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Dice Age — Indie Gaming Project vs. Hollywood
ArrowBay writes "Dice Age, a independent game project that raised nearly $35K through Kickstarter, is apparently facing some scrutiny from a certain movie studio that has produced movies with a similar name. From the latest project update: 'As if the Ice Age was exclusively the name of a movie, or if Dice Age was a movie itself, the 20th century fox has just asked for an extent of time (till 10-26-2011) to oppose to the registering of our beloved Dice Age game name. My point of view, as a scientist, is the Ice age is a geological era before it is a movie.""
Hollywood has made it their goal to privatize everything from "Seal Team 6"- registered by Disney, to our fairy tales like Snow White. Stealing from the public domain and threatening everybody not in the club is nothing new for them. I have little doubt that the bean counters at Fox known damn well that most courts in the land will back their insane claim, assuming the small developer can even afford to fight the battle.
Just rename it "Dice Edge"!
Oh... wait, that won't work either.
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Why should anyone pay to see a motion picture from a major studio ever again?
If they're going to have this kind of hostility to society, by claiming all of culture as their own private property, I don't see a single reason why I should respect them in any way.
I have said before, and believe more strongly all the time, that pirating movies is a political act of civil disobedience against elements of private industry who have attacked us first by stealing our shared culture.
They can take a story from Aesop, turn it into a movie, and then sue anyone who uses the phrase "The Tortoise and the Hare".
They have declared cultural war against us. I think we should strike back.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...about using Casablanca in the title of their film. Sadly, Snopes says Groucho ws being a bit disingenuous, but still an awesome read.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
In a word: no.
I've seen Ice Age, and a sequel, I think, but when I first read "Dice Age", if it hadn't been in the context about a movie studio claiming to own the name of an epoch, I would not have confused the two in any way. And watching the video on Kickstarter, it's even less confusing.
Should no one be able to create anything with remotely similar names without expecting this to happen? What about "rice age", "nice age", "spice age"? Or a little further out? "Rice rage"? "Mice Mage"? "Price Gauge"? When do you feel that it ceases to be "obvious that this would happen"?
Now, if it were a game based on similar characters, or even a the geological epoch with a similar mission theme, I'd say your statement might have some merit. Might. But as it stands, it's ridiculous.
I was once served with a C&D regarding a trademark I was supposedly infringing on. With the first notice, I explained why there was no TM conflict and provided some documentation regarding the merits of their requests. With the second notice, I re-sent my first response and offered some options of remediations, including offering to sell them the domain in question for what it would cost me to re-brand it and re-establish my new brand. Again, the only response I got was another C&D, and at that point I told them to fuck off or I'd sue them for harassment.
Amazingly enough, they stopped. A lot of this sort of activity is similar to that of bighorn sheep butting heads in the wild. Show of force, lots of bluster. If it's handled right nobody really gets hurt.
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