SpaceDice2010 Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 This is crazy what they are doing. Now, there are some issues involved in the naming of the emulators. It obviously appears that Atari is going to bat to get a home run. Atari will never get a cent of my money again. Ever. In fact I just sold my copy of Test Drive Unlimited 2 (which I liked to play, but kept thinking of buying the Casino) on Ebay. With that said I am going to launch boycottatari.com hopefully this weekend. I have a conference call setup later today with our legal team over another matter and want to get some feedback on the issue. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 Is this the kind of thing that we could put on the AA 'news' page? I'm nervous about that because Albert hasn't been contacted (that I'm aware of), but he's certainly not outside the scope of their efforts. For our Harry Potter fans does Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus mean anything to you? Seriously though, I think for the larger Atari related sites it's best to try and draw as little attention to themselves as possible. No need to go poking at a sleeping giant (or dragon). Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Rogue Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 Is Nolan still on the BoD? Would he care about any of this? He's a "special advisor" to the board. I.E. he was let go from his original board position (which was purely as a representative of BlueBay's shares for BlueBay) and they wanted to keep the name involvement there somehow. Most people were confused (which was done on purpose) and thought Atari had brought him in and he was running things there. BlueBay brought him in for publicity to try and help the company through PR, by having him represent their board seat. That gave him a cubicle at Atari SA in California (where the headquarters of the brand and the board is now) and they'd run some of the in-production games by him to say "Cool, great game" so they could say it was "approved" buy Nolan Bushnell (Star Raiders was one of those), had him involved in some of the press releases that went out, and had him going around to different shows and events to generate more PR. When it was clear that wasn't working to help Atari SA last year, BlueBay took him off the position (and he lost his cubicle) and switched efforts towards selling their majority ownership. Wilson had Nolan still be involved in name by having him become a "special advisor". So in answer to your other question, no, he didn't have anything to do with this. Nor could he do anything if he did care about it, he was never in any type of CEO position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 I say we write a new kind of Atari emulator. This one actually emulates Atari and generates bogus threatening legal correspondence. Sounds like the story for a great new homebrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariNerd Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 (edited) I think I'm about to be ill. This could set a very bad precedent - it becomes not just about a handful of Atari users, but the whole emulation scene...all of those who enjoy being able to play games on platforms from common to arcane. Edited September 2, 2011 by AtariNerd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 Saw a Slashdot article on my iGoogle homepage about this. Saw the Steve Benway talked about it in one of his "talkies." I would imagine the news of this will be spreading.. True, mostly among gamers at this point... If Atari is looking to start spreading their name again, that is working.. desiv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalH Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 I think I'm about to be ill. This could set a very bad precedent - it becomes not just about a handful of Atari users, but the whole emulation scene...all of those who enjoy being able to play games on platforms from common to arcane. I was under impression this was already settled case law in the US. Emulators are legal as long as they don't reproduce BIOS images without authorization. Someone needs a good IP lawyer to fight back with to not only win, but file a countersuit against "Atari". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reaperman Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 (edited) I was under impression this was already settled case law in the US. Emulators are legal as long as they don't reproduce BIOS images without authorization. Someone needs a good IP lawyer to fight back with to not only win, but file a countersuit against "Atari". With Atari targeting 'the little guy' this probably won't happen. Hopefully someday they'll piss off the wrong site and they'll have a legal department, but I've seen nothing to indicate that this has happened yet. I think wikipedia is using their logo--somebody should tip Atari off. They mention asteroids too. Edited September 2, 2011 by Reaperman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 http://www.gaijingames.com/?p=2064 From the desk of Marshal Banana It has come to the attention of Atari that you are currently engaged in publishing a property of degenerate similarity to it’s current line of stand-up cabinet electronic entertainment devices PONG . This activity is deemed to be in direct violation of ATARI’s copyright, trademark, patent, civil, and constitutional rights. Furthermore the exploiting of this property for monitary gain causes ATARI direct and bodily harm for which you should all feel very bad and apologise. The simmilarities include but are not limited to: a) a line with dimensions 1/25th by 1/105th of the size of the screen. 2) a square with dimensions of 1/105th by 1/105th of the sceen (I got a ruler for chrsitmas and I can assure you these measurements are accurate) 3) the property whereby when a a square with dimensions of 1/105th by 1/105th of the sceen meets a line with dimensions 1/25th by 1/105th of the size of the screen a noise is induced and the square with dimensions of 1/105th by 1/105th of the sceen’s x velocity is inversed. To the untrained eye there are several differences in ATARI’s PONG and BIT.TRIP BEAT. But it can be simply showed that these are actually bastardisations of existing PONG design (likely brought about by sloppy coding) as well as obvious improvements that ATARI was totaly going to do anyway. These non-novelty inducing differences will be listed below: 1) The lack of an opponent paddle: it is clear to ATARI programmers that Gaijin Games was simply incapable of copying the sophisticated Artificial Intelligence PONG uses to control its opposing paddle. We have several sworn affidavids from ATARI programmers to this effect. In their failure they obviously just have balls fly at the player psudo-randomly. 2. The changing of tones when balls hit the paddle: Only to the most non-electrical engineers does this not reek of theft from PONG. The stand-up cabinet electronic entertainment devices PONG ™ had its sound induction hardware (speakers) produced by an extremely shoddy 2nd party. This was purposefully to induce differences in tone when the PONG ball hit the PONG paddle. While such poor speaker quality is often assumed to be unpurposeful it was a designed feature to induce a “Music Like” effect. 3- Trippy Graphics: ATARI admits that the graphics are pretty sweet. But similar graphics would be an inevitable product of ATARI programmers. Many of whom experience vivid acid flashbacks. ATARI can produce many affidavids to this effect. ATARI feels it has shown the offending property is a simple copy of PONG and expects Gaijin Games to remove said property from the market forthwith (in the strongest possible terms). If this expectation is not complied with forthwith then ATARI will be induced to induce upon Gaijin Games a state of Compliance (in the strongest possible terms). That won’t be pretty for anyone! Good day Marshal Banana Head of legal Induction for ATARI p.s. any tips on beating the Growth boss? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Oberhäuser Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 (edited) Is Nolan still on the BoD? Would he care about any of this? Nolan is at Burning Man this week, FYI... Is this the kind of thing that we could put on the AA 'news' page? I'm nervous about that because Albert hasn't been contacted (that I'm aware of), but he's certainly not outside the scope of their efforts. Does anyone remember how fan sites prevailed against Viacom/Paramount/CBS in the late 90s when they went after various Star Trek fan websites in order to redirect all of fandom to the "official" MSN page once they signed a fat exclusive contract with Microsoft? I seem to recall Lucasfilm trying the same thing before the release of Episode II... Suffice to say independent fan websites still exist for both of those subjects. Just so you all know, Slashdot just covered this mess again today... http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/09/02/1825230/Atari-CampDs-Emulators-Site-About-Asteroids The funniest two comments - in my opinion - on the thread are here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2410528&cid=37290056 The story's probably also been covered on Digg but at this point, who cares about Digg? Edited September 3, 2011 by Lynxpro 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Just checking in. I'm not going to make any Atari investments at all, until this plays out. Thanks all for a great scene, but there is no way I can deal with Atari playing that kind of ball. The looming threat over everything just takes the good vibe out of it for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 (edited) I trashed approx 40 - 50 Infogrames/Atari games so far, there'll be more to follow. Edited September 3, 2011 by high voltage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 What's the point of that? They've already made their profits from it. If anything, you'd have hurt them more by selling them cheaply, so possibly denying them a sale to somebody else. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R4ngerM4n Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 With that said I am going to launch boycottatari.com hopefully this weekend. Most likely Atari will shutdown your site soon, as it contains the word "atari" - a registered trademark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barnieg Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 (edited) The information around this seems to be vague, however if as it appears Atari are going after Emulators that could set a dangerous precedent. If Atari where able to get emulators withdrawn despite their legal or moral right to do so what happens to emulators of other systems? Is all this a the trend towards media owners wanting us to keep on paying indefinitely for the same software? Regarding copyrighted code such as os roms - didn't Hasbro makes some sort of public announcement about being free to use or was that limited to just the Jaguar? Its reasonably clear-cut on some other platforms - you can buy cloanto's software for the c64 & Amiga (and I've used the amigaroms from Amiga Forever on versions of uae for Linux with no problems) As for games - A retro game player shouldn’t have to pay again if they run a game in emulation but already own the original game. For games that players don't own media owners need to have a cheap and easy way to purchase the rights to game bundles that can be used on any system i.e not restricted to a particular platform Barnie Edited September 3, 2011 by barnieg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 (edited) Interesting. So Atari is going after any website with an emulator or ROM on it? Wonder if AA has been targeted? I've done a fair bit of research on the topic lately, mostly to do with Trademark violation in a domain name. Generally speaking "Fair Use" (or "Nominative Fair Use") is allowed for legitimate, non-monetary purposes done in "good faith." Here's some good links I've discovered: http://udrpcommentar...-and-criticism/ http://udrpcommentar...e-of-trademark/ http://www.citmedial...ademarks-others http://www.seomoz.or...es-acpa-or-udrp http://www.chillinge...k/faq.cgi#QID56 http://domains.adrfo...ons/1030720.htm http://domains.adrfo...ons/1350483.htm My personal favorite is the Hot Dog Stand defense: http://www.gimmelaw....aw-fair-use-law Hope something in there helps you guys. It's a shame we now have to defend ourselves from the hobby we love... Edited September 3, 2011 by Gregory DG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 (edited) I trashed approx 40 - 50 Infogrames/Atari games so far, there'll be more to follow. I am not giving up my Atari sweatpants. I may quit playing "Star Raiders" on the Xbox but well, that mainly has to do with my lack of enthusiasm for them trashing the storyline and making the ship a transformer. The information around this seems to be vague, however if as it appears Atari are going after Emulators that could set a dangerous precedent. If Atari where able to get emulators withdrawn despite their legal or moral right to do so what happens to emulators of other systems? Is all this a the trend towards media owners wanting us to keep on paying indefinitely for the same software? Regarding copyrighted code such as os roms - didn't Hasbro makes some sort of public announcement about being free to use or was that limited to just the Jaguar? I was under the impression that the Hasbro Interactive regime made all of the Atari OS'es public domain. There should be an online record of their announcement and that would be just as damning in court as Jonathan Schwartz's comments congratulating Android for its Java underpinnings have been in the ongoing court case between Oracle and Google over Android. I could swear Hasbro finally authorized the release of not only the Jaguar security/encryption codes but also that of the 7800. Then again, I've noticed TOS 4.04 alluded to still being an underground and unauthorized release to this day. As for the 8-bit OSes, couldn't the community just piece together an emulator using the third-party OSes [iCD? or am I suffering from a memory error?] and one of the better versions of [ahem, "Atari"] Basic from OSS? Wouldn't that still be 95%-98% compatible with just about everything in existence? Edited September 3, 2011 by Lynxpro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 That is what happened on the CoCo 3, with good results. Took some serious efforts by alphas in that community working over a sustained time though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trent Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 I'm going to remove all references to the word "Atari" from my emulator, get rid of any screen grabs from Atari owned titles, and re-release Droid2600 in the Android market. I'm thinking of calling it Irata. Any other suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Irata is the first thing I thought of too, but since "atari" is originally a term from Go, another option would be to use a different Go term. There's a list here, and there are a few attractive possibilities. Of course, I can't vouch for which of them (if any) are currently being used by trademarks as someone else! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 I'm going to remove all references to the word "Atari" from my emulator, get rid of any screen grabs from Atari owned titles, and re-release Droid2600 in the Android market. I'm thinking of calling it Irata. Any other suggestions? Isn't it true that you won't have legal issues with numbers? Thought I remembered that was one of the reasons Intel stopped using 386, 486 and went with Pentium, etc...???? If so, then Droid2600 should be fine... Just change all the Atari to Irata (I like that..).. Yep, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_%28brand%29#Origins_of_Pentium_trademark However' date=' Intel was unable to persuade the court of law to allow them to trademark numbers (such as "i486")[/quote'] So at least Trademark wise, Droid2600 should be fine.. desiv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Atari's getting some flak on their facebook post comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 That is what happened on the CoCo 3, with good results. Took some serious efforts by alphas in that community working over a sustained time though. Explain? I know Jeff Vavasours emulators are free now or are you talking about something else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 I'm going to remove all references to the word "Atari" from my emulator, get rid of any screen grabs from Atari owned titles, and re-release Droid2600 in the Android market. I'm thinking of calling it Irata. Any other suggestions? "Vicosy" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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