'Club Penguin Rewritten' Allegedly Shut Down By Disney, Website Seized By London Police (techcrunch.com) 62
"Club Penguin Rewritten," a popular remake of Club Penguin enjoyed by thousands of gamers, has been seized by the City of London Police, with three people in connection with the site's shuttering reportedly arrested for allegedly distributing copyrighted material. "Over 140,000 users were members of a Discord server for the game until today, when every message on the Discord disappeared," reports TechCrunch. From the report: In 2007, Disney purchased Club Penguin -- the children's RPG that served as my first introduction to online fandom -- for a whopping $700 million. Even then, as a child with little context about tech industry acquisitions, the purchase seemed foreboding (at least my friends thought so on the Miniclip forums, where I fraudulently claimed to be 13). But eventually, those of us who were dedicated fans of virtual sledding games and dance parties grew out of it, and after once boasting 200 million users, the game was shut down due to lack of interest in 2017. Disney tried to shuttle remaining players to a new mobile game called Club Penguin Island, but it only lasted for a year. But ever since the end of Club Penguin -- when the iceberg finally tipped in a strangely emotional moment -- there have always been remakes out there for nostalgic adults to relive their days of collecting puffles, dancing in the pizza shop and speed-running bans.
Only one message on the Discord remains, posted early this morning by an admin: "CPRewritten is shutting down effective immediately due to a full request by Disney," the admin said. "We have voluntarily given control over the website to the police for them to continue their copyright investigation." TechCrunch reached out to the City of London Police and Disney to verify these claims but did not hear back before publication. In 2020, Disney shut down "Club Penguin Online," another copy of the game that acquired over a million new players during the pandemic.
Only one message on the Discord remains, posted early this morning by an admin: "CPRewritten is shutting down effective immediately due to a full request by Disney," the admin said. "We have voluntarily given control over the website to the police for them to continue their copyright investigation." TechCrunch reached out to the City of London Police and Disney to verify these claims but did not hear back before publication. In 2020, Disney shut down "Club Penguin Online," another copy of the game that acquired over a million new players during the pandemic.
So... here's a summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
Disney: "There's this thing we can't make money off of... but we'll be damned if we let anyone enjoy it after we paid for it. Let's spend more money and maybe get a few people put in jail for costing us nothing in lost profits just because maybe it might possibly set a precedent".
If you ever wondered how evil a corporation could be... this is middle of the road stuff.
Supply and demand (Score:3)
Folks never stop to think that supply and demand goes both ways. And if you can constrain supply, your profits go up. Often much, much more than they would just by increasing sales.
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Re:So... here's a summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
The city of London Police should not be working for Disney.
Re:So... here's a summary: (Score:4, Informative)
well then that DMCA better pass court review with (Score:2)
well then that DMCA better pass court review with an real judge and jury
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Quite so, the London police are the MET (the Metropolitan police).
They are not copyright enforcers for hire, like the City of London police. They're much more into corruption, cover ups, extrajudicial punishments and protecting politicians.
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City of London Police makes an appearance in a lot of UK based copyright crimes as they are basically a for-hire police force who will arrest anyone for the right price.
Less hyperbole please. The City of London Police show up in a lot of copyright crimes not because they are "for-hire" but because the City of London is a financial district where a disproportionate amount of crimes are of financial nature (such as copyright infringement).
They are a police force like any other. They just have a different demographic than the traditional "shoot-black-people" police of America.
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They just have a different demographic than the traditional "shoot-black-people" police of America.
You were doing so well and then had to throw this in.
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It's not relevant. It's similar to us stating our police are great since they are better than the Russian police
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Maybe you didn't understand the point of me throwing it in. The point was to demonstrate the complete bias we have towards things we hear of in the news.
In the news you only hear of City of London police when they are busting financial crimes and copyright.
In the news you only hear of American police when they shoot someone after pulling them over for a busted taillight.
I'm sure you can come up with other examples that are completely not representative of a whole police force.
Now that I have explained my po
Re: So... here's a summary: (Score:2)
Now you know what the bobbies are up to over there.
Let's ignore the out of control knife crime and just arrest people for pissing off Mickenstein Mousolf.
Re:So... here's a summary: (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK fan/community rebuilds of both Toontown and Pirates of the Caribbean MMOs are still running. The only clear distinction between those and Club Penguin Rewritten is they had monetized it with ads (and possibly other methods?)
So maybe the line in the sand is don't monetize IP you don't own...
=Smidge=
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They have no choice if they want to keep the IP. If they don't police the copyright they lose it. That means if they had/have future plans they would be gone.
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You are mixing up copyright with trademarks.
And the REWRITE is most likely not covered by Disneys copyright, after all: it is a rewrite.
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A rewrite that uses Disney's character designs is most probably a derivative work.
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If all names are changed, you are already pretty outside of copyright. Now you change the wording of every chapter, gone. There are actually sciences about that. Some people claim there are only 15 stories on the planet, and they get retold in different words all the time.
However you have a point about Disneys legal power/money.
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Re: So... here's a summary: (Score:2)
oops
Thank Heavens! (Score:5, Funny)
Thankfully Disney was able to shut this down before... something... uh... socialism? Anyway, I shudder to think what terrible fate could have befallen Disney had this website unaffiliated with them been allowed to bring joy to people. Tragedy averted.
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Re: Thank Heavens! (Score:2)
And I am so glad the London Police has protected English society from these scary IP infringers.
Who cares if a gang of "students" or maybe evwn "travellers" might have been knifing someone to death a few blocks over?
Disney wants to create NFTs from it (Score:1)
the Disney copyright scam continues...
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Re: Disney wants to create NFTs from it (Score:2)
Maybe that will happen when a new CEO comes on board.
Copyright? Trademark? (Score:3)
In all seriousness, though, I hope the people who created CPRewritten did not end up using any Disney IP (images, sounds, etc.) in the site but, well, *rewrote* it.
I'm not familiar with European (or UK) copyright law, and I know there are treaties with the US that may apply here, but if there was not explicit reuse of copyrighted material (and I hope there was not) then this seems like maybe more of a *trademark* dispute, and that might be harder for Disney to litigate.
Of course, if even one cute penguin sound was lifted from the original CP site... The sad thing is that the litigation might kill the site even if they did nothing wrong. It takes time and money, and Disney has pretty much all of both. :-(
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No. Even if change names, the set-up is still protected, so nothing would have changed.
The only possible way to have avoided this is to travel in time and kill Queen Anne of England before she steal the "public domain" of ideas from the... public.
Do you know why there's a second part of Don Quixote? Because it was legal to create fandom until that damned Queen, the Dark Queen...
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what. Copyright protects art (avatars, music, decor etc.) and code, so if they did not use the former, and rewrote the latter from scratch, they have nothing to worry about. Yes, it's ok to make a clone of a game with different characters and stuff, unless the game is patented of course, which is a different issue altogether.
Provided they didn't reuse art and code, the only thing they have to worry about is the trademark usurpation...
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what. Copyright protects art (avatars, music, decor etc.) and code, so if they did not use the former, and rewrote the latter from scratch, they have nothing to worry about.
Yeah, not. LOL. 100% wrong.
People try this all the time with Sony and Nintendo product and get shut down.
IP THEFT is IP THEFT. There is not cute way to avoid that using only parts and pieces of things, and renaming them.
If it is obvious you stole and idea, we can see it. The idea is stolen. You can paint it blue, pink and green, doesn't mean you didn't steal INTELLECTUAL property.
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Sorry, no. That's the difference between copyright and a patent. When people talk about IP theft, they conflate the two, but the two are very different beasts.
There are many real-world examples. Have a look at OpenOffice vs Word. Both work basically the same way, but those are independent implementations, and the idea of an office suite is not copyrightable.
Ok, what about games? FPS? They are all based on the same idea, most of the time they are even built with the same game engine, meaning they use the sam
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Unless this "Club Penguin" used patented technology that the reimplementation infringed upon, the lawsuit alone cannot stand on "hey this works in the same way than what we made."
Reductionist and absurd. Its a straight ripoff. By your logic this case:
https://www.copyrightuser.org/... [copyrightuser.org]
should have worked out for the guy who stole the other man's idea? Specific idea -- SPECIFIC. Be obtuse less.
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What do you mean by "the set-up is [...] protected"? Last time I looked, there was no office of set-up protection.
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Are you sure? Take the whole story of, let's say "Encanto", but just change the names, the place, etc.
You'll end up in court yes or yes.
Or should I remember you that the guy who take by himself a photo of a bus in the London bridge and put everything in B&W except the bus LOST because another one did the same thing before him?
https://www.copyrightuser.org/... [copyrightuser.org]
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What a naÃve idea...
Copyright was never, ever meant to "protect" what you created. In fact, it was created to create a new monopoly (printers).
Copyright was created to stop others from re-using what you created, locking it out of available human common knowledge sharing.
Re: Copyright? Trademark? (Score:2)
"Do you know why there's a second part of Don Quixote? Because it was legal to create fandom until that damned Queen, the Dark Queen..."
Wow, Margret Thatcher and now this?
Mouse murders penguin (Score:3)
Copyright not a civil crime anymore (Score:2)
Why are the police involved.
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Because Disney are rich and favours get traded, especially with the Met.
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It's the UK, not the United States. And it's London at that. They're legal charter is kinda weird. That might not be relevant here though.
Regardless, Disney is likely alleging that the people operating this service were engaged in mass copyright infringement, the equivalent of hosting a popular torrent of a movie or what have you. There are some circumstances where even American citizens have faced criminal punishment for distributing thousands/millions of copies of a movie. It's an extreme stance on D
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Their not They're ugh.
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Their, their... Don't git you're panties ina twist. Alot of people say they're.
Is this the obtuse hour? (Score:2)
Disney, like most companies and normal people, make things. They don't want those things perverted in a way that reflects on THEIR PRODUCT.
The fact you think its not a punishable offense to have thousand upon thousands of people playing something that is 100% mis-represented as to the actual thing that would be controlled and maintained by the author(s) is pretty LELKEK.
Expanding your take, I guess if I go around stealing things in the world, so long as they are under
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Disney does not and will not ever monetize Club Penguin ever again. They're defending a product with zero present and future value against a service that charges no money whatsoever and does not "mis-represent" anything.
None of the rest of what your'e saying means anything, as it is gobbledy-gook forumlated to attack an argument I'm not making.
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Disney does not and will not ever monetize Club Penguin ever again. They're defending a product with zero present and future value against a service that charges no money whatsoever and does not "mis-represent" anything.
DOESNT MATTER. ITS NOT YOUR PRODUCT.
As for none of what I am saying making sense FOR YOU, why did you reply?
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It does matter when it comes to the question of whether or not the service represented more than a single instance of copyright infringement AND it matters when it comes to the question of monetary damages!
What kind of Disney shill are you?!? People are going to jail for this!
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What kind of Disney shill are you?!? People are going to jail for this!
I hate Disney. I think Copyright law and Trademark law is shit.
But I am also not a moron, and the law is the LAW. Want to change it? Maybe stop being a retard on Slashdot and actually GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Re: Copyright not a civil crime anymore (Score:2)
London is a town for the rich. It's (or was) largly funded by Russian oligarchs.
The rich typically protect their own, especially from peons who dare step on another rich fellow's toes.
Club, Penuguin (Score:3)
Disney... (Score:2)
"Let's buy Happy Fluffy Bunny. People are no longer excited about Happy Fluffy Bunny so we will shut it down. And if anyone tries to resurect Happy Fluffy Bunny, we will have them arrested!"