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Microsoft Monopoly, The Board Game
billybob submitted it first: "If you're looking for a great way to waste some time, check out
Microsoft Monopoly,
the online board game!" It's GPLed and you can submit your own jokes. I like the quick'n'easy lawsuit form.
I thought that it was particularly interesting that they devoted an entire section to explaing how someone was eventually going to bring a lawsuit to the table.
The funny thing about lawsuits is that large corporations are using them as leverage. Say I have a big-time company that makes OS' (what, me? pointing fingers? NEVER!), and I find a website that, although it is clearly labeled a parody, I find slanderous. Now, I am big and burly and have lots of money. The owners of this site are most likely either poor or not well-off enough to be able to support themselves easily while fending me and my macho corporation off.
So I sue. Even though I am obviously in the wrong, 90% of the time, the po' wittle website (say that five times fast!) will cave in simply because they cannot pay the incredibly high lawyer's fees.
Ah yes, welcome to America, Land Of The Free (tm.. of course.)
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rJames.org - illustration
Enjoyed your MS Monopoly site. Check out my version of the MS Monopoly game I created about a year ago, plus the other MS humor at:
http://jokewallpaper.com/msdoj.htm
I also can relate to your "I am So Mad I Could Sue" page. My parody/satire site is just a little over four years old. In that time I have been contacted by lawyers from Intel (Pentagram 666 processor, dropped from site), Apple (Think different, still on site), Netscape (modified, lawyer letter on site), Eli Lilly (prozac-seltzer, dropped from site), Pine Tree Car Air Freshnr (computer air fresheners, dropped from site), and UPS (modified, lawyer letter on site)
Check out the letters at:
UPS: http://jokewallpaper.com/letter13.htm
Netscape: http://jokewallpaper.com/letter1.htm
The points I make in the UPS letter are valid. You are covered by "fair use parody" in the use of the Microsoft trademark, but perhaps not covered in the use of the Hasbro trademark. You definitely are making a social commentary using the Microsoft logo, but using the Monopoly game trademark is not so clear cut.
Please remember all legal advice in the preceding paragraph comes from a humor writer, not an attorney.
Have Fun,
Steve Kremer
JokeWallpaper.com
BTW, if some of the "Letter to a Netscape Lawyer" looks familier, segfault and userfreindly used part of it for a lawyer letter prank last April Fools Day.
It took me about fifteen minutes just to download the "board" page with all the images. Click on one of the squares, and it takes a minute for the Javascript window to pop up.
Granted, the site is probably being Slashdotted. Still, it's a bit embarassing to see the Apache, PHP3 and MySQL logos displayed so prominently when the site evidently can't handle the load. Someone at Microsoft is probably thinking that they're getting the last laugh here.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
The "poor little website owners" are often up for a fight anyway - they're angry, they're determined, they know they're in the right and they don't want to see justice taken for a ride. The most extreme example would be the McLibel defendents, who faced personal bankrupcy to defend themselves in court.
So don't threaten them - threaten someone upstream from them, like the ISP. The ISP doesn't care about the rights and wrongs of the issue - they're looking at the money. And the money says that you have very little to gain by standing by your customer and everything to lose - the best commercial proposition is simply to drop customers as soon as anyone who can spell "lawsuit" writes to you, regardless of whether they'd have a case, and regardless of who the Good Guys might be.
This simple inequality is probably a bigger risk to free speech online than any CDA style legislation...
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