Slashdot Mirror
Infogrames Serves Civ3 Fans With Cease and Desist
janolder writes "According to multiple articles on heise online (German only), the leader of an effort to localize Civilization III for Germany, Kai Fiebach, has been slapped with a cease and desist letter, including $500 lawyer bill from Infogrames Germany. A grassroots effort to help Kai and tell Infogrames off is forming."
"Background: Most European versions of Civ3 are late. With a slated release for March 2002, Kai and a group of Civ3 fans decided to translate portions of Civ3 to German and to make the result available as a set of files to be applied to the US on time for Christmas. Kai informed Infogrames of his effort and even offered to join forces with their localization team if only the game would be released sooner. Sadly, Infogrames reacted by sending Kai a cease and desist letter, alleging copyright infringement. The home page of the translation effort has already been taken down.
The reason for Infogrames' reaction seems to be that Infogrames Germany doesn't make a single penny on the US version of the game sold through Amazon Germany and other vendors."
Important news, someone violates copyright and gets in trouble for it!
If Infogrames has the distrobution rights for civ3 then this would cause them to lose money. Losing money is ussually considered bad by most companies.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
The problem here seems to be that the text those guys are distributing is (c) Infogrames.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
from the Fireaxis website:
"One of the enduring strengths of the Civilization franchise has been its ability to be customized by the fans.... Firaxis is very interested in Civilization III having an active mod community, but need to know where our efforts are best spent. Together we can make Civilization III a potent platform for not only exploring factual history, but also your creativity and interests. "
Apparently having the game in your native language does not apply as someing in fan's 'interests'.
As the german site linked above states, it's Infogames German division that fears they'll loose money if this voulenteer effort gets the product done before they do - it's all the *same company* people, it's just a different local manager, who wants to make sure he/she gets their bonus so they can buy that new SUV they've been coveting etc. etc. etc. I would understand (and I wouln't characterize the management as I have) if they approached these people, personally, thanked them for their effort, and tried to work out something. It's *obvious* that the german fans involved had this attitude, but the company just reacted with the easiest, most convenient 2x4 they could find. Typical. *end rant*
Kai was not doing anything malicious. He wasn't try to compete with Infogames, trying to hurt their profits, or even trying to make a profit from himself.
Instead, he was trying to help his fellow German gamers with localization. Infogames should have overlooked the fact that his might have been copyright infringiment.
In the end, it is horrible for their PR, if nothing else.
At least you had the brains to post that as anonymous COWARD. They have just as much right to speak german as you do to speak english. Secondly, you are blaming something that started in Germany that is long over on the people who live there now. Just because someone speaks german does not mean they supported WW2. It doesnt even mean that they are german. Austria and Switzerland are two more german speaking contries yet the people there are not germans.
From the article it sounds like the the German company is not going to make any money off of the US version. It would also seem likely that the US company will not make money off of the German version, although there probably is some sort of licensing fee. IAMNATPC, (I am not a transfer pricing consultant) but the licensing fee probably generates less income than a direct sale. Ergo the US company would probably be very happy to have a bunch of translators working for free to increase their revenue.
In case you haven't noticed, proprietary software advocates always forget that clause. How many times have Linux developers been told that someone's not going to use Linux because "there's no-one we can sue if something goes wrong!"? Proprietary software isn't any better. In fact, given the wording of some EULAs I've seen, your attempted lawsuit might give the company grounds for legal action against you, especially if you publicize said lawsuit.
This is, of course, assuming that EULAs have any legal weight at all. That is, unfortunately, still an uncertain issue, and seems to depend entirely on what judge you get and how informed he is about precedent and contract law. And how much he's been paid off, in America.