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Slashback: Mods, Books, Checkmate
Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)
From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."
In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.
But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."
Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers!
ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?
'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.
However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.
We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"
So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.
The text above is the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I fail to see anything in there resembling anything about copyright infringement. I didn't think copyright came about until after the U.S. Constitution was written.
I also fail to see why he got a +5 insightful for passing on info that was obviously false.. I guess some moderator had just too many points and decided to use them up.
I believe the parody thing you were talking about deals with Fair Use rights, which was not put into the constitution, but it was written as a federal law or something like that (IANAL).
As for where you draw the line in things like this, and I feel that the game company is right in this case, is when a product that a group of people create could possibly be in conflict with any current or future projects that the company that holds the copyrights on the said information.
E.G. I make a dragonballz game, if the people who 'invented' dragonballz saw my game as something that they may create in the future, even if they dont have plans to make the game, can tell me not to make my game.. Its just how the rules work, I can see why it is like that, even though I think it would be nice if it was different..
Geist (too lazy to find name/pass)
Does anyone remember this? The whole map was the enterprise, down to a T. Well, it wasn't a mod, it was a level, but it was pretty damn cool :) Even the transporters worked, but they always beamed you to engineering.
Actually, English grammatical structures haven't changed that much, certainly not due to the introduction of the apostrophe. English retains a genitive case (in the singular, at least), which French lacks. In your example, the French construction would be more like "The birthday presents of Tom are nice".
The apostrophe as an indicator of possession is an accident of orthography, not grammar or syntax. The apostrophe traditionally represents sounds that are left out, usually vowels. The genitive (or possessive) case in the singular was generally formed in English by adding -es to a noun. The plural was generally -a. With a few exceptions, the e was gradually lost in pronunciation, and spelling conventions followed suit, putting an apostrophe in place of the e in every genitive - except for pronouns. I'm not sure if the use of an apostrophe without the "s" for the plural genitive arose at the same time. So from a historical perspective, the apostrophe in Tom's and the apostrophe in isn't are actually doing the same thing, not different things.
Gradually, however, the concept of -es as the genitive marker was lost, and the "rule" of 's and ' (for plural) being the possessive markers was extrapolated from common orthographic usage. Most of the other case formations were regularised, and the genitive (marked now by the apostrophe) is really the only vestige remaining of the old case system, with the exception, again, of the pronouns.
Pronouns were and still are irregular. "Its" as the accepted form of the third-person neuter genitive pronoun was well-established before "Tomes" would have been shortened to "Tom's". (As an aside, the dominant Anglo-Saxon form was "his", from the nominative "hit", consonant with masculine "he" and feminine "heo". The "h" was dropped in the dominant dialect, though some dialect populations in England and America still retain the old "h" pronunciation, however.)
I don't see why anyone who has ever worked on fiction / science fiction / any creative work of their own, would even consider to sign the petition to get George Lucas to change the name of HIS movie. Make fun of it all you like, but it his movie. Just because you might not like it, and some other people agree with you, doesn't mean you should try and force him to change it. There is a good reason why you can't force him, it is because it is his creation and if you can't respect that then just don't go watch it. Don't read anything else about Star Wars. I am sure George Lucas wouldn't care, his movies aren't targeted at the majority of people who read and post to slashdot anyway. They are targeted at a generation of younger kids who don't have the experiences and knowledge it is hoped that we do.
Do something useful with your time instead of bitching about someone else's story. Write your own or read one who's title you can live with.
Harbinger
Of course, since I read it here in Slashdot, there's a 72,1489% chance of being wrong. People here always come up with numbers to prove their point.
This space left intentionally blank.
Funimation/infocomm has the rights to DBZ video games. TOEI (sp) does not, they've aleady sold them and could care less.
However, if the game qualifies as a parody then most of the copyrights are extremely difficult to maintain. Having had some exposure to DBZ, i'm sure that it won't be that hard to get from serious DBZ to a Parody of DBZ.
The estimated number of chess games is 10^80. The estimated number of all particles in the universe (a lot more of them than atoms) is 10^100.
Also, if you have 10 billion computers, each computing 10 billion positions a second, it would take you only 10^60 seconds to enumerate them all. According to the physicists the universe has been in existence for about 10^18 secs.
Of course you probably would not to have to enumerate all positions to solve chess, but the numbers are telling.
Errr, no, more like "Send in the Clones" :-p
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Wrong. If you include one more number you end up with 72.14895%. You should have rounded upwards..
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That particular collection of letters is called an acronym .
And by the way you'd pluralise it VCR's, as with all acronyms I can think of. Probably.
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. The thing is if you think about it, The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars are pretty cheasy names, but we don't care, we see these movies anyway. Why? Because we don't care about titles, never did, (not sure why we are starting now) we care about content.
I'll start at the end first :)
My point was they should probably have realized from the beginning they couldn't develop something like this aboveground, and they are now paying the price for not being a bit more FreeNetish.
They DID in fact know better, and actually claimed that they had struck a deal with FUnimation at one time I believe. There were claims that things were fine, then this shows up much to their chagrin, nice work Chris!
Having some practical experience with Q3 mods, I'll try to explain something. I think you are probably theoretically correct. They could do that and it would work to some extent. However! The boxed editions of Q3A for linux sold poorly, thus Linux is not a very powerful gaming force, thus Windows remains on top of the heap in gaming. What does this mean? All the DIY stuff with putting the game together yourself just ain't gonna happen with Joe. Q Windowsuser. You've gotten Linux on the brain (no offense meant by all this of course) and you're not used to packaging thigns up neatly and tidily for Win users. Sorry if I'm wrong on that, but that's how it seems. This mod wouldn't be half as popular on release if it was distributed in tiny chunks, with users creating hteir own pak files and creating hteir own images... Good in theory, but I don't think it would work for this particular instance.
Lastly, I want to say that they are going to change everything to non-DBZ according to their website, and still have it out in a month. Hrmmm... They miss deadlines a lot, so don't expect this to actually happen so soon.
Funimation blows :)
-Pasty
cause you dont know any of the good ones, stoopid..
Yes, a number of pawn-less six-piece endings have been compiled. See my other postings below.
"You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by...Jon Katz" Now that's a scary thought. Bad drugs that make you read Jon Katz reviews instead of just the normal spiders crawling in your mouth and melting walls. *Shudder*
I have to agree, though your entire email could be rewritten by replacing "'liberals' don't want to liberate us from anything except personal responsibility" with "'conservatives' don't want to conserve anything except their narrow religious outlook and their bank accounts". By the larger point remains, only simplistic morons continue to try and describe politics in a black vs. white, left vs. right, linear graph.
Let's pick some examples and give a Bizzaro World rating on each isue:
Abortion: This is one of the weirdest issues to be shoe-horned into the conservative versus liberal scale. Abortion is entirly a religious issue. A powerful subset of religions in this country has decided that this is their litmus test. The supposedly constitutional conservative polititions should be pointing to the "separation of church and state" clause of the Constitution and telling these groups to fuck off. The supposedly careing liberal politions should be fighting for money to build huge government "embryo orphanages" to bring up and help the helpless little zygotes. Bizzaro world rating: 9.7
Welfare (see military): Tax credits to corporations, payments to farmers, discount grazing rates on public lands, mineral rights to public lands sold for a fraction of the private-sector value; all are defended by the supposedly conservative right wing and opposed by the supposedly liberal left. Bizzaro world rating: 9.4
Military (see welfare): The biggest government-funded job program in history is the darling of the conservatives. On the other hand, the biggest government-funded job program in history (that also provides education and training for some of the poorest citizens) is the target of the librerals. Bizzaro world rating: 9.1
Drug War: Similar to the arguments on abortion. The liberals are saying, "Stay out of my life, let me do what I want." The conservatives are pushing for military raids on individiual's homes, "taking" of private property, and system that amounts to little more than a government job's program for lawyers and prison guards. Since the drug war does proportionatly affect minorities and the poor these issue does play into the stereotypes of convervatives versus liberals which limits the bizzaro world rating: 5
Environment: You would think that an Adam Smith solution to this issue would make everyone happy. Make corporations pay the full cost required to clean up after themselves. Charge full market value for logging, grazing, and mineral rights on government land. To do anything less is welfare. The conservatives sure don't seem to pushing very hard on this. On the other hand, liberals seem to have a knee jerk reaction against anything that "commodifies" nature and they also have a tendanency to want to spend infinite amounts of money on perfect solutions instead of available money on those solutions that will do the most good. See the flap over the "arsenic in the drinking water" as a good example of politics over results. Bizzaro world rating: 8.7
My last point: next time someone tries and describe someone as "conservative" or "liberal" when they really mean "right" or "left"... slap them.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The whole problem here is not whether it's a good title or not - it's a matter of whether it's a good title for this particular movie. Judging from Episode I, the image of Jedi running from giant killer tomatoes in Episode II may not be that far from what the movie actually turns out to be!
I have bad news for you. Chess will not be "solved" in the course of the current universe. Naturally we will not be able to generate and store all possible chess games, even up to move 40. That would be 10^112 games, which reduces the number of elementary particles in the universe to a silly, irrelevantly small number.
But of course we could take the other route: generate all possible positions and calculate all winning lines, as Ken Thompson did in the 80ies for three, four and five-piece endings. When you complete the retrograde analysis on these the computer plays them perfectly. We even use these endgames in the Fritz search, so that these days typically Fritz ends its won games by announcing mate in 20 to 70 moves. The first batch of six-piece endings have now been generated, but they are big. And the interesting ones (not yet calculated) are with pawns, which makes them even bigger. Pawns ruin one plane of symmetry and have the irritating habit of being promotable, so that you have to have all the piece endings that can derive from them available as well. Fritz can access a number of pawnless six-piece endings, but there is currently no practical use for installing these endgames.
How about the 32-piece endgame? Now this is seriously big, containing between 10^40 and 10^50 positions. Trust me, it cannot be handled by the computer farms you propose. Dr John Nunn (mathematician, chess Grandmaster) tells me that just storing the 32-piece endgame database using optimum storage techniques (smallest theoretical energy levels for each bit of information) would require the matter stored in a few million galaxies. Maybe it could be done, but John is worried what Greenpeace would say about a project that involves dismantling galaxies in order to store chess.
They'd probably chain themselves to the rocket ships.
I do not agree. I think Star Wars was perfect for the time in which it came out. Sure, it may sound "hokey" now, but come on, it was produced in 1977. I am sure that half of the people reading this reply weren't even born yet. This was made (and named) well before the mass producing of B grade space films in the mid 80's, which Star Wars set the precedence for.
Don't Upset the Buhda
I am one of the worlds hungry. Where did I put those dam doritos...
Has anyone thought to use something like distributed.net as a huge chess computer? I'd bet it would be several times more powerful than deep blue, even without chess ASICs.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You're going to sign a petition to make him change the name from "Attack of the Clones"? Really, is that any worse than "The Empire Strikes Back"?
I swear, Lucas can do nothing right anymore.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I hope Luca's takes those petiton's seriously and change's the title. Attack of the Clone's i's reall'y stupi'd. Then agai'n, it's better than the killer tomato's.
Yes... and I'm the loser who is pointing out that you're a loser for pointing out that he's a loser for bagging on all the losers. But in the end I'm the only one who saw the irony applied to my own post before someone else told me. I'm not going to say I'm better than you here, because I'm not... I just acknowledged ahead of time that I'd blow a couple minutes on this little bit of sad recursion so the cycle can hopefully stop. We're on slashdot. Face it, we all suck. Thanks to everyone for your dilligence in making the obvious even more painfully obvious and the redundant even more redundantly redundant.
I know I felt like pelting the ugly motherfucker with tomatoes when I saw Episode I. (Jar Jar, not Lucas. But the title of Episode II is making me question the wisdom of that choice.)
Actually, I wanted to pelt Lucas. That fat tub of lard is as ugly as you say.
WildTanget ( http://www.wildtangent.com ) Is not a necesarrily a Java engine. It is a graphics module useable in just about any programming language, this includes C++ and Visual Basic. The team wouldn't have to start from scratch, they'd just have to clone the Q3A engine. The WT object is very flexible and could very well make a game like Quake3. It just wouldn't be as fast. Don't diss the WildTangent =P
5) acknowledge the fact that yes, they're trying to take somebody else's creation, and exploit the franchise for their own uses. They're not getting money for it, perhaps, but the point is that they're using somebody else's work without asking.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You won't find time-shifting or space-shifting in USC17 either, but we do have those rights. Thanks to the courts anyway.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
When questioned why, he said that "Revenge is not a Jedi Concept".
IIRC, this little factoid was revealed on the "The Making Of...." preview at the start of the Special Edition video tape (3-tape widescreen collection, U.K. version, though it's probably present on all the SE Ep III tapes).
However, I'm posting from work, so I'm unable to verify this source right now. It could all be a figment of my diseased imagination. Or it could be marketing spin to make Lucas sound more like Buddha and less like a merchandising-cash-hungry dog.
Send in the Clones?
It sounds like another way of saying "celebrity deathmatch".
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Sorry. my usage of the word "gpl" was tossed-off. I was trying to imply, in a way, "open source", to the greatest extent to which the mod could be open sourced.
Keep in mind i haven't the foggiest idea how to create a q3a mod; i didn't particularly like quake 3, and so i didn't buy a copy. Therefore i don't know much beyond what i saw in the demo and at other people's houses.
Whether you can gpl an image, you *can* distribute the entire mod in a format where the images, models, sounds, and program code are all in their own little seperate files rather than being lumped into one compiledish modfile. (of course, for all i know, q3 mods actually *are* distributed with the models & sounds all remaining as seperate files in a big tarfile or something.. i don't really know). My mention of the gpl is because it has a nice little conception of how you have to distribute source-- you have to give all the individual components, in a form they can be used to tweak and reproduce the "binary". This would be sound, source code, and whatever project files glue it all together. I figured that "gpl" makes about as much sense as "open source".
(For the record, you *could* gpl an image; you couldn't release seperate "source" to that image (maybe you'd have to release any unflattened photoshop files you still had, if you still had them.), because the image *is* the source, but you would by gpling the image be saying that any "derivative work" would have to be gpled-- i mean, if you reused the image in a game, you would have to gpl that game.)
It would , of course , be no better to gpl it than to bsd or lgpl it... and given you are using images, concepts and characters you don't own, you should probably just public domain it. (again, my use of the term "gpl" over the term "public domain" earlier was solely based on the gpl's insistence of distribution in a form with uncompiled component parts, not because of the ideological things behind it)
A VERY interesting case would be this: They release their mod under the GPL; Funomics or whoever takes the images & character models & other DBZ recreations, and boxes the whole thing as a Q3 DBZ mod in stores; gpl violations are claimed; and Funomics argues that becuase they own the right to those images, not the creators of the mod, the creators of the mod did not have the right to mandate the GPL restrictions on those images, and becuase the GPL is based off of using copyright law to ensure the source remains open, Funomics wins. (Alternately, Funomics just shipped the whole mod, the court would probably rule that they have a right to images and models and other DBZ things, but the program code to the mod is still GPLed...) Interesting thought experiment.
HOWEVER:
Ugly. But they'd have to replace all the name references to copyrighted characters as well... a lot of changes overall to make it distributable.
You misunderstood my point.. which is that instead of putting their names on the mod, getting space for it with a company that knows their names and addresses, etc., they should have just made the "source" files for the whole thing available while it was in development, so that if they get tracked down and get C&D letters, others can circulate the files person2person and continue the creation of the mod, and that way, they wouldn't have to bother with copyright laws, because the laws would be irrelivant. If they had done that, the DBZ mod would be playable now. As is, it will not be playable until they have done what you say-- remove all DBZ names and likenesses from the game; and that is because of a consious choice they made, that having their names on the final product is more important than being sure that the final product uses DBZ characters. My point was they should probably have realized from the beginning they couldn't develop something like this aboveground, and they are now paying the price for not being a bit more FreeNetish.
I don't see why anyone would bother to print up shirts for this movie if it's going to be as bad as Episode 1 (that means it has Jar^2).
Fark. I modded this as troll and it came out modded as funny. "Troll" isn't even near "funny" on the dropdown, I don't think I flob'd it. Anyway, um, metamod me *stands like a sacrifice* but know that, um, i don't think it was actually funny. *sigh*
closed minded is as closed minded does
RC1 and RC2 were leaked. The webpage that originally had them to download was shut down by the makers of the mod... if you look around you may be able to find it.
Please correct the petition to state "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" rather than "Attack of the Killer Tomato's".
It's already extremely unlikely Lucas will pay any attention, but we might as well be grammatically correct in our attempt, so as not to be discarded before he even sees the petition.
Is it a coincidence that your nick is "Gee... sue!"? :)
karma capped
Who was the idiot that thought *that* was a good idea?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Oh, horror of horrors!
I have lost the respect of an unidentified person somewhere who has nothing better to do at 11:58 PM on a friday than read and respond to random comments about star wars on slashdot.org!
It is clear i have disgraced myself and my family by reading star wars novels in the seventh grade between classes. I must now ritually disembowel myself in the seppaku ritual.
*SOB* what have i done
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Someone should petition Lucas to release Ep. 2 as a GPL movie.
Then we could name the $#(* thing whatever we please.
just my 3 cets worth
episode one was such a dissapointment, i feel to hell with it.
the quality of the title gives me a glipse of what to expect from the movie, and its not good
i think "attack of the killer clones" would be better
IMHO, the reason why people complain about lame content in Ep. 1 is because they ... grew up.
No. I first saw Star Wars when I was 31. It was popular with my contemporaries and was certainly not seen (except possibly be literati who affect to despise all SF) as a "kids' movie".
I was disappointed by Ep I because it clearly is aimed at kids, and unless I hear that Ep II is different (unlikely, under any name) won't bother to see it.
Tell me, sir, how does it feel to be an expert on ficitious events conjured up for the amusement of children and associated merchandising?
At least he reads books. I doubt you could say the same.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
See, I would think it would be "The Clones Strike Back."
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Coincidence???
Absolutely. You're reading far too much into a movie that was basically designed to go "bang", "boom", "oooooooh" a lot.
That applies as much to RotJ as TPM. The fact they have superficial resemblance to anything deep and meaningful is completely coincidental - and it probably says as much in the credits...
I second that.
Remember, periods go inside the quotes.
Some of us hackers/geeks do it differently for a reason. Not sure if that applies here, though.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
If MS wanted to kill Capcom by cloning streetfighter, they wouldn't be allowed to use the same characters. Instead, they'd be forced to use Ballmer the dog boy, Paper-clippy, Bill-borg and Code Reddy the IIS giant.
But aside from Qui-Gon becoming a double-ended shish-kebab (and forgetting to become one with The Force), Obi-Wan was only briefly disarmed, before picking up Qui-Gon's sabre and finishing the job. And I recall Amidala fighting her way into the throne-room where she could point a gun at the Trade Federation guys. Neither really gave up their weapons. And the whole battle was eventually resolved when Anakin fluked the destruction of the control ship (man, they had light-speed travel, but didn't know about redundancy) using a Naboo ship he'd borrowed.
I suspect that you're reading just a little bit too much intentional sub-plot into the movie.
They never offered to pay them. At least not to my knowledge.
Remember, periods go inside the quotes.
This is a silly convention which leads to ambiguity, and I only use it informal writing.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
You've been on the happy dust, again, right? The far left is actual Socialism and Communism (actually, I'd argue that Communalism is even further left) -- these are systems that don't work and never have. The far right is Fascism and some Totalitarian systems (excluding, of course, Communism). Conservatism is not, as people dumbly argue, for smaller government. The fact that Conservatism proposes to impose so many moral restrictions on its people (more laws) mandates more law enforcement, which, of course, means a larger government. Both systems expand the Government, but in different ways.
This does not mean the entire spectrum of Government is Totalitarian. Only that the extremes are. Most governments are inbetween. Libertarian, contrary to the assertion of the original sig, is a left-wing, liberal idealogy. The argument he wanted to make was that the Democratic Party is for Socialism and the Republican Party is for Fascism. Neither are true. (Albeit, while the Socialists and Communists are Independents that vote inline with Democrats, the Fascists are generally a part of the Republican Party.)
I refer them to this handy guide: Bob The Angry Flower's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots
Hopefully that'll clear things right up.
---
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
doesn't this sound redundant redundant to you?!
Anyway, if Jar-Jar and Jake had been involved the title would have been more like "Itsa De Cloneys Attacking. Yippeee!".
Your sig...
Really, I always read Anonymous Coward posts, and always post as Anonymous Coward.
Supporting the rights of Anonymous Cowards for 2 years now!
Umm no
But they have the right to protect their trademarks - it is the Law - Dont like it - go to university and get a law degree, or run for government and change it - dont sit there and whinge. Legally they have a perfect right to control the actions of a non profit mod - the own the character rights and thus they can legally say how and where the names, images and concepts can be used - end of story.
The MS comment is childish - you are talking about 2 different licenses and 2 different laws - MS license you to make USE of their product thus you can write letters on it etc etc.
Fair us unfortunately has NOTHING to do with copyrighted images etc, the company could choose to not block or to block it - they have chosen the latter - and Funimation have total right to stop them as they own the characters (legally)
Check out the MS license and then do a search on copyright laws.
These guys have wasted their time and they lose out -they should have gotten a clearance in writing before starting - thats what BUSINESS people do - and even if its not for profit the company can argue the very reason they chose the Dragonball Z characters was to get the considerable fan base intersetd that is they used the funimation copryrighted material to attract customers to their product - whether they make money of not is a moot point really.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
It does seem kind of silly though to call it "Attack of the Clones". Why not simply Star Wars Two: The Clone Wars. That's what the period has been known as for years.. it'd make more sense. Ah well. Doesn't matter to me. I'll probably go see it but I'm not one of these crazy people that goes out and buys the DVD of the movie (well, if there was one) and all the boxed variations of the directors cut, etc. and the toys. That's just silly.
My first response when seeing the petition to change the god awful name of Episode II was happiness at being able to voice my mind and support an effort to improve a series I care about.
On consideration however, I think that signing that thing ignores the real problem -- quality of content. It is my expectation that Ep II will suffer a weak storyline, lame characters, jackass explanations (i.e., the Force comes from bugs in your cells or whatever the hell that was) just as Ep I did. Given this near certainty, I think the title is great. Let shit be called shit and we can save ourselves some grief.
Not that it would have done much good anyways :P
They were a mile beside the point when they mentioned Wild Tangent's WebDriver. This game is a mod, the developers of BFP didn't write the Q3 engine upon which it runs, they just did a truckload of new graphics and sounds, and wrote zillions of lines of gameplay code. That's why people make mods instead of standalone games : you save the hassle of writing your own game engine and easily benefit from the pros' work. If these guys were to actually make BFP in WebDriver, it would probably end up looking like an old playstation game (low-polys, cheap colors) because they might not be very familiar with the intricacies of 3d lighting and tesselation issues.
Infogrames's lawyers are either ignorant or well informed. Either they stated this out of pure idiocy, or someone in the know told them that it would not only look good to the press, but it would also stop the BFP team dead. I'm putting my money on #2.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Back in the Good Old Days(tm/c/r/patent pending), I and a decent sized group of friends were working on the Predator Quake TC. It was a lot of fun and we were nearing our first public beta. (un)Naturally, our morally mindful leader got the notion to ask for permission. *pow* FOXED. It was rather depressing, but what could one do?
:P
:>
I wonder what they'd think if the ZIP got released... Then again, thinking back on it, I'd be rather embarassed.
Someone needs to do a TC that's a bit more original. I mean, people *don't* have to use pre-existing monsters to do good work. DoD and CS for half-life are hugely popular without such content usage.
I'm not saying it's fair that we can't use freely (as in no one gets a dime) things that are popular and recognizable. It's just that I think we're pretty unlikely to win this battle anytime soon. Why not make our on multi-million dollar franchises?
There are better things to petition than the name of the next star wars. Sorry, but they screwed you on the last one -- now is the time to give in.
What might be better? Well, for one:
Anti-DMCA Petition:
http://www.dibona.com/dmca/
Programmers speak in Code.
http://www.anti-dmca.org
You really need to start acting or there won't be any net...
-B
- March of the Clones
- Scourge of the Clones
- Storm of the Clones
- Strike of the Clones
- Onslaught of the Clones
- Drive of the Clones
- Onset of the Clones
- Pugnacity of the Clones (A good one to give the word pugnacity the attention it deserves)
- Bellicosity of the Clones
- Bedlam of the Clones
- Militarization of the Clones
- War of the Clones
- Combat of the Clones
- Fray of the Clones
- Clones of the Clones of the Clones...
I hope George will break out his Thesaurus and Dictionary and do a serious rethink of this title.Stupid people get no sympathy here.
(Karma, goodbye...)
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Look, "Attack of the Clones" is cheesy, I admit, but a whole lot less chessy than "Star Wars" or "The Empire Stikes Back". We've just gotten used to those being the names of great movies.
People keep getting upset about the Star Wars films having Lucas fingerprints all over them, and for the life of me, I can't understand why! Star Wars is Star Wars, and it should not suprise you that there are things as painful as Ewoks, as predictable as light-sword fights, as broken science as ships meant for vacuum with hinged hatches. These are the hallmarks of the fun-but-essentially-fluff science-fiction-fantasy that Lucas creates. It's decent fantasy, but with high (and almost certainly accidental) camp value.
Go see the movie expecting a Lucas film, and I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Go expecting the next 2001, and you will be an unhappy camper.
Are you a real troll, or just play one on TV?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Crouching Jedi, Hidden Clone"
Can't take credit for that one, though... :)
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
If your viewpoint is the case, then where does anarchy fit into the political spectrum? I admit that I over simplified my explanation, but the main point that I was trying to show is that if total government is on the left and total government was on the right, where would no government be? It obviously is not in the center...
So climate's changing. So what? It has always changed. The big news would be if it wasn't changing. - Dr. Philip Stone
The Phantom Menace refers to the underlying theme of the SW films: evil lies within. It showed its characters embracing violence (Amidala), deceit (Qui-Gon) and anger (Obi-Wan) in order to do what they considered to be the right thing. Intelligent film-watchers who have seen ROTJ should be aware of this. It is only when Luke renounces violence at the end of ROTJ that the tables turn and the "good" side wins. Coincidence???
Consider the end of TPM. All three contingents are effectively "disarmed" (sometimes forcibly) before they achieve victory. And the moment they give up their weaponry -- they win.
But what does this all have to do with clones? Thematically, TPM is full of "doubled images" (handmaidens, Sidious/Palpatine, droids) which are associated with order falling apart. Even the planet Naboo is split into two halves (the ego and the id - diplomats and warriors), etc. And so if you actually bother to reflect on it, the new title makes perfect sense. These bad decisions our "protagonists" will make (out of - no doubt - a desire to do good) will begin to backfire on them badly.
As much as people may dislike Jar Jar (I found his presence objectionable myself), doing idiotic things like signing this petition is just foolish.
Most notably the voice of the Joker [as a quick IMDB search would have revealed... ;)]. Which blew my mind when I found out -- I mean,
the voice of the Joker and the voice of Luke Skywalker are not two that I
would have pegged, just from listening to them, as coming from the same
man.
sed 's/In Soviet Russia/In NSA America/g' < yakov-smirnoff-jokes.txt
Did you completely disregard everything he said, simply because you wanted to post something that sounded as holier-than-thou as that? This doesn't even have the slim arguments of "theft" that the various "media pirating" scandals have perpetrated. This is the reinterpreteation of character design as a game mod.
This is similar to fanfic, in my eyes, or a fan site using pictures proclaiming undying love for the series.
Unless you're just trolling, in which case I suppose it's all okay then.
what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
Anime is gay and DragonBalls is the worst gayest penis-whore suckfest of them all!
Okay, we're a little off topic here, but it's a slashback, and I think it's a fairly interesting discussion so I'm gonna put in my $0.02.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about when you refer to libertarianism as a "left-wing, liberal idealogy". I assume you're talking about US "liberalism" here, which is a horrible misnomer. US "liberals" don't want to liberate us from anything except personal responsibility. But that's another issue. US "liberalism" is extremely close to socialism. They haven't quite managed to push us into a truly socialist system, but that is certainly what they are trying to do. They attract votes by telling the less well off that they've been screwed by the system, and that they'll take lots of money from the "rich" to institute all sorts of social programs to make things better. Well, they don't actually accomplish much, but they seem to have the masses gulled into thinking that voting Demokrat is their only hope of achieving the "American Dream".
The Republicans aren't really much different. They do have the evil influence of the "Religious" Right, but that's balanced by their slightly closer adherence to the Constitution in other areas. The point is that both parties are primarily interested in preserving the status quo which places them jointly in control of the country. And those in control (with the exception of the occasional statesman [read: politician with a conscience]) will always be interested in increasing the size and power of the government. That means less freedom for the average citizen. Unfortunately, the average citizen (at least here in the US) isn't all that smart, so when a politician tells him that adding this shiny new social program is gonna make things better, he believes it. Especially if the tax jump to support it is only applied to the "rich".
Note: There are a number of definitions of "rich". For the purposes of this comment, there are two important definitions, that for the average US citizen and that for politicians. To the average US citizen, "rich" means "anybody who is making more money than I am." To determine who is rich to a politician, you have to pick an income cut off line. That line has to be high enough that the "rich" people represent a minority of the population, but low enough that they represent a sizeable minority. If it is too low, there will be enough "rich" people that when you screw them they can probably make sure you don't get reelected. If it is too high, there aren't enough to exploit effectively because you simply don't bring in enough money for the government.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
This may be a little bit before some of you, but Lucas refered to Return of the Jedi as Revenge of the Jedi to the press as to make it more dificult to find out info on it, and He has a long history of Misinformation, Misdirection, and Tentative Title names to keep people on thier toes.
I expect this to be no differant.
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
Magius_AR
Jar Jar clones...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Actually, that dates back to the old by-hand printing presses. They had to put it inside the quotes for some strange reason.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
This mod wouldn't be half as popular on release if it was distributed in tiny chunks, with users creating hteir own pak files and creating hteir own images...
It would be pretty easy to distribute it in more than one form simultaneously, even if over hotline.
I did understand that one crucial battle scene pits Obi Wan against a disgustingly profane clone on an elevated platform. Just as the authorities arrive the clone plunges to his death and Obi Wan is arrested for making an obscene clone fall. This sends his young apprentice spinning out of control into the dark side of the farce. Unable to make bail, Obi Wan escapes and becomes a hermit on a remote, desert planet.
Episode 3 will be a response to the more vocal fans and will be called, "Obi Quiet, It's My Movie!".
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Imho a mod based upon some story/show/movie/game etc, is really just a form of fan art. IF i make a level for Counterstrike that seems remarkably similar to the battleship in UnderSiege.. should i be liable to be sued? If i draw a picture of one of the dragonball z characters for my personal enjoyment (is a free mod for anything but?) am i violating their copyright? HELL NO. Fuck off Funimation!
The alternative reason is that Star Trek 2 was coming out at about the same time, and it's original title was "Revenge of Khan". Lucas changed his movie so there'd be no confusion, but then it got changed to "Wrath of Khan" anyway.
Dyolf Knip
The parallel is to ESB. The "pit" is bad news in any symbolic reading (falls from grace, death, etc). By rising out of it to confront Darth Maul (who allegorically represents the evil within), Obi Wan becomes a "true" Jedi Knight (he gets a green lightsaber). Symbolically, Obi-Wan passes the test that Luke failed in ESB when Luke refused to accept that Vadar was his father (and thereby confront the fact that the potential for evil existed in him as well).
Absoutely. But ANH also showed us a victory built on violence - and look where it went. Its end ceremony explicitly quotes Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will". The new film is equally skeptical on a symbolic level. Victory WAS accidental, and it WAS based on violence and not the kind of conscious moral decision (Luke's) that triggers victory in ROTJ. And so we end with day falling to night (good --> evil) in a funeral ceremony clouded with fear and uncertainty. Not exactly a happy ending.
I understand your skepticism, but I'd respectfully suggest that you're not giving Lucas enough credit. Why does the new film keep referencing Ben Hur? Why are we continuously given suggestive Christian images associated with the fall from Paradise? Why is all of the color symbolism consistently negative with regards to our "heroes" (Amidala wears red and black!!)? Why such emphasis on "masks" and doubles? Why the shift in emphasis from the sun to the moon, paternal to maternal relations?
As much as some of its features (like Jar Jar) may be offputting to some, it is hard to ignore the incredible complexity of the film as a whole.
He knows a girl with a Revenge on the Jedi shirt. Does that not just say "she-geek" to you?
I actualy disagree with the point I'm about to make... but your logic is flawed so I'm going to point it out to you.
Don't think "theft" of the digital property. Think "theft" of the rights to distribute that property. Once someone else has given the property away you no longer have the exclusive right to distribute do you? Unauthorized copies are moving around. That's how it's "theft."
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
--Instead of trying to fight this battle, the writers of the Q3 DBZ mod should sidestep and throw it back in the copyright holders face.
They should turn it into a parody.
Can my character have DBZ hair? Can my character have DBZ clothing? Can my character shoot big fireballs? Can my character have DBZ naming?
You draw that line in the sand and I'll find some way to split it in half. Copyright laws were designed to focus on intent, not specifics.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Well *DUH* of course they were going to be told to cease and desist. It's a terrible shame that people with the imagination to create a game of that complexity and richness couldn't have spent another 1% of the time to think up some slightly different characters. Anime characters are so formulaic anyway, I'm not sure anyone would actually have noticed anyway!
Anybody know if a copy has been released into the wild? I would like to download it before it gets sued to oblivion.
...why would anyone think that he'd listen to fans about the name. It's probably been focus-grouped to death by yes-men MBAs from various toy companies. Face it. Lucas is losing his touch. He has little of Akira Kurasawa's work left to plagiarize -- or worse still, chooses not to. Each film has been worse than the previous. I'm expecting Attack of the Clones to be about as good as, say, the average Star Trek Voyager episode.
If you know that you're in a country with a screwed up legal system that can allow a copyright holder to limit the third-party use of characters from horrible tv shows even when the use does not dilute the copyright, affect in any way the profits or revenues of the original copyright holder, or make money for the third-party, then why on earth make it possible to send a cease and desist letter? Publish the whole thing anonymously on xoom.com, GPL it, and make sure that every step of the design process from pre-alpha up is freely available so even after xoom gets the C&D letter and kicks you off, your mod will still be floating around hotline. Just let the community have the thing, and it will never die, no matter how hard the lawyers try to stamp it out.
P.S.: To the "call to power" people: It might be too late to "leak" your source code anonymously to usenet-- since the lawyers can whomp your asses even if the leak was unintentional-- but it isn't too late to get your thing distributed. replace your splash screen with a big "DBZ SUXOR!!" drawn in Microsoft Paint and release the thing. Taa-daa! You are now "parody", and protected under what's left of the U.S. free speech laws.
Anybody remember that old macintosh World Builder game set in Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood...? Damn, that thing was hard.
Not so fast...I think this is not as simple as you make it sound.
I think there is a case to be made that this mod would fall under the category of parody. This means that it is protected from claims of copyright infringement under the first ammendment.
Besides, if you want to take such an exclusive view...where do you draw the line? Can I use a DBZ skin for my player? Can I use a DBZ character name for my player?
IMHO, if there is no profit involved then the courts, society, and all of us should be giving people wide latitude when it comes to these kinds of creative endevours.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
The question if it is fair is not relevant unfortuantely - i know that this an unpoluar opinion in some quarters of /. but funimation holds the copyright on Dragonball Z and thus they have the right to control its usage and appearance, thus if they say cease and sesist you cease and desist - its the law and the law has nothing to do with fairness. You could argue fair use and no profit but i fear that wont work as they have proven themselves to be aggresive in defending their copyrights (and it is legal for them to do so)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Of course, you included a redundant "at least", so apparently nobody's perfect. The "its"/"it's" thing bugs the heck out of me too, but I suppose you can't blame posters for getting it wrong when none of the /. editors know which one to use :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Why can't the movie title just be named what it's about: Clone Wars. I think all Star Wars nerds have heard of the Clone Wars.
And in no way, sir, does this post insinuate that you are a loser. Because you're not, really! I mean, how could such a well-versed Star Wars expert ever be called a fucking loser?
Sir? Sir? Are you there, sir?
...loser.
If you create a DBZ skin you can be sued for copyright infringement.
Maybe "Send In The Clones?"
I'm sorry but did you see that last movie. Giant Red Tomatoes would be a huge improvement. I think the petetion should be to replace Jar Jar with a Giant Red Tomato.
That case could be made if the mod did in fact fall under the category of parody. However, it does not, so I fail to see the relevance.
Besides, if you want to take such an exclusive view...where do you draw the line? Can I use a DBZ skin for my player? Can I use a DBZ character name for my player?
No and no. You don't own the copyright. Even just for "personal use" is still an infringement of copyright [but you're not likely to be caught].
There is no line to be drawn. It's simple copyright law.
these kinds of creative endevours.
If the mod authors were so fucking creative why couldn't they invent their own characters?
Ouch. Maybe you should give Global Thermonuclear War a shot.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Looks like nobody can sign the petition to ask to have the name changed. With the traffic they are going to get from /. they could get quite a formatible list of signatures. ;)
Too bad.. I think that 'Attack of the Clones' is a pretty silly name.. May as well call Episode 3 'Return of the Clones'...
Isn't there a PETA site or some civil rights site you can post at? I don't post there so don't be bringing your soapbox around here, fella. * Heard that JAr Jar was in this one too...Howabout "Attack of the crappy cardborad characters" or "Slow destruction of Childhood memories"
Never trust a bald barber; he has no respect for your hair
-Legion
While theUnited States Constitution makes no provisions for or against the existance of copyright that does not mean it is not legitimate law (general reference, not disputing your point). Remember that The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The Courts have taken this to mean (especialy under the 14th ammendment) that the Congress can make pretty much whatever law it wants provided that it doesn't abridge any specific or implied freedom as determined by the court. Furthermore, I find it highly unlikely that this Court is going to strike down Copyright as unconstitutional.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
There is no lack of scarcity, in other words it's not the same as someone taking something away from me and giving it away, since in that example I wouldn't have it anymore.
This is *NOT* the case here, a copy leaves the original intact. If i remember my history correctly, it was one the points raised by your very own Thomas Jefferson, when he raised some personal worries concerning copyright and patents...
Of course, it might reduce the market value of the original...
Yes there are some precendents for a company nixing a mod that contains their IP.
id shutdown a mod for q2 called "generations" that featured BJ blowkosky (sp?)(wolf3d), the Doom! marine, the Q1 dude, and Q2 players. Some game where they all played together. id didn't want it because they had q3 coming out and a "return to castle wolf" in the works. Whatever.
Also, 3drelms (makers of duke nukem) shut down many sites that had maps for q2 that were remakes of the classic duke nukem 3 maps. Even bigger whatever.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
All speech has rights. Even twits like him.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Umm am i missing the point here ? maybe cause as far as i can see Lucasarts can name the movie anything the like - they own the property after all, they appeal of phantom menace i think has shown that they no longer rely on the fanboi element for survival and they could really call it Star Wars Three - Obi One sucks Yoda's cock and they would all still go and see it.
Dont you think its a bit childish to have petitions to change the name of a movie that a company has decided on ? What about world hunger? civil rights ? rape? Nope were gonna protest about a movie
I give it approx 10 minutes befors some ethical person posts email addresses for lucas arts staff or george lucas himself - that wayy all of you can mailbomb them to death in the reponsible adult way you all practice
This is a really fucking retarded post.
What will Funimation do? Sue them.
Tthe "UPDATED" feature in Slash is there for a Reason. Why don't you slashdot-editor-people ever seem to *use* it?
If you're going to put up a link to a petition which is closed *before a single comment has been posted*, then wouldn't it make sense to alter the article and note in it "oh, btw, you can't sign the petition anymore" ?
What's up with this wierd aversion to updating the article to reflect important details that are A) in h2 type at the top of the link B) noted in cid #12 or so..? I mean, it isn't a big problem.. i'm just curious.
Hey hey hey, quit bashing the name. I hear that Jar Jar Binks, Mark Hamel and the little kid that played Anakin Skywalker spent hours thinking this over. Let's all honor their hard work!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'm not a fan of dragonball Z (sorry Taco I just don't like it) but this whole thread brought to mind fan fiction. I have every feeling of certainty that some company has the book rights for dragonball z and I'm sure that there are books out there based in the DBZ universe that can be had at any waldenbooks. just as easily I'm sure i can search google for DBZ fanfics. so when is someone going to start CandDing fan fic sites?
-
Hey, there is nothing wrong with Latin, so lay off.
The truth is always there, whether or not you want to believe it.
It was really Attack of the Cones
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Everyone complained about Episode 1, and now everyone is complaining about Episode 2. I know that movies often tremendously differ from books, but how similar are the books and movies in the Starwars series? Is there a JarJar in Book 1? Pod Racing? Force-o-meters ?
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Did anyone even bother to listen to the little bit of history the original movie presented itself with? do you guys even *remenber*? (the ones always bitching about E1 being crap ;)
;)
;)
If they are making the movie after the Clone Wars, the title is perfect..perhaps it is 50-60ish, but so what, it's better then watching the Trade Federation and the annoying droids do all the fighting
Then again, i'm use to reading the Star Wars books, which are as we all know, books are always twice as good as movies
Well, movies frequently have fake names while they are still in production. ROTJ was once called "Revenge of the Jedi" while it was still in production. In any case, Lucas should have embellished the title a little more to "Attack of the Killer Clones from Outer Space", though hopefully it won't be quite that hokey (cross fingers).
Admittedly, "Star Wars Two: The Clone Wars" is a much cooler name, but it's probably too similar to "Star Wars".
cpeterso
it's incredible how people are always bitching about StarWars! First you complain about The Phantom Menace title, next about JarJar, next about Attack of the clones. Since the SW prequels resurfaced, the only thing people are doing is critisizing George on every thing he does. You really think The Empire Stikes Back was such a great title?? Come on! If I was George Lucas I would stop right after Attack of the clones and NEVER make the 3rd one. How cruel would that be?
Rape and such is already illegal. Why would you protest something that isn't allowed?
News flash... things that "aren't allowed" still happen. Plenty. Bringing attention to illegal atrocities may serve to reduce their occurance even more.
Unfortunately, very little is likely to reduce the occurance of Star Wars movies. Sigh.
They have four options:
1) Change the game to a Dragonball Z like mod. All they would have to do is change the faces of the characters. Just so they are not immediately recognizable. They would also have to change a few maps (like Kami's house).
2) Ask for donations. Check out the forums over there (links at the top of their page) and if everyone only sent $5 dollars they'd probably have enough for legal defense. Some lawyers might take it pro bono for publicity.
3) Get whichever company makes Quake (don't own it so I don't know) to help them. This is a mod for an existing game, so Funimations licensing may not cover it.
4) "Sneak" a copy or several hundred thousand out to the general public. Once it's out (and I've heard copies are already floating around) what is Funimation going to do? I envision an ICQ/ email/ etc distribution campaign. This is what I would do.
No sig for you.
"...we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation."
What? A simple "no" wouldn't have done?
I don't think they will get you for naming yourself after their characters. What you need, my friend, is a buck naked, shaved bald, pregnant Bulma skin.
IMHO, if there is no profit involved then the courts, society, and all of us should be giving people wide latitude when it comes to these kinds of creative endevours.
So if I take something of yours and give it away, but I don't charge for it, that's ok, right? Because there's no profit involved, right?
Something tells me this viewpoint is just a little bit simplistic.
They didn't take anything away, they made use of existing ideas. There's a significant difference between physical theft, and a dispute over a copyright or trademark.
... flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz
:)
No I don't. But thank you.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
IANAL. That out of the way, the line for parody is that it must use only as much of the original to be readily recognizable. I suggest that a good parody that knew how to stay on the line was Spaceballs. They could even gat away with Dark Helmet's...er...helmet, plus the Alien re-enactment in the diner. Mad Magazine also knows its way around how far it can go and come in under the parody clause.
--The basis of all love is respect
I heard that the new Planet of the Apes was originally titled Marky Mark and the Monkey Bunch.
You definitely have a point, you know; but you might also want to re-read this. If only it was as simple as a matter of 'right'...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I know a girl (well woman now) who still has a Revenge of the Jedi T-Shirt...its bound to be worth, say, $20 by now ....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Dude's got to lay off the crack.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Jebus people! If you create something for your own personal use it DOES NOT constitute copyright infringement. Nor would it constitute patent infringement. Those 2 areas of law are designed to prevent COMPETITION. If you are not distributing the creation, it is not competition.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If you DISTRIBUTE a DBZ skin you can be sued for copyright infringement.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I was kinda thinking along those lines myself. If I was Lucas, I KNOW I wouldn't be able to resist the chance to fuck with the heads of a bunch of Star Wars geeks :) For all we know he could be laughing his ass off right now.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
to change their name to Attack the of the Alien BFP Clones just to piss everyone off
BOSTON SUCKS!
Speech comes in two forms:
+ popular
+ unpopular
No one can agree 100% with which is which. Sometimes you are the moral majority, sometimes you're not. It's all a matter of when and where you are isn't it? When were the Christians the moral majority? Now? Yesterday? Where? Here? When were the Christians the moral minority? 2000 years ago? Where? Europe?
Ever notice how no one (except communist china) is ever offended by Buddhism? That's probably because you don't see them backing their morals with guns, brutality and death. I say this because they are the model of peace and tollerance... mostly... Ever hear the expression "losing my religion?" You just lost yours the moment you decided to judge the "racist." Jesus didn't tell you to judge anyone. Jesus told you to love him. So piss off you hypocrite.
BTW, I'm atheist but it doesn't make me wrong does it?
This is the RC3, so it says on the page where I found it
two links!
BOSTON SUCKS!
What if the Bid for Power guys said that the video game wasn't based on Dragonball Z in the USA, but in Japan?
On the other hand, I seem to recall the Aliens TC hack of Doom being MUCH more popular than the official first person shooter based on the Aliens world. It's doubtful that the official Aliens shooter would have been such a flop if the Doom Total Conversion had not been so well done.
Distributing DBZ eps...you have a case. Distributing fan scripts and stories? Then I don't think you should, even though the laws say you do.
The whole purpose of the copyright laws were to encourage creativity. Things that extend or add to creative works (as long as their are clearly labeled to identify origin) should be allowed.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
If you take something of mine and give it away I don't have it anymore, do I?
But wait, with digital data I probably do. So the "theft" argument doesn't work (check the dictionary and you'll see that it requires the removal of property against the will of the owner... removal not copying).
That case could be made if the mod did in fact fall under the category of parody. However, it does not
Says unimportant you. That's an opinion, not a fact.
When I think Q3...I think ugly horrid monsters roaming castles and courtyards. DBZ seems a complete mockery of that. I mean, what if someone make a damn Pokemon Q3 mod? How about Strawberry Shortcake? At what point do we say, hey that's definitely different than the original work?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
About that Star Wars title: I may be utterly wrong, but it was my knowledge that the entire series of Star Wars films was based on books which could not be fit into a single film. (You knew this, yeah?) So surely the title has already been decided by the title of the book? (Does anyone own the fabled tomes, who could confirm this?)
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
You have directly reused my property without recompense nor permission. It may not be called 'theft' in all cases but it all comes back to that point.
Wow! This is a new one to me. Aliased fonts? What is this 1985? And aliased TT fonts as well. Do yourself a favor and switch to using PS fonts!
Pooty tweet
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OOOOOOO! Helvetica! Now that's freaking original! Why don't you try Arial or Times or some other exotic font!? Why not go crazy and use Verdana or New York.
Please! Helvetica has to be the MOST boring of all possible fonts! Vanilla, plain and simple.
Pooty tweet
Right on; and to think, all of this entertainment for the price of a few pairs of dollars.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
- "It's" does not mean it possessive. It means "it is" -- a contraction.
- Judging from the context of your sentence, I assume you mean the movie's title, not the title of the movie is "title."
- In this case, you need to use "its" -- the proper form of it possessive.
Final Grade:Content - B+
Editing - D
Yeah, right.
He did it with Jedi
Imagine the t-shirt presses of Shenzen are whirrin up right now with "Attack of the Clones".
Be a bit of a blow to them if he changed the name a month before it opened.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
But FUNimation would go after someone if they distributed a script that they wanted to use. It's all about what FUNimation think they can make money off of that they atack.
-Pasty
'fanfic', or other sorts of 'takeoff's arn't covered by copyright.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You can create and distribute anything DBZ related that you want. As soon as you make something that FUNimation wants to make money off of they will say "HEY! Don't do that because you are stealing out profits!" and the C&D letters come out. If you make a winamp skin (aren't all you other /. people linux? I thought I was the only one using winamp =P ) nobody is going to say "Damnit that's 5.4MILLION dollars I'm losing on the winamp skin industry. They signed with Infogrames to make a DBZ game, so BFP is taking their profits, how simple is this? Copyright violation in an easy to swallow capsule!
-Pasty
Thats unpossible! There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden--a thousand healths and hidden isles of life. Even now, man and man's earth are unexhausted and undiscovered. -- Nietzsche
I first went beyond BBSs to the Internet around the time Doom came out, because I found out about a Star Wars Total Conversion. By the time I tracked down the right message boards, etc... I had found that the original group of developers had given up because LucasArts had sent them cease and desist letters. However, LucasArts at the time was developing a Doom-ish Star Wars game, "Dark Forces," so they had a little more interest than Funimation.
:-)
For a while, I picked up where the original Star Wars conversion people left off, made a website and everything, and made lotsa progress, but never once received a negative communication from anyone with a commercial interest.
After a crappy Dragonball Z game comes out with proper licensing, I have a feeling no one will care if better or different stuff is released later.
FUNimation would have no rights to a script that someone else wrote. Fanscripts are still copyright the script author, even though technically according to current laws the scripts themselves are infringing on the copyright of the characters themselves. It's a fine line and a stupid one at that.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Who needs hell?
Retards like yourself seem more than capable of turning this planet into something even more impressive than some mythical lake of fire. Really. By the time you are done with the world, hell will be a eternal vacation resort... especially if you aren't there.
Every time something like this comes on Slashdot, some idiot always says "no, no, we can use this unrelated piece of legislation to get around the law in this case". Forget it. You can't. This is just nerd hubris. Do you really think an experienced judge would accept transparent lies like "oh, it is supposed to be parody"?
Even "Star Wars" is a hokey name. That's the point, isn't it?
sulli
RTFJ.
Great link, great site.
My life had almost gotten normal :)
Excellent.
You mean other than being the same people with multiple accounts?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
> DBZ seems a complete mockery of that. I mean, what if someone make a damn Pokemon Q3 mod?
Besides, there are probably plenty of parents of school-aged sproggen would pay good money to blast Pikachu into a mountain of gibs ;)
(Shit, I loved lobbing a stream of rockets into Barney the Dinosaur in that DOOM wad... and I don't even have kids!)
If you really think about it, "Star Wars" sounds sort of silly to begin with.
At least in my mind, "Return of the ___" and "The ____ Strikes Back" were pioneered by the Star Wars series. Attack of the Clones seems derivative at this point.
It's a silly name (I thought it read, "Attack of the Clowns" at first), but it sure isn't petition-worthy.