Jita Park Speakers Corner

For a start, unwind the changes to the ToS that you applied earlier this week.

edit: Mynnna hit the nail on the head: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3613820#post3613820

My personal feeling on what such a revision should look like is as follows.

• Expand section 2B of the naming policy to include player names and names of player organizations. Change the relevant sections of the EULA & TOS to mirror this.
• Nuke section 2C of the naming policy from orbit, & remove the clauses that mirror it from the EULA and the TOS.

These changes would continue to forbid impersonation through similar names (abusing I vs l to fool and confuse and so forth), but allow more meta styles of impersonation as have been brought up as examples countless times in the past few days, such as claiming to be a representative of another player or player group, claiming to be another player, and so on.


In more elaborate terms, Section 2B of the naming policy would add a clause something like this after the second bullet point:

• Impersonate or parody another character's name or player corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players.

Section 2C would be removed.

Section 8 of the ToS would then read something like "You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or present yourself or your corporation or alliance by imitation of their name"; the language may be a bit clunky, but you get the idea.

And finally, the line in section B of the EULA which currently reads "No player may use the character name of another player to impersonate or falsely represent his or her identity." would change to something similar to the TOS, for example "No player may impersonate or parody the name of another character, corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players."

a bit out of the specific of this thread, I would advise to actually give some hard studying of the ToS in it's whole, as it might actually have some ambiguity traps laying about. With this, you might even cut the ToS size by half and making it crystal clear, while retaining the very same rules and meaning.

I can understand, however, some areas need to be a bit more "grey" than others, for there might be some valid exceptions here and there. However, the fallout of this issue might be the perfect excuse to do a house cleaning of the ToS itself.


as for the issue at hand, Kismeteer seems to be the better approach.

"present yourself to be another player's character" is probably better wording as it accounts for alts.

1.) Clearly define "groups."

2.) Also define what constitutes "representation." (i.e, the scope of affiliation - including with npcs)

3.) Misrepresentation and impersonation are cornerstones of dystopian pgc.

I've seen interest in clarification/further discussion on these 3 points in the previous feedback thread. The problem is that the language is too vague. No one knows despite GM/dev assurances that nothing has changed, what's allowed atm? What's a group? When can rp'ing be considered npc affiliation? CCP says one thing, but the words read differently. Whether policy remains unchanged or not, the language of the ToS has changed and the words being used now are much more subjective and open to interpretation. Without guidelines, they are meaningless.

If a re-write is in the works, it must preserve as much cut-throat tomfoolery as possible. The game cannot protect players from EVE's inherent dark nature. If there was anything said repeatedly that was easy to agree with, it's that.

YK

I think some people take exception to the addition of 'presenting yourself' as the person entirely, but understand that names in Eve are confusing.

So maybe something more like:
"You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not take advantage of another player, corporation, or alliance by using a similar character name, and presenting yourself as the original character."

As we mostly all thought, it should disbarr impersonating a CCP employee, Dev, GM, ISD volunteer or implying direct affiliation with such, also creating deliberately misleading player names and corp names to directly impersonate a player/corp.

Impersonating a Concord collection Agency, Gistii Ambusher or Chribba by claiming to be his alt and such common or garden deceptions should be perfectly legal ToS/EULA wise.

Not bad, though the language could use some work on clarity. I think it's simpler to say "You may not falsely present yourself as another player or another player's character." A number of long-running scams depend on the ability to (legally) claim to be Bob the Goonswarm Ice Mining Permit Manager.

Personally I think Mynna's wording is better, under yours it could be implied that claiming to be a persons alt is not allowed, whereas with Mynna's it is fairly clear (in my opinion) that it is.

Posting publicly what I'll be saying in private as well:

My thoughts are more along the lines of no. #2, thoughtful objections to the TOS itself. I like mynnna's wording, and here's where I'm coming from on it:

The TOS on impersonation should (1) prohibit players pretending to be CCP or people connected to CCP, and (2) it should prohibit players from using UI tricks to make their characters too difficult to distinguish from another character.

That's it. Players lying and pretending to be other players or organizations or representatives of those organizations should be completely allowed. After all, if I am pretending to be someone else or someone else's representative, my mark can check in with the original as long as I'm not violating point no. 2 above. If I am, then *that's* the TOS violation that protects the player.

People with good reputations can protect them by petitioning any clones who're scamming and by reminding their customers to triple-check before doing business with them. Access to a character in order to edit a bio or send a mail can verify that you're working with the right person. Someone wants to broker supercaps on their alts? Great, they list their names in their main's bio. Someone wants to rent out all of Vale? Great, they list the approved rental officers in the corp description or a bio or something.

Similarly, if someone apps to my corp with the text 'June Ting's Cyno Alt' and I don't check with June to see whether they're actually who they say they are, I'm liable for anything that happens afterwards. It's no different from accepting an app from someone who says they're a total carebear who wants to come to mining ops without checking their API to see what they *do* at said mining ops. Sure, it's a lazy way to awox, but margin trading is a lazy way to scam and *that* still works. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.