The Defendants

The defendants are a number of small developers and publishers, ALL of whom are using Hasbro's intellectual properties to profit in some way. This profit may be financial, or it may be an increase in fame or notoriety. Either way, it's wrong to do this. In most cases, what we have is plagiarism, plain and simple. In a couple of others, we have a situation where Hasbro's trademarks are clearly being leveraged -- without any permission or consent on Hasbro's part -- as a way to increase profits, either directly or indirectly.

In most cases, these aren't innocent little public-domain works. These are commercial, bona-fide, shrinkwrapped boxes with CDs in them. Being sold for money.

The defendants have decided to use two specific lines of attack against Hasbro:

(1) "Rip-off? What rip-off?"

The defendants taking this stance don't consider their games as similar enough to the originals. To which I say: Go take a look at them and judge for yourselves. If you honestly believe that these games have not lifted the majority of their core gameplay from the originals, then the argument ends here. But, in my humble opinion, you'd have to be incredibly obtuse to miss it.

Yes, a couple of the cases in question are only marginally about plagiarism, but case is not just about plagiarism. Hasbro have to protect all their intellectual properties, and that includes the names, not just the games.

Let's analyse the actual sales blurb for 3D Astro Blaster. This game, and a number of the others in this case, can be found at http://www.egames.com, but is also still on sale through a number of other online sites. I chose it because this clearly illustrates my point:

"Save the universe from asteroids and space aliens in this action packed arcade game."

Gosh! That sounds familiar...

"Incredible graphics and sounds put you right in the middle of the action as you blast apart asteroids on a collision course with your ship."

...VERY familiar! This sounds *exactly* like Asteroids so far...

"Advance to higher levels and recieve better weapons, stronger shields and more."

...Oooh! "Asteroids" with some extras thrown in. But still, clearly and recognisably "Asteroids".

(Which is, incidentally, STILL a registered trademark. That's what that little 'R' in a circle means, folks. It has never, ever, been released into the public domain.)

Folks, let me make this clear: Moviemakers have to ask permission of the original copyright owners when they want to create a remake, even if the end result bears little or no resemblance to the original.

Now take a good look at the screenshot for "3D Astro Blaster":

-- (again, this is from the eGames site, but most of the others use the same image.)

Clearly, this is an attempt at a remake. And a remake made without permission is just plagiarism. Plain and simple. Imagine if someone other than George Lucas had decided to create "Special Editions" of his original 'Star Wars(R)' trilogy. Do you think they'd get away with releasing them and charging for them without permission from George?

I didn't think so.

This is all clearly enshrined in IP law. It has been so enshrined for more than a century, long before TV and movies came along, yet neither industry appears to be suffering from it. So why should games be magically exempt?

Ignorance of the law has been a valid defence since... when, exactly?

(2) "But nobody's been taken to court for doing this before...!"

Diana Gruber's article makes some good points about this, but by her logic, it would be Right to kill someone just as long as you don't get caught. Forgery is forgery and plagiarism is plagiarism. It makes no difference whether you use paintbrush and gouache, or Visual Studio and a keyboard: ripping off other people's work for your own, personal, gain is just plain WRONG. Period.

Make no mistake: Intellectual Property *is* Property. Just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Art, in some shape or form, has been around for far longer than recorded history. We were painting pictures on the walls of caves. We were inventing new forms of music and dance long before we had invented words for "music" and "dance".

Part of Homo Sapiens' very success is due to an ability to create and consider the abstract. It's what makes us human. So please, let's forget all those "I can't see it or touch it, therefore it doesn't exist" arguments right now.

The only -- I repeat: ONLY -- reason that older plagiarists got away with it is timing. Put simply: it usually cost too much to prosecute in proportion to the amount of money that would have been saved at the time. The industry simply wasn't that big back then and Atari sure as hell couldn't afford to take every Tom, Dick and Harriet who was ripping them off to court, so they tended to focus on the bigger fish instead.

In fact, if you take a look at the long and bloody history of Atari, you'll see that Atari did take people to court over these very same issues. They even won a few cases. But Atari's finances were high enough to fund such lawsuits for only a very brief period: after 1983, they lost their crown and never regained it.

Even Tetris has been the subject of a number of plagiarism lawsuits over its history.

Today, it's the same story. Except the stakes are much, much higher.

The Truth