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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."
yawn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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!
Now what the hell, is an occupying country, doing hosting the Olympics????
:-)
This Greek, is no amused!
FREE TIBET!!!!!
Greek Geek
Perhaps they have licensed it?
Perhaps it is a rip off, but then either way the Slashdot article should provide evidence of this.
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.
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.
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?
Guy making proprietary software of a trivial nature is outraged that someone dared to use his code without his permission.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Die in a fire.
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.)
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.
Mainland China is all about making money as fast as possible with no regard to the long term (e.g. screw the environment, screw human rights, screw international law). Anybody want to make a bet on whether they're paying to use Transformer images in the Mario Kart clone http://kart.sdo.com/ ?
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
...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
The word "Olympic" has several different meanings in the many different Chinese dialects, one of them is to "pick it up and run with it", which is what we see here happening.
Besides, this is not military secrets - what's the real focus of the Chinese government - it's a Flash game. A tiny Flash game, which is not going to change the course of mankind. In the spirit of the Olympic Games, everyone should have a right to enjoy it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even if it is from a Chinese Olympic site, I don't think so.
I almost allowed NoScript to allow the scripts so I could see the game. But then common sense prevailed and I moved the cursor away.
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?
Designed by architects, engineers, software developers and artists in the West. Made in China.
:P
What are they supposed to be showing us at this "coming out" party then? Our own stuff?
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.
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!
But as was I reading the posts and reloaded the link it appears to be redirected to the main page now. /. FTW?
qz
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
Cute game - looks like they've removed it from the Olympics website now?
;)
http://en.beijing2008.cn/funpage/game/clouds/ - just show front page's content.
Google cache shows some more detail:
http://66.102.9.104/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fen.beijing2008.cn%2Ffunpage%2Fgame%2Fclouds%2F
"Fuwa fights the winter clouds"
"Shameware" anybody?