Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ames!pacbell.com!pacbell!tandem!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Tetris variants Keywords: justifications for ripoffs all = greed Message-ID: <1990Jun12.195107.5899@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 12 Jun 90 19:51:07 GMT References: <21774@snow-white.udel.EDU> Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 186 In article <21774@snow-white.udel.EDU>, rife with inaccuracies, and full of justifications for stealing intellectual property, EVERHART@arisia.dnet.ge.com writes: >It appears fairly clear we have witnessed in the recent withdrawal >of Tetris variants by Fred Fish a case of (to this point) successful >legal bullying. Fred is quite familiar with the legal issues here, as this is at least the second go around on this issue for him (remember Ogre?) Protecting the intellectual roperty by means of which one earns a living is not "legal bullying", but simply an attempt at survival in a very hostile environment, the computer games market. > Let's get some issues clear. The idea for the tetris game can be >written down in a few lines, and ideas are not copyrightable. (This one >may also not pass muster as a useful invention for patent purposes, but >that's beside the point.) Here's a stab at this writing: > Tetrominoes fall into a rectangular container (less top) under >control of the player. Whenever the blocks making up the tetrominoes >form a complete row across the width of the container, the row is >removed. Object of the game: keep the container from filling as long as >possible. Not even close to a sufficient specification for the game. You haven't mentioned what controls are and are not available to the player. You haven't defined "full" for the container. You haven't mentioned the preview option. You have said nothing about scoring. You have said nothing about early dropping. You have said nothing about speeding up motion as the score increases. You have not identified the process of "chewing back down" to fill in holes. Tetris is an immensely subtle game; the millions of (wo)man hours being lost to productive use world wide due to Tetris play occur because of some excellent design choices, which is what makes the game design a valuable (and legally defendable) intellectual property. > The various games that have come out, some on the Fish disks, follow >this idea. They are however not duplicating Spectrum Holobyte's code The legally defendable item is not the game code; the valuable intellectual property is the game design. >but are original works belonging to their authors and released to the >rest of us. SH is attempting to deprive these authors and their beneficiaries >(the rest of us) the benefits of their code. You have the wrong end of the stick. Those authors were trying to deprive SH of a valuable intellectual property, and the rest of us of a viable game market. > The analogy with Rubik's Cube is instructive. Repainting one certainly >does not make a new or non-infringing cube. Replacing the guts with something >different, however, does. (This is also very nontrivial to do.) Rubik's cube has a mechanical design which is quite ingenious. However, the more valuable part of the design is the intellectual thrust of the game. I once wrote a "software Rubik's cube" for my Apple ][+; it shared none of the mechanical attributes of the cube, but all of its play aspects (except "Rubik's Wrist"); had I released my code, I would have been violating the intellectual property rights of Mr. Rubik. > Since SH cannot claim copyright infringement over the code, they are left >with the screen image. It is at this point worth mentioning that since you don't have a clue as to what is being stolen in this case, your analysis is all wet. The design of a game is a separate, legally protectable entity, and that means the _play_ design, not the colors on the game board or, in this case, the screen. >Their images have elaborate drawings as background, >which certainly make the totality copyrightable. However, the game board >part will if challenged in a technically competent forum certainly be seen >as too trivial to copyright. The relevant analogy is bitmaps of fonts. Totally immaterial. >There >are after all only five tetrominoes, and these shapes have been around for >generations. Irrelevant, and, since Tetris does not allow reflection, it has seven, not five, separate playing pieces. >SH has explicitly disclaimed that they regard color as >significant, so one is left with a board determined solely by the game idea, >which cannot be copyrighted. The "game idea" can in fact be patented, not just copyrighted. I have no idea whether SH did so, but that is within their rights. >Their situation is much the same as if someone >copyrighted a drawing of a scene which included a 5x7 bitmap of an "M" and >then attempted to sue someone who used the same 5x7 bitmap of the "M". Not at all. The game idea, not the picture on the screen, is what is a protectable object. > One hopes that SH got some code from ELORG, since if all they got was >the game idea, they paid for something that cannot be protected, save by >extra-legal bullying. The game idea is exactly what can be protected, by fully legal means well known and often used in the game design field. >Taking on Fred Fish, whose lack of deep pockets is >fairly well known, and who doesn't want to be involved in such controversies, >was a cheap hit. Since Fred has long ago expressed in the clearest terms an insistance on putting only legally distributable software into his much respected collection, and since he immediately, voluntarily, and without grumbling issued a recall notice when informed that the legal distributability of the Tetris clones was in question, "taking on Fred Fish" is a loaded phrase which has no relationship to the actual situation. Neither is it the case that protecting a valuable property is a "chaep hit"; it is a way, the only way, to stay in the software games publishing business. >It does not show the SH case holds any water at all. SH doesn't have a "case", they have a property to which they have licensed the rights. > I'm puzzled nobody seems to have asked whether the SH code plays >differently from the others. For example, is there some analysis built >into the SH engine which permits one to continue indefinitely with the >game which may be missing in the others? Or does this fall out of the >geometry of tiling an area with tetrominoes? (If the latter, a random >selection is adequate and one argues over the quality of random number >generators.) Such an analysis would be pretty useless unless it also took into account which play choices you had already made, in which case it would probably make the game too easy. > As for what to do, it seems clear that several steps are in order. >1. Sources other than the Fish disks should not regard Fred's withdrawal > as having anything to say about SH's claims. The programs should > be kept in circulation, denying SH any advantage in using threats > to accomplish what it may not accomplish by valid legal protection. I believe your statement comes under the heading of "misprison of a felony"; I sure wouldn't be sticking myself wallet first into this situation if I were you. > They risk encountering someone with deep enough pockets to defend > their (and our) rights should they continue their tactics, and > cannot hope to succeed in their object in any case. Well, all of us with hopes of writing and distributing commercial software naturally wish SH all the best, since if they fail it may well foreshadow the end of the Amiga game/software market. >2. This should be considered as a relevant item when thinking of buying > anything from SH in the future, and the issue should be made known > to friends using other computer types. (There are many other Tetris > clones out there on other platforms.) True. Persons who value a strong Amiga games market, with lots of choices on the shelves, would be well advised to buy an SH game or two just to help them with the legal expenses needed to set a strong precedent here. >3. Nastygrams to SH on the issue would not be inappropriate either. Flames to twits who think everything in life should be provided to them free of charge seem more appropriate. >Incidentally: the five tetrominoes (which those of you who read the >mathematical games section of Scientific American already should have >seen) are: > XXXX XXX XXX XX XX > X X XX XX > As noted above, the Tetris game uses seven, since pieces without reflective symmetry act as different pieces. >Glenn Everhart -- Enemy of the Amiga games market. Kent, the man from xanth. (suffering fools, as usual, not at all) -- in the distance a roasted cave newt screamed in agony -- Andrew Palfreyman