Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning
rockpapershotgun.com
rockpapershotgun.com
They weren't exactly "homemade" servers either. There was an entire industry of game server rentals and these were datacenter rack servers connected to fat pipes.
It wasn't unusual at all to find third-party servers with way better pings (and higher player caps) than the official servers.
I don't remember the official bf1942 servers ever having 32v32 player matches but that was fairly common for thirdparty servers for example.
Then the legal system isn't trying to mandate specific implementation details.
But then people at least have a chance to know what they are buying.
I find this much less problematic than the idea that support will be eternal for a $50 game.
The actual content of EA's letter makes it quite clear they are specifically after the unauthorized usage of their branding and trademark, and the fact that the site hosted the actual Battlefield Heroes game binaries for free download. The letter does not demand the site unilaterally shut down its server hosting. The site's response is arguably a big overreaction by the administrators, and most of the comments here seem to be misreading the events the same way.
There's a potential debate to whether EA should still "own" the right to block distribution of Heroes when there's no other way to acquire or play it, but debating whether or not EA has the right to shut down player-hosted servers is unrelated to the subject at hand. They do have an established right to enforce the use of their trademarks (logos, branding, etc) on a fan site like this.
Simply running alternate servers, distributing patches to the game, and using their launcher without copyrighted artwork or branding (maybe a "not endorsed by or associated with EA" sort of disclaimer) would seem to be fine.
It's reminiscent of the EverQuest server emulation community. They distribute patches and run open-source server infrastructure, but forbid distributing copies of the EQ game itself, pointing people to legitimate acquisition methods.
Challenge for HN: find the most recent three patents which (a) were filed by individuals not an employer (b) those individuals could reasonably be described as poor (c) aren't subject to widespread infringement by a big company. (and (d) is for something actually useful not a perpetual motion machine etc)
I think it might be quite a hard thing to find.
”According to the law, the inventor, or a person to whom the inventor has assigned or is under an obligation to assign the invention, may apply for a patent, with certain exceptions.”
and, more explicitly, http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/crashcourse/applicant/:
”When someone makes an invention, and does so as an employee of a company, usually the company owns the right to apply for a patent. The exception once again is the United States, where only natural persons may apply for a patent. In the USA, the employee will typically have a clause in his employment contract stating that he assigns all his patent rights to the company. The filing is then done on behalf of the employee, but the rights immediately go to the company.”
Patent law as it is explains much of the 6-fold increase in inequality in the US in the last few decades. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-biggest-economic-social-p...
PS Employees aren't generally amongst the poor.
But Intellectual property is a different animal. It may require upkeep in the form of legal defense on infringement but I'm not aware of anything else. But should that prove too costly, and were it sold in the scenario you've painted, it would at least go to someone who considers it valuable and desirable rather than languish, unused.
All a bit of a hypothetical strawman though.
Most of a company's tangible assets aren't taxed. In fact, quite the opposite...
Doesn't Switzerland do precisely this?
It's sad because bnetd lost their case, even though it was a total open source re-implementation and was an amazing work for what it was.
Any game devs: This was the single most fun mechanic I've played in years. Please please please make an FPS where you can hotswap between characters like that. For some reason apparently this awesome feature didn't even make it into the PC version of the game. I'd love to play a game with that mechanic again.
If you sell/advertise those two pieces of software as a single integrated product but you only give away the client executable, how long after the sale should you be required to keep the server running?
It's a bit like a web app: The user downloads some HTML+JS which makes XmlHttpRequests to a server backend. In theory the user could download the HTML+JS only once and keep working with that initial copy, but after a few weeks the server endpoint might change and break that copy.
I think the expectation for a web app is to keep working for a day or so and the expectation for a console game is at least 20 years?
Amazing how Planetside 2 being a free game manages to outclass pretty much any combined arms FPS and is still looking really good visually for 2012 release.
What I'm suggesting is that if an IP is abandoned in a meaningful way (such as server support for a multiplayer game) then the IP owner should not be allowed to prevent others from replicating that functionality.
A few details still have to be hashed out though: can people charge for the use of their third party servers? Are new players required to purchase the game from the owner? What rights, if any, does the owner have regarding online configuration and interaction for a game they no longer support? If the owner stops distributing the game do they lose the right to demand payment for each copy distributed by a third party, either for pay or for free? I don't know these answers, but it's a better alternative to our outdated IP system.
"Use It Or Lose It" should be the IP motto in the Information Age.
What I think wickedlogic means is that the term "IP" is often used as a catch-all term for legal frameworks that are very dissimilar, and the various sides of "IP" should be treated very differently.
As a catch-all term it might seem useful because it's short, but it's often used to confuse and divide.
As an example: for Free Software,
-software patents are just a terrible idea
-copyright is broken, but usable
-trademarks are important
Three different branches of "IP," with widely varying consequences and implications.
If someone talks to you about "IP," ask them to be specific, even if just to make sure you're talking about the same thing.
Dear [REDACTED],
I write on behalf of Electronic Arts Inc. and its development studio DICE or, in other words, "those guys that make Battlefield."
We've noticed that Revive Network has several projects and websites devoted to being a Medic by reviving older Battlefield games, including Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 2142. It's great to see your enthusiasm for these titles. Not to brag, but we too get the nostalgia chills when booting up these classic entries in the Battlefield franchise.
We need a favor though: we must ask that you stop throwing down Ammo Crates. In other, more legal-styled terms, please stop distributing copies of our game clients and using our trademarks, logos, and artwork on your sites. Thing is, your websites may easily mislead visitors to believe that you are associated or affiliated with EA we're the only ones that get to wear the Official EA dog tag. Since you're Battlefield community members, we know that you are smart and helpful, and will respect that we must protect our intellectual property rights in the franchise.
Please drop us a line to let us know you're on board with this. Should you have any questions regarding all this, please do not hesitate to contact me via e-mail at [REDACTED]@ea.com.
Thanks,
[REDACTED] IP Counsel Electronic Arts Inc.
Trademark infringement is not what took down this service (or so motivated these people to take down the service). I have yet to read an "IP" compliance request that was accurate, truthful, or aligned with achieving a correct legal understanding between parties. This is not an accident. The use of that term creates an artificial whole, which is then used to imply greater authority over the sum of the parts.
My comment is on the prior comment, which is about the concept... not this specific instance, even though it is still applicable.
>Inb4 South China Sea.
There's only so much space on the island of Manhattan. It can't fit everybody on the planet.
Digital property is reproducible at zero cost. We could have a copy of Battlefield 2 for every man, woman, cat, and dog on this planet, at effectively the same cost that it takes to create the first copy.
Actually, in theory it could - it wouldn't be very comfortable, nor easy, and forget fire codes, but...
Manhattan is approximately 22.82 square miles in area; or approximately 59103529 square meters.
If we say "standing room only" and allocate 2 square meters per person, we could cram approximately 29551765 people on the island (assuming we level everything else, of course).
There are 7.6 billion people on the planet Earth, so:
7600000000 / 29551765 = 257 layers
If we say "let's build a building to house them all - and let's give 10 feet of room between levels" - then we get a (very ugly) "building" 2570 feet tall.
The Burj Khalifa is 2722 feet tall.
So that's 260 * 8 + 26 * 24 + 16 = 2720 feet.
But at ~50W thermal output per person, that's 380 GW of heat that has to be removed from the building. The perimeter of Manhattan is about 32 miles, or 168960 feet, so that's about 1 billion sq.ft. of surface area, about 1/3 outer wall and 2/3 roof. The building would need to reject 380W of waste heat from every single square foot. You would need AC capable of moving 1.3 trillion BTU/hr, or 108 million "tons".
I think regular air conditioners might not cut it. You'd probably have to use all collected urine to transport waste heat to a gigantic radiator out in the ocean.
You're already running some heavy-duty nuclear reactors just to circulate fresh air into the building and waste products out, so the real problem, I think, is getting food calories in, and the solid waste out.
Even if you can fix the structural problem, and the waste heat problem, and the CO2 problem, you can't get food into the building fast enough to feed everyone.
A 2000 kcal/day diet for 7.6 billion people is 18 million tons of sweet potato running up the elevators all day, every day. New York is a freight transit hub, but I don't think it could currently handle 6.5 billion tons of freight annually. The entire US transports 20 million tons of freight annually. There's just no way.
You would have to reduce the food to a liquid nutrient slurry off-site, and bring it in via pipeline. And your sewer... we're talking a literal river of poop, here, at 7300 cu.ft./s .
3 years in this instance were the alternate Battlefield servers being run outside of EA, which might be considered a reasonable space of time without the publisher taking action to the point where the alternative servers might be considered the inheritors of the intellectual property?
It's a bit of a stretch, but perhaps there is some validity here. I don't feel too strongly about it, so I hope you don't feel like I am trying to shut you down.
Which makes your argument absolutely hilarious, because there's actually a provision for houses that aren't used that allows squaters to take over and own it legally.
It's called "Adverse Possession."
So yeah, people who abandon (the use of) property... don't actually have the right to hold onto it forever. It's almost like the law favors society over complete assholes.