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Microsoft Releases Allegiance Game Source
Zenin writes "Microsoft has graciously released the source code to Allegiance for free on their site. Allegiance was released back in 2000, and rated the 'Best Game No One Played' by GameSpot - this little- known multiplayer space-combat/team-RTS was pretty innovative, yet never took off in the mainstream. Nevertheless it quickly developed a fanatical following - a dedicated community who reverse engineered the game to enable complete mods, expand server power, and much more. A million thanks to Joel 'solap' Dehlin and the rest of the Allegiance development team for making this happen!"
Cause I want it.
Damn, we both posted the Licence at the same time.
Sorry for the dupe, mod down if you like!
My Stack Overflow user
Seven years jail, $150,000 fine if you don't tell the world your email and home address
By Kieren McCarthy
Posted: 05/02/2004 at 22:13 GMT
If you don't tell the world your email, home address and telephone number you could face a seven-year jail sentence and a $150,000 fine under new legislation that the US Congress is trying to push past today.
Senator Lamar Smith of Texas - chairman of the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee - yesterday produced from nowhere extensions to the 1946 Trademark Act that would make giving false contact information for a domain name a civil and criminal offence.
His bill (HR 3754) was discussed today at 10am Washington time in his Subcommittee. It was live here.
No you're not dreaming, this is what the Bill proposes. Mr Smith's attempt to "provide additional civil and criminal remedies for domain name fraud" may be laudable, but his approach is as unthinking and blinkered as the Intellectual Property lobbyists that have his ear.
The extensions to the Trademark Act would make the provision of misleading contact details when registering a domain an offence. Not only that but a "willful" offence - which in American law means three-times normal payout. Also, anyone "acting in concert with the violator" or "maintaining or renewing such registration" would also be guilty. In the case of a trademark infringement on the domain "the maximum imprisonment otherwise provided by law for a felony offense shall be increased by 7 years".
The intention for this legislation is clearly peer-to-peer sharing networks, but by making the provision so wide, it is pulling in millions of normal Internet users and businesses. Not to mention registrars.
While the provision of nonsense registration details has proved an irritation - particularly to IP lawyers - many millions of people do not provide their full details because it is freely available to anyone on the Internet and so intrudes on their privacy. Domain name details are also regularly farmed by spammers.
Minding the farm
In fact, the entire WHOIS issue has been controversial for years; and only recently have new systems been introduced to make Internet domains fully functional yet not wide open to abuse. One example is the extra password people have to type in to get at WHOIS information, which cuts down automated email farming.
However, Mr Smith - who can be neatly summed up by pointing to the fact that he introduced the Clean Airwaves Act banning eight profanities from being broadcast, and that he proudly describes himself as a fifth-generation Texan - sees everything from the IP lawyers' point of view.
In fact, invited to speak at the American Intellectual Property Law Association in November last year, he told the assembled: "The gravity of intellectual property crimes are too often dismissed by those who believe they have a right to work created and owned by others. We're going to do our best to bring IP crime to the forefront of the Congressional agenda and focus attention on it in a new way."
He went on: "There are billions of illegal file downloads every week on peer-to-peer networks. The result is lost jobs, lost sales to businesses and lost royalties to artists and copyright owners. One way to reduce this illegal activity is through the court system. Most people agree that stealing is wrong. We can all agree that it is wrong to walk into a record store, put a CD in your pocket, and walk out. It's just as wrong to illegally download a song from the Internet. But many people do not recognize that these actions are one and the same."
There is much more along this vein, but you get the idea. Smith also introduced the cybercrime legislation that was whisked through with the "Patriot" Act, which hugely expanded the authorit