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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."
The are not knockoffs, they are the same games but with the resources changed. Have you played them or even looked at them properly?
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.
It's not a clone, i.e. they did not see the original and thought "Hey, we can make something like that".
It's a byte-perfect copy of many of the elements in the game, sound and graphics. So it really is a copyright violation.
It's simply re-skinning some elements and publishing it as your own. Like taking Windows, make the default background red, and selling it as your own operating system.
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).
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.
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.
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...
That still makes no sense. Copyright does work like that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I would suggest that is not sound legal advice. Maybe it would be, up until the bit where you say they should use Olympic copyrighted stuff. I think that would result in only the lawyers getting any money out of this.
Hey G, can you change the permissions on those two txt files. 403. Or, is that the point?
.
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?
You are looking at two different uses of the word 'copy', or rather, at two different levels of copying. Scrabulous copies the rules of Scrabble in a game developed by different people, and if there was a lawsuit for every internet game that - to put it mildly - took a great deal of inspiration from another, none of us would be able to move for the boxes full of litigation papers. This, on the other hand, is different, because it copies actual code and graphics from the original. You cannot legally protect game rules, but you can legally protect code and artwork.
There is also an irony issue here, in that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has always gone after people even vaguely infringing *it's* copyright with all the teeth-baring viciousness of a rabid attack dog, so to have a website associated with them involved in blatant copyright infringement is more than a little amusing, but that takes a back seat to the difference between the actual legal issues of the two.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Umm... dude, reread your two posts before that one. They're about as choc full of content as kdawson's head.
I hate printers.
You obviously didnt RTFA.
They didnt strip out a lot of the unused resources.
Many of the original game files are still in there even when they arent used.
It doesnt take a genius to realise that many of the graphics and sounds are identical as well.
It appears like they did rewrite the code but its still a blatant copy.
They based it from the original swf, they didnt start from scratch.
Here y'go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
Note that China is a participant in TRIPS (follow the link at the bottom t'see all participating countries). Software copyright is addressed (it is treated as a literary work under this agreement), and fair use is very limited.
The author of the 'orignal' claims that he has decompiled them and that the games use identical resources, even down to resources that the original author accidently left in but isn't actually used in the game.
If true that's beyond coincidence or imitation.
...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?
Has anyone though that maybe they got permission to make the copy
Not anyone who read the fucking article. I mean seriously, no one has mentioned it yet because the author of the original says:
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.
So like, no- they didn't get permission.
How bout that they approached the makers of the original game and said, "Hey we like this game can we use it with a few modifications?" I see no reason to assume right off that it is stolen.
Hey idiot,
Please look up what RTFA means and then RTFA.
Thank you,
The Internet
Decompilers are few and hard to come by (and one which was open source years ago has gone closed... though some of us still have copies of the OSS code), but flash disassemblers are plentiful. Folks may have a pre-license-change copy of the Free decompiler that went closed (sorry, don't remember the name, would have to check the hard drive on a separate machine that's turned off right now to find it), or they may be using a disassembler and describing it badly. Does it matter?
Regardless the IOC are douchebags...and the more than 1 million people forced from their homes for this is absolutely unforgivable. If you dont know the IOC is EXTREMELY CORRUPT ORGANIZATION. SCREW THE GAMES they are not what they were once intended. Oh and with China watching over the dopping is like letting the french oversea it for their little bike race.....they are a bunch of douches all of them.
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
You don't decompile flash, FYI. It's code and play, no compilation needed. I've grep'd the sources for both, they're nearly identical.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Remember, you can't copyright the rules of a game - not even in the US of A.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
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!"
RTFA. It's written by the author of the original game. He's hardly like to give them permission and then accuse them of theft, is he?