Slashdot Mirror

While Sega seems to have some insane fixation with introducing a new and soon-to-be-forgotten character in each Sonic game, no matter how close it is to the basic Sonic platforming game, they still seem to be lacking in the massive amount of characters that now make up RPGs, both playable and NPC. Perhaps it's fanboyish, but I've been a fan of Archie Comic's Sonic the Hedgehog, collecting them since I was 12 or so (about a decade now). In that time, Archie has branched out the Sonic universe immensely, giving BioWare more than enough characters to choose from or adapt, as well as many locations and scenarios.

Even without that, the "critically-acclaimed" Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon from early '90s Saturday mornings has a smaller (although similar) cast of characters.

If they don't want to pull exclusively from the U.S., they could always look to Fleetway's Sonic the Comic from the UK, which I'm not as familiar with.

What I'm getting at here is that if BioWare just makes up a bunch of shit characters instead of pulling from a large pool of already-established characters in the Sonic universe, I will be one very pissed off fan.

It's still Veronica for me.

"Archie, Veronica and Gopher. Once again, it's Jughead, man!
Jughead I say!

Let's say someone set up juliaroberts.com, and it was a fan site, and they registered it in good faith. Should she be able to take it away? I'd say not. Obviously the microsof.com guy was abusing microsofts trademark on their name, because he was posting a page related to the software industry. But this has come up before, for example, when the people who produce Archie Comics went and sued a parent who registered veronica.org (which is a dead site now), after his daughter Veronica was born.

Incidentally, you can find a nice collection of these blurbs here.

All in all, its most people with money for lawyers trampling on people without, and it is generally just disgusting abuse of IP law. The guy who once owned tatooine.com doesn't have it any more. And there's not even a web page there.

One obvious indication of squatting is people mass-registering domain names. But I'd say unless squatting is clear, first come, first serve. And even with a squatter, they should be reimbursed for all domain fees paid.

I'm just thankful we have 2600 to push some buttons and stand up for people.

The original /. story is here. The story generated over 1,300 letters to Archie Comics, causing them to back down. It'll take more than that to take Mattel on, I'm sure.

Strangly enough, www.veronica.org doesn't seem to be up anymore. Hmmm...black helicopters...

WTF does he hope to do with a .org domain anyway? Corporations should stay in .com where they belong.