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Olympic Web Site Features Pirated Content
An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the emphasis on protecting Olympic copyrights in China this year, the official web site of the Beijing Olympics features a Flash game that is a blatant copy of one of the games developed at The Pencil Farm. Compare the game on the Olympic site with 'Snow Day' at The Pencil Farm."
These are Summer Olympics, that game is called "Snow Day". How could it be a copy?
they are not the same! that is some other website you are looking at! we pushed those flash games into the swamps! *coughlawsuitcough*
The Chinese have seen an idea they like and make an imitation of it? Shock, horror, how will our technology markets ever survive if they repeat it somewhere else?
Oh, hang on, they already do copy gadgets and make cheap versions that look almost identical.
Yes the idea is the same, yes the clouds are suspiciously similar, but how many other games are there on the Net that are almost identical like that? Unless they actually copied exact content then there's no copyright issue I can see, just lack of creativity.
Knockoffs from China... What next? Lies from the WhiteHouse?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.
Choice of characters, better graphics.
How date they!
Coca Cola did the same last year by ripping off "Ninja" by Joel Feitch (the guy behind Rathergood.com)
Two weeks later it was reported that Joel Feitch got well compensated for it (exact amounts were not disclosed as part of the agreement).
Read all about it here, with accompanied footage.
They actually re-used the code, not just copied it. From TFA:
I'd also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn't see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I'll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren't being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).
Sound, better movement (both character and ice blocks), rankings.
Furthermore you seem never to run out of time in the copy. I hate games that try their best to make you win.
I decompiled it, there's no similarity.
All the graphics are different.. you don't even need a decompiler to see that.
Here's the main routine of the Chinese game.
And here's the routines from the other one.
Even without understanding action script anyone can tell they are completely different.
And besides, why would you bother ripping off the code for something so trivial? Any decent Flash jockey could re-write this game in an hour or two.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Follow the link given in the Summary and then read what was written by the original author of the game.
Seriously RTFA.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Ummm... what? Did you read the article? It specifically does exactly what you say it does not do. It includes screenshots to show that many of the graphics are stolen (pixel for pixel exactly the same, not an approximation). And it includes text from the creator of the original game, documenting how he reviewed their game code and discovered that it was completely stolen, not clean-roomed. From the article:
I'm pretty sure that if the game the Olympics is using contains sound files that are basically leftover stubs from his other games then that's pretty damning evidence.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Seems there are duplicate files in the SWF files of each. So although the code might be new, the content isn't completely.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Oh? Why so?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
i wonder if the website is being routed through their knocked-off copies of cisco equipment too?
i'm just waiting to find out that their athletes are clones of americans, but with cheaper parts and crappy build quality, that say strange things due to mis-translation of the manuals.
Why is the character in the Chinese version 'Fighting winter' by making the clouds snow?
Disregard that the games is similar. The reality is that the music, the clouds, the ice cubes, etc were STOLEN straight out from it. Not a bit changed. This is akin to somebody lifting 100 pages out of 120 page book. Copyright is designed to prevent just that. How did you get modded up?
He also mentions that the Olympics site contains games very similar to those wonderful Ferry Halim games from www.orisinal.com - of course, they might be licensed from him. Anyone asked Ferry?
Any lawyers out there fancy taking on the Chinese Olympic Committee? Might not be a good idea...
Seriously, can noone else see this game as a hilariously ironic commentary on China's futile attempts to lower pollution in order to have blue skies for the Olympics?
Of course this: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8874472Economist article seems to not be loading right now, but they even have a blue sky monitoring scale which counts days without brutal amounts of smog, and are trying to figure out if they can somehow control the weather.
he filed at the olympic site about the IP infringement. He deserves it. And I agree with him about taking it to suhu in the same fashion. Hell, after reading up on the google/suho issue, this sounds just like the same. Google used sohu's data and the idea from sohu. How is this different? It is not.
The chances are that the Chinese will ignore the mail and the court claim.
Put up some copyrighted Olympic stuff to the advantage of your business, have a link explaining what you are doing.
If they sue in China: ignore them.
If they sue in your home country then join your court claim to theirs.
I'm sure no one would notice if we copy this game and change some graphics.
Slashdot: Where the sig outsmarts the comment
A friend of my father-in-law's owned for many years a hotel in France called 'Hotel d'Olympique'. He still owns the hotel but it is no longer called that as he was sent a 'cease and desist'-type letter by the IOC.
FWIW I am not interested in the Beijing Olympics. Any lingering interest in the event has been soured by the appalling way that Chinese citizens have been treated by their government and, by extension, the IOC. No sports event in the world is worth evicting, beating, imprisoning and killing your own citizens for.
Oh that's a near copy. But a tad different. So where to send the take down notices.
Seeing as I'm replying to myself here, let's make it 3 for 3.
The original work is 353,472 bytes. The copied material is:
icecube 758 bytes
cloud 3464 bytes
splash sound 5423 bytes
bell sound 1783 bytes
poof sound 1783 bytes
bling sound 1783 bytes
song 42967 bytes
total 57961 bytes
Which is 16% of the original work, and the majority of that is the song which was used in neither the original work, nor the derivative..
In any case, this is small enough to be considered fair use.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There are tons of things China has done wrong, but not this one !
Is this a slow news day or what ?
Geeeeesh.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This is especially ironic since many of the Olympic Committees sue anyone using the word 'Olympic' or press governments for legislation protecting their precious name. For instance a few link samples:
US: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15360
CA: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1777/125/
UK: http://blogs.reuters.com/uknews/2008/02/06/olympic-tussle-over-a-name/
Given the IOC and each local Olympic committee's approach trademark ownership, they should have no problem removing the game.
This is unlikely because, they will not treat other's work the same as they want theirs enforces. Hypocrisy at its finest.
That still makes no sense. Copyright does work like that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You have posted nearly half the comments to this article. All in defense of the Olympics. Was it you that developed this for them?
But lets skip that BS argument. Instead, read the wiki.
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- the nature of the copyrighted work;
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Since this is used for commercial gain, AND it destroys the value of the original piece, you can bet on it that any intelligent judge (or just intelligent individual) will throw out your argument.Better to keep quit, rather than open mouth (or keyboard) and remove all doubt.
It doesn't matter how little you copy, it's still a copyright violation. (And no, this particular usage is definitely not covered by fair use.)
Copyright works precisely like that. Maybe if you didn't shoot your mouth off so quick you would have noticed that the article is talking about theft of assets, not code. And then maybe if you knew anything about the history of copyright you wouldn't have tried to claim "fair use" on the art assets because of their byte counts. The inclusion of unused assets from the original demonstrates beyond any doubt that this whole game is a derivative work. There's a reason why legal reverse-engineering is done with two sets of engineers and a spec handoff.
This is good old-fashioned copyright infringement, with no ambiguity at all. And not only are you wrong, you're being a dick about it. What do you have against the author of the original game?
It's OK for Scrabulous to essentially copy Scrabble because you can't copyright or patent game rules, but it's not OK to copy this game?
Summation 2
goodluck trying to get china to do anything about it
Hi All,
I agree that this game is an obvious copy however at least they went through the trouble of changing the characters and giving folks the choice of character which is "different" than the orginal game. Since the origainal game is FREE and the copied game is FREE nobody is losing or gaining here so I don't see a big problem with it.. There are MUCH bigger problems to worry about than copyrights... tell me you've never copied an image from google's image search for a website or powerpoint presentation!
I hope there are no vulnerabilities in Flash.
Umm... dude, reread your two posts before that one. They're about as choc full of content as kdawson's head.
I hate printers.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Wow... seventy-nine posts, most of which attempt to debate the subtleties of Chinese copyright law, something about which none of the posters know anything.
Now we know why the Chinese government built the Great Firewall...
Three Squirrels
Interesting.
Comment 1: That's not how copyright works. No explanation of why.
Comment 2: Really? How so?
Comment 3: Bad summary.
Comment 4: Actually, copyright does work that way.
Comment 5 (your comment): I have nothing to say, but I'll try and take you down a peg or two by making an inane comment.
The bottom line is: you haven't actually contributed anything yourself. Reread your own comment - it's not exactly full of information - interest or insightful.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
...pirates have no respect for copyright. The holders of copyrights apparently only respect their own.
They demand that others respect their copyrights and then turn around violate others. How many times have we seen stories where this happened? I've lost count.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
This once again confirms that copyright only work one way... always TOWARDS large corporate interests.
Nevermind the vagueries of copyright law and its applicability to Chinese-hosted site, what matters is that this is likely to be a visible loss of face for the ROC Olympic Committee. Given the Chinese proclivity to punish moral crimes on a spectrum that ranges from extreme public humiliation to summary execution, I'm curious if the I-only-reused-16% developer will have 16% of his/her body mass removed for reuse after the execution van comes for a visit?
I think not...(*poof*)
If you want some schadenfreude check out these articles where that same proclivity for cheating cost the government billions due to tax deductions from faked business receipts.
The sad thing for China is that unless this culture changes, it's going to be a very long time before products of any kind coming from there will be accepted by the rest of the world with the same kind of lax inspection standards ones from the West enjoy. Thus, on a per-capita basis, China will never catch up.
You reap the whirlwind....
...it looks like the Sailing game (http://en.beijing2008.cn/funpage/game/sailing/index.shtml) is a ripoff of a game called Arctic Blue on orisinal.com (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/arctic.htm)
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
What Flash de-compiler do you use? (Google search)
Closed source flash tools lists only one decompiler. The Open Source Flash Projects list has no decompilers.
Are we talking about a copy of the code of the game, or are we talking about the look-and-feel copyright of the game play? Is this a matter of them downloading the flash and modifying it, or is this just a workalike?
Regardless of the details of copyright law in China, or in the US, is this violation something we should be concerned about or is it something we would expect the LPF to be defending if it happened in another context?
Never mind, they seem to be using the same code and graphics. That's a blatant ripoff.
I hate to piss in the porridge, but we're talking about a government that kills people for daring to express an unpopular opinion! It murders babies (near and full-term abortions) to enforce a one-child-per-family policy, and has hundreds of other draconian policies to protect its power structure and closed society. You think it's going to give a damn about a copyrighted game? They don't and won't.
One more time. This is Communist China. They kill their own people. They don't care about rights
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Again I must insist that you bother to read TFA before you go accusing him of racism or nationalism. The creator of the original used a game engine he wrote for another of his games. And he didn't delete all the assets from the original, including the title screen. Decompile the chinese copy and you'll find a flash title page for a different game written by the author of the original.
You'd also notice it is the author of the original accusing the chinese website of copying it, so they obviously didn't license it. Bitwise identical graphics, the sound files that play on the original are present but disabled in the copy, unused assets from another game show who did the copying, and the author says he didn't authorize it. It's pretty cut and dried.
Quantum, I think you forgot to log out and post anonymously before trolling, or perhaps you have some sort of split personality. Please explain what you're talking about.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
And Rupert Holmes ripped off Jimmy Buffet when he released the Piña Colada song...
C'mon there is a difference between stealing someones game and tweaking it _without license_ and writing a game that is somewhat similar in game play but completely different.
You're the biggest asshole on /. today!
Remember, you can't copyright the rules of a game - not even in the US of A.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
As long as you change the elements that are copyrightable (images, music, etc.), everything else is fair game. The gameplay can be the exact same.
We are talking about a Flash decompiler? Yes, it would matter.
If there were no copyright, copyleft wouldn't be necessary. If somebody were to try to take a Free program proprietary in a world without copyright, someone else would disassemble it, comment it, and post it to some comp.sources group.
But the record industry is a different matter entirely. Music publishers have successfully sued people for accidentally copying a couple bars from a proprietary song into their own songs. The precedent set by cases such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton ends up having a chilling effect on composers. It is possible to avoid reading proprietary computer programs so that you don't taint yourself with access to a work, but it's much more difficult to avoid listening to the proprietary music that a retail store plays.
You keep repeating that title. You're talking about Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607 (7th Cir. 1982). The First Circuit looked at a similar case, Lotus Development Corporation v. Borland International, Inc., and found the opposite: a process was not subject to copyright. This caused a split between circuits, which the Supreme Court resolved in Lotus v. Borland, 516 U.S. 233 (1995). Does Lotus, which was decided later in a higher court, overturn the precedent of Atari?
And does anybody know of parallel cases under Chinese law?
No, but you can copy artwork, sound and source code, all of which was blatantly stolen.
Again. RTFA.
Here's the relevant clause of the Berne Covention:
Since they don't exactly give their own nationals very much in the way of individual copyright protection, the use of a foreigner's material is no more protected than their own people's - in other words, no protection: This is legal under the Berne Convention.Since they are giving his material the same protection they would give works by their own people ("if the gov't want to use it, they can by fiat or emminent domain"), they can copy all they want for any official Chinese agency. Not only is it not "theft" (remember - even member nations don't regard copyright infringement as theft), its legal.
Also, instead of just reading the article, try both of the games. The chinese version plays smoother.
Too many posters are going down the "copyright fair use" track, which is totally irrelevant to the discussion. Yes, the music and images, and *some* of the code are protected - but not for public use in China by the government or its' designates.
Also, under chinese law, he has no claim anyway, even if it was a patent or trademark infringement instead of copyright. He has to be in a minority partnership with a chinese agent/business.whatever or he simply can't do business under chinese law. Only businesses which are either majority or completely owned by chinese nationals are legal in China. - so he has no standing for damages.
"No cake for you, round-eyes!"
You are right, having the same rules is not a copyright infringement in itself. But in this case it's evidence that they copied the code of the original game verbatim and that is copyright infringement.
You've got to be angriest gook on the planet!
And under the Berne Convention, they only have to give foreign works the same level of protection they give works by their own nationals. In other words, the Chinese government or its' designates are free to copy code, images, and the song of foreigners to the same extent they would with their own people. In other words, they can copy whatever they want and still be in compliance.
How come you're making a distinction between art (media files) and code? Why is one an asset and not the other?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
They couldn't create *anything* original even after being hit by a clue bat a thousand times...No one should be surprised about this...
Don't go against the slashdot groupthink!
Either you're being deliberately misleading or you're plain stupid. Given your other comments elsewhere, I'm guessing the latter. The conversation went like this:
QuantumG: Copyright doesn't work like that.
You: Oh? Why not?
QuantumG: Bad summary.
You: Copyright does work like that.
QuantumG: Like what? What are you talking about? If you want to have a conversation, state your freakin' opinion already.
Me: (To QuantumG) Umm... dude, reread your two posts before that one. They're about as choc full of content as kdawson's head.
My comment to QuantumG was referring to his first two posts, the second of which did not even contain a full sentence. I shouldn't have bothered jumping in, because the argument between the two of you had all the skillful intellectual swordplay that I would expect to see between two kids with plastic spades in a sandpit.
I don't know why you feel the need to jump in and defend him, but I think the only conclusion I can come to here is that you are just plain retarded. Not that that's a bad thing, there are great institutions to provide the kind of care and support that special people like you need. Don't feel bad, downs syndrome isn't the handicap it used to be.
I hate printers.
But as was I reading the posts and reloaded the link it appears to be redirected to the main page now. /. FTW?
qz
How could they have licensed it if the author is saying it was stolen? Are you suggesting that he FORGOT he licensed it to the Olympics? And how could it have been stolen FROM the Olympics if they've only had their game online for a month, while the original author has had his game online for years? Are you suggesting that the original author somehow time-traveled to the future, copied the game from the Olympics site, then went back in time to years earlier, modified the game to make it appear as his own, and then released it? How stupid are you?
Here's an idea: why don't you bugger off and die. You added nothing to the discussion, and merely made things more confusing.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Reconciliation is down the hall, room 2A. This is abuse.
I hate printers.
I'm certainly no expert on international IP law, which was why I made no comment about the legality either way.
I just think it's friggin' lame to not even bother to update the game logic enough so that the game is coherent.
They say the goal is blue sky. When I saw the snowing clouds, I wasted a lot of time trying to shoot them -- naturally assuming they were the next step in the game (maybe they require 2 or 3 hits to zap them?).
But no, they were just snowing because... it's a snow day.
Copyright does not cover game mechanics, only presentation. The only part of a game you can "steal" are its art and music resources. No part of intellectual property law covers the way a game plays, and both the copyright and patent doctrines are very, very clear on this point. If you want to catch the Chinese stealing games, go to a game portal. Cloning games isn't theft, even if it should be.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I want to jump on the content-void bandwagon! Come on, everyone, let's all try to get the last word while pointing out each parent's uselessness! Parrrr-tayyyy!
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Welcome aboard brother, welcome aboard.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Dude, you called him retarded. What did you expect? Roses and chocolates?