Jimquisition: The Saga Scrolls: Edge of Candy

[Bad Jim]

I'm wondering if there could be some kind of bullshit lawsuit insurance. It would be on a case-by-case basis. You show them the letter you've got from some asshat's lawyers, and if it's sufficiently bullshitty and devoid of merit, they charge you an affordable premium and agree to fight it to the death it comes to court.

They can afford to do this, because once you are covered, the asshat knows you don't have to back down, and also knows his lawsuit is worthless in court. Thus, the court cases won't actually take place.

 

[Bad Jim]

One of the reasons piracy is doing so well is that copyright laws, trademark laws and licensing processes make it more or less impossible to compete for the better service.

Not really true. Sure, there may be DRM restrictions, but torrents are usually a lot slower than downloading from Steam and the risk of getting trojans/giraffe porn instead is much lower on Steam.

 

[Yopaz]

One of the reasons piracy is doing so well is that copyright laws, trademark laws and licensing processes make it more or less impossible to compete for the better service.

Not really true. Sure, there may be DRM restrictions, but torrents are usually a lot slower than downloading from Steam and the risk of getting trojans/giraffe porn instead is much lower on Steam.

I was thinking movies and TV shows more than video games here. I should have specified that. I agree that Steam provides a service that makes me prefer it over piracy. Simple, legal, fast and convenient.

DRM restriction isn't a part of copyright laws, it's just what they do to prevent us form pirating. Ineffective, but annoying.

 

[RandV80]

Another interesting thing to note, the US actually has little respect itself for things like international copyright and trademarks. Everyone's heard the name of stuff like Kobe beef or Champagne. I forget all the details here but these are actually long standing international awarded trade marks for products created in specific regions in the world. The US never used to give a shit for these things though so they just ignore it and have let their own business use the names to sell their products.

I'm Canadian and we pretty much do the same thing, but at least we're not going around the world cock slapping everyone else with copyright & trademark laws that are important to our own businesses.

Not true - these days you can't find U.S.-made "champagne" in U.S. stores, instead finding "sparkling wine". The same holds true for port - if it's origin is the U.S. they aren't allowed to call it port (I've spoken to vineyard owners about this, because I'm a nerd and that's what I do when I go wine-tasting). If you see champagne, port, burgundy, etc in the U.S. that is actually labeled as such, read the bottle, and you'll see that it isn't made in the U.S. (though it might be bottled here).

I haven't paid attention to the current status for non-alcoholic beverage items, like meat and cheese, so I'm not sure how they are currently working.

Okay fair enough, I remember reading about this I think just a year ago so it must have been pretty recent?

 

[RJ Dalton]

Totally with you on that. The patent and copyright laws are totally broken. Aside from them not having updated with the march of technology, they've been overextended and ridiculously broadened by companies who wanted the laws to be changed in such a way that they'd be allowed to do what they're doing. They need fixing.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I don't know the first thing about copyright law, aside from it being full of dicks. I will comment on the one thing I could understand from this video:
LUTHOOOOOOOORRRRRRR!!! Stop stealing our snack cakes!

Oh well, let's see what else can be said about copyright law:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-O84oCJPqIk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

EDIT: Dammit, YouTube! You Embedding instructions don't account for this!

 

[Pebkio]

Yeah... this is all being looked at from the contextual lens of games and gaming. I wonder just how much of this idiocy exists outside of the gaming industry. I could try to list all the cases within the last ten years, without even linking to anything, in a row without spaces, and I'd STILL hit the limits of a forum post. I don't even blame the patent law, anymore. I'm pissed at the companies, for sure, but even they are doing what is natural for our type of economy.

I mean, what kind of reforms to the laws in question have to be based on for them to become fair? Capitalism? Greed? Fiduciary Duty? Yeah, sure, and Superman himself will sign the documents. As far as I'm concerned, we have the systems that we rightly deserve.

I take this in full context of the Machinima contracts and the Youtube claims. It's all the same thing to me.

 

[tzimize]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like people are being unfair to King.com

First, as a disclaimer, King is most definitely not in the right. Suing Stoic Games for Banner Saga, while publicly declaring that "we don't really think they're doing any harm" is a dipshit thing to do. If you don't think it's doing harm, then call off the damn lawyers.

At the same time, comparing them to Tim Langdell is disingenuous. Tim Langdell trademarked a common word, did absolutely nothing worth mentioning with it, then targeted small developers for legal action because he knew they didn't have the money to fight back.

King, on the other hand, actually made something successful, and they're lashing out because they're being swarmed by copy-cats. They're like the Phil Fish of development companies--they're acting like assholes, but you can kind of understand because the internet is treating them like shit. When I look at King, I don't see money-grubbers, I see a company that rightly pissed off by parasites leeching off their brand stupidly lashing out against innocent bystanders.

Did you see the last part of the video?

OT: Fucking patent trolls.

 

[nightazday]

Yep preaching to the choir episode.

At this point the question is not "should the patient system should be fixed" but rather "how are people going to fix it?"

 

[Adept Mechanicus]

I was going to point out that even if copyright laws were cleaned up and revamped for the age of the Internet like they damn well should be, you would still have companies trying to waste each other's time and resources on spurious claims like this, even if the spurious claims are on a different issue entirely. Changing copyright law does nothing in this case because the issue is fundamentally not about the law, because the companies themselves KNOW that none of their claims would ever hold up in court. This video could have benefited from citations of specific US copyright laws that allow things like this to happen.

Not only do they need to clean up the criteria for being able to trademark something, but they need to start imposing large penalties to people who file spurious nonsense claims like the one King did here. When the courts eventually throw this nonsense out (and they will) then they need to also slap a multi-million dollar fine on King for wasting everyone's time. That would make companies think a little before spamming the court system.

This is exactly what needs to happen. A penalty for spurious infringement claims may also discourage the copyright trolling that's taken over Youtube recently.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Fun side note. Banner Saga was already done with their Kickstarter before Candy Crush was even out.........
So they are claiming they were copied BEFORE their game came out.

I hate lawyers....

They just drop three words, "Prior Art, Bitches" and walk out with legal fees covered.

 

[TheIceQueen]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like people are being unfair to King.com

First, as a disclaimer, King is most definitely not in the right. Suing Stoic Games for Banner Saga, while publicly declaring that "we don't really think they're doing any harm" is a dipshit thing to do. If you don't think it's doing harm, then call off the damn lawyers.

At the same time, comparing them to Tim Langdell is disingenuous. Tim Langdell trademarked a common word, did absolutely nothing worth mentioning with it, then targeted small developers for legal action because he knew they didn't have the money to fight back.

King, on the other hand, actually made something successful, and they're lashing out because they're being swarmed by copy-cats. They're like the Phil Fish of development companies--they're acting like assholes, but you can kind of understand because the internet is treating them like shit. When I look at King, I don't see money-grubbers, I see a company that rightly pissed off by parasites leeching off their brand stupidly lashing out against innocent bystanders.

Oh, yes, if I were King and I had made a successful rip-off of Bejeweled, Peggle, and Puzzle Bobble, why, I sure would be mad about a company copying my games, too!

Oh wait...

 

[AT God]

While I hope that the laws get fixed, I wish some kind millionaires would step up and at least make some good come from having a terrible law system.

My idea was to have some nice charitable people purchase the trademark for using either the word "Revelations" or the letter "2" at the end of a game's title. However, instead of making it so that game companies cannot use those two words, make it so they have to pay royalties on those words, and then donate the royalties earned to a charitable cause.

This would hopefully deter some companies from making sequels to original games that don't need them, meaning we might get some more interesting games, OR, if a company is so dedicated to making a sequel, they have to give a portion of their laziness to charity. That way we could still get great sequels like Half-Life 2, but the greedier companies would have to either change their name to something stupid, costing them money, (especially if they can't just title their sequel the original title COLON Revelations), or they might have to actually decide to make something original.

Probably wouldn't work, I can accept that but wouldn't it be awesome if it did work? Every game that holds a 2 in the title has to give some money to a charity, and we would have less crappy games if they weren't able to cough up some cash for charity.

Alternate idea would be to try and trademark the idea of sequels completely, again not making them illegal but for the sake of charity.

 

[GodofTheForge]

YAY! Thanks for using a clip from the Edge of Twilight teaser!

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Aaaah, I do love it when we can put aside the feminism arguments, the damsels in distress, the hatred of gamers for other gamers, the hatred of reviewers and just shit all over terrible copyright laws and terrible people as one big happy shitting family.

Jolly cooperation indeed.

 

[Adventurer2626]

I would love to see a Jim Sterling/Janelle Bonano debate on this issue. If that's a thing that can happen make it so. As you can see there's a fair amount of confusion on these issues. Maybe so official word and air clearing could help to get everyone on the same page. Thank God for Jim.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I remember when GW tried to trademark 'Space Marine' and I laughed. I mean they could have trademarked 'Space Marine Chapter' and I doubt people would have made a fuss. I don't think Chapter is a common word after marine, but the larger point is the absurdity of the whole thing. I mean Space Marine? Come on!

And didn't Zippo and Harley Davidson trademark the sounds their products make, the flick-pop and roooaaarrr, respectively?

 

[Sanunes]

I don't think I would have the same amount of issue that I do with King.com's actions if they were just more specific, such as using the word Candy in the name of a piece of software that the object is to generate an identical line of symbols. Right now with them being able to copyright the word Candy in gaming is if any Candy maker wants to make a contest app or something along those lines they have to hope King.come will be generous or if the Candyland game is ever developed the same issue would occur.