Who Owns What
After a beer or two and another great conversation with Mike, I have been driven (asked?) to post a link to a good discussion over a Terra Nova that took place a little while ago. We were having a conversation about distinguishing the difference between actual technological limitations (re: Taylor's article) the choice of a designer to not offer players the tools to create their own avatar.

So this brought us to the Marvel vs NCSoft court case. Marvel was disgruntled over the fact that players were creating characters (avatars) that were in likeness of their copyrighted. The argument is that NC Soft provided the tools for the players to create their own characters - of which the players created characters in likeness of Marvel heroes. Marvel cried copyright infringement - and someone (read the full thread) stated that that was like sueing Crayola for providing children with crayons that they can draw superheroes with. Needless to say, Marvel lost that round.