Techdirt. Stories about "atari"

Techdirt. Stories about "atari" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "atari"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:31:18 PST After Years Of Near Obscurity, Atari Turns To Copyright Trolling Zachary Knight http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120122/09412817503/after-years-near-obscurity-atari-turns-to-copyright-trolling.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120122/09412817503/after-years-near-obscurity-atari-turns-to-copyright-trolling.shtml
Since then, Atari has never been itself. It has been sold and resold many times over the last 3 decades. Eventually, it became nothing more than a name and a legacy portfolio. It has never been able to regain that household name status of its wonder years and like all obsolete companies it has fallen to the only thing left to do, trolling. Not just any trolling, but copyright trolling. Atari's latest owners recognize the value of its legacy portfolio. It knows that a number of developers today grew up playing the Atari 2600 and have fond memories of those games. Like many people who love the culture of their childhood, they want to pay homage to that memory.

Enter Black Powder Media, the makers of the iOS game Vector Tanks. These guys wanted to pay homage to the classic arcade game Battlezone and made Vector Tanks in its image. Black Powder tried to make it unique and were fairly successful at it. However, even Black Powder's best efforts to avoid copyright infringement were not enough for Atari.

Anything that has even a passing resemblance to an Atari classic has been issued a copyright infringement claim. So – thanks to their special relationship with Apple – Atari has successfully scrubbed the app store of their perceived competition. It looks as though Apple complied without so much as a rebuttal or independent evaluation.

Atari decided that because it was no longer able to compete in a fair market, it would clear the market of any perceived competition. The fact that Apple was complacent and cooperative in all of this is also troubling. This is the type of world we live in today, where the claims of a copyright holder are taken at face value and no chance for a rebuttal is given to the victims. This is the current world of the DMCA, where in order for a platform to avoid liability, it resorts to a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy.

What makes this even worse is Atari's attitude about the take downs. In response to a query by Develop, Atari brushed off any concerns by stating little more than, "We need to protect our IP".

While we have great respect for the indie developer community and greatly appreciate the enthusiasm that they have for our renowned properties, we need to vigorously protect our intellectual property and ensure that it is represented in highly innovative games.

Is that how you show respect? You think that indie developers enjoy having their work killed off with no questions asked and no chance to respond? In what can be seen as an even bigger slap in the face to indie developers, Atari still wants to work with them.

We look forward to further developing strong relationships with the indie app development community through additional games that we will be releasing in the future.

How can you build a strong relationship with indie developers when you are killing off their games? Why would any game developer want to work with you if this is the attitude you will take? If Atari was really interested in working with indie developers, it would probably be better to actually respond to their inquiries for licensing deals. As Black Powder told Venture Beat:

The cruel irony here is that I tried for years to get ahold of Atari to license their IP but they seemed to have fallen off the planet. Now this. It's very depressing.

So instead of working with the game developer to license your IP, you wait for that developer to waste its time and money making the game it wants anyway and then killing it once it hits the app store. While the games themselves may have a strong resemblance to the games in Atari's portfolio, Atari cannot hold a copyright on ideas. These games would have to have more than a passing resemblance to Atari's games for this to fly in any court. Which is probably why these takedowns were done privately through Apple. Of course, this behavior of lashing out and then coming in saying they want to work with the companies attacked is nothing new for Atari.

So are these the final death throes of a dying game company or is Atari poised for a retro game come back? Considering that Atari has been trying for many, many years to revive its legacy portfolio, I don't think this is any indication of new life within this shell of a company.

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]]> when-you-hit-rock-bottom http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120122/09412817503 Fri, 7 Jan 2011 15:05:19 PST RapidShare Ruled Legal... Yet Again Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110106/16034212566/rapidshare-ruled-legal-yet-again.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110106/16034212566/rapidshare-ruled-legal-yet-again.shtml worst of the worst websites when it comes to copyright infringement, it's notable that the site continues to rack up legal victories. We've covered how it's been vindicated in lawsuits in the US and in Europe, where it's been noted that the site takes down infringing content when made aware of it, and has plenty of non-infringing uses (and users).

Now there's yet another ruling in favor of RapidShare, this time in Germany, where the Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf ruled (again) that RapidShare takes "sufficient measures" to stop copyright infringement, in a case brought by Atari. Similar to Viacom in its lawsuit against YouTube, Atari suggested that RapidShare should be required to install a proactive filter, but the court said such a requirement would be unreasonable, since it might also block legitimate works.

Of course, with the US pushing for laws like COICA and standing behind questionable domain name seizures based on faulty evidence, it seems like this, once again, shows how unreasonable it is to simply listen to the RIAA or MPAA and accept their word as clear proof of infringement. As the courts are showing here, just because some industry rep claims a site is the "worst of the worst," it doesn't mean it's actually violating the law.

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]]> worst-of-the-worst? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110106/16034212566 Fri, 1 Oct 2010 07:26:34 PDT Atari Wants To Work With 'Illegitimate' Sites... After Being One Of The Earlier Supporters Of 'Pre-Settlement' Deals Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100928/00244211193/atari-wants-to-work-with-illegitimate-sites-after-being-one-of-the-earlier-supporters-of-pre-settlement-deals.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100928/00244211193/atari-wants-to-work-with-illegitimate-sites-after-being-one-of-the-earlier-supporters-of-pre-settlement-deals.shtml to work with file sharing sites, even as they make unauthorized copies available:

With the GO affiliate program, you're intending to work with sites that host illegitimate versions of Atari games - it's rare to see a company engaging with, rather than fighting, unlicensed distribution.

Truth be told, why in the world would I ever want to go after my fans? These are people who absolutely love our classic old arcade games. I joke about the fact that it seems like every computer science student, after their first year of programming class, goes off and writes a copy of Asteroids or Missile Command or Battlezone. The web is filthy with those.

Now, instead of arming up a cadre of lawyers the smart thing to do is say, "Look, you're fans of our games, let us give you the legitimate version of the game," and then bring those affiliates into the fold by saying, "We'll actually share revenue with you." They've been running that less than optimal, if not [coughs] a little dodgy, version of Asteroids or Missile Command, so why not just run the original one, share in the revenue and still have the same appeal to the fans they want to draw to their site? And we've got the library of all our other great games that we can bring to them as well.

Now some of those quotes struck me as interesting, because as you may recall, Atari was actually one of the earliest believers in "arming up a cadre of lawyers" and having them send out pre-settlement notices. It was one of the customers of Davenport Lyons, which was the predecessor of ACS:Law in the practice, and it only backed away, when it realized how much negative publicity it was receiving for threatening people if they didn't pay up.

So it's great to see the company looking to be a lot more embracing of ways to work with sites, and recognize that these are fans, not people to be attacked, but we shouldn't forget that it initially approached the space very differently.

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]]> well-that's-a-turn-around http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100928/00244211193 Wed, 8 Apr 2009 12:23:00 PDT Atari Apparently Learns Nothing From EA's Bad Experience With DRM Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090408/0707574429.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090408/0707574429.shtml warnings to avoid overly cumbersome DRM), EA discovered just what sort of backlash annoying DRM could have when thousands of reviewers on Amazon slammed the game Spore for its overly limiting DRM from Securom. EA eventually backed down (somewhat), and on newer games seems a lot more sensitive to community concerns about DRM (though, many would argue not sensitive enough). Apparently, some of EA's competitors, however, haven't been paying much attention. Reader Tyler Hipwell sends in the news that Atari recently released the game Chronicles of Riddick with similarly awful DRM (requires online activation, limited to three total activations) and a ton of negative reviews are flowing to the Amazon listing. Either Atari didn't pay attention to EA's experience with Spore... or it somehow thought that the same thing wouldn't happen to its game as well. Neither one of those options says anything good about Atari.

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]]> head-in-the-sand http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090408/0707574429 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 11:42:00 PST Atari Backs Away From Davenport Lyons, As More Innocent Threat Letters Are Uncovered Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081201/0233572982.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081201/0233572982.shtml bad publicity showing up for law firm Davenport Lyons and its ongoing campaign to shake people down with "pre-settlement" letters threatening them with copyright infringement lawsuits if they don't pay up, it appears that things aren't going quite as planned. First, the press has found more people who were apparently falsely accused by the firm -- and this time, it's an elderly couple who are quite horrified that they're being accused of downloading gay porn (this would be the same gay porn where recent reports noted that the publishers were encouraging another company to upload it to many sites, so there would be more people to accuse of pirating it).

On top of that, it appears that Atari, which had hired Davenport Lyons (and whose games were part of the original story of falsely accused people) has now stopped the anti-piracy campaign, canceled requests for identification on various IP addresses and apparently dropped Davenport Lyons in the process. It seems Atari realized that the campaign was generating an awful lot of negative publicity. Shaking down innocent people can do that, apparently.

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]]> ain't-that-called-extortion? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081201/0233572982 Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:54:44 PDT UK Lawyers Video Game Piracy Shakedown Catching Plenty Of Innocent Bystanders Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081030/0222502686.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081030/0222502686.shtml threatened to sue as many people as possible for allegedly sharing a video game. Despite some lofty talk by Davenport Lyons, it was quite clear from the beginning that this never had anything to do with copyright. It was just a straight up shakedown. The firm would send threatening letters claiming that it had evidence (even if it did not) and then demand a settlement fee be paid to avoid an actual lawsuit. It's difficult to see how or why that should be legal.

The firm was aided in its quest by drastically exaggerating a legal "win" in one of these cases. The win was because it was a default judgment. The woman that was accused of file sharing did not show up in court, and the court had no choice but to rule against her. Yet, to hear Davenport Lyons tell it, you might be lead to believe that a full blown court case occurred, with a full defense of the actions, and the woman lost.

A lawyer in the UK who was disgusted by this practice, Michael Coyle, has offered to defend as many innocent recipients of the shakedown letter as possible, and now the press is reporting he's already pursuing seventy cases of innocent people being falsely accused (and has heard from hundreds more). The article profiles one such case, where a couple (aged 54 and 66) were accused of sharing a car racing game. The only problem? They have no video games on their computer, nor any file sharing software (and they didn't even know what it was until they got the threatening letter).

Even more ridiculous? They wrote to Davenport Lyons three times without any response. It was only once a magazine picked up their story that Davenport Lyons and Atari dropped the threat. It's about time that the press shines a light on these practices, which clearly have little to do with protecting the rights of copyright holders, and plenty to do with a new, highly questionable, revenue stream that some might call "extortion."

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]]> this-is-what-we-call-a-shakedown http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081030/0222502686 Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:47:00 PDT Atari Sues Websites Over Pre-Release Reviews Of Games Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080623/1840261484.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080623/1840261484.shtml Slashdot points us to the news that Atari has started suing various websites that posted reviews of new games prior to the release date of the games. The reviews are negative, but the real problem, according to Atari, is that there was a press embargo on reviewing the games, and if someone has a copy of the game prior to the embargo and hasn't agreed to the embargo, then it's clear that they pirated the game. At least one site has explained that it purchased the game legally from a retail source who mistakenly sold the game before the release date -- which would suggest the problem is with the retailer, not the reviewer. No matter what, the whole thing seems ridiculous. Suing those who review your games (even if the reviews are not good or if the reviews come out early) is a sure way to make sure many sites refuse to review anything you do again.

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]]> what's-illegal-here? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080623/1840261484