Dice Age — Indie Gaming Project vs. Hollywood 47
ArrowBay writes "Dice Age, a independent game project that raised nearly $35K through Kickstarter, is apparently facing some scrutiny from a certain movie studio that has produced movies with a similar name. From the latest project update: 'As if the Ice Age was exclusively the name of a movie, or if Dice Age was a movie itself, the 20th century fox has just asked for an extent of time (till 10-26-2011) to oppose to the registering of our beloved Dice Age game name. My point of view, as a scientist, is the Ice age is a geological era before it is a movie.""
Are you surprised? Its Hollywood. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are you surprised? Its Hollywood. (Score:5, Insightful)
Aye. Who needs a court victory when you can just make the cost too much before even getting to the courtroom.
Re:Are you surprised? Its Hollywood. (Score:5, Informative)
"Seal Team 6"- registered by Disney
This was revoked.
Re:Are you surprised? Its Hollywood. (Score:5, Informative)
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Simple solution! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh... wait, [wikipedia.org] that won't work either. [escapistmagazine.com]
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Re:Simple solution! (Score:4, Informative)
Langdell got the smackdown in court
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30784/Court_Refuses_Preliminary_Injunction_In_Edge_Trademark_Case.php [gamasutra.com]
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Or keep the name but claim it's an acronym:
Disney Is a Completely Evil Asshole Greedhead Enterprise
Don't play along (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should anyone pay to see a motion picture from a major studio ever again?
If they're going to have this kind of hostility to society, by claiming all of culture as their own private property, I don't see a single reason why I should respect them in any way.
I have said before, and believe more strongly all the time, that pirating movies is a political act of civil disobedience against elements of private industry who have attacked us first by stealing our shared culture.
They can take a story from Aesop, turn it into a movie, and then sue anyone who uses the phrase "The Tortoise and the Hare".
They have declared cultural war against us. I think we should strike back.
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I think you mean makes movies out of this culture.
It seems most of the films these days are just comics and books put to film.
Re:Don't play along (Score:5, Insightful)
Last week we drove to Pennsylvania and spent time with friends, at a wedding. We then spent time with other friends playing mini-golf and chatting. We played a couple flash games and commented about indie game development. Monday we spent time in DC, including visiting the National Cryptologic Museum (and checking into the NSA on Foursquare). Later that night, we swapped books and killed a couple beers while talking about quilting and Roman cuisine. We spent Tuesday wandering through the back hills of West Virginia with friends, out of any cell coverage and quite happy (some of those towns not only don't show up on Wikipedia, they don't even appear on Google other than a Flicker photo by a biker who snapped a photo as he rode through!). Wednesday, my wife and I drove all day to Tennessee (back home), stopping and getting fireworks and otherwise enjoying the trip. I'm about to head out and go play a tabletop roleplaying game.
I'm enjoying my life quite nicely without seeing movies. We did go and catch Captain America on Saturday night. It was good -- but certainly not the highlight, focus or anywhere near necessary to have had a blast for the last week. I'm pretty sure I and my friends are enjoying culture without the MPAA being involved. Or the TSA, for that matter.
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What sound is really lame?
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Man, have you got the wrong guy.
And do you really believe that the major movie studios have "created the culture"?
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As an Australian who refuses to watch anything made or distributed by hollywood studios, no, they don't.
Maybe if you're a myopic American you'd see it this way, but people in the real world don't.
Re:Don't play along (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should anyone pay to see a motion picture from a major studio ever again?
Because the paying customer gets to vote on future productions.
The paying customer gets The Incredibles, Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3 with a $200 million dollar production budgets. The paying customer gets ten years of Harry Potter with impeccable British casting.
The paying customer gets the theme park and the Broadway production of The Lion King.
The remake of True Grit.
He gets The Dark Knight Returns.
Batman and Batman: The Animated Series. He gets Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill and Heath Ledger as The Joker. Batman: Arkham Asylum as the video and PC game tie-in.
They can take a story from Aesop, turn it into a movie, and then sue anyone who uses the phrase "The Tortoise and the Hare".
No they can't --- and the geek knows better.
What they can do is copyright their unique interpretation of the characters and story, as Disney did in 1935 and Warner Brothers in 1943. The Tortoise and the Hare [imdb.com]
Disney's animated "Cinderella" was released in 1950. The Rogers and Hammerstein musical was produced for television in 1957. Jim Henson's "Hey Cinderella!" with the Muppets in 1969.
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You make that statement approvingly?
If so, don't have enough of a common frame of reference to continue this discussion.
You may not have noticed, but some things have changed since the period of 1950-1969, among the
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You may not have noticed, but some things have changed since the period of 1950-1969, among them the fictive notion of "intellectual property".
This is what the New York Times had to say about the economic impact and innovation of Disney's IP in 1938.
"Prosperity Out of Fantasy"
New York Times Editorial
May 2, 1938
It is said that what America needs to swing it out of the present economic tailspin is a new industry. Many things just over the horizon, such as television, air-conditioning in the home and flivver airplanes, have been suggested. But none of them seems yet to have materialized in terms of wages and heavy sales. Would it be ridiculous to suggest that industrialized fantasy may prove to be the answer?
Industrialized fantasy sounds like something extremely complex. Yet it is quite simple. Walt Disney's picture-play "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is an excellent example. Here is something manufactured out of practically nothing except some paint pots and a few tons of imagination. In this country imagination is supposed to be a commodity produced in unlimited quantities. If it can be turned out as an article of commerce which the public will readily buy, then prosperity should be-well, just around the corner, anyway. The Disney picture cost about $2,000,000 to produce.
To be sure, it gave employment to no flesh-and-blood actors, human attributes being confined to voices on the sound tracks. But it kept a small army of artists, animators and gag men busy for many months. And from all reports it will not only return more than this investment to Mr. Disney, but is showering fortune on every playhouse that shows it. Dopey, Grumpy and their fellow-dwarfs, despite the fact that they get no wages themselves, have been the most valiant miners and sappers against recession whom the moving picture magnates have hired this year. No matter what business may have been in most theaters, the exhibitors of "Snow White" have not had to layoff a single dwarf.
Moreover, the picture has virtually developed a new industry from its by-products. Figments of Disney's imagination have already sold more than $2,000,000 worth of toys since the first of the year. Since January, says Kay Kamen, Mr. Disney's representative here, 117 toy manufacturers have been licensed to use characters from "Snow White." The only thing in the picture that the public doesn't seem to crave is poisoned apples.
One factory in Akron, Ohio, which makes little rubber dwarfs, has been running twenty-four hours a day, while many of the other rubber factories are closed. Dopey and Grumpy are putting men to work in paint shops, box factories, silica mines, stone quarries and mills all over the map. Wherever they turn up, prosperity begins to radiate. "Snow White" is Disney's first full-length picture. What is going to happen when he really gets into his stride? Industrialized fantasy? It should be industrially fantastic.
The Entertainment Economy: "Disney Dollars" [pophistorydig.com]
You recount a catalog of triviality.
That is your opinion, not mine.
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Nice job finding all that, but the New York Times editorial does not come close to suggesting anything like the extremist IP land grab of today. The only direct mention of IP is in the fourth paragraph where the writer says that 117 toy manufacturers have licensed the Disney characters which are direct Disney work product. The original Grimm Bros story does not have Dopey, Grumpy, Doc, or the one Wal
Mark Hamill as the Joker??? (Score:2)
Really?
"but Batman," he whined, "my gang and I were going to go hang out tonight!"
Was he as bad as the idea sounds?
*shudder*
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Not sure if this is a troll, but Mark Hamill has been the Joker in the Animated Series since its inception and was also the Joker in Arkham Asylum and in the upcoming Arkham City (which is, supposedly, the last time he'll ever play the character.)
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Please kill yourself and any children you might have before the gene pool of our species is even further polluted.
Re:Baiting the Bear (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen Ice Age, and a sequel, I think, but when I first read "Dice Age", if it hadn't been in the context about a movie studio claiming to own the name of an epoch, I would not have confused the two in any way. And watching the video on Kickstarter, it's even less confusing.
Should no one be able to create anything with remotely similar names without expecting this to happen? What about "rice age", "nice age", "spice age"? Or a little further out? "Rice rage"? "Mice Mage"? "Price Gauge"? When do you feel that it ceases to be "obvious that this would happen"?
Now, if it were a game based on similar characters, or even a the geological epoch with a similar mission theme, I'd say your statement might have some merit. Might. But as it stands, it's ridiculous.
I was once served with a C&D regarding a trademark I was supposedly infringing on. With the first notice, I explained why there was no TM conflict and provided some documentation regarding the merits of their requests. With the second notice, I re-sent my first response and offered some options of remediations, including offering to sell them the domain in question for what it would cost me to re-brand it and re-establish my new brand. Again, the only response I got was another C&D, and at that point I told them to fuck off or I'd sue them for harassment.
Amazingly enough, they stopped. A lot of this sort of activity is similar to that of bighorn sheep butting heads in the wild. Show of force, lots of bluster. If it's handled right nobody really gets hurt.
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But why should one even have to spend time or thought to avoid a name like this? It's clear it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Ice Age movies, or even the Ice Age itself, if you assume that just by creating a movie in an era and giving it the name of that era, you now own it and all related names.
Die, sage! (Score:2)
How about a game where you have to kill an aromatic herb that's very nice in poultry and dumplings (but don't put too much or it tastes of medicine)?
Reminds me of Groucho's letter to Warner Bros.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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To say he was being "a bit disingenuous" is a bit disingenuous: he himself claimed his goal was to manufacture a controversy to generate publicity for his film; that he did this by "out-lawyering the lawyers" — using bullshit historical and moral claims to preempt bullshit legal claims— is actually quite brilliant. It's not "as if" he wanted Warner Bros. to sue — he actually wanted Warner Bros. to sue, as this would generate even more publicity for the film. Alternatively, he wanted to be
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't even close to copyright/trademark gray area, like parody, fair use, etc. It's simply intimidation and proves we're speeding down the IP-law slippery slope opponents had feared.
Rebrand! (Score:2)
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not just hollywood? (Score:1)
Any Publicity is Good Publicity (Score:1)
Hey, why is your economy in the shitter again? (Score:1)
Oh... right. The lawyers are taking all the money.