTC (link)
	Sucks to hear about the issues going on with SL. If you're looking for something to unwind with, you could always try finding a 4th edition D&D game group when it lands this June. The first adventure's hitting in May and has pre-made PCs, so it could be done as early as then, too. What's your Steam ID, by the way? Curious. Mine is just "Demota" (Reply to this)(Thread)

twoflower
2008-04-02 02:33 pm UTC (link)

I've considered it, but I dunno. D&D's gamery math rules always seemed to get in the way of the stories I wanted to tell, back in the NWN days. I do appreciate their attempts to combine miniatures, online play, and DMing into one package, though... DM'd NWN was a blast since you could tell a story rather than just argue about dicerolls and combat balance.

...still, I'm semi-independently-wealthy and I don't mind investing in something just to see how it ticks, so why nots. Could be interesting.

My steam ID's [DFB]HeXcoda. Drop me a friends request.

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demota
2008-04-02 04:27 pm UTC (link)

I've sent the friend request.

4e seems like it's less "gamery math" and a bit more "story" focused. Like, the "Monsters" don't follow the same rules as the PCs. If you want them to take more of a beating, you don't have to grant them more levels and hit dice in order to give them more HP. You just plain give them more HP.

The arguments about dice rolls and combat balance probably vary depending on the group you're with. I personally haven't seen much of that, except for people joking about how they're (truthfully) playing an underpowered class and having fun with it anyway.

The book that comes out in May is called "Keep on the Shadowfell", and hits May 20th. The D&D 4e books proper land on June 6. I'm personally a bit curious about how D&D Insider Game Table works. If every player had to have a DDI subscription to play, that'd be really irritating since that would mean that games could not start unless EVERYONE were a subscriber. That doesn't strike me as a smart decision, so I'm guessing that non-subscribers get access to a scaled down version of DDI Game Table. But this is all baseless conjecture.

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twoflower
2008-04-02 04:49 pm UTC (link)

After I do my obligatory SL tech support (we're also launching H4Skeeball and FS:Rock tonight) I'll investigate the insider service. I know I can certainly afford the price, but thinking back, the one thing I couldn't afford was the TIME.

Fleet Street Gaming sessions were held every Sunday, for up to 3 hours. That messed with my Sopranos watching. ANY sort of weekly, multi-hour thing messes with me since I prefer to have open time. I'm only just now getting back into the swing of weekly multihour COH, but that streak'll be broken by an RL friend dropping in this Saturday.

As much as D&D appeals to me on conceptual grounds, we'll see if I have the free time / obsessiveness needed to really play it much. If it's not a pickup and putdown game like TF2 or Rock Band I tend to have trouble.

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	demota 2008-04-02 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	You've got a good point there. I wonder what can be done to foster the growth of Pick-Up D&D games. Or RPGs in general. I know there are systems specifically designed for those, like say, Spirit of the Century, but as a whole, I don't see much RP outside of "Weekly campaign session with no planned end". (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2008-04-03 08:20 pm UTC (link)

Well, to me it always seemed like Feng Shui was well-designed for pickup games. Thanks to all the character types being 95% pregenerated (including backstory) action movie stereotypes, and no need for players to know anything about the setting, it's not a hard game to get into. I had one game with a group that had five players who'd never seen the game before, and we were still done with chara creation and into playing in 30 minutes.

...Contrasting with D&D, where I just joined a game with other veteran players, and chara creation took up all of our session time for our first week.

-NeoVid
(who seriously likes Feng Shui)

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demota
2008-04-04 01:22 pm UTC (link)

Oh, hey. Neovid. I haven't seen you around in forever.

Yeah, there are a lot of pick-up games out there. I just don't see them being played too often. Which, I think, might be the point. It's usually a change of pace from a normal roleplaying game when people have gotten a bit tired out of it, or a convention game.

4th edition looks like character creation time might be a lot faster, but I still see it taking up a whole session. Though I'll have to admit that there's something that's just plain FUN about creating a character in any RPG, so that might not be too much of a loss.

Ever heard of Risus?
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm

Free RPG that's a pdf four pages long. And two of those pages are optional "Advanced" rules, filled with options like "Use a different size of die" or "Build character with more points" Perfectly suited for a pick-up style game. The system's pretty shallow, but that's the point. The way character creation works is, you get 7 d6s to create your character. You make up Cliches and assign dice to them. Like, if you wanted to play a fantasy swordsman, your sheet might look like:

Swordsman 4
Outdoorsman 2
Lady'sman 1

And that's it. That's your entire sheet. You want to do something at a task, you roll whatever's appropriate in dice. Like Swordsman. You roll 4d6, and the GM has a target number in mind that you should meet. Combat, same thing, it's just the rolls are opposed. I play in a Risus game on alternating Thursdays. We don't do that much rolling, but the system is incredibly liberating if you get tired of big rules for a while.

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twoflower
2008-04-04 04:02 pm UTC (link)

I don't mind rollin' up a character. (They see me rollin', they hatin'?) Character builds are a lot of fun for me. And once they're done, they're done and you can get into things.

What I don't like about D&D is all the mathematic gyrations you have to go through to resolve a single turn of activity, and all the numbers you gotta keep in your head when making decisions, particularly for the casting classes. I like how computer games do that math for you; you pick a target and an action, it figures out the rest. But pen and paper, you gotta do the legwork on your own, and it slows. things. down. considerably.

Also, I've never gotten my head around "roleplaying" as in "acting out your character" when sitting around a table. If you do it entirely in a third person narrative sense, sure ("Okay, I reassure the peasant that her baby hasn't been eaten by orcs -- can I do a Persuade roll there? -- then tell the gang we need to get moving.") but I'm used to WRITING out dialogue, live-roleplaying style. You can do that online. Offline you just look like a bad improv actor.

I simply don't come from a pen and paper background. All my RPGing has been done online and it flavors my approach and my tastes, afraid.

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(Anonymous)
2008-04-04 09:56 pm UTC (link)

To a large extent, the "mathematical gyrations" are really simple, and just take preparation and reptition.

By preparation, I mean knowing your damn spell-list, your powers, and what they do. In some cases, like Clerics, this seems like a daunting challenge, but really, a cleric is actually only going to have maybe two or three spells that they don't regularly use per session. If the GM tries to keep track of absolutely everything in terms of rules, it often doesn't work.

On the other hand, repetition is just what it sounds like. It sounds cliche, but practice really does make perfect.

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	jengagne 2008-04-05 04:57 am UTC (link)
	If you wanna try this out in SL where we could combo it with not-in-person RP. I agree, even sitting at a table, LARP is just too... I don't have enough suspension of disbelief to take it seriously! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2008-04-06 04:57 pm UTC (link)
	Don't sabotage yourself. You shouldn't pass up a chance to try something fun because you think you might not get it right. And yes, there are better RPGs for your style than D&D, it's just that D&D is the easiest to find a group for. -NeoVid (Reply to this)(Parent)

kowh
2008-04-02 04:27 pm UTC (link)

In the realm of possible new things to try, I've recently picked up a PSP and Patapon and quite like it. Sort of a RPG/rhythm game. I've also ordered Crush (puzzle game that you press a button to alternate between 2d and 3d) and Loco Roco (tilt the level to make a blob move around and pick up other blobs, but in full weird and fun Japanese style). Any of which if you haven't tried you might want to look into, they're all pretty unique and therefor interesting.

Coming from a DS, I still think the DS is a better system to get if you only get one of the two systems (having more of the better games). But the PSP is interesting as yet another toy and not expensive enough to get out of the range of "I've got a bit of money set aside to blow on fun things". The downside is that most of the other PSP titles seem to be more of the same same same and thus not terribly interesting, no matter how well done they might be. Although I may end up trying the FFVII prequel.

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twoflower
2008-04-02 04:47 pm UTC (link)

The PSP is difficult for me to handle with these odd hands of mine. PSP's basically like a Lynx or a Game Gear in that it's very wide and has stock pad and buttons and triggers. The DS has the same, but it's smaller, and most games are just manipulated via the easier for me to use stylus. (I deliberately avoid those whacko games that require complicated button combos and trigger chording.)

Plus, I'd rather not drive anyone around me to murder me with a claw hammer.

That said, it's certainly got some interesting games; Crush notably impressed me. So, I'll second the recommendation for people who have normal, non-mutated human forms.

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kowh
2008-04-02 05:43 pm UTC (link)

The pata-pata-pata-pon certainly does get stuck in your head. Also the pon-pon-pata-pon. And so on. I haven't tried playing it around other people for long periods of time yet, so I don't have any data on how homicidal it makes others.

The one thing Patapon does have that might help you is that all you really need to be able to use in a timely fashion are the four symbol buttons on the right. So if you can work those buttons, you're fine. You only need the shoulder buttons to navigate the menu, so they don't need to be pressed in a time sensitive fashion. Another thing about the PSP in general is that being able to remap buttons seems to be far more prevalent than on the DS. It's not universal, but I did notice it because it's so rare on the DS. But if these things aren't enough to get over the whole form problem for you, then I can't really convince you to get one. I'm mostly just angling for someone to perhaps try the online stuff with at some point. ;)

One thing that I like that the PSP does that the DS does not is WPA support for wifi. Theoretically the DS can do WPA, but it's up to the individual games and none of them do it. I expect they use some standard Nintendo library that doesn't do WPA and don't bother to improve on it. *grumble*

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thaumata
2008-04-04 03:56 am UTC (link)

I think that all the fuss is because you have a lot of people trying to do business in SL who have no experience (and often NO business, pardon the pun) running a business anywhere, let alone online. I met a shop owner the other night who literally did not know the difference between IP theft and IP address, and kept telling me that you could use a device (I assume they meant a proxy) to change your IP so nobody could steal it. NO, SERIOUSLY.

But LL has every right to defend their trademark, and I am glad they are doing it, so all those ill-informed people don't get hoodwinked by someone using a confusing name that looks a lot like the official ones. Will some people have to change their domain name? Yes. They will have to pay the ten bucks or whatever it is and move their stuff. Should they have been using someone else's trademark in their domain to begin with? No. You wouldn't start cocacolacrackpots.com or something and expect to not get a takedown notice. SL is no different from that.

For what it's worth, you can say second life, SL and Linden Lab in a blog post without any symbols. That's nominative use and it's allowed. If you were to use it as a tagline, however (making cool fish games inside of Second Life) you would need it.

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twoflower
2008-04-04 04:06 pm UTC (link)

This is why I loathe "Business-in-a-Box" sales in Second Life. People, if you have no creativity, don't pretend you're a content creator... and more often than not people who rely on those have no business skill, either, as you describe. They just wanna Make.Money.Fast.

I agree LL should defend trademarks, but how is "SL" trademarkable? "Second Life", okay, maybe, but why "SL Foo" being bad, and "SL Foo Bar" being good? It's just a lot of eyebrow raising and confusion. On top of that, they're really late in the game to be insisting people rename every project they have to comply with some new standard. All it does is make matters more perplexing, not grant marketplace identity clarity.

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	jengagne 2008-04-04 07:15 pm UTC (link)
	Thaumata, heh, RE: IP vs. IP. That's a good one. Poor thing. And yeah Twoof, as I was saying yesterday... "SL"? I guess next World of Warcraft is going to trademark the word "Wow"? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thaumata 2008-04-05 02:29 am UTC (link)
	I do think it's a bit odd that they'd spell it out so specifically like that. I suspect there must be some kind of legal reason why one would need two words to escape that rule, and if that's the case, LL isn't at fault. I mean, they have no good reason to complicate it, you know? And yeah, they are often late in the game, I will give you that, too. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jengagne
2008-04-05 05:35 pm UTC (link)

*tries googling* Well, this quote is interesting...
"In a long string of cases, WIPO URDP panels have concluded that the addition of generic words after trademark names is insufficient in itself to remove the confusing similarity..."

So arguably, it's fairly permissive of LL to say they're OK with you using it if you add two words after it. OTOH, I still wonder about claiming trademark on "SL". I guess "IBM" pulled it off, eh?

Googling again...
"The Court held, however, that abbreviations of generic words may become protectable abbreviation has a meaning distinct from the underlying words in the mind of the public."

Obviously LL's lawyers researched this and have the know-how to make these assertions. It's just interesting to me to find similar info elsewhere... makes it seem less off-the-wall to have some legal context.

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