Now that I've successfully panicked you, chill. This is going to be a very informal summary of policies that are already stated or implied elsewise. This is not a bunch of crazy stuff that you're supposed to memorize and keep in mind whenever you're on the site; in fact, most of it is common sense.
Seinvocc does not claim ownership of your intellectual property. If you make a character, it's your intellectual property. If you submit some picture in the Artisan's Alley or something, it's yours. No problem. If you PM some song lyrics that you just wrote or a picture that you just drew to your friend, I don't see them, and I don't own them. (If you didn't know, admins are unable to read your PMs unless they change your password so that they can access your account and read them as though they are you, which, quite simply, does not occur.) I don't own anything of yours. Now, that doesn't mean that you can use your own licensing to post whatever you want. You still have to follow the rules of the site. Let me spell that out into individual questions that some people may be a little foggy on, just in case.
- If you make a character, whether you copyright it or not, we do not have to accept it as a playable character. You are responsible for building your character's info to be logical, unobtrusive to others' character concepts, and fair. You can edit your present character to fit and license that, or you can simply use the edited version here and keep your license on the original. The site's properties take precedence.
- If you are playing as a character, whether licensed or not, and you violate the rules and refuse to edit to be fair, we can and will edit or delete for you. We have not had to do so as of yet, but we do reserve that right. Again, the site's properties take precedence.
- If you are playing as a character and become incapacitated (whether by intentional inactivity, unintentional inactivity, or an account suspension/ban) to the point at which an admin has to post as your character in order to progress gameplay, we reserve the right to do so, whether your character is licensed or not. If the character is licensed, we will include a note in the post that publicly designates the post to be written by the admin in question, not you (which you can basically think of as fanfiction of a canon character, if that eases your mind). If the character is unlicensed, we may include such a note, as well, or we may otherwise make it obvious that the author of the post is not you, but we are not legally obligated to do so. That is a courtesy, not an obligation. If it helps to ease your mind about any discrepancies that you have with this, you should be informed that this has occurred in one post throughout the history of the site. More information can be found *below. Again, the overall well-being of others' gameplay on the site takes precedence over character ownership, within reason.
- If you design a character and license it, we can not simply hand that character over to someone else or put it up for adoption. We can put it into the Character Adoption Center because that forum serves a dual purpose; aside from existing as the name implies, that forum exists to provide pictures, videos, other character information, and other inspiration and principles for others to implement in their own characters. They will not be allowed to simply copy yours, but they may use some common ability names, properties, and other factors that do not violate your copyright. Basically, you don't get to copyright your "fire guy," write up a "Fireball" ability, and claim copyrights against anyone else with another character that develops a "Fireball" ability. Likewise, you can't use a picture of Axel from Kingdom Hearts to describe your character's hair, then dictate that no one else on the site is allowed to use that pic to describe a weapon. The picture is licensed to others, not you, and your inclusion of it does not expressly forbid its use anywhere else on the site. This isn't anything new; I'm just trying to make sure that you realize that a license doesn't allow you to automatically own everyone's ass.
Also, note that we don't like to simply hand characters over or even use too many similarities if we can avoid it, whether licensed or not. If you make a character and don't license it, we're still going to treat it as something that's explicitly yours unless you give permission otherwise. - Making and licensing a character does not give you total reign over the character's storyline. You are free to write whatever you want as a background in your character's bio (within reason; it shouldn't be obtrusive to others' character concepts or blatantly illogical to the point at which it gives us nothing to operate on), but what happens during regular gameplay is, by definition, a group effort. You can not cause events to occur that you are not given control over; that is bunnying. (See the Terminology thread.) You can not deny an event simply because you feel that you should be the only one to dictate the story of your character. If you are looking to write a fanfiction alone, you may do so in the Spam forum, but this is a role-playing site, not a fanfiction site. The very point in the game is to react to what others throw your way and develop your character in response while you develop your character elsewise on your own. This should come as common sense; if someone else posts that they show up and ask for a spar, your character may turn that person down in-game, but you don't have an oar in the water if you want to throw a fit and impose that the other person should not have posted in "your" thread. This is a public forum. For a manner of inducing exceptions, see Exclusive Threads.
Now, if you're in a thread in which you're posting to yourself (presumably only once per few hours or so), then someone comes along and adds to the thread, but you and that person simultaneously submit conflicting information, there's flexibility. Typically, a mod/admin (or just the other poster) will see this. The individual that posted the post with less effort will then edit or delete accordingly. That is generally the accepted manner to go about things, but it is not a rule. Again, this is a courtesy, not an obligation. Legally speaking, we can do anything from saying, "She posted first, so you have to fix yours to match hers," to simply deleting both posts and telling you both to try again. We're nice people, so we opt for the more convenient and courteous route, but don't think that we have to go your way. - Finally, your intellectual property is not considered to be licensed unless you clearly post the license information. We are generous when it comes to this; your character's license information can be in your signature, in your bio, in your personal introduction, in the Artisan's Alley, in the Character Adoption Center, or wherever else you may feel it to be appropriate. We will respect the license as long as we are sufficiently made aware of it. It is your sole responsibility to make us aware of any copyrights that exist on your intellectual property that is on Seinvocc. If you do not alert us of your license and we treat your work as unlicensed, you have no one to blame but yourself. Clear?
If you make us aware of such copyrights and we have already treated your work as unlicensed, we are not obligated to change details ex post facto. We probably will as a courtesy, but, if it is beyond our reasonable reach, however we personally define that, that's it. We do not have such a legal obligation. Again, if you want to run the license game, it's your responsibility, not ours.
More good news about this is that, as I've been saying this whole time, we are respectful and courteous people. We often treat your work as though it is licensed to you even if it is not. We're nice like that. It's up to you to conform with the law, and we'll do the same as long as we're made aware, which is also your responsibility, so just don't take our courteousness as something that you can abuse in a courtroom.
That link will direct you to the exact post. It is the second-to-last post on the page by default settings, specifically the one by Revil that begins with, "Supreme Representative!"
You should read the previous threads with Laola and the General. They begin in the Necrohol of Rodentia and follow a simple, labeled path. If you are having trouble, you may use the search function of the site. You should at least read the full thread, not just that post. Try not to hurt yourself by facepalming/facewalling/facedesking too hard to Bill's failures.
This character was not licensed, so my obligations are nil. I put a courtesy note just to be nice, not out of obligation.
My post as Revil occurred simply because the thread was about to finish up and Bill had been banned. Bill is the only person to be banned from Seinvocc to date because he is the only person that has blatantly and rudely refused to play by the rules. Since I tolerated him for more than a year and everyone who has read his posts can vouch that he was failing beyond all reason, no one disputes how fair his ban was.
You may notice that the thread ends with both of Bill's present characters dying. In case you couldn't tell, that's not the typical way that things go. General was killed off because Bill was trying to get General killed (and metagaming to do so), as he openly admitted, so it made sense gameplay-wise. Revil was killed off because it made sense gameplay-wise and Bill had nothing to contest. If you read that thread, you will notice that, because Bill metagamed so that his characters were holding back, he put everyone in danger. Speaking by gameplay, my badassery was enough to save my asses and Daniel's, but not enough to save the fools who were holding us back. Simply said, they died because character deaths are a natural part of gameplay, and these characters were due to die. My post as Revil had nothing to do with this; my post as Revil served the sole purpose of cycling posting order with a character that belongs to a banned individual.
If you look elsewhere on the site, the typical action that is taken is for a powerful individual or group to somehow sweep the character that is in question away, whether to another dimension in which the character is suspended until the owner comes back and an event occurs to return the character, or simply to another area, where the character may make a thread to recover and progress from there when possible. Having an admin post in someone else's place has only occurred under very rare, abnormal circumstances.