If there was any doubt that the eclectic mix of gamers who call themselves MUSHers form a community, events of the past month or so have removed it. For those who are already sick of this issue, bear with me. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll explain.

There was a forum dedicated to criticizing character descriptions. Note, I say criticize, not critique. The goal of this forum was not to be kind; in fact ridicule was the name of the game. It wasn’t nice, and it probably wasn’t all that mature either, but for those of us with a train-wreck watching sense of humor, it was occasionally amusing. Recently, a description was posted that belonged to one of the MUSHers who frequent the forums. While most take their fifteen minutes of infamy with good grace, this individual was deeply offended, and she defended her description on the forum, which gave rise to more heckling. Long story short – after taking part in the resulting flame war, this individual contacted the forum’s provider and got it shut down on the grounds of copyright violation.

In the grand scheme of things, a forum dedicated to making fun of people’s character descriptions being sacked isn’t going to bring the medium to its knees, but the situation has caused ripples throughout the community. Trust has been addressed, and dragging legalities into this area of the internet have left people with conflicting views and a few questions. Where do we as a community stand in terms of copyright law? When should we keep our disagreements inside the fence, and when is it appropriate to go outside the community to get a conflict resolved?

The Spirit of the Law

I’m not going to go into the letter of copyright law in this article. If someone requests clarification on the matter, a link about copyright and MU*s can be found on the Medium forum.. Here, I’m going to talk about the spirit of copyright law. It is my understanding that the basic idea of protecting someone’s copyright is to ensure that you can’t take someone’s work and claim it as your own. Further, you can’t reproduce someone’s work in a way that keeps him or her from making money off of it. In short, copyright law there is to protect someone’s identity as a creator and someone’s livelihood when those creations put bread on the table. I’m sure there are loopholes and qualifiers aplenty, but this is the gist of it, right?

Where does MUSHing fit into this? Forget getting into the intricacies of copyright law in terms of a collaborative work – where does this basic premise fit into our hobby? Do any of us make money off of RPing? I know I don’t. This isn’t my livelihood. I wish it was, because I put an awful lot of time into it, and I enjoy it immensely, but I don’t make a dime off of it. So if people paste a character description of mine on some forum, they’re not exactly threatening my income. If they credit the description as my own, they’re not stealing my work and claiming it as their own, either.

So why would anyone drag copyright law into it in the first place? The only answer I can think of is ego. Feelings get hurt, and the exposure to harsh criticism isn’t fun. There might be a sense of helplessness that all these people are laughing at one’s expense, and one’s prestige within the community might be compromised. Are these grounds for a valid lawsuit or complaint to a forum provider? No, absolutely not. That is my opinion, and I stand by it. It might not be nice to post someone’s description for the purpose of ridiculing it, but we’re not always nice people, and when you start trying to legislate kindness and generosity, you trample on our very basic human right to be jerks. I find this personally offensive.

As a writer, I appreciate copyright law, and I understand the need to protect one’s work. However, as a reasonably realistic human being, I also think that running to the law every time someone hurts my feelings would be even less mature than stating that someone’s character description reads like a bad romance novel. Whenever you put your creative efforts out for people to see, there is a risk that unkind things are going to be said. My suggestion is to learn to take criticism, even harsh criticism, with good grace. Also, learn to write. Oh, and don’t give up your day job.

Community Backlash

So this forum dedicated to badly written descriptions was closed down. Many people involved in the forums were unhappy. Some forums preemptively banned the player who complained to the forum provider. Other forums sprang up elsewhere so that this description could be ridiculed at will. More legal threats were made, and the description was once more removed. No one wants to go through the tedium of a frivolous lawsuit even if they’re pretty sure they’ll win. It’s still time-consuming and expensive, and for a hobby that’s supposed to be relatively cheap, it’s not worth it.

The player who complained got her way, ultimately. No one is ridiculing her description anymore. Instead, they’re ridiculing her. There have been mutterings of shunning her, refusing to acknowledge her presence in our community, and she’s already been banned from a whole mess of forums. There are also games that have mentioned discreetly that they intend to preemptively ban her. One might wonder why there has been such a harsh reaction to a few legal threats in order to get a description removed. It isn’t about the forum getting closed down, though. It isn’t even about another forum getting threatened with a lawsuit if the description wasn’t removed.

It’s about keeping it inside the fence. We don’t always get along, and we snipe at each other from time to time. Accusations fly, insults abound, flame wars roar like the fires of Hell, and sometimes we get burned. Usually, however, we keep our troubles inside the community. We don’t air our dirty laundry outside of our cozy little group. We don’t go screaming libel to our lawyer when someone calls us a poopie-head. That was this player’s perceived crime: not that she got a forum closed down, but because she went outside our community to do it.

In short, the reason so many players don’t want anything to do with her anymore is because they feel she can’t be trusted. If we can’t insult each other without the law getting dragged into it, that stifles our ability to express ourselves creatively. We’re creative people. This doesn’t set well with us. Walking on eggshells around someone whose ego is so fragile they might sue you in a heartbeat, for any perceived wrong, is not something I think anyone enjoys doing. The sad irony is that if she had taken the whole ordeal with a wry grin and a grain of salt, it probably would’ve scored her points. Instead, many players have expressed nervousness at the idea of even having her on their game.

Drawing the Line

This begs a question, though – when is it appropriate to go over someone’s head to get something done? If someone is paging me on a game threatening to find out where I live and kill me in my sleep, am I betraying the community by calling the police, or am I protecting myself? I would say the latter. When it’s a matter of life or death, I should hope anyone would take a threat seriously enough to do something about it. Yes, I would call the police. However, I would also inform the game’s administrators immediately. But come on. A copyright suit for making fun of a character description? I’m sorry, but I think that is ridiculous. However, it leaves me wondering where one draws the line.

We all have our own moral codes, and we judge situations according to our own beliefs and experiences. I doubt anyone in the world thinks exactly like anyone else. Something I might consider repugnant might not be such a big deal to someone else, and I’ve found that the opposite is usually quite true. I can see the need for legal definitions and definitive lines for when outside intervention is necessary, but where should those lines lie? Obviously if someone online is threatening to kill or harm you, go to the police. That’s a no-brainer. What about stealing your description to use for his or her own character object? What about using your work after you’ve left the game? I would be outraged if someone used a description I wrote and claimed it as his or her own. Using my work after I left a game, though? Forget being offended. I’d pretty much expect it.

Complicating matters further is the fact that most, if not all, laws in regards to copyright were written before MUSH came into being. To my knowledge, these laws have never been officially applied to the medium, though threats get tossed around all the time – not outside the community until this incident, however. It saddens me to think these laws might really come into play in the future. Not only is it depressing to think we can’t trust each other enough to work out our differences, but choking the relative creative freedom of the medium would be doing this community a terrible disservice.

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