Van Hemlock

Regular readers will by now, know that I have a rather unfashionable vice. Everyone has at least one, those awkward quirks in otherwise good friends, those little things that you don't approve of, or like, but put up with out of a greater sense of comradeship. We put up with them because we hope the the favour will be returned, I guess. Mine, or at least one of mine, is an enduring fascination with [Name Removed For Legal Reasons], an online virtual world where users are encouraged to build things, sell them, show them off to friends, make a bit of beer money out of it all, and occasionally dress up as foxes for hot cyb0r action.

I know its not an MMO, and I know that most of you, dear readers, couldn't give a toss what goes on in there. And yet I occasionally post about it anyway; its one of my vices and one of my own particular failings. Or at least was.

In amongst the welter of news which my RSS reader seems to have become swamped with lately, (someone check on Brent...I think his PC has gone all 'Shodan' on him), I saw a link to this:

[Name Removed For Legal Reasons] Official Blog: More on Trademarks

In which ShortStraw [What Americans Call Lime Trees] attempts to defuse the powder-keg caused by this new page on their website:

The [Name Removed For Legal Reasons] Brand Center

It comes as no surprise to see that the 150+ comments appended to the blog post are pretty much all "Nevermind that...fix the damned game!" I'd say its been going through a bumpy time lately, if 'lately' didn't stretch back to 2003, and one wry commenter, quite rightly, points out that the only thing that hasn't gone bananas in all that time, is the billing system.

So aware of the dangers of Rhetoric and Inflammatory Kneejerk, I spent at least half an hour of my life, (which I'll never get back), trying to work out what the hell had actually happened here. As far as I can tell, it seems that there have been people in [Name Removed For Legal Reasons] being rather cavalier with the IP, running their little pretend businesses and pretend websites with [Name Removed For Legal Reasons] logos all over it, giving the impression that they are officially endorsed [Name Removed For Legal Reasons] people, and probably cheating and scamming people in some fashion as a result. Most likely, [Name Remove For Legal Reasons] has had enough of the...petitions, complaints, whichever. Rather than police this in a one-to-one manner, it looks like they've lawyered up and then some and gone a bit ballistic with New and Improved Terms of Service, which now include the link above.

One regrettable area of collateral damage seems to be us, the hard-working and largely voluntary Blogging Community at large, who it seems, are now no longer allowed to use the name [Name Removed for Legal Reasons], (or even the letter before T and the letter before M, next to each other!) without all sorts of arseing about in the extended character-map for symbols, which must be put behind The Name, and footnoted with all manner of extraneous trademark guff, or...well, I'm not entire sure what will happen actually. Probably one of those ridiculous Real Life Civil Court Circuses that make me cringe so much, in the Real People News.

The whole thing seems to have caused a fair amount of fuss, including, wait for it...a Blogger's Strike! Aw, bless! Something like 30 'prominent' [Letters Removed For Legal Reasons] bloggers did indeed down tools for three whole days, no doubt causing no end of disruption, although last I heard, management did not come to the table. Ahh... its like Thatcher was never gone...

Partly because I didn't want to be a scab, but mostly because I couldn't be arsed, I didn't blog about it either! Solidarity Citizen!

I'd be flattering myself if I thought anyone reading this old e-Rag was then inspired to go and try out [Name Removed For Legal Reasons], but on the off-chance that the ultimate sanction for such ASCII related transgressions as I have committed in the past, is indeed an opportunity to win a life-time subscription to a place where you get to dress up in a boiler-suit costume and have very r3alz0r hot action with a large gentleman named 'Bubba', I'm removing all law-breaking posts, and shall not be committing the heinous crime of talking about [Name Removed For Legal Reasons] ever again! No great hardship, I must admit, and I'm sure you'll all be somewhat relieved. Let them do their own publicity for once; I'll be damned if I'm going to have to open CharMap just to fill in my own damned blog posts!

We now return you to your scheduled ranting about Proper Games!

(Incidentally, just to see if this wasn't just what all the normal MMOs do, only with far less pretentious fuss, I've just sat down and read the Tabula Rasa™ EULA, (another half hour of my life I'll never get back), picked at random out of the other games I currently play. Couldn't see anything about the above nonsense, although the loading screen does note the various trademarks NCSoft® own. Don't think I've ever heard of any other company go quite so berserk about the whole thing actually, or have needed to.)

NCsoft®, the interlocking NC logo, the interlocking DG logo, the Destination Games logo, Destination Games, Tabula Rasa™, Character Cloning System and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation.