A related story of how one company came to realize how DRM was a giant waste.
A few years ago I worked on an educational application for a big educational company. They asked me for a menu of DRM solutions. I offered a whole range of solutions from none all the way up to a hardware dongle and net verification every launch. I included both how much it would cost and how much it would cost to maintain. (Legal told me not to tell them and estimate of effective each method was.)
In the end they chose one of the most expensive methods involving: 1) A unique key printed on the CD. 2) A different unique key on the actual CD its self. (These are expensive to press.) 3) A hardware footprint key that changed with any hardware change or OS reinstall. 4) The person would then have to CALL a toll-free number (in the US) give them all three of these keys, and if they checked out the operator would give them an unlock key.
Setting up this system took considerable more work than actually making the educational title, including accessing with the CRM software the operators used to record and generate keys. Oh, and it needed to be cross platform with vintage machines. (Win 95-Win Vista, OS 9, OS 10) Testing and implementation was a huge issue.
All of this for a $35 educational title.
We did it. It even worked. We even doubled the bid for it because it was so stupid, but they said they really wanted it.
18 months after it shipped they called us up and asked is how much effort it would be to remove the DRM. We quoted them a number equal to what it cost to run their DRM call center for a year. They paid.
All-in-all a good client for our bottom line.
(And people wonder where software developers get a reputation for being dicks.)
It's been nearly a week since I updated Reader! About time for another download install and unnecessary reboot!
Every single time Reader/Acrobat updates it resets its self as the default viewer. That's completely inappropriate behavior, especially for a 'security update'. (And no, I can't uninstall it. Job requires proofing PDF in Reader just like all my poor clients.)
I saw/overheard this in a bar recently (seriously): Girl: So where do you work? Guy: Adobe. Girl: Oh yeah, you're the guys always asking me to update and reboot. *walks away*
The only way that anyone does proper printing of web documents is as PDFs, and to hell with the browser. This is for very good reason.
If your system absolutely must print from a web page, use Flash. Yes, I know. But it will print from within the page, it produces identical prints in all browsers/platforms, and everyone already has it installed.
As I understand it, it the ads will only be on the web site or on certain subscription only channels.
Who on earth uses Twitter's web site to use Twitter's data? It's quite possibly the worst interface to the service that exists. Maybe 10% of the users I follow ever post from web.
And if you want to subscribe to the all ad channel, then.. well, you're using Twitter in the way that all the microblogging haters love to make fun of, and frankly, you're doing it wrong.
Yes, but a majority of people who nead a "Beginner's Guide" of this type will be doing a new install, with the latest version.
However, having worked with Joomla (Sorry I don't add exclamation points to names) as well as many other CMSs around I can say that it's kind of inherently obsolete. It is incredibly arcane, awkward and a constant fight to use. It's the kind of software that seems almost intensionally convoluted so it can sell more How To books and support contracts. Menus items are semi-randomly organized and in weird places, tasks common in modern web sites require hacky solutions, and content organization is surprisingly limited and counterintuitive. The add-on community is moribund at best. And it has a long habit of making new versions break compatibility with themes and plugins making upgrading almost as difficult as a new deployment.
If I was writing a Getting Started With Joomla book the first chapter would be titled "An Introduction to Drupal"
But I'm not bitter. I did get paid by the hour for the Joomla projects.
...why isn't this something in Adobe's official reader yet?
Because most people have no idea that there can be threats inside of PDFs and this kind of pop-up would only alert them that there could be a danger. Who wants that kind of publicity?
I love it when everything old is new again. I mean, you know, good for the kids to be trying stuff, but maybe they should read a little history so they work in new stuff instead of reinventing the wheel.
I don't know if it's particularly awkward or not compared to other countries, but it is a ton of work.
There's a lot of paperwork that has to be exactly correct, there are filing fees, and you likely have to hire a process server to serve the suit. (You can recoup these costs if you win.)
And if you get a judgement in your favor it's not like the money is just deposited into your bank account. If they don't feel like paying, you've got to take it to collections. Which might get you 10% of what you are owed.
In short, to recoup $60 for the game would take a lot of time, effort, and aggravation. If you worked the same amount of time at minimum wage you'd probably get twice the money.
I live in SF, and when I had a family member in an other part of the country pass away I discovered the the SF Chronicle had two different rates, one much higher for death notices for non-residents. ($750 vs $250 for residents if I remember correctly, though this was a dozen years ago.) I would guess its similar for most large city newspapers to keep the size of the death notice page reasonable while still getting as much income as possible.
I can't wait to see how long it takes for an ad platform which is embedded at the operating system level and connected to a global distribution network that users have no control over to cause havoc on a enormous scale.
I was ready to buy a new iPhone when the product refreshed this year, but now I'm looking at what else is out there.
If they (or you) can't tell then running Antivirus and Malware detection isn't "too heavy consider" it's mandatory, even if it means a few hours on dialup. If they can download the crapware they can download the AV.
(And you're being overly dramatic. Daily updates should take a few minutes to download at most, even on dialup.)
If the King can't afford a food taster then he gets poisoned or he starves to death.
Except they didn't bring it up in a "tactful manner". They didn't run an "Experiment", they ran out the change secretly, everyone complained, they rolled it back.
Don't tell me this was a "12 hour experiment" when they had engineered rolling content ID's to thwart filters. You don't do that when you only plan to roll it out for 12 hours. What they did was a "12 hour mistake."
But what really pissed me off about the whole thing was the naked contempt for people who use ad blockers. After they secretly released this change there were article comments from visitors complaining that they couldn't see the content on the site. When one reader suspected that it was intentionally done to get people to whitelist the editors response was, in essence, "Ya think? *smirk*" and went on to pile on anyone who had a problem with their underhanded tactics. It's not like they had even -asked- users to whitelist. (This was a day before they posted TFA.)
And what is even worse is that they completely wiped all the comments to that article. All of the various editor's dickish comments, all of the various viewer responses, all gone. Then they post this article and everyone feels sorry for them.
Forget it. I'm not going to give those guys my time of day much less any ad revenue.
"On the other hand, if you don't make any money, no-one is going to bother you with anything other than a cease and desist."
This is entirely false and shows the problem with asking for legal advice from random strangers on the Internet. If a company feels that you're damaging their trademark, image, etc, they'll sue you for damages, even if you have never made a dime. And they can win money you don't have.
If you have a question for a lawyer and you can't afford one, stop what you're doing. It's that simple.
The OP says:
" The original game has no trademark or software patent associated with it..."
How do you know? Did you just type "obscure game" into the USPTO's web site? Or did you have someone who knows what they hell they're doing to a trademark and patent search. I suspect it's the former because the latter costs money, which you complained about not having, and can be done by an attorney who could also answer your questions.
The OP continues
"...my clone isn't infringing on the original's copyright in any way (all the programming and artwork is original)"
And this is why you're in deep crap, you have a limited and incorrect idea of what copyright is.
Oh, and hey, you're not making an iPhone game are you? Because if you are, when you go to publish your game you'll see the checkboxes for all those other countries, so hey, why not publish them there too? Bigger audience, more money, right? Or at least bigger potential legal risk. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and intellectual property law are different in different countries, and lately the US has been willing to cooperate with litigious foreigners.
Note that I'm blindly assuming you're in the US. That's because you left the all important "what jurisdiction I'm in" information off your question. Just another sign of your ignorance and why you really really need to find the money for a lawyer.
I've been thinking about this since I first saw it reported. I haven't been to Japan in two years, but I did live in central Tokyo for several years and I think I got a feel for the place. I know exactly where this hotel is and walked by it quite often.
A Shinjuku capsule hotels are not the cheapest in the city by any means. A $3 train ride can save you 50%. The only reason most people don't do that is because they missed the last train--not a problem for the unemployed.
And while yes, it is cheaper than a Tokyo apartment, many (most?) people who -work- in Tokyo can't afford to -live- there. They live out in the 'burbs, up in Saitama or down in Kawasaki or wherever, where you can get your own place for a lot less. Sure, it's an hour train ride to work, but in Tokyo that's pretty standard. And you'd get your own place rather than a luxury coffin.
I've talked to my friends who still work in central Tokyo trying to get conformation of this 'trend' but all of them have reported back that this is bogus. But none of them are homeless businessmen, so my sampling is biased.
But what's the environmental impact of making up 'facts', turning that into smoke, and then trying to blow that smoke up my ass?
A lot of people are getting bent out of shape by this thing, but I can't see how anyone can begin to take it seriously. The whole thing is so completely bogus and made up that giving it anything but a good hearty laugh
Thought I'd love it if my randomly made up factoids merited a front page story on Slashdot.
This sounds like exactly what happens when I go out to eat:
When I go out to eat at a new restaurant I get regular service and pay 100%.
When I go to eat as a restaurant I'm a regular at I get good service and pay 90%.
When I go to a restaurant with a friend who owns a well regarded restaurant I get amazing service and pay %50.
When I got to a restaurant with the staff of a popular TV cooking show, the owners and chefs come out from the back and do gymnastics and we eat for free.
Heck, this is already applied to software. Do you think game reviewers pay for their review copies?
I have 5 computers on my home network. One would regularly have slow DNS resolves and probably 1 of 20 would simply fail. To things like google.com. Refreshing the page would usually load correctly.
The only difference between that computer ant the others? Its DNS was set to 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2. Changing these resolved the issue.
L3 has giant faults in their service. Either it's intentional or accidental, but I don't know which would be worse.
When I went to Staples to buy ink a couple weeks ago (yeah, I know, it was something of a printing emergency) the guy behind the counter was helpful in finding the ink I needed. And when he checked the price he said "You're probably better off buying a new printer." Refreshing honesty.
I did end up buying a new printer which fortunately was easy and trouble free to set up. (remember the rpinting emergency).
What to do with the old one? I've scavenged a lot of the parts out of it. Between it and another printer that I found on the sidewalk I have most of the parts I need to build a decent quality CNC machine. If I end up cycling through any more printers I'll start collecting parts for a 3D printer. (like RapRep or MakerBot.)
Slashdot Mirror
A related story of how one company came to realize how DRM was a giant waste.
A few years ago I worked on an educational application for a big educational company. They asked me for a menu of DRM solutions. I offered a whole range of solutions from none all the way up to a hardware dongle and net verification every launch. I included both how much it would cost and how much it would cost to maintain. (Legal told me not to tell them and estimate of effective each method was.)
In the end they chose one of the most expensive methods involving:
1) A unique key printed on the CD.
2) A different unique key on the actual CD its self. (These are expensive to press.)
3) A hardware footprint key that changed with any hardware change or OS reinstall.
4) The person would then have to CALL a toll-free number (in the US) give them all three of these keys, and if they checked out the operator would give them an unlock key.
Setting up this system took considerable more work than actually making the educational title, including accessing with the CRM software the operators used to record and generate keys. Oh, and it needed to be cross platform with vintage machines. (Win 95-Win Vista, OS 9, OS 10) Testing and implementation was a huge issue.
All of this for a $35 educational title.
We did it. It even worked. We even doubled the bid for it because it was so stupid, but they said they really wanted it.
18 months after it shipped they called us up and asked is how much effort it would be to remove the DRM. We quoted them a number equal to what it cost to run their DRM call center for a year. They paid.
All-in-all a good client for our bottom line.
(And people wonder where software developers get a reputation for being dicks.)
According to Tim O'Reilly, who is quoted heavily in the article, he didn't say hardly anything attributed to him.
http://www.google.com/buzz/timoreilly/j61qZ42h6rB/Frustrated-by-flamebait-NY-reporting-in-Microsoft
(Which, if you've had any interaction with him you probably already knew or at least suspected.)
Ever since Google put a PDF reader in Chrome it's been all I need for most things. Simple, fast, no cruft.
(To use it you need the dev version of Chrome. To enable it go to chrome://plugins/ and click on "Enable" for the "Chrome PDF Viewer" plug-in.)
It's been nearly a week since I updated Reader! About time for another download install and unnecessary reboot!
Every single time Reader/Acrobat updates it resets its self as the default viewer. That's completely inappropriate behavior, especially for a 'security update'. (And no, I can't uninstall it. Job requires proofing PDF in Reader just like all my poor clients.)
I saw/overheard this in a bar recently (seriously):
Girl: So where do you work?
Guy: Adobe.
Girl: Oh yeah, you're the guys always asking me to update and reboot. *walks away*
The only way that anyone does proper printing of web documents is as PDFs, and to hell with the browser. This is for very good reason.
If your system absolutely must print from a web page, use Flash. Yes, I know. But it will print from within the page, it produces identical prints in all browsers/platforms, and everyone already has it installed.
As I understand it, it the ads will only be on the web site or on certain subscription only channels.
Who on earth uses Twitter's web site to use Twitter's data? It's quite possibly the worst interface to the service that exists. Maybe 10% of the users I follow ever post from web.
And if you want to subscribe to the all ad channel, then .. well, you're using Twitter in the way that all the microblogging haters love to make fun of, and frankly, you're doing it wrong.
Yes, but a majority of people who nead a "Beginner's Guide" of this type will be doing a new install, with the latest version.
However, having worked with Joomla (Sorry I don't add exclamation points to names) as well as many other CMSs around I can say that it's kind of inherently obsolete. It is incredibly arcane, awkward and a constant fight to use. It's the kind of software that seems almost intensionally convoluted so it can sell more How To books and support contracts. Menus items are semi-randomly organized and in weird places, tasks common in modern web sites require hacky solutions, and content organization is surprisingly limited and counterintuitive. The add-on community is moribund at best. And it has a long habit of making new versions break compatibility with themes and plugins making upgrading almost as difficult as a new deployment.
If I was writing a Getting Started With Joomla book the first chapter would be titled "An Introduction to Drupal"
But I'm not bitter. I did get paid by the hour for the Joomla projects.
Because most people have no idea that there can be threats inside of PDFs and this kind of pop-up would only alert them that there could be a danger. Who wants that kind of publicity?
I love it when everything old is new again. I mean, you know, good for the kids to be trying stuff, but maybe they should read a little history so they work in new stuff instead of reinventing the wheel.
Anyone remember server side image maps? Or how about server side push animation?
Yeah, don't reinvent those either.
I don't know if it's particularly awkward or not compared to other countries, but it is a ton of work.
There's a lot of paperwork that has to be exactly correct, there are filing fees, and you likely have to hire a process server to serve the suit. (You can recoup these costs if you win.)
And if you get a judgement in your favor it's not like the money is just deposited into your bank account. If they don't feel like paying, you've got to take it to collections. Which might get you 10% of what you are owed.
In short, to recoup $60 for the game would take a lot of time, effort, and aggravation. If you worked the same amount of time at minimum wage you'd probably get twice the money.
(I'm also very much not a lawyer.)
I live in SF, and when I had a family member in an other part of the country pass away I discovered the the SF Chronicle had two different rates, one much higher for death notices for non-residents. ($750 vs $250 for residents if I remember correctly, though this was a dozen years ago.) I would guess its similar for most large city newspapers to keep the size of the death notice page reasonable while still getting as much income as possible.
I can't wait to see how long it takes for an ad platform which is embedded at the operating system level and connected to a global distribution network that users have no control over to cause havoc on a enormous scale.
I was ready to buy a new iPhone when the product refreshed this year, but now I'm looking at what else is out there.
No. It's not "normalization". Being able to differentiate between colors is incredibly valuable.
Now if they were researching gene therapy to make swarthy folks more acceptably white we might have something to complain about.
In a related note: If I could get gene therapy to let me see further into the UV and IR ranges I'd totally go for it.
while ((paper.cost < computer.cost) && (paper.ubiquity > computer.ubiquity) && (paper.easeOfUse > computer.easeOfUse))
{
paperlessOffice = false.
}
So if you want a paperless office work on raising the price and lowering the usability of paper.
If they (or you) can't tell then running Antivirus and Malware detection isn't "too heavy consider" it's mandatory, even if it means a few hours on dialup. If they can download the crapware they can download the AV.
(And you're being overly dramatic. Daily updates should take a few minutes to download at most, even on dialup.)
If the King can't afford a food taster then he gets poisoned or he starves to death.
Except they didn't bring it up in a "tactful manner". They didn't run an "Experiment", they ran out the change secretly, everyone complained, they rolled it back.
Don't tell me this was a "12 hour experiment" when they had engineered rolling content ID's to thwart filters. You don't do that when you only plan to roll it out for 12 hours. What they did was a "12 hour mistake."
But what really pissed me off about the whole thing was the naked contempt for people who use ad blockers. After they secretly released this change there were article comments from visitors complaining that they couldn't see the content on the site. When one reader suspected that it was intentionally done to get people to whitelist the editors response was, in essence, "Ya think? *smirk*" and went on to pile on anyone who had a problem with their underhanded tactics. It's not like they had even -asked- users to whitelist. (This was a day before they posted TFA.)
And what is even worse is that they completely wiped all the comments to that article. All of the various editor's dickish comments, all of the various viewer responses, all gone. Then they post this article and everyone feels sorry for them.
Forget it. I'm not going to give those guys my time of day much less any ad revenue.
This is entirely false and shows the problem with asking for legal advice from random strangers on the Internet. If a company feels that you're damaging their trademark, image, etc, they'll sue you for damages, even if you have never made a dime. And they can win money you don't have.
If you have a question for a lawyer and you can't afford one, stop what you're doing. It's that simple.
The OP says:
How do you know? Did you just type "obscure game" into the USPTO's web site? Or did you have someone who knows what they hell they're doing to a trademark and patent search. I suspect it's the former because the latter costs money, which you complained about not having, and can be done by an attorney who could also answer your questions.
The OP continues
And this is why you're in deep crap, you have a limited and incorrect idea of what copyright is.
Oh, and hey, you're not making an iPhone game are you? Because if you are, when you go to publish your game you'll see the checkboxes for all those other countries, so hey, why not publish them there too? Bigger audience, more money, right? Or at least bigger potential legal risk. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and intellectual property law are different in different countries, and lately the US has been willing to cooperate with litigious foreigners.
Note that I'm blindly assuming you're in the US. That's because you left the all important "what jurisdiction I'm in" information off your question. Just another sign of your ignorance and why you really really need to find the money for a lawyer.
I've been thinking about this since I first saw it reported. I haven't been to Japan in two years, but I did live in central Tokyo for several years and I think I got a feel for the place. I know exactly where this hotel is and walked by it quite often.
A Shinjuku capsule hotels are not the cheapest in the city by any means. A $3 train ride can save you 50%. The only reason most people don't do that is because they missed the last train--not a problem for the unemployed.
And while yes, it is cheaper than a Tokyo apartment, many (most?) people who -work- in Tokyo can't afford to -live- there. They live out in the 'burbs, up in Saitama or down in Kawasaki or wherever, where you can get your own place for a lot less. Sure, it's an hour train ride to work, but in Tokyo that's pretty standard. And you'd get your own place rather than a luxury coffin.
I've talked to my friends who still work in central Tokyo trying to get conformation of this 'trend' but all of them have reported back that this is bogus. But none of them are homeless businessmen, so my sampling is biased.
But what's the environmental impact of making up 'facts', turning that into smoke, and then trying to blow that smoke up my ass?
A lot of people are getting bent out of shape by this thing, but I can't see how anyone can begin to take it seriously. The whole thing is so completely bogus and made up that giving it anything but a good hearty laugh
Thought I'd love it if my randomly made up factoids merited a front page story on Slashdot.
(Yeah, but your is better copy edited than mine. I'm going to have to turn in my proofreader's badge for that one.)
This sounds like exactly what happens when I go out to eat:
When I go out to eat at a new restaurant I get regular service and pay 100%.
When I go to eat as a restaurant I'm a regular at I get good service and pay 90%.
When I go to a restaurant with a friend who owns a well regarded restaurant I get amazing service and pay %50.
When I got to a restaurant with the staff of a popular TV cooking show, the owners and chefs come out from the back and do gymnastics and we eat for free.
Heck, this is already applied to software. Do you think game reviewers pay for their review copies?
If you're technical enough and care about such, you're way better off setting up your own recursive DNS server.
Yeah, because going into your network settings and typing two IP addresses is certainly similar to setting up and administering a DNS cache.
No wonder everyone hates their sysadmins. They try to make everything sound complicated.
Another anecdote for your data:
I have 5 computers on my home network. One would regularly have slow DNS resolves and probably 1 of 20 would simply fail. To things like google.com. Refreshing the page would usually load correctly.
The only difference between that computer ant the others? Its DNS was set to 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2. Changing these resolved the issue.
L3 has giant faults in their service. Either it's intentional or accidental, but I don't know which would be worse.
When I went to Staples to buy ink a couple weeks ago (yeah, I know, it was something of a printing emergency) the guy behind the counter was helpful in finding the ink I needed. And when he checked the price he said "You're probably better off buying a new printer." Refreshing honesty.
I did end up buying a new printer which fortunately was easy and trouble free to set up. (remember the rpinting emergency).
What to do with the old one? I've scavenged a lot of the parts out of it. Between it and another printer that I found on the sidewalk I have most of the parts I need to build a decent quality CNC machine. If I end up cycling through any more printers I'll start collecting parts for a 3D printer. (like RapRep or MakerBot.)
Given the last few classes of grad students, no, not so much.