Do none of the comments from anonymous posters in this thread have any value? I''d prefer to see moderators remove childish messages than to ban anonymous posters altogether.

(I''m the anonymous poster who recommended that copyright book. Is that worth nothing at all?)

A very valid point why dont you email the people who did Unreal Tournament and point out that they are making a duck, as they are copying quake.
Why dont you also email all the people who make cars and tell them to stop ripping off Ford, and in between writing these emails, why dont you amaze all of us by posting the screenshots of the entirely original masterpiece game I am sure you are the creator of.
By the way you might also want to insult Chris sawyer for copying Theme park, maybe Ensemble studios for ripping off command and conquer, Perhaps Iain Banks should sue the guys that made Halo, and Im pretty sure the guys who did the matrix should sue the guys who made Max payne.
And if your writing this on a PC, then you are a duck, as the whole idea of a PC interface is stolen from Apple, who stole it from Xerox.
Gee, given all these ripoff clones, Im really pretty excited about seeing your original game xDS4Lx. Is anyone else excited about it too?

http://www.positech.co.uk

quote: Original post by cliffski
Is it possible to ban anonymous posters just from this business board? If not, Ill be following others lead, joining the ASP and switching my posting to there instead, This board is often helpful, but I dont want to have to read junk comments from 12 year old anonymous posters.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Aye, while most lamers keep out of this forum it''s not immune to them.

it''s not necesserily the legal system Cliff, if you''re talking about Hasbro, then you''re talking about the company, which co-incidentally (the interactive division) is sold to infogrames, and they''re not even an american company. As far as what happened to you it''s a shame, considering you probably didn''t use any specific copyrightable material. Whether you think it''s messed up or not, it''s still to protect people''s IP rights so that someone doesn''t deliberately copy them.

Keith

(btw there were a couple of games in the lawsuit that were
actual ripoffs, I beleive one of them was macman which looked almost exactly like pacman except it was blue instead of yellow)

the law is to protect those IP rights... So don''t blame the legal system for something a bad company did.

XGames3D fought and lost the legal battle against Hasbro, because XGames3D ran out of money. It''s a bit bogus, but that''s the way our court systems work. I''m sure you''re not stealing any ideas, it''s just that just about every basic arcade game has a copyright on it that''s owned by Hasbro, and your publisher probably saw a little connection between the two.

Hasbro is just stealing purses from old blind women... And don''t tell me there isn''t people like that were you come from.

-Fredric

Ufhgood,

It has a lot to do with the legal system. First of all, because of the costs involved in fighting a lawsuit it''s hard for an individual to defend himself against a bunch of corporate lawyers. On top of that, companies with lots of money will sue even if their case has no merit. Getting a settlement that favors your position is for practical purposes like winning the case. All of this creates fear, which is the reason cliffski''s game was droped.

By the way, copyright law was originally meant as a policy to promote creativity and the dissemination of creative works. It was never intended as a property right as it''s currently seen by many people (including lawyers and judges).

Once again, read "Copyrights and Copywrongs" for more about the state of copyright law in the US. Other books to read are "The Future of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig and "Digtal Copyright" by Jessica Litman.

No doubt it sucks Cliff.

I''m suprised no one has posted a reference to this link.

Lawsuits in the Internet Age : Hello, my new game, 104LB7A will be great(TM)!

Not to make light of your situaion, but this guy has been blazing this trail for a while. Unfortunatly if his expirence is any indication, you are only beginning to feel the pinch.

American lawyers? Are you suggesting that people like European or lawyers of other nationalities are above such things? If a laywer from _insert your nationality here_ were offered as much money as they were to fight something that didn''t concern them in the least bit, they would do it too. Don''t come on here bashing America or Americans in general for something that a CEO and some shareholders cooked up over breakfast.

People from other countries are constantly bashing Americans for things left and right. Its either that we "don''t know geography", "we don''t know what''s going on in the world", or even "we don''t give a rat''s ass about the rest of the world". First off, just because we live in America doesn''t mean that we don''t know as much about geography as everyone else, perhaps you forget that that most Americans don''t need to think about it as much considering you could fit all of Europe in it and then some so we''re in a pretty self contained little world here, we don''t have 40 some odd neighboring counties, just a few. Second, we know just as much about what''s going on in the world as everyone else does. We have many news stations and newspapers just like you. Whether we choose to take time to learn more current events is a different story. Third, we do care about the rest of the world, at least most of it anyway, except for all the countries that hate us because we''re "wasteful" and are a giant terror to the rest of the world. They''re all hypocrites. If they were as big as us and had the resources our country has they would be the exact same way, there''s really no avoiding it, we''re all just humans yanno.

As for the rest of the world not liking us for getting involved with world affairs such wars and what-not, if we didn''t, parts of the world would be in much, much worse a state then they are now. Places like Vietnam which were threatened by Communism, constantly waring countries, and then there are countries which have horrible dictators that kill thousands without a care in the world, remember the whole Kosovo incodent? How about Hitlers reign? Exactly, Europe was in a bad fix when we entered the WWII and if you''ve studied that part of history there''s no need to argue with it, I''m just making a point.

If you want to get on our case for developing and using the atomic bomb on Japan, you can ask China and all of the Pacific Islanders what they think about what Japan was doing, killing all of those innocent people for laughs, and then ask yourself if it was or wasn''t necessary to use the bomb. Yes, we killed many people who shouldn''t have died, and I know this and believe it was wrong to have had to do that but if we hadn''t the war would not have ended so quickly and a land and sky battle between the two nations would have killed far more on both sides. Many people would say that our campaign in Vietnam was a failure, I am one of those people, but we DID make a difference for the better and thats what counts the most.

I''m not saying we do everything right, and we DO make mistakes, everyone does, but this is not a bad country. Not by a long shot.

Mindgamez Entertainment

Please lets not turn this into a political discussion. This thread is about cliffki''s game being dropped, not about American politics. Whatever the rest of the world is like, the fact that American corporations can abuse the law to suit their own purposes says a lot about the American legal system.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Big Stupid American Publishers?

Can u make an original game?

We have to protect our interests, even from piddly arsed
programmers like u.

Stop whining like a bitch.

You have to admit that copyright law has become a means for a lot of abuses. For Example, BT (British Telecom) tried to enforce a patent on hyperlinking or the Hasbro BS from not to long ago.

I checked out the link under his posts and his games look pretty good to me. I don''t know if the concept is original (but then how many games have an original concepts.).

Dropping a game because over zealous lawyers have managed to scare publishers isn''t exactly protecting our interest. If anything it hurting us.