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Likeness Rights Work Arounds?
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Just an old country doctor by the name of McKoy, his Vulcan antagonist Mr. SPOKK, and their fearless Captain Circk.... These are original characters of my Foundry missions that do not represent any known actors or characters from the original show. They only happen to look similar.
Also the mission involves Q. Although he looks like John DeLancie, he's actually a different Q. No relation, I promise.
Anyone have a problem?
Also the mission involves Q. Although he looks like John DeLancie, he's actually a different Q. No relation, I promise.
Anyone have a problem?
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technically its probably ok but how many missions will get flagged because someone does not know the exact spelling of McCoy anyway and just flag it because it sounds close enough.
my advice is just keep clear.
http://www.startrek.com/article/cafepress-launches-customizable-star-trek-merchandise
But maybe someone can explain it.
Actually, I don't think that character likeness is allowed on the cafepress stuff. I vaguely remember reading in the rules regarding the fan merchandise that character likeness is one area that's off limits. might have to look through it again...
[edit] Ah, here we go...
I knew it was there
taken from a post by dstahl, there seams to be a list of characters we cant use.
Long story short; I sell blue T-shirts with a red 'S' logo on them. I explain in court that my T-Shirts aren't about 'Superman' from Krypton, they're about 'Sooper Guy' from Betelgeuse. Guess what happens? I lose the lawsuit and have to pay punitive and compensatory damages (them's just fancy words that mean 'lots o moneys'), and I may end up having to pay DC's court costs and attorney's fees.
Besides, unless Cryptic/Atari's attorneys are stupider than the people that believe that your post presents an accurate depiction of the situation, I'm certain that the Foundry EULA will contain language that reads something like this: "Trademarked characters are a violation of this agreement, as are similar characters with minor changes, e.g. 'Sooperman' instead of 'Superman', or 'Captain Quirk' instead of 'Captain Kirk.'"
Then I hope they list them so we know from the start to avoid them.
Like:
list of characters with no restriction
Spock
Kirk
whatever
list that we can mension but not deplict
Data
Troy
whatever
list of off limits characters
Ambasador puggy puggy
or whatever
The we can avoid all those copyright issues from the start.
Here is a link to those rules.
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/popup/index.aspx?page=fan_merch_rules_startrek
My understanding is that you can mention characters in dialog, missions, etc, but that you will need to stray away from trying to represent those characters/actors likeness in game.
As an example - the STO team has to get specific approval anytime we use an actor's likeness in game and they have rights of refusal in most cases to say they don't like it and we have to pull it.
what about characters who have already appeared? such as Worf? or characters whose likeness is inspired by a book (Calhoun)?
That's really neat of CBS to apply the cafepress standards.
And yes, Falcon, I was joking to make a point about potential misuses and violations. If I ever have a mission with Mr. SPOKK, you can flog me silly.
Frankly I am happy to avoid using characters from the shows. There are already enough children of Kirk and others floating around. Even the new movies can't avoid using the old characters. At least we can make new content.
It's my understanding that UGC is not actually part of "canon", but is more for people to play through others' ideas and have fun with. That being the case:
What if we want to have a time travel mission and hang out with (or solve mysteries with) Picard and crew? What about dead actors?
If I was reviewing a mission, I'd flag the heck out of something that either used names in a similar manner to the OP or used characters in a manner that flagrantly disregarded canon.
That said, I'd have no problem with a mission that either a) referenced previous missions (not unlike the scan the Gorgons mission currently), or b) referenced a fictional mission (i.e. We found a tidbit in the log of the enterprise-d blah blah blah).
Sounds like that's what this is going to be like, but I'm trying not to speculate until the actual rules come down... there's more than enough armchair developing around here (the forums not necessarily this thread) on unreleased info.
Why not just make a new likeness and just keep the generalized versions. There have been many movie Batmans for instance. In Trek There are now two versions of the original Crew. Why not just make the STO version of these characters. You did with Naomi WIldman who had an adult version of herself in the show.
Then if you get rights later you could change their appearance to the actors.
Hey, yeah, what if we just make a bald white guy, and call him Picard? No attempt to actually make it look like Patrick Stewart? No actor's likeness issues, right?
Which unfortunately doesn't prevent people from attempting to retcon or otherwise redefine the characters through their own stories. If people can't put James T. Kirk in a mission, the next best thing will be to put Jimmy T. Kirk Jr.
ok, can mention them but can't represent them physically
I can see where we, the players, might want you to get us a few exemptions
star trek personalities needed for many many stories
Borg queen
'Q'
Grand Nagus
It would be super nice to be able to use these guys.
People tease Cryptic about putting actual content in the C-Store, but if there was a mission that included Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard with his likeness and voice I'd buy it in a heart beat.
And if buying that content helped make a Picard Character available for use in The Foundry it would be a plus to everyone playing STO whether they bought the special episode or not.
I'm just not sure how many desires for actor likenesses need to be expressed on the forums before persistent action is taken towards this.
Agreed, this is a great way to make micro-transactions attractive to consumers.
On the other hand, I'd like to do some time travelling in the UGC missions, so why not be able to interact with any or all of them?
Dstahl says they need CBS approval and the actor can refuse...does this mean we don't have to pay the actor's for their likeness? If we do need to pay, use the microtransaction to raise the money, and let people use that asset then in their UGC.
Same for canon music....we'd pay for it, but we never get the chance.
Worf is already around
Seriously?
I mean... it's bad enough we have to spend $15/month (assuming non-lifetime, anyway) to make content for Cryptic's game... now you want to give them more money to make them better content that will attract more players to make Cryptic more money?
That sounds like some bad pyramid scheme you're supporting there.
If anything Cryptic should pay us for making missions for their game. Maybe a C-Point reward based on similar equations they use to figure out how much experience a mission is worth, plus the average rating given by players.
Your logic is going the completely wrong way, man....
right...because fan fic is totally worth money :rolleyes:
So...you don't think more people are likely to pick up STO because it has UGC in it?
A potentially endless supply of content to play seems like it'd be a selling point to me...
I've bought books of professionally published fanfic for Star Trek. Depends on the quality of the story.
Yes, it's certainly going to be a selling point. Doesn't mean that you should earn money for it...Cryptic is offering UGC as a tool, you are welcome to use it to better the game. but to expect to be paid...maybe in XP/EC? but nothing else. otherwise...chaos would break out over "whether my mission deserves money", etc etc. Even CStore points would cause the same problems, since it's essentially IRL money that you spend on STO.
How is it right that Cryptic can earn money on it but not those actually using the tools to create content?
Your argument does nothing against my point.
Heck... even Girl Scouts get some sort of reward if they do a good job selling someone else's cookies. They don't get the money for doing the work, but at least they get something. And XP/EC is meaningless if a person is more interested in making content than playing content.
And yeah... C-Points might essentially be IRL money, but it's IRL time people are putting towards making the missions, too. It actually makes more sense to reward in kind than reward with in-game items/currency.
Because you sign a EULA saying that Cryptic can do whatever they want with it, and you have no rights? Comes with using THEIR tools that THEY created for YOU.
True...but again, by signing this EULA you are essentially handing over any right you have to the content. Without the tools they provide...it's just an idea in your head.
Don't get me wrong, I would love a way to earn CPoints...but it's just not feasible.
Who knows, maybe that one really awesome mission writer and designer will emerge and Cryptic offers them a job :eek:
That's about the only way I see anyone getting paid from this.