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Victory for small business in domain disputes
A reader sent us the link-o-meter to the story about how Clue Computing beat toy giant Hasbro over a 3 year long legal dispute over clue.com (Hasbro owns the Clue board game). Some are hoping that this will mean small business have a precent to call in in the case of legal disputes over names trademarked by different folks-and in related news, Hasbro will be purchasing Wizards of the Coast, Magic:The Gathering card maker, and owner of TSR, Inc.
This largely makes sense. I don't know about statement 1, I don't think there *is* any absolute protection of a name. As many said, trademark law protects your use of the mark in your trade... not your right to use the word for anything you want.
2) I don't agree. "A" can have as many domains as he wants....
3&4) YES! Absolutely! Good idea! We should start doing this immediately.
The only problem I see with revoking domain names is the fact that people percieve having PAID for it. Even though they have just paid a fee for 'registration services' and not actually bought the domain..... this could get ugly.
If my domain was taken away, I would certainly feel that NSI had performed their duties as registrar fraudulently by letting me register in the first place.
It would be easy to show that the original guidelines, up until recently, for which TLD to use are still in place, and that NSI ignored them.
A company called RealNames is trying to do what you're describing. What's stunting RealNames is acceptance; obviously, companies have to pay them extra to sign up, and that doesn't sit well with them sometimes (they thought they took care of that in trademark registration).
The problem with InterNIC/RSI "impartially" (i.e, non-commercially) administering something like this (besides the fact that it's RSI) is the enormous overhead, plus it's what DNS was supposed to do. They didn't policy-build to account for cybersquatters and the like, and now it's coming back to bite them in the butt.
OTOH, Yahoo lists net presences by category; you could find your category, and then look for Clue (Entertainment:games:board:Hasbro) or Clue Computing (Companies:California:etc.).
I think the current DNS resolution policy would work, if it had more serious teeth. That's likely to be the best solution we'd get.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Hasbro buying out WotC is probably the worst thing which could happen for role-playing gamers.
Why? Because Hasbro is a huge company. And huge companies have this annoying habit of bowing to the twisted whims of the so-called Christian right (never mind that it's neither). Look at Warner's cop-out of releasing The Matrix only on DVD (which I hope they don't do in the end).
In other words, everyone's favorite band of immature zealots will now have a much easier time of getting a lot of the best role-playing and card games out there effectively banned by "forcing" Hasbro to stop making them (thanks to one incredibly annoying facet of the Christian right: it's so damn huge that a boycott, or even the threat of one, would be disastrous to any company, even Micro$oft).
I don't know if it solves all the problems, but I think your idea definitely has potential. Something like this would certainly be an improvement, though a lot of details would have to be worked out. I for one would like to see the idea developed.
I guess there's still the problem that the names are textual, which could lead to contention -- if they are required to be the organization's real name, people would just start clamoring to get the "cool" company names. Already, plenty of internet start-ups have "dot com" in their names. Then again, they wouldn't have to do that if normal names could be used to find web sites.
Of course, the existence of a problem does not imply the existence of a solution -- and how could you possibly avoid contention while using textual names? I think the problem is inherent to the concept, but I suppose it can be worked around and minimized.
Would your idea allow exact duplicates? That would seem to cause trouble, but I think it would actually help: when someone registers a name that is identical to an existing one, he could be required to provide some distinguishing information, and the other guy could be contacted and given the opportunity to provide some additional information as well, so that when you do the query, you would see the same name twice, with some annotations to help tell them apart.
Alternately, it could allow both entries to have exactly the same name, but contact both parties and give them the opportunity to add annotaions. In the meantime, the entries could just look the same, which is presumably undesirable to both parties. Even if one or the other is playing dirty, e.g., trying to steal the other guy's "eyeballs" (ugh!), at least one of them will want to add something.
It's just a directory entry, though, so we can't let them write a book in the description field. Hopefully most people wouldn't get too carried away, but there should be a hard limit at which it resorts to first come, first served and the new guy would have to think of something else, or maybe just append a number. To clarify, I'm talking about someone duplicating not only the name but the description, in which case there would almost have to be someone who is clearly trying to play dirty, so it could be decided fairly enough.
Also, it would be a pain to have to do this query every time, so users need a way to get back to the site they actually wanted once they've found it. This can be handled by a simple bookmarking system like browsers already have, though it should store the actual IP addresses, or some other unique identifier, rather than the query that was used. Also, since users would want to rely on them more, it would be important to have a better system for organizing bookmarks. Maybe some kind of lightweight database application on the user end.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
But you do raise a good point. Suppose a company changes it's name. For example, Foo Bar Incorporated (foobar.com and foo.com) decides to become fbi.com. (hmmm, so that is what fbi really stands for). Do they get to keep foobar.com? Probably, yes, but do they then get to keep foo.com?
Hey I'm going to try out this No Score option on this pathetic comment.
Oh yeah, praise be to the bringer of GURPS.... "Give us an hour, we'll give you a round of combat."
So it is a good job that there is no (as far as I can see) .rus TLD. Otherwise, a certain company might claim that the whole TLD infringes their trademark.
Bianca's Smut Schack is still around, and still under the same name as always.
Looks to me like she and her trolls beat the Radio Shack twits soundly.
Jake
like if somebody buys 1-800-get-clue would Hasbro have the right to come along and claim it as their trademark, and force the owners to fork it over? Must be some precedent setting court cases in that area.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The first time I mention something that I'm not totally sure about the validity of it, and someone has to call me on it. Doh! At any rate, Priest and Mage deck products (and even the wanna-be Tarot cards included with Ravenloft) weren't quite what I meant, however, by cards. What I said was excessively vague as far as that issue was concerned. I think I'll keep on track next time. *bonk self* Ugh.
~ Kish
How do we go about enforcing per-country domains though? .us back in their box, I say...
Put the
This freaked me out the first time I saw it.
Check out:
http://www.apc.com/
Two different companies link off of one page!
jfs
Hey, I was wondering... Why is it THE American law ruling the Net, since the Net is somehow *not only* in the USA.
I'm European, and I'm sick and tired to see whatever's done on and to the Net is ruled by yankee law. I think there should be an Internet Law, signed by as many nations as possible that would only apply on the Net.
Waaahh, we might even GPL the law...
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
- Screwing around with Ars Magica
- Significantly improving and then dumping Talislanta (I grew up on Talislanta, how could they try to kill it!?)
- Buying, or rather nearly buying, a game from me very own brother -- and then when they stopped publishing RPG's, not telling him so that (if he didn't act himself) they would still keep rights to sell it (although they wouldn't sell it)
I think it's obvious that last one pissed me off more, but they managed to piss on a lot of games I liked and bought one of the games I most greatly despise. Oh well.--Matthew
"One Organization, one Domain."
.de, .ch, etc). I know for sure that here in Finland, you can only own a name such as mydomain.fi if you're a company and hence pay a pretty important fee. And a company can only own one domain name.
.com etc. as THEIR domain.
It's actually the case in many countries, regarding the country domain names (.fi,
I agree it's going a bit too far, but at least large companies don't own 90% of all possible names in the country.
What I see is very wrong too, is that the USA never use their country domain (.us?), but rather consider
There should be a law for that.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
But then, some company called "Toys, Inc.", for instance, would be found at TOYS.R.US. I think some big well-known corporation would have a problem with this (see discussion further up).
This is how disputes should be handled. Seems to me this is a win/win, rather than one entity being forced to surrender their domain name.
What's with the constant comparisons between every company under the sun and Microsoft? It's like when people constantly describe a band (like, say, Gravity Kills) by comparing them with another band (perhaps Nine Inch Nails). Quickly the entire definition gets lost and you make it appear as if everything is precisely like everything else. So much for unique identities, eh?
Anyway, the only notion I have to offer here is that WotC is still not and never will be the "big boy" of RPGs. They are a CCG company. They probably always will be, unless Hasbro is just totally nuts (trust me, they are). They bought TSR, and suddenly what became a part of the new Dragonlance expansion? Cards!?! These people have no creative thought. Which, I suppose, is like Microsoft in many ways. However, they would be this to CCGs, not RPGs.
D&D and its various offshoots and editions have been slowly crumbling under the pressure of the last few years due to a lack of creative thought, a flexible rule system, and various other signs of a now decrepit age. White Wolf is the bad boy of RPGs today. Their presence is certainly felt more than any other RPG company I know of.
~ Kish
Most domain name suits have no real legal basis. They aren't violating any trademarks or infringing on patents or diluting public perception. The approach that seems to be being used to fight over domain names is trademark. Some company has a trademark over a name and so they use the trademark to try and bully small companies or private individuals. The only problem is that the legal bullying usually has no grounding. You can only trademark a name for a particular purpose. So for instance Apple Computers is free to sell computers under the Apple brand name but they can't sell records since that would infringe on Apple Records trademark. There's still some room for litigation at times of course. Apple Records sued Apple Computer for QuickTime since it could record/play back music and hence from Apple Records point of view Apple Computer was in the music business. By sticking to strict interpretations of trademark law though most cases could be thrown out of court. This isn't happening though, common sense isn't prevailing.
In the Hasbro v.s. Clue Computing case the judge should very quickly throw the case out of court. Clue Computing isn't infringing on any of Hasbro's trademarks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem there are enough common sense judges out there. We need more Judge Judy's who aren't afraid to tell somebody their case is ridiculous. As soon as the concept of common sense is applied most of these lawsuits would stop: The plaintiff's case is dismissed, the defendant's countersuit for the amount of $XXX for legal fees and punitive damages is awarded.
Trademarks are there to protect both companies and consumers. Unfortunately too many companies are misusing trademarks. Unfortunately not enough judges have the scruples or guts to call a frivolous lawsuit what it is.
Yehaa!! This is going to be one great app. Do you know what gui toolkit it uses. It is appropriate, that Apprentice is ported to linux, because most of the Magic players who go to uni actually do computer science, and a lot of them would use linux or some other form of unix.
Hasbro buying WOTC? No biggie. In fact it's good to see WOTC getting some of their own medicine. Now Hasbro buying Avalon Hill... that SUCKED. Note they made AH the same offer of keeping the same management that they are making WOTC. Look at how well they keep their promises...
But, that argument is circular; 'R' Us only has value because a court is willing to enforce it as having value. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd have to agree with you that it is questionable that a company could grab hold of a phrase and prevent even non-competitive uses of that phrase...
Write your Congressman.
Pokemon is Wizard's current cash cow, and the reason Hasbro bought them. WotC is projected to get more sales just from the Pokeman card game than they got from sales of all products last year.
Yea except Fry's eventually forced them to give it up. I'm not really sure how, becuase Fry's is kind of forced to use the full Fry's Eletronics in thier adds so they don't conflict with the real Fry's which is s grocery store. (Funny thing is that they started off as the same chain and that in some places like Pheonix they sit side by side.) But it really doesn't matter since both domains sit with nothing on them. Which is kind of sad. I'd like to see the white trash thing that Fry's would put up for its website.
Yep, this makes it hard to tell in a lot of cases whether the company feels compelled to attack or is just being a bully (c.f. Volkwagen's shenanigans where it seems like the latter...)
----------------
Overheard: "Aww, why'd you go and install Windows on a perfectly good machine?"
It's that simple.
Hey all,
Well I must admit that I don't have any problem with Hasbros... yet. I own the atari.co.uk domain and have a pretty tacky site on there, but in the year that I have owned it I have had no correspondance regarding it from Hasbros. Touch wood I won't in the future.
If someone could figure out quite why not please state... I would be interested in my legal position. I know for a fact that the owners of atari.de were contacted but other than that, who knows ?
Another site, diet-coke.net was bought by my company by accident... long story but it basically comes down to an internet domain-registering program.
Anyway, we got the invoice and then started trying to figure out who had registered the domain (never mind why) when two days later we received a letter from lawyers representing diet coke (or whoever owns them) demanding that we hand over the domain to them promptly *or else*.
Needless to say we gave it over to them - we're a small company and the publicity would not do us any good, even if ruled in our favour.
The point is, what gives the big companies the right to do this ? Fair enough if someone registered the simpson.com domain and then started selling off sub-domains eg bart.simpson.com but just for owning one for legit purposes must be fair enough... after all, "first come, first served.".
On a wider note, maybe Rob should add a billing page to slashdot.org where you could use a credit card to donate to a good cause.
I quite agree.
.com? I know quite a few examples where it`s the small grocery store.
Imagine there is a well-known, international company based in Finland, or the UK, or Australia. And there`s also a minor little grocery store with the same name in a small town somewhere in America. Which one do you think gets
But then, the USA is the world, isn`t it?
DNS is not the problem. Domain name allocation is the problem. First off, there should be top-level-by industry domains. Not this .web crap, that's just going to incite more abuse. We should have .pharm (did someone stop believing that more than three letters were allowed?), .fin, .toy, .game, .soft, .comp, .rest, etc. Also secondary tiers should be established for certain industries that would actually *want* a long domain if it ended in the right thing. For example I know many companies that would kill for a .edu address, so why not have a fubar.com.edu? Are you trying to tell me that Hasbro would want clue.pharm? clue.doc? No, they'll want clue.game and clue.toy. For an educational game, they might want a .com.eud, etc.
.uk, .de, .jp, etc. friends overseas) and I say we should take full advantage of it! Clutter that space boys! ;-)
We in the US have the *huge* advantage that we control the top-level domain space (unlike our
DNS works. giving out only 6 primary domain heirachies with 3 being tightly controled was just short-sighted.
Wizard's of the coast actually owns Game Keeper (the mall chain store) now too. It astonishes me that Wizards is allowing themselves to be bought out. But more importantly worries me that many games and game stores might be hurt irreparably in the transition. Wizards bought another Role Playing Game previously from White Wolf Games called "Ars Magica", which was in the same line as Vampire the Masquerade and other Storytelling rpgs. Ars Magica was very quickly dumped on Atlas Games which has since mired the production.
It would be a shame if Hasbro dumped D&D entirely or even put it on the back burner as many gaming stores could be hurt by this move.
For more info on the aquisition goto wizards site.
Joseph Elwell.
The entire whois database is still in the gigabyte range (read somewhere), which is no problem to copy between network level domain servers with todays datarates. The TLDs created for the proposed system would be short, probably no more than 10 bytes or so on average, so even a million of them would be less than a 100 megabyte database (name + 128 bit ipv6 name server reference).
That was definetly the best proposal I have heard on the subject.
-
Maybe some of you played this, but I doubt anyone with half a mind still does. I quit playing after they started releasing a new set every week. My god, there isn't much more they can do with the game now, so I doubt hasbro is gonna make any money off of that deal. Type 2 tournaments are simply a money making scheme. They don't allow older sets, WOTC doesn't sanction type 1, so you HAVE to buy the new cards if you want to play in the tours. Its friggin crazy. Richard Garfield HAD a great idea til it got all twisted around in an effort to make money.
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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Back, foul beast! Back to the cave where once you came!
Not very likely, whith Decipher's recent purchase of FASA, and the main rumor going arround that that was done so they could produce the SW RPG (Which has been in the air since the WEG fiasico), I doubt you'll see something like that happen. Besides which, w/ Decipher being number 2 in the CCG market, and Hasbro now the number 1 you might see some leagal problems on that front. Espically since I think FASA was rated 3 or 4 in RPGs before the buyout.
The value of the abovementioned policy is highly dependant on the willingness of companies to actually live by it. In this case, where Hasbro seemingly appeals the judgement by sheer reflex, don't exactly give me high hopes for the future. I might be mistaken, but it seems that given a large enough company, there is no limit to how far a dispute is pushed in pursuit of total victory.
Or else I'm juste extremely cynical.
//Wegge
Isn't Linux a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds? I'm not much for legal research, but I've noted that statement at the bottom of a number of different Web pages (although always believing the validity of what you read is rather naive). I mean, Linus isn't exactly a huge corporation with tons of money with which to go do battle on the legal fighting grounds that are the United States. Not only that, but Linux is probably one of the mostly widely seen trademarks on the Web today. How could he possibly protect his mark against all threats to its proper usage? Again, I admit a good amount of ignorance in this area and simply seek an enlightening response.
~ Kish
I am guessing that is supposed to be "precedent."
On a more related topic, I am glad small business finally won one. I think Toys 'R' Us was a Nazi in this arena, trying to say that www.toysrGus.com was some kind of trademark infringement. They said basically that since they invented the "X-r-us" idea that anything-r-us is a trademark violation. Sick.
There was a court decision some time back that awarded intellectual property rights to the CCG concept to Garfield and by extension WotC. How long do think it will be before Hasbro starts demanding huge royalties from any and all companies that produce anything even remotely resembling a CCG?
Wizards of the Coast is worse for card gaming competition than Microsoft is for fair computer OS competition. WotC uses strong arm tactics, high prices, and "extend and embrace" tactics to slowly take over the world of CCG's. (Collectible Card Games). I only hope that Hasbro will grab them and curb their craziness, allowing other, smaller CCG houses to spring up.
Dan Turk
op on undernet's Magic channel...#mtg
I won't give it "excellent," but "fair."
"Good" would be sanctioned issued (at least entirely covering the fees incurred in litigation.
"Excellent" would be a public bawling out by the judge, along with a formal referal to the bar association.
Well this case seems like the "first come, first serve" rule is still in effect. And I guess that's a good thing.
Though sometimes it's a pain. Did you ever try to find out about Nissan cars and trucks at Nissan.com? Well, you'll only see a cheesy frontpage site about a little computer store in North Carolina. Nissan the car company had the amazing foresight not to get Nissancars.com, or Nissan-cars.com, but Nissan-USA.
God I hate URLs with dashes in them...
While ICANN is far from perfect (it has allowed its focus on NSI to distract it from building truly representative governance structures), it is still a marked improvement over the present status quo. If ICANN were to fail, its replacement would be far worse - an international treaty organization along the lines of the ITU or WIPO. These organizations' track records suggest that individuals and small businesses would be even more badly disenfranchised under a successor regime than they purportedly are now.
I think that this purchase will lead to a lot more AD&D branded toys and merchandise, and perhaps lesser contribution to the art of role playing.
.com hierarchy should be either restructured, or else priority given to the owner if its not being used to confuse with a trademark in the same industry or specialization.
I suppose that the same could have been said about wotc buying tsr to a lesser degree.
btw, i feel that the whole
Hasbro also owns Atari. You realize what this means don't you? AD&D for the 2600! Woohoo!
I'd definately agree with this one, and there are quite a splits that actually might make sense (as opposed to .web, .biz, etc.)
.edu, which you actually had to prove. (and yet, a nursing school couldn't register as one, for some damned reason). .net is filling with non-isps. .org is filling with for-profit organizations. And .com is saturated with every stupid thing out there.
Take for instance, media sources-- there isn't much conflict in that one, as those that are broadcast media have 4 letter designations in the US. There aren't too many magazines willing to get mixed up with each other, and neither are the movies. (sure, there may be crossover between them, but those are the breaks).
As is stands presently, however, the TLDs are completely useless, except for
Unfortunately, unveiling new TLDs, without having some major limitations will result in people flooding the registrars to get them, and more TLDs will be more difficult on the people who have enough problems remembering two letters, much less three. There's some solution out there, I just don't know quite what it is, though.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Maybe if we're real lucky you'll soon be able to hear "Dragonlance action figures - coming to a toy shelf near you soon!" ..
I better go pre-order my Tanis
(1) All top level domains are valid (no longer restricted to .com, .org, .net, .ca, etc.) .bar)
(2) To register a domain, the applicant is STILL REQUIRED to register names in two parts (2nd level + TLD). (e.g., foo.bar)
(3) TLDs can be registered to no one, nor belong to anyone. They will forever remain free and available for anyone to use. (cannot register
This would allow Apple computer to register apple.computers, and Apple Records to register apple.records, and some farmer to register apple.farms. Chevy could have chevy.trucks and nissan could have nissan.trucks. etc. Then the namespace is increased infinitely. And there is room for all.
This would also put an END to squatting since it is financially impossible to register an infinite number of domain names. Microsoft cannot register microsoft.foo, where foo can be any string of up to 32 or whatever chars of any combination since that would cost (roughly) $70 * (27^32+27^31+...+27^1). Squatting would end. And Squatters wouldn't even be able to dump what they already have.
Oh, and one more thing, once the unlimited TLDs go into effect. Prohibit domain name lawsuits. Make it a condition when you register a domain name that you can sue to acquire or sue to stop others from using their domain names.
Thoughts?
Actually, Hasbro's purchase of AH was the only thing that saved most AH titles from the dustbin forever. AH had most of its net worth awarded to Activision (I believe), in a court case revolving around AH's selling of "exclusive rights" to the computerized version of Civilization to multiple companies, as well as producing their own version.
Hasbro purchased AH for their backlist of boardgame titles to feed to their computer game designers. Hopefully, AH actually had clear title to these games, as I understand that AH didn't actually own the rights to many of the games that they published.
At least with Hasbro owning AH, there's at least a chance see a computer version of, say, Circus Maximus.
As long as we're talking about ancient gaming history, you can make a case that SPI is the Company of Death. TSR acquired SPI, and began to loose money, eventually being acquired by WoTC. Then WoTC started bleeding, eventually being acquired by Hasbro. Will Hasbro be next? And if it is, wouldn't it be cool if M$ decided to acquire Hasbro to round out their game offerings? :)
The problem is that often might makes right. Take Gateway2000 for example. Their trademark was "Gateway2000" and all their computers and ads said so. A smaller company called 'gateway research', or 'gateway computing', or something like that had the domain gateway.com. Gateway2000 decided that they wanted to change their name to 'gateway' and since they were doing this, they ought to have gateway.com "to reduce confusion" Gateway2000 made a joke offer for the domain name ($10000 or so), so when the owner turned them down, they took it to court and won because "who had ever heard of the small company" I con't even remember what it is called now.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Hasbro will be purchasing Wizards of the Coast, Magic:The Gathering card maker, and owner of TSR, Inc.
Tell me this isn't true??! PLEASE!! NOOO!!!
*prepares to suicide*
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I just wonder why the geographical domains are not more enforced than they are? The .us domain is heavily underused. Suggestion: Make US-based companies use domains like .ca.us, .mn.us, .tx.us and so on, depending on where they have their headquarters. That would resolve a lot of the ambiguities out there. Reserve the .com domain for companies with representation in at least n countries, where n could be somewhere around 10 or so.
A similar system is actually used here in Sweden, "small" companies can only register under .a.se, .m.se and so on (where the letter indicates in which part of the country the company is located). Likewise, private persons can only register under .pp.se . Seems to work so far.
Another thing which would make the domains more easily handled is to make it harder to register product names as domains. Is it, for example, that much harder to write "www.company.com/product" than to write "www.product.com"? I certainly prefer the first variant. Some companies seem to register each and every product as their own domains, and that leads to a very cluttered namespace.
Bottom line is, you just can't allow anybody to register any domain they want like now - there are only so many letter combinations before they start getting incomprehensible.
Hmm would a small toy company have a trouble holding TOYS.R.US against the massive Toys R Us chain if they registered it first? Or would the latter have to get TOYS.R.US.R.US instead?
Trademarks are registered within a geographical area. I've known of several cases where a company had to change its name because it expanded into areas where their name was already registered and in use. We already have a naming system that relates to geographical area. Simply make it the law that com is up for grabs and will hold now sort of weight in any trademark dispute; however, a corporation must defend their registered trademark in domain names that are registered in areas in that they are doing business.
For example, Food Lion used to be Food King or some such name. They expanded into an area that already had a Food King, thus the name change. So Food Lion is a registered trademark in the state of North Carolina in the US. If I register foodlion.nc.us then Food Lion must hunt me down and make me relinquish my hold on the domain, or risk weakening their trademark. Company B can come in and name their corner convenience store Food Lion, and when challenged tell the judge, "Heh, they let HIM do it." So Food Lion would have every right, even the obligation, to make me surrender the name. But they would have no right whatsoever to foodlion.tx.us. Food Lion doesn't operate in Texas. So if the convenience store tried to use that to justify infringing on Food Lion's trademark, the judge would just laugh and fine them for stupidity.
So it's simple. Amend the law to say that TLD names don't hold weight in trademark disputes. Let people squat all over them, let companies pay out the nose to get them, and let NSI make boat loads of money. Only the localized names will mean anything.
People won't be able to remember all of those extra letters you say? Do you know the zip code of where you live (this is for US people)? Do you know any for Raleigh, NC? Of course not, unless you happen to live here. Why is that? Because you don't need to know it. All you really need to memorize is your own. And it'll become the same with domain names. And it'll acutally be more convenient this way.
What do I do if I want to order a pizza? I pick up the phone. But I'm online. What if I could just go to the pizza houses web site? But that means searching the entire WWW to find a local pizza house. Now if I could just search through ra.nc.us...
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
From www.memepool.com:
-Andrew
(Quick side-note: Apprentice is a FREE win32 program that allows gamers to play Magic: The Gathering CCG over the internet. It is sponsored and licensed by Wizards of the Coast. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.dragonstudios.com/
Development on Apprentice for Linux is moderately dead in the water right now. We had one programmer work up an early alpha version and nobody in our group was able to get it running. We have not gotten any more revisions since then.
We're currently putting this on hiatus and the head programmer for the windows version (which is developed in Delphi), is waiting for the delphi development kit for linux that was announced not too long ago.
Our focus is mostly on a Macintosh version of Apprentice right now, as we have a MUCH higher demand for this than a linux version. However, if there are programmers out there with a serious interest in helping us port or re-write a version for Linux, please contact me via email.
I guess mostly I hope that such an alternative will eventually show up. I don't know any good alternatives, and the moment, probably because I haven't looked. Although some kind of "directory service" would seem to be a good idea. Instead of using DNS, there should be a new protocol that returns a list of close web sites. For instance, I should be able to type in "clue" in my web browser and have a list returned that included
- Blue's Clues
Voila!! Problem solved. You'd just click on the site you want, and it'd pop up. I sorta am able to do this now with whois lookup's, but very ineffectively. It could almost be a search engine, but instead of being based on web pages, it'd just be based on the name registered. -BrentClue Computing
Clue's Card and Etc
Clue's for You
Hasbro - Clue Game.
--
A couple I can think of offhand:
The Orchard Supply Harware chain wanted to open a store near San Jose. Turned out that there was already a store with the same name, older than registered trademark. They paid several times what the little mon'n'pop store was otherwise worth.
The Mirage, in Las Vegas. Turned out that there was already a little flea-bite motel with essentially the same name. They paid millions just to take the name off.
Disclaimer: IIAL, but this is not legal advice. See an attorney licenced in your area if you need some.
That said: litigating these for the little guy would be expensive. With a few years of hindsight, the approach I'd take (as a little guy) would be to find a fresh lawyer starting his practice, or who wants to start one. Cut a contingency deal with him, and possibly lend him office space as part of the deal. Supply him with clerical stuf.
***AND*** = don't miss this, lest disaster strike!
*pay* for a seasoned attorney to help him out. Generally, fresh lawywers takes space in suites with other lawyers, and knowledge freely flows (not like it used to; advertising killed that). But this kind of involvement is a lot more than the friendly exchange of ideas and advice. *do not* scrimp here. Nor should you expect the young lawyer to foot these fees (creates a major disincentive to ask the questions).
Yes, it will still cost a lot. But structuring this creatively can work out well for both you and the new attorney, who wouldn't have the experience (or resources) to handle a case like this without the old warhorse.
(But don't look at me to be that warhorse. I only do antitrust & other economic issues any more).
Exactly! No company should demand rights to a domain that is based on an 'everyday' word. If you name your product that, it's your downfall.
Of course, you can be too successful and lose your branding, e.g. Aspirin, Sellotape, etc.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I was watching a CNBC story about Hasbro, in which it mentioned that they bought Wizards of the Coast because WotC makes Pokemon cards, the current hot craze among kiddies. So I wouldn't expect great things in the AD&D department, but they should get more money out of the deal.
Virtual Works claims NSI and Volkswagen have no legal justification for challenging its use of www.vw.net, which it said NSI assigned to the Internet service provider in 1996. A year earlier, VW was assigned the address http://www.vw.com, leaving http://www.vw.net unclaimed. .net denotes an ISP, generally, so what do they think they have to stand on in their argument that www.vw.net should be given to Volkswagen? I can't believe a judge would consider taking a case like this... then again, the way the legal system in America is, I shouldn't be surprised.
I can't believe those people..
Nevertheless, I just hate it when I hear about NSI and the companies that do this kind of thing... I mean, honestly, they usually have no basis for their actions, because most people use the generic ".com" when looking for addresses (ok, well I would, if I were looking for Volkswagen, because ".com" is usually what general sites that their site would have... they sell cars, that's all. They're no organization, no ISP, certainly no government organization.), and so I don't see why/how they should also be awarded ".net". What do they need with two sites? (I know, I know... they'd both point to the same thing/host the same thing, etc.) Still, if people aren't smart enough to find VW (re: by trying www.vw.com), they don't need to be buying one,.. much less a car in general!
Insert mind here.
"It's the golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rule."
At least that's what I was told by an Asheron's Call worker the other day.
they wanted Battletech.
Well, just as WoTC looks like they didn't kill off everything cool and are doing a good job with TSR's product line, now we have to fret about Hasbro screwing everything up again. :(
The way I see it people are forcing companies to grab many domain names. How many of you have ever typed a url out pretty quickly and hit a wrong key. Then 78 banners pop up and you realize your at a pr0n site. If people wouldn't abuse the system, there would be no need for companies to register all their names. But if Hasbro does not own clue.com , would some newbie typing that url in know that the site he found wasn't a part of Hasbro ?
anybody know of a 'Magic Suitcase' or other card db proggie for linux ? I'd love to have one that would directly import my whole database. I know I can set up several Linux db's to do it, and I've started setting one up, but it still not as handy as those dedicated windows card db programs. If anyone knows of one, feel free to email me. thanks.
This has turned into a conversation about board games. What in the h#$$ does that have to do with this story? Just because it involves a company that makes board games doesn't mean that it's about board games.. Some people -- I'll never understand..
Actually, the trademark for "Asprin" was lost due to the trademark owner (Bayer) being a German company, and Germany loosing the First World War.
Hey, Rob's got to sleep every few days....
I'm not sure if this is technologically possible, but a mature solution would be:
The small business gets a domain name like clue-computing-boston.com, Hasbro gets clue-hasbro-game.com, and somewhere there is a single web page under www.clue.com that says for Clue Computing of Boston click here, for the Hasbro Clue game click here, etc.
For an example of this type www.slashdot.com That will take you to one of those pages which then directs to here, or a few other places that use slashdot for some reason.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
My company has gone on a domain name registration binge for some of our newer products, and some we haven't even signed a client on, "just in case" the deals go through. So, I'm forced to clench my teeth and mutter under my breath while I set our DNS up to serve a .com, .net and .org for each new domain they want. It makes me sick. At least they've stopped going through registration middlemen that charge $120 per domain...
.edu, .gov and .mil for each domain, but I'm afraid they'd take me seriously.
I've half a mind to suggest that they register
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to organize a boycott of McDonald's. Or Wal-Mart, or any one of a number of large corporations. Hell, I don't even care if something's being boycotted for a reason I consider to be BS -- all the more reason for me to support the company. Remember the Baptist boycott of Disney? 'nuff said. :)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
It would also make it easier to find official sites, since for a company like Ford(TM) would be at FORD.R.US or FORD.R, and you (initially) wouldn't have to worry about names like FORDCARS, FORDTRUCKS, etc.
If sites had to rely on promoting their IP addresses rather than their domain name, any marketing advantage or disadvantage to domain names would be removed. The legal issues with domain names to do with trademark infringements and squatting would disappear and mom&pop companies could coexist with large corporations on the internet quite comfortably. (eg. Clue computing and Hasbro)
.com addresses...
Existing trademark laws would still apply, but the focus would be on content and product rather than location. Also p0rn sites and other parasites would not be able to latch on to variations of popular site names, and it would be extremely difficult for them to get similar IP addresses.
The only downside (though not for me) would be the loss of the monopoly by US companies on
Any thoughts on this?
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
I thought there was, at one time, a rule that basically was "One Organization, one Domain."
That is, if Hasbro wanted clue.com, that would have to be their ONLY domain, so they would lose hasbro.com
If this rule were enforced, all these problems would go away! Each company would have one, and ONLY one domain, squatters could only claim one name, unless they made a front corporation for each one. For what purpose does a company really need more than one DNS address? if they have many sites they can subdomain, like clue.hasbro.com
Play the Expansion Pack ! Settlers ROCKS !
This is only partially true. A trademark is limited in scope - usually to a particular area of trade. There can be no infringement outside of this area (with the exception of well-known marks). The classic example in the U.S. is "Delta". I can think of three right now - Delta Airlines, Delta Faucets, and Delta Dental (insurance). Despite the use of the same name, these three do NOT conflict as far as trademarks go.
Well-known marks would include something like McDonalds, which covers so much ground that McAnything is going to have a problem (yes, I know about the McDonalds in Scotland, and there have been court cases in the U.K. about this very issue.)
Hasbro is throwing its weight around. Based strictly on trademark law, I'd expect Hasbro to lose the appeals, since 'Clue' is not a well-known mark, and there's no significant cross-over between areas of trade. I just hope that Clue Computing can hang in there for the rest of the proceedings.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I'm never shopping *there* (which is made easier by the fact that there are no Fry's on the east coast.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
As an RI resident and longtime Hasbro observer, I would say that if past is prologue, Alan Hassenfeld will probably liquidate TSR's highly paid American game developers and replace them with Indonesian teenagers doing the same job for $0.35 a day.
With this in mind, look for AD&D 3rd Edition to have the same kind of effervescently nonstandard spelling and grammar that one is accustomed to seeing in the installation guides for off-brand video cards.
"Produce of Your Imagiration"
Indeed.
"The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient"
Take a look at his idea for dealing with this.
(Thread URL is this one.)
Hmm... nobody's registered "com.com" yet... I'd better jump on that one!
This is almost certainly off-topic; those who don't want to hear about this particular subset of role-playing gaming history should move on. But I feel as if I have to set the record straight, both as a rabid Ars Magica fan (and player) and as an Atlas Games playtester.
First off: Ars Magica was developed originally by Mark Rein*Hagan and Jonathan Tweet when they were part of a start-up called Lion Rampant. ArM (as it's usually abbreviated) was kept by the company when - through a complex business morph - it became White Wolf. White Wolf later sold ArM to Wizards when their Storyteller line took off, and WotC provided some decent support for the game (even going so far as to hire Jonathan Tweet, who has since helped re-write D&D 3rd edition). Within about a year of their purchase, however, WotC decided to drop all their RPGs, concentrating on collectable card games (this was before they bought TSR, recall). Atlas Games jumped at the chance to buy the venerable ArM.
Now, Ars Magica was a testing ground of sorts for White Wolf, and many of the game designs that premiered in ArM evolved and became the bases for the Storyteller series. To be honest, ArM had - and has - one of the most elegant magic systems in any role-playing game, and moreover, they worked from a historical perspective.
In the Ars Magica community, few people have bad things to say about Atlas at all with their handling of the line. In fact, Ars Magica has become their primary cash cow, and they treat it with respect. Atlas has averaged three to four supplements a year since they purchased the game, and they have produced the 4th edition rulebook, which is widely considered the best edition ever, including the 2nd, which had long been called the One True Edition by Ars Magica diehards. With the money Atlas earned from Ars Magica, they bought the rights to several other games, including the flailing Feng Shui and the much talked-about Unknown Armies. To say that Atlas has buried the game is to do them a great disservice, as Ars Magica has been both a critical and a popular hit.
Returning to WotC, however, they have become something of the Microsoft of the RPG world. They are ruthless, business-savvy, and bent on domination of their chosen market. The only company to really hold a candle to them within the gaming industry was FASA, which has since been divided up and acquired by Microsoft and Decipher (the former to expand their games with the Battletech line of computer games and the latter to bolster their credibility and get a solid money-making product in the form of Shadowrun). I have several friends within the gaming industry who have been very nastily burned in their interactions with WotC.
Hasbro has also acquired not too long ago the strategy-gaming staple Avalon Hill, and although they claim that they will be reprinting about half of the former giant's catalogue, many hard-core gamers I know have despaired at the recent shake-ups in the industry and turned to more home-grown games. I seriously doubt that Hasbro will sink the D&D 3rd edition project, however, since WotC has a movie contract tie-in and at least one computer game tie-in in the works with third parties.
In summary, however:
I am very glad someone is buying WoC..thier game production team SUCKS....the card rage is a huge money pit and any true RPG WoC has ever touched has begun to smell very soon after...I do not know about you but I'm still usinb the first edition rules for AD&D anyways, and the thrid edition was recently announced so i doubt it will fade :)
It worked for Tandy Corp. Any thing *Shack that's related to electronics is under thier trademark.. ComputerShack, NetShack, they are all Fair Game, I know one company that had to rename by threat from Tandy. The Big Companies like to Whip the Little Guy around
Microsoft owns FASA Interactive, which was a subset of FASA - the subset that produced all the computer games. FASA themselves got bought out shortly after selling FASA Interactive. The buyer, as the other responder to this post mentioned, was Decipher.
I should be able to buy and sell all the domain names I damn well please on a first cone serve basis. If I PAY for 5000 domain names. They're fucking MINE, and I can resell them for any amount I want. Or maybe I will just sit on them. No one has to buy them. And if I am to assume ALL THE RISK (of not being able to sell them), then I should receive ALL THE PROFIT when I do make that one big killing.
Since this guy was moderated down as a troll I'm qouting his text for everyone's benefit. This is a legitimate concern. It is legal to purchase realestate and then sell it to businesses or individuals, why can't we do the same thing with domain names??? I don't see any problem with squatters, they had the good sense to get the name before you did, so you have to pay their price if you REALLY want the name. Perfectly reasonable.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I can easily dismiss the rants of this person because they are reflective of the attitude of society as a whole. Fuck him, fuck her, fuck everybody! I'm only in it for the cash. I guess it's too much to expect, for people to act in a reasonable manner. If Microsoft did this, I bet this guy would be the first one on the list to slag MS for gouging the public ect, ect.. Let's dispatch with the double standards please.
That's odd, right now I just go to a search engine or directory (Yahoo, Google, et.al.), type in "clue" and get a similar list. The filtering isn't good, but that's a matter of improving the back-end implementation, not developing a new concept.
(just returned from www.cluedo.com). Ugh, not only did they change the name of the US version to 'Clue', but there's no Reverend Green, and Dr Black has become the grimace inducingly pun-tastic 'Mr Boddy'. ...and they're 'Marathons', not 'Snickers'. Grr!
Better idea:
Use ".tm" because "tm" is recognized as a trademark abbreviation. To avoid conflict with the country code, don't make it a top-level domain; make it a subdomain of the country where the trademark applies, such as "tm.us". For any international trademarks, "tm.int".
Within each "tm" domain, use subdomains for each trademark category defined, suitably abbreviated. Then, every company with a registered trademark would have undisputed rights to the trademark under the subdomain, but they'd have to prove ownership of the trademark first.
For the few trademarks (McDonalds?) that are viewed as transcending the category boundaries, they could receive domains directly under the appropriate "tm" domain, for free.
Then, offer no trademark protection in the ".com", ".org" and ".net" domains; everyone would know where to look for the real entity owning the trademark they're interested in.
A possible approach to limiting name-grabbing abuse of the ".com", ".org" and ".net" namespaces -- make a registrant's first domain name cheap (say, $10/year), and double the cost for each additional domain. This would cost the small guys less than $30/year (each) if they only have one or two domains (thus using the DNS responsibly), and those owning 3 or more domains would start paying more than they currently do. Abusers who grab up dozens of domains would really pay for abusing the DNS -- holding 20 domains would cost over $10,000,000/year! Compare this to a cost of $600/year -- which total will encourage a multimillion-dollar business to use the DNS responsibly? Which one will discourage domain-name speculators?
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
You know what? How about we just use IP addresses instead?
While this might seem like a bad idea at first, think about it.... there would be no pseudo-domain names (like mine, i know, i know) and you would have to be honest about your IP!
I guess not everyone has my propensity for remembering numbers, but computers do.... so while television ads for 24.0.148.95 (I think that's my friend's cable modem, except I changed a digit) would fail to grab your attention, email would work just fine.
AND.... it would remove the "dot com" television advertisement FOREVER.
"That sounds like a tautology to me!.... Book it, I don't care! I meant to say that! I said it sounds like a tautology!
Being in regular contact with the WotC/TSR guys (playtesting and whatnot), they are saying that for now it's business as usual, in web policy et al. I'm personally glad to hear that, having registered a domain relating to the new setting coming out for alternity, I would hate to lose it. More worrisome, though, is the Hasbro moral stance, as someone mentioned. If they start censoring D&D, Alternity, and other products based on the irate cries of ignorant parents, just because a product mentions a "devil", I'm going to be rather unhappy. According to the WotC website, Peter Adkison (founder, CEO) will be chatting on their chat server tomorrow at 11:00 AM Pacific time. I've never had much luck with their chat server, though :(
Communication is only possible between equals
I think I get what was meant here. If I go out and register 200 domain names and don't use them, or do use them, but one should really be owned by someone else, then if I don't have a legitemate right for it, I must either give it up, or lose all my domains. Okay, something like that
The only problem I see with revoking domain names is the fact that people percieve having PAID for it. Even though they have just paid a fee for 'registration services' and not actually bought the domain..... this could get ugly. If my domain was taken away, I would certainly feel that NSI had performed their duties as registrar fraudulently by letting me register in the first place.I agree. I think too many people believe that they are *buying* the domain and somehow have *ownership* of it. Nonsense. They own the domain no more then they would "own" their post office box. So if you paid a year for the domain and had it for a year, your squared away. If you had it for only 3 months, and then found out it "belonged" to someone else, then I'd hope you'd get a prorated refund.
I think that domain names need to be controlled though. TLD's need to be restricted as to who can get a domain in that TLD. As was mentioned before, net should be restricted to networks, org to organizations and com to business. domains should be automatically allocated to whoever best "owns" them. buick.com for instance should belong to only one company legally. They pay their $35 a year and that's it.
What's harder is to determine is personal and "promotional" type domains. Who gets christmas.org? Which Smith gets smith.org? Who gets NewYearsRocks.org? what does the rfc say? Where do these domains belong anyways? Hopefully a few more TLD's will provide more ability to classify domain names better. .shop can only be one thing. .home is simple to guess what we'd find there. And most importantly, we need a restricted .adult domain.
I'm not sure what to think about "reselling" domains either. I feel cybersquatting is wrong, obviously for buick.com of course, but I don't think it's legitimate for yesyesyes.org either. I can see why domain names have "value" But I think domains names, after one is finished with them should be given up to let the next "renter" use, much like you'd give up a Post Office box when you were done with it. I don't advertise my PO Box 1234 when I'm done with it, and I think that's the way domain names should be handled too.
Of course, again we're back to the problem of people complaining when the domain names are taken from them because when they registered the name that assumed that it "belonged" to them. Now it's being taken away and they're losing their "investment" which they wanted to sell for big bucks.
Well, I just can't wait tfor the use of domain names to be deprecated. That'll hopefully take care of all the problems.
-Brent--
Check out info here and here.
The merger should be completed by the end of the month.
I can't find any info on the merger at the Decipher website, as they don't seem to have any corporate press releases up that aren't related to their games.
In the meantime, I miss the days when a site was named with product.company.com or www.company.com/product or whatever. SGI's good about this, but most companies suck, and this has led to peoples' mentalities that a domainname should be www.product.com and oftentimes not understanding that a URL isn't simply www.product.com. One time it took me half an hour to convince someone that Be's BeOS website is at www.be.com and not www.beos.com... and it really didn't help that www.beos.com was a very badly-broken site.
Wow, i've rambled again and lost track of my point. Bad porcupine, no cookie... *smacks self on the forehead*
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
These silly people are already filing an appeal, and I don't know how much longer I can keep fighting. Please, O Beloved Slashdot, email the crap outta Hasbro and let them know if you don't support thier perversion of the 'Net. Thanks! Eric Robison Clue Computing
It was Judge Woodlock, in the US District Court for Massachusetts, with a gavel.
As I write this last story is 7 hours old. This is quite unsatisfactory.
/. addicts need our fix on at least a bi-hourly basis. This waiting 7 hours business is going to drive us insane. Rob, Hemos, please post stories in a REGULAR rhythm. So if we check back in 2 hours there will be something new.
Us
THANKS. BTW I appreciate all your hardwork.
RPG's are no longer a large portion of the gaming market. Even AD&D is slim pickings compared to WotC's card games.
It's a sign of the graying of the hobby. This happened to the wargamers and it's happening to us. While this has probably improved the quality of the average campaign (no more eighth-graders grabbing loot and inventing the Helm of Many Fists to wear all of their rings :), it's going to hurt the industry. I think it'll return to the hands of the small companies and the hobbyists within a decade.
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
The two companies have quite a few products in common; for example, Hasbro has the rights to manufacture Pokémon toys for the U.S. market (at least that's what the tag on my stuffed Pikachu indicates ^_^) and WOtC had the rights to market the Pokémon CCG in the States. Hasbro bought out Microprose, which made the Magic: the Gathering computer game.
This makes me wonder, though; Decipher currently has rights to produce Star Wars CCGs, and Hasbro makes the SW toys. I make a conjecture that some switching of licenses will be going about soon.
Is it easier to buy the company than to just buy the licensing? Hmm...
As I write this last story is 7 hours old. This is
/. addicts need our fix on at least a bi-hourly basis. This waiting 7 hours business is going to drive us insane. Rob, Hemos, please post stories in a REGULAR rhythm. So if we check back in 2 hours there will be something new.
quite unsatisfactory.
Us
THANKS. BTW, I appreciate all your hardwork.
Hmmm, A wolrd-wide AOL.. sell KeyWords as opposed to URLs? It's a Thought....
Yes. Hasbro's attitude in this case was rumored to be "we want clue.com, we don't think you are infringing on our trademark, but NSI's dispute policy lets us beat up on you, so fork it over." Which is clearly WRONG.
It is an excellent day for Right over Might.
Warner
The holding company that owns FASA (and is partially owned by Weismann and his father, mostly his father), has been partially owned by Microsoft for several years. They simply took a larger, now-visible stake in the company.
Right now Decipher hasn't bought FASA yet. They HAVE issued a letter of intent to buy. But all the details have to be hammered out yet. Speaking with Jill Lucas, and Bryan Nystul (of FASA) and several people over at Decipher, the deal looks pretty much done.
Also, it looks like, after the initial 6-8 months of integration (which will probably be "turbulent"), it'll produce nothing but Good Things for all the FASA and Decipher properties. Not much OUTWARDLY is going to change. FASA's offices on 1100 Cermak will remain. FASA gets more funding and project support, as well as a better distribution channel. Decipher gets a fairly seasoned RP/Miniatures gaming division with some fairly hot properties both in the RP and computer gaming world (Shadowrun, BattleTech, MechWarrior.
And I think it would be a mistake to call FASA an industry whipping-boy. They're fairly shrewd. How many companies in their industry have been bought and denatured by others like WotC? TSR, the 800 lb gorilla of the gaming world was bought by them. Now TSR-based products have all but made themselves irrelevant. Heck, they've taken to rehashing old projects to put new material on the shelves!
FASA has neatly avoided this. They don't change, get more money, a bit more clout, and great distribution.
The only part of FASA that Gates got was the FASA Interactive division (which also holds the old Virtual World properties). Currently they hold all licenses to computer games based on the FASA properties. MechWarrior4 (based off the Virtual World engine) will come from this division. And compared to the rather anemic, and bug-ridden Zipper Interactive offering (MechWarrior3), it's going to rock.
I will agree with you on one thing. I think a buyout by Hasbro is a Very Bad Thing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This largely makes sense. I don't know about statement 1, I don't think there *is* any absolute protection of a name.
That's why I qualified it the way I did. There is no absolute protection true, for example Apple Computers does not infringe on Apple Record's trademark of the word "Apple". You can, though, determine whether a use is not protected, eg. if I opened up Apple Computronics and advertised as Apple, Apple Computers would have a right to make me stop. IMHO domain names should be subject to the same rules as any name when it comes to trademarks, no less and no more.
2) I don't agree. "A" can have as many domains as he wants....
However, by taking up all those names, A is preventing others from using names they may be legitimately entitled to use. That's why DNS is hierarchical, to deal with this problem. IMHO if Apple wants sites for Macintosh and PowerBook computers, they should register apple.com and create macintosh.apple.com and powerbook.apple.com 3LDs, rather than registering both macintosh.com and powerbook.com. The intent of #2 is to encourage people to use 3LDs for different parts of the same entity, freeing up 2LDs for other uses.
Squatting, IMHO, can be solved by a simple rule: any offer by the holder to transfer the name for money or other valuable consideration is prima facie evidence that the name is being held only for sale and, if reported to the registrar, grounds for immediate and non-appealable revocation of the name registration. The evidence must be in the holder's own words, not paraphrased or summarized.
The smaller company could have gotten clue.boston.ma.us anytime it wanted (and for a lot less than Network Solutions charges), which is one half of your idea. But since .com is "desirable real estate", nobody uses .us unless they're cheap or iconoclastic.
nissan.co.jp is their main site
....especially for many asian based companies.
it's a standard practise to use "-usa.com"
I haven't actually seen Pokemon cards, but I was wondering if WotC were the makers. I have a friend who owns a bookstore, and she sells out of their Pokemon allocation within an hour of getting it from the delivery truck.
Technically, WotC is licensing and translating the card game from Nintendo of Japan -- it's called "Pocket Monsters" over there (which became pseudo-abbreviated in that odd Japanese way to "Pokemon").
As for your considering selling them? Good luck. I don't know what kind of distributor you'd find for the product, but I have three (two for games, one for comics) and only recently started getting them on even a weekly basis.
And that's because my distributors are -- and therefore, I am -- willing to pay extra for the boxes, so I have to sell them at around 30% over suggested retail. Luckily, my customers tell me my prices are lower than many stores in the area.
Jay (=
My favorite domain name conflict was / is frys.com, which was taken by someone claiming to be "Frenchy Fry's Frozen Foods", leaving Fry's Electronics squatting on fryselectronics.com.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Basically, while we all sit around and criticize these companies for throwing their weight around on smaller companies (don't get me wrong, I do it too), a company really has no other choice if they want to protect their trademark. According to corporate law, if someone can prove that you don't enforce your trademark, it becomes dilluted and your right to use it is weakened.
So a company with a trademark must use draconian measures of enforcement when defending their trademark -- they have no choice if they want to prove that to a court that they're enforcing it. And since cybersquatting has been a problem in the past, companies are probably advised by their lawyers that they MUST track down ANY potential use of their trademarked name, even in situations where it won't apply.
Of course, that means nothing to the poor small business owner (or private owner) who coincidentally is using a name that has been trademarked. It's certainly not fair to them at all -- and they don't really have the funds to defend against such matters, nine times out of ten.
It seems like a situation where no one can really win. If a company wants to retain the rights of their trademark, they have to crack down in every situation (which is why Red Hat is doing what they're doing these days). On the other hand, there's no reason why someone in a business completely unrelated to the trademark should ever have to be pushed around by a corporations legal teams.
The only way out of this is to either a) strengthen the rights of the people holding the trademark, so they don't have to enforce it all the time, or b) weaken the power of trademarks significantly, or even abolish it all together, so that no one can lay any kind of legal claim to a word or a phrase.
Either option has its problems, but I think that abolishing trademark would be better than strengthening it -- if it were strengthened, companies would probably find it more "convenient" to force people who had trademarked words in their domain names to hand them over, even if the domain names were used in a way completely unrelated to the trademark itself. If that were the case, sites like ajax.org would have been instantly overrun and they would have had no legal recourse whatsoever.
Hope that wasn't too disjointed...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
You say the Hollywood types are rallying against it, the simple fact is they rallied this, and pressed the board to vote for it. Their issue is rather that it doesn't go far enough. I invite you to listen/watch the Real Audio/Video archives of the ICANN Santiago Meeting to see evidence of this.
Rather the Hollywood interests are trying to get seperate representation for themselves, rather than being in with the "Intellectual Property" group. They are pressing for rules that will enable you to lose your domain name because you use infringing CONTENT, not related to the domain name. That is their suggestions, and yes, the archives provide evidence of this.
The fact is that the NSI policy gives you more rights than the ICANN one does. And this is the travesty.
Bottom line, don't take mine or J. Reynolds word for it. Go check out the archives and you will see it for yourself. It's all very well documented.
This board has voted to extend its own term, without elections, and they have voted on a sweeping set of policies that directly affect domain name holders, despite the fact that they deny representation to individual domain name owners, and indeed have refused to consider their application for recognition.
They have adopted policies that give trademark and other intellectual property holders more rights than they have in ANY other media in the world. In EVERY other media, the trademark/copyright holder must bear the burden, and expense, of filing a case and proving it, and indeed the penalty of sanctions for filing a case without merit.
The ICANN Policy will eliminate this burden for them, thus giving them more than the law would give them, at the expense of you and I, and every individual domain name owner.
--
William X. Walsh - DSo Internet Services
Email: william@dso.net Fax:(209) 671-7934
Editor of http://www.dnspolicy.com/
Member of the Individual Domain Name Owners Association
This is a side question that I would like to see discussion on someday.
I notice that a lot of folks here seem to hate so-called 'squatters' who reserve domains for money, presumably because some folks here work on that kind of thing in their day2day job. I also see some people ranting against overbearing big businesses that use piles of paperwork to overwhelm smaller registered owners for domains that they want (ie ajax.com and many others).
What should be the 'rights' reguarding names and domains? First come first served leads to squatters, but trying to discern honest holders from large pushy companies seems difficult at times. And what about "name-grabbers" like George Bush Jr., who tried to grab all the parody-type addresses he could think of before announcing candidacy. Many of you folks work within the DNS system for a living, how do _YOU_ feel it should work?
Random Speculation, pay no mind if you don't care...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Well perhaps this will make Hasbro standardise the International naming of this product - which is called "Cluedo" in the UK (and everywhere else AFAIK).
We in the UK have been putting up with everything gettting renamed to the US version for a while, the latest tragedies being Opal Fruits turning into "Starburst" (s*** name) and "Oil of Ulay" becoming "Oil of Olay"
Anyway - http://www.cluedo.com points to Hasbro's web site if anyone's interested!
So what idiot at the trademark office allowed a common word to be trademarked? I think we're all familiar with the fact that I can't call my product Kleenex since that's a trademark, but does this mean I will be allowed to trademark "Facial Tissue"? If so, what will other tissue makers start calling their products? The problem isn't always with the law or how it's interpreted. Sometimes the problem rests with some poor slob who had a bad weekend or wants to leave work early Friday and will rubber stamp anything that comes across his/her desk.
Its good that someone finally has woke the heck up over in the Justice System. No one really defined _what_is legal to register and what isn't. But you can waste money doing a trademark search.
Lets quote NSI shall we
Revision 03 Effective February 25, 1998 1. Network Solutions, Inc. ("Network Solutions") is responsible for the registration of second-level Internet domain names in the top level COM, ORG, NET, and EDU domains. Network Solutions registers these second-level domain names on a "first come, first served" basis. By registering a domain name, Network Solutions does not determine the legality of the domain name registration, or otherwise evaluate whether that registration or use may infringe upon the rights of a third party.
This is solely written to deter themselves from suffering legal actions... point blank
2. The entity applying for a domain name ("registrant") is solely responsible for selecting its own domain name ("domain name") and maintaining for the continued accuracy of the registration record. The registrant, by completing and submitting the Domain Name Registration Agreement ("Registration Agreement"), represents that the statements in its application are true and that the registration of the selected domain name, to the best of the registrant's knowledge, does not interfere with or infringe upon the rights of any third party. The registrant also represents that the domain name is not being registered for any unlawful purpose.
Does this mean that if I registered "whatever.com" and three months down the line someone trademarked it, they can now sue me? Some of these laws are a joke... I can see whay they would make these laws being it would deter some moron from registering a site to make massive money, but there a Corporate entities who turn around and bastardize these laws as well
3. Network Solutions neither acts as arbiter nor provides resolution of disputes between registrants and third party complainants arising out of the registration or use of a domain name. This Domain Name Dispute Policy ("Policy") does not confer any rights, procedural or substantive, upon third party complainants. Likewise, complainants are not obligated to use this Policy.
More legal mumbo jumbo from a half assed registrar
http://www.netsol.com/rs/dispute-policy.html
6. Indemnity. The registrant hereby agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless (i) Network Solutions, its officers, directors, employees and agents, and (ii) the National Science Foundation ("NSF"), its officers, directors, and employees (collectively, the "Indemnified Parties"), for any loss or damages awarded by a court of competent jurisdiction resulting from any claim, action, or demand arising out of or related to the registration or use of the domain name. Such claims shall include, without limitation, those based upon trademark or service mark infringement, tradename infringement, dilution, tortious interference with contract or prospective business advantage, unfair competition, defamation or injury to business reputation. Each Indemnified Party shall send written notice to the registrant of any such claim, action, or demand against that party within a reasonable time. The failure of any Indemnified Party to give the appropriate notice shall not affect the rights of the other Indemnified Party. Network Solutions recognizes that certain educational and governmental entities may not be able to provide complete indemnification. If the registrant is (i) a governmental or non-profit educational entity, and (ii) not permitted by law or under its organizational documents to provide indemnification, the registrant must notify Network Solutions in writing and, upon receiving appropriate proof of such restriction, Network Solutions may provide an alternative provision for such a registrant.
In other words money talks...
What I wanna know is...
What is Network Solutions going to do in a cross-registrar dispute?
What if they weren't the registrars how are they going to handle things. And when just when are the court systems going to stop letting people twist laws?
oh well back to work...
Want Root?
It seems that a simple clarification to the trademark laws stating that use of apparent trademarks used on the web do not constitute trademark infringement. Lacking this clarification, it is up to the courts to set legal precedent. I'm glad the judge in this case saw it this way and hope that more will follow his lead.
Got #mtg on Undernet and ask Shroomie. He's 'The Man' when it comes to apprentice, trust me.>;)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
"Clue" is a common word. An individual should be able to take any common word and make a domain out of it. It's the company's fault if they name their products single words that appear in /usr/dict/words or personal names (veronica.org dispute). It's the same with movies. If you want a domain for it, don't call it a single word. Make a creative name and your product would be more recognized.
t ogetformybirthday.com :)
Also, it's a user's fault if they type in "www.clue.com" and assume they are at Hasbro's site. I'm sure there's a card in the box that gives the address, or people can type the company's name. Sometimes I just guess the URL if I'm looking for something, but I look at content if the site comes up.
Are we to assume that if someone knows the name of a product, they should just be able to go to www..com and get there?
Surf on over to www.thatonethingisawinbobsofficelastyearandwanted
Fortunately for us real gamers Steve Jackson is still around. The same man that made the EFF, also gifted the world with GURPS. It's more flexible, more realistic, and has a level of detail (historic, scientific, and cinematic), that D&D and White Wolf just can't match. Of course you could get the best of both worlds... play White Wolf story-teller capaigns under the GURPS system.
Hmm... what else can we turn to? Amber anyone?
I'm a gnu world man.
Scalping (spin word) or the reselling to tickets to whatever at an inflated price is legal in many places. Ticketmaster has made a (legal) industry out of it. And phone numbers that spell out vanity words ARE sold by 3rd parties and by telcos themselves at an inflated price. The same happens with vanity car license plates. Acquiring stuff for one price and reselling it at a higher price is an accepted fact of life in a free market society. Real estate dealers do it. Used car dealers do it. What the fuck is your problem?
Allowing anything to be a TLD would create no more chaos than what already exists within the COM zone? It just gets move up to the root node.
Nonsense. Utter and dismal nonsense.
Domains aren't "owned". They are registered and "leased". I think that the idea of "owning" a domain was the biggest mistake ever made. You register a domain and use it. When you are done with it, if you don't use it "forever", then it's unregistered and the next person to register for it starts paying for it. That's how the Domain naming system should work.
You shouldn't be assuming any risk, because the domain names aren't intended to be a salable goods. It's no better then scalping tickets. If you think that you own domain names, what else do you own? Phone numbers? Do you buy chuncks of phone numbers so that you can sell them to the highest bidder? 1-888-cooldude; 1-800-your4us; 1-615-iamnice? How about post-office boxes. PO Box 666 might be valuable. Do you stand in line and offer to step up of line to the highest bidder so they can get closer to the front of the line? What in the world makes domain names any different.
I think that whoever would "buy" the rights to a domain name from a third party is a fool. I will only get a domain name by registering it directly from a registrar, or legally getting rights to it through the court systm.
-Brent--
I haven't actually seen Pokemon cards, but I was wondering if WotC were the makers. I have a friend who owns a bookstore, and she sells out of their Pokemon allocation within an hour of getting it from the delivery truck.
It's insane. Hell, I work at a computer store, and we're only half-jokingly considering selling the damn things.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
The trademark and copyright interests are lobbying ICANN very heavily (including big money Hollywood interests) for stronger protection, even beyond what the law currently gives them. They can't get Congress, or even the courts, to back them up, so they are lobbying hard within ICANN, and ICANN is listening, not wanting to have to fight big corporate interests who are the ones actually paying ICANN's bills right now (see Follow the Money).
Soon individuals and small businesses with find themselves in the position of having to do what Clue Computing did, be the plaintiff in a case suing to KEEP your domain name, since under these new policies Trademark holders won't be obligated to take you to court and prove infringement or dilution. You will have to prove you aren't infringing, thus shifting the burden of proof as well as the expense.(Clue Computing sued NSI to prevent implementation of the Dispute Policy)
Not a very promising outlook.
I've been advocating some sort of grass roots campaign to rally against these actions by ICANN, but some people just see that ICANN is fighting NSI and think that is a justification for them trampling our rights.
--
William X. Walsh - DSo Internet Services
Email: william@dso.net Fax:(209) 671-7934
Editor of http://www.dnspolicy.com/
In this freelance world of domain names, disputes such as the one with clue will continue to happen. This might be unpopular, but I would impose a rather draconian solution. Incorporated companies are given .com; in this case hasbro.com. Web sites associated with hasbro, such as clue, will be something like, clue.hasbro.com. The caveat to all of this is that hasbro can still register hasbro.net, or hasbro.org. However, they cannot force someone to give the name up if it was already registered. OTOH, with time, ppl will search check out .com sites if they are looking for corporate info.
I know that they are working on additional domain suffixes. However, unless drastic measures are taken to restrict and control which domain can be registered and for what purpose, things are going to be real ugly during the next decade. Otherwise, the only unregistered domain in ten years will be gpqidnzw.com, or the only way to navigate the web will be by use of portals.
That WotC purchased TSR, which was the previous Microsoft of the gaming world. Now Hasbro, which already owns the remains of Avalon Hill will buy WotC which owns TSR which bought SPI...
Reference the case Bozo vs. Bozo, won by the "Bozo's Resturant" owner who had apparently been using the name long before Larry Harmon. Mr. Harmon was reportedly livid at the result, expressing his anger and disbelief that the small resturant owner was allowed to continue using the name "Bozo" for that mere reason, as opposed to him being awarded exclusive use of the name based on the size of his great "Bozo the Clown" empire.
Or people would start associating letters with digits, as in phone numbers. Result: Numerologists paid big bucks to serve as expert witnesses in trademark disputes.
Or the biologists would help out. Result: Government gives everyone a free souped-up extra-smart-gene mouse to help remember IPs.
I gotta say, I can't imagine what led you to suggest this. Perhaps you went to a school like MIT where they had building numbers instead of names?
I've always been wanting to ask this, but is there any semblance of an apprentice 32 program for linux? Magic the Gathering is a great game when you get to know it, if a little expensive but I don't like having to reboot into windows whenever I want to play a game online. Thanks
Last week, I saw the following quote on Ditherati:
This infuriated me, since it seems to me that that is exactly what the domain name system should not be about. All anyone seems to care about is having a URL that is catchy and easy to remember. The actual quality of the content or servce that a site provides hardly seems to matter by contrast.
I think a lot of us are against both domain squatters and domain bullies. It's not about big guys vs. little guys this time. Rather, it's because both activities are based on this horribly commercialized concept that the web is all about companies pushing and shoving to attract the all-valuable "eyeballs" to their sites.
One more thing: you said "Well, I just can't wait for the use of domain names to be deprecated." Do you know something I don't about an alternative system that will take care of these problems, or are you just expressing the same hope that I share, that some such alternative will come along eventually?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Avalon Hill, famous for hardcore strategy games
and the Role Playing Game "RuneQuest" had been
bought by Hasbro too, RuneQuest has been dumped,
information on Avalon Hills Strategy games are
not to be found anymore on AH's webpage.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
If we were to simply state that domain names don't infringe on copyright, these problems would go away.
The outcome is clearly correct. The question is whether Hasbro should be sanctioned for an abusive filing for initiating the frivolous litigation.
There are *many* categories of trademarks in the U.S. A trademark in one category does *not* in any way block the identical trademark from being used in another category. That Hasbro has registered "Clue" as a game would in no way stop Ford from building a car called "Clue."
Somehow, Hasbro has gotten the idea that trademarks reach *much* farther in domain names than they do anywhere else. This is simply fallacious, and worthy of sanctions.
hawk, esq., once again griping that judges in general are far too slow to use their authority to sanction frivolous filings.
We're too busy playing Settlers of Catan.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They branched into many other card games, and bought TSR, among other things. M:TG is not their only cash cow. TSR still sells to the kiddies. Hasbro would not have bought them if they weren't totally convinced that they'd make money from the deal, and corporations that large are not stupid about what they spend money on, regardless of what Joe Public (or anyone else) may think...
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Yes, I know that trademark law stinks too, and that in this particular case maybe it is what needs to go first: but the dns situation is just going to get worse and worse.
.com tld. I read on the original vision for the web (from CERN) the other day (it was linked here I believe) and it included critism for keyword systems, and yet what has DNS turned into: write "flowers.com" for flowers, "greetingcards.com" for Greeting Cards, "drugs.com" for drugs (not that kind, of course, that would not be fitting).
.org .com and .net, they will go ahead and buy them in .wtf as well.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
There simply are not enough phrases around to give everyone a fair chance with a DNS system where no one cares about anything except the second level name in
The fact that DNS is controlled from the top down plays right into the hands of all kinds of abuse, everything from lawyer happy MN corporations, to NSI's constant monopolist practices, to the intervention of the American regime that is last thing we want on the Net.
Will adding more tlds help? Hell no, companies are already buying out there domains in
I can't say that I have a beautiful replacement in mind that solves all the problems, but we have to start looking for a decentralized, non-commericial, non-governmental naming system. The current domain name system is not, and will never be, anything but a bad compromise and a headache for the way the Internet has turned out.
-
but I knew what you meant.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I'm not sure if this is technologically possible, but a mature solution would be:
The small business gets a domain name like clue-computing-boston.com, Hasbro gets clue-hasbro-game.com, and somewhere there is a single web page under www.clue.com that says for Clue Computing of Boston click here, for the Hasbro Clue game click here, etc.
Perhaps I'm dreaming, but let's say there was a mega-server somewhere. When you type www.name-used-by-many-people.com in your browser, you're shown a web page from this server that basically presents you with a set of links to all sites related to that name. Now all we have to do is find someone to maintain the mega-server and the lists (yeah that's the scary part).
This fighting over domains is utterly stupid.
.com addressing.
First of all...DNS is nothing more than a kludge to get around the fact that most humans can't just remember an 8-digit hexadecimal code (even though they can easily remember a 7-digit decimal one). I am horrbily glad that companies like http://www.tldns.com/ are pointing out the absurd nature of
If I go get the phone number 800-463-3339 can I then get sued by Federal Express because it's 800-Go-FedEx? I can think of several examples of companies who do tricks like this to get attention in the phone world. For example, if you dial 888-265-8006 you get AOL technical support. If you dial 800-265-8006 you get a phone sex line. Yet this never winds up in court!
Speaking of America Online...let's take a look at how f-ing blind U.S. judges are:
America Online owns the trademeark "AOL". THis means they are (thanks to stupid judges) entitled to the following domains:
aol.com
aol.net
aol.org
aol.web
aol.*
AND
aolsearch.com
aolsoftware.com
aolhelp.com
aol*,com
useaol.com
ilikeaol.com
in reality? *aol*.*
If any website anywhere happens to use the abbeviation "aol" somewhere in their domain, AOL can sue, and would probably get, it away from them. What if they had chosen "AO" has their trademark (as is more grammatically correct anyway) this would be absurd. In fact, I'm 99% sure that the reason AOL wants to be an ICANN registrar so bad is so they can gobble up every aOL name possible without having to pay overhead to Network Solutions.
Is it just me, or does this not seem ABSOLUTELY wrong to anyone? AOL is not a non-profit organization...the hell are they doing with AOL.ORG other than pure greed.
And consider ATI.com...which for years was run by a guy calling himself "Artificial Turd Industries" and thumbing his nose at other companies with the trademark ATI. There were more than one! Not just the graphics card maker that we know of...farming equipment, real estate...everyone wanted ATI.COM but Artificial Turd Industries, Inc. got it first.
So ATI Technologies (the card makers) got www.atitech.com. This is no way prevented them from using the web and maintaining a company presence. Sure, some dumb idiot who doesn't know what is ATI's homepage will probably type in "ati.com" and get routed to the wrong page. But the ATI webmaster had links to every other aTI company right there on the top! So it was a laugh and an extra click to get to the REAL ATI homepage.
If two companies in unrelated fields can both have the same trademark (Example, Dominick's grocery stores in Chicago and the completely unrelated Dominick's heavy equipment manufacturers) why can't two companies in unrelated fields have the same domain? Both companies go out and get unique domains, for the two above it could be dominicksgrocery.com and dominickstractors.com. Then both companies split the cost of dominicks.com and the only thing on the homepage is a link to the other two domains.
As other Dominick's companies become registered trademarks (Dominick''s Frozen Heads, Inc.) they get tacked onto the same homepage in a first-come first-server order and the cost of hosting the page gets redistributed among the (now) three different companies.
Simple. End of problem.
F the Judges who cannot see such a SIMPLE answer to such a simple problem.
Ever tried to visit www.slashdot.com?
- JoeShmoe
Avalon Hill got bought because of a trademark fight.
Once upon a time, Avalon Hill published an English board game called "Civilization," in which players would play one of several great civilizations, and try to "advance" their civilization into the Iron Age. Avalon Hill had a microcomputer games divison, that produced "Computer Civilization."
In the meantime, Sid Meir produces Civilization, others produce Civilization II, and somehow, the trademark gets split between Microsoft and Activision-- which apparently had a hand in the development of "Civilization II."
Activison later releases "Civilization:Call to Power," and Hasbro, having in meantime, bought Microprose, releases a kludgy "Civilization II:Test of Time," presumably to cannibalize Activison's sales of Call to Power.
To strengthen Hasbro's hold over "Civilization: the Trademark" Hasbro buys Avalon Hill, granting them rights over "Civilization" and "Advanced Civilization". Also, this will allow them to finally release the long awaited "Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex," and also give them control over a bunch of wargames.
Incidentally, Runequest may be dead, but the world of Glorantha will still live on through a game of a different title, to be published by Issaries Games, a startup company with some very peculiar business plans. I believe this company will be more less seperate from the Chaosium, which originally published Runequest.
Boys and girls, don't be so quick to conclude one way or the other about Hasbro's intentions toward WotC product. It's never that simple, and it's never that easy to predict.
From the view of the mainstream business media, the motivation for the buyout stems from WotC's year-round product strength. "Magic: The Gathering" (aka "Crack for Gamers") and "Pokemon" are the current strengths of WotC proper. TSR and Five Rings Publishing, two of WotC's subsidiaries, produce powerful product in their own rights: D&D (TSR), Alternity (TSR), Marvel Saga (TSR), Fifth Age/Dragonlance (TSR), Legend of the Five Rings (FRPG), and Legend of the Burning Sands (FRPG).
As you see, Hasbro has quite a lot of material for its branches to draw upon. It's more than places for new toys to come from. It's also a place for other media to raid for tie-in products. Hasbro, through Microprose, could make a Gamma World game for the PC using the Alternity RPG as a basis for a game engine. Hasbro can also use the Runequest name (and nothing else) with the upcoming 3rd Ed. of D&D as a new fantasy setting, and then turn around to sell toys of signature characters as well as computer or console games using the name and the rules.
Hasbro isn't stupid. They know that they've got a damn good buy with WotC, so they aren't going to upset that cart. What they might do is use some of its might to consolidate loose ends for what it does control. For example, the Star Wars RPG is a West End Game product. Their dire straits make new product impossible, so that licence is up in the air. You'd better believe that Hasbro would assist WotC in acquiring that licence. (TSR has Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft already; this is not impossible.) The same could occur with regard to the L5R RPG; the next edition could become a D&D setting, if Hasbro so desires.
Whatever happens, this will be very interesting and very important for the tabletop gaming world.
"A god outgrown immediately becomes a life-destroying demon."- Joseph Campbell, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces"
I always tend to put wotc and games workshop, and microsoft in the same idea of doing business.
What a pity they are all 3 very successful at what they are doing... if only people were educated ... (teenagers, concerning wotc and gw)
When in the USA somebody buys a domain name. And afterwards somebody else claims to need that same domain name. You get a juristic game to tell who gets the domain name.
Now I got this question, what about those companies that buy domain names and then sell them for -a lot of- money ?
In Belgium we have the FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED rule.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Belgium HyperBanner
http://belgium.hyperbanner.net
Linux hosting for $2.50/mo
The domain name registration for .fi is handled by Telecommunications Administration Centre (works under Ministry of Transport and Communications).
.com .org and .net as well.
See the FAQ they have about registering domain names. Learn from it. Make Icann and whatever learn from it, because their policy works. The reasons it might not work for you Americans, are:
a) Finland is smaller than USA, and the rest of the world is interested in
b) Finland has a justice system and laws, whereas USA has a "rob a man of his money and/or drive him into banrupcy by pointing a finger at him" system and "laws" (just my opinion, based on what I've seen on telly, news and Slashdot).
- HoppQ -
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
What excactly do you mean, "kiddies?" I'm 21 and still play AD&D. In fact, I know noone who would be young enough to classify as a "kiddy" who plays. I dislike MTG, personally. I find it a shallow verison of D&D, even though it is MUCH easier to set up for a quick game and can be played with less people. At least you don't have to worry about a bad DM though..:p If no offense was ment.. none was taken.. :)
I run one of the larger AD&D sites on the web (I get about 100,000 hits/month, even though I haven't updated it in a year... :-(
Am I the only one that remembers the problems we (ie the gaming community) had with TSR over writing game extension and new rules? Thankfully, this sorted itself out, and WotC seems to have been content to abide by the TSR decision.
I'm really worried about Hasbro, though. Given that they seem to have a rather (shall we say) zealous approach to "protecting" their Intellectual Property, I'm really worried that they might try to revert to the old ways, and start trying to stop alot of the independent authors of D&D material.
I couldn't fight them if I got sued. I don't have the resources. This despite the fact that I've been EXTREMELY scrupulous about making sure none of the stuff on my site is lifted from TSR material. I'd have to close down, and that would be a shame.
Hopefully, Hasbro will Do The Right Thing, and continue with the current policy. People writing new material for the TSR games help sell "Official" material. And I'm well within my rights to create such stuff. I just can't afford to defend myself in court.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.