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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."
Watch out for those I tags, there, Chris.
Cheers,
levine
seems to be that the game is not yet available in Germany and that the effort going on will cost Infogrames a lot of money (the heise article, which, btw, is here says so, too). Also there will be issues with support. And it is there intellectual property. So, by altering a closed source program without permission they stepped over some border line. Wouldn't it be prosecuted here in the US under DMCA?
- Just my 0000010 cents
It's a nice gesture to offer to work with the official translation team, but they are probably (hopefully) have the entire process planned out. So it wouldn't be of much help to have some random guy "helping out."
Besides, even if I had to wait I'd rather have a real version instead of a hacked up patch that comes with no guarantee.
A clarification here.
:)
Providing patches for a binary-only software product may be a violation of the EULA, but that doesn't in itself make it a COPYRIGHT violation.
EULA violations are purely civil, there might not be any statutory or punitive damages, etc. (depends on the local laws). EULAs are based in CONTRACT law.
Copyright violations can be civil or criminal (FELONY (*) in some cases), there are statuatory damages (you can be ordered to pay even if they weren't harmed AND you didn't benefit), punitive damages, contributory and vicarious infringement theories (which don't seem to exist with EULAs) which judges follow, etc.
The DMCA may apply in both cases, depends on the country and the judge. If you get Judge Kaplan, you might as well sell all your stuff and live on the street right now and get it over with. 1/2
Ask a lawyer (in your jurisdiction) for legal advice.
(*) In the US. I don't know the situation in other countries.
P.S. If a company acts so irresponsibly as to try to assess a $500 bill for sending a cease and desist letter because you were trying to be helpful, then to hell with them. Asking you to pay for the costs of their legal attack is unconscionable.
But what I heard about the laws in Germany, that practice seems to be blessed by the gov't there.
"abmahnung" I believe it is called.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This is in germany... and that something similiar (opportunistic lawyers using a german law to fatten their own wallets)
see what happened to Kontour (was Killustrator because of a similiar german lawyer tactic...
it's like ambulance chasing but for intellectual property... so... don't necessarily jump on infogames case, because they didn't initiate the cease and decist...
E.
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I know of two unofficial fan translations of Harry Potter books into German. This high quality, multi contributor one was torpedoed before completion. However, this one man effort hit the web early, and was allowed to stay up by a court because it was inferior to the official translation.
And there's the problem. A translation can be treated as a derivative work with enough original content to protect it under copyright laws. It doesn't have to be worse, it can be better - it just has to be different. However, if the copyright holder (in another language) has not yet done a translation, it becomes problematical to prove that your translation is substantially different.
As this is a civil case, it'll come down to a judge deciding what is (here comes that word again) a reasonable delay of the official version before translators can take a shot at it. A three month delay is probably reasonable, a three year one probably unreasonable, but it will be decided on a case by case basis (at least in the UK, I'd be interested to hear if there's a specification of duration in Germany)
So, if the translators waited for the official CivIII German version to come out, then produced their own resource files that differed from the official ones, that would be allowed. But they can't force the copyright owners to hurry up.
What a tangled web we weave.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
> So where can I pick up my 'Boycott Sid Meier' shirt/Tshirt/bumper sticker?
Research "Tee Shirts" and "Printing", and then you can build them in any city with a textile mill.
Or you may find it easier to just plunder neighboring civilizations that already have them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade