Olympic Web Site Features Pirated Content

An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the emphasis on protecting Olympic copyrights in China this year, the official web site of the Beijing Olympics features a Flash game that is a blatant copy of one of the games developed at The Pencil Farm. Compare the game on the Olympic site with 'Snow Day' at The Pencil Farm."

You got it wrong

[Jack Malmostoso (899729)]

These are Summer Olympics, that game is called "Snow Day". How could it be a copy?

Yawn!

[Stephen Samuel (106962)]

Knockoffs from China... What next? Lies from the WhiteHouse?

They should be grateful

[gijoel (628142)]

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.

Re:They should be grateful

[Yartrebo (690383)]

Normally I would agree, but in this case it's the sincerest form of hypocrisy. Whatever corporation runs the olympics is notorious for it's heavy-handed approach to IP, so one would expect them to respect others' IP to the letter. That they don't is being quite hypocritical.

Coca Cola did the same... but sortof fixed it.

[88NoSoup4U88 (721233)]

Coca Cola did the same last year by ripping off "Ninja" [7secondsoflove.com] by Joel Feitch (the guy behind Rathergood.com [rathergood.com])

Two weeks later it was reported that Joel Feitch got well compensated for it (exact amounts were not disclosed as part of the agreement).

Read all about it here [robmanuel.com], with accompanied footage.

The Chinese version doesn't even make sense

[Ma8thew (861741)]

Why is the character in the Chinese version 'Fighting winter' by making the clouds snow?

Social Commentary about China's pollution?

[reidconti (219106)]

Seriously, can noone else see this game as a hilariously ironic commentary on China's futile attempts to lower pollution in order to have blue skies for the Olympics?

Of course this: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8874472 [economist.com]Economist article seems to not be loading right now, but they even have a blue sky monitoring scale which counts days without brutal amounts of smog, and are trying to figure out if they can somehow control the weather.

Probably off-topic but what the hell...

[Harold Halloway (1047486)]

A friend of my father-in-law's owned for many years a hotel in France called 'Hotel d'Olympique'. He still owns the hotel but it is no longer called that as he was sent a 'cease and desist'-type letter by the IOC.

FWIW I am not interested in the Beijing Olympics. Any lingering interest in the event has been soured by the appalling way that Chinese citizens have been treated by their government and, by extension, the IOC. No sports event in the world is worth evicting, beating, imprisoning and killing your own citizens for.

Re:

[Harold Halloway (1047486)]

What a strange comment.

First of all, it's a friend of my father-in-law's, not his brother. Secondly, I have never met this chap and have never been in his hotel, although I have seen it. Thirdly, I didn't say where this hotel is. I have no interest in promoting his hotel, nor can anything in my post be taken as such. It was just an example of the IOC's zeal in enforcing its trademark.

The second paragraph was a mild piece of self-indulgence, making the point that whatever charges of plagiarism, copyright the

Heavy Handed Hypocrisy

[Riturno (671917)]

This is especially ironic since many of the Olympic Committees sue anyone using the word 'Olympic' or press governments for legislation protecting their precious name. For instance a few link samples:
US: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15360 [dvorak.org]
CA: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1777/125/ [michaelgeist.ca]
UK: http://blogs.reuters.com/uknews/2008/02/06/olympic-tussle-over-a-name/ [reuters.com]
Given the IOC and each local Olympic committee's approach trademark ownership, they should have no problem removing the game.
This is unlikely because, they will not treat other's work the same as they want theirs enforces. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Re:

[sconeu (64226)]

Dear Slashdot,

Please note that we are a major corporation or something. Laws exist to protect *OUR* copyrights and trademarks. As a major entity, we are allowed to do whatever the hell we want.

Thank you,

The IOC

That's not the only copy...

[Chysn (898420)]

...it looks like the Sailing game (http://en.beijing2008.cn/funpage/game/sailing/index.shtml) is a ripoff of a game called Arctic Blue on orisinal.com (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/arctic.htm)

Re:

[RenHoek (101570)]

It's not a clone, i.e. they did not see the original and thought "Hey, we can make something like that".

It's a byte-perfect copy of many of the elements in the game, sound and graphics. So it really is a copyright violation.

It's simply re-skinning some elements and publishing it as your own. Like taking Windows, make the default background red, and selling it as your own operating system.

Sorry

[QuantumG (50515)]

Seems there are duplicate files in the SWF files of each. So although the code might be new, the content isn't completely.

Re:Fair use

[by Anonymous Coward]

Which is 16% of the original work, and the majority of that is the song which was used in neither the original work, nor the derivative.

Wrong. Clearly, you have no idea what "fair use" is. You should look it up.

In a nutshell, "Fair use" means taking another's copyrighted material for academic or critical purposes. Instead, this (assumed) copyrighted material has been taken for neither of those purposes - instead, it is used to make a website more fun for kids.

And furthermore, 16% of a document/book/program likely goes far beyond fair use for even academic, scholarship, or critical use.

If these "copyrighted materials" had no value, then the developers should have simply included their own materials instead of someone else's content.

FURTHERMORE, to say that 16% of a book, movie, song, or other work is "small enough" to be considered fair use is simply ludicrous. The percentage of material is irrelevant to the copyright. A film is made of over 100,000 still images, yet a single 35mm photograph doesn't have 1/100,000th the copyright protection of a film.

Re:It is NOT fair use, or even close to it.

[pipatron (966506)]

From your link:

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law

This is China. Not United States. If you post a relevant link to the Chinese copyright laws and their notion of fair use, that would be informative and interesting.

Re:It is NOT fair use, or even close to it.

[Quothz (683368)]

If you post a relevant link to the Chinese copyright laws and their notion of fair use, that would be informative and interesting.

Here y'go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights [wikipedia.org]

Note that China is a participant in TRIPS (follow the link at the bottom t'see all participating countries). Software copyright is addressed (it is treated as a literary work under this agreement), and fair use is very limited.

Re:

[ATL_gadget_grrl (1122351)]

Until someone stands up to the Chinese and hands down some pretty serious penalties for this sort of behavior, this ripoff bullshit is going to continue. Let's see what would happen: China would refuse to send us cheap/lead-riddled garbage to sell at WalMart, we'd actually have to fire up some shuttered American factories to manufacture what they're no longer sending us, people would have to actually go to work...How could this be a bad thing? Personally, I don't think any of the emasculated world leaders

Re:

[cduffy (652)]

Sorry, infringing the copyright on a work that is given away for free precludes 4.

Look at the ruling on the Java Model Railroad Interface case, and then come back and tell me you want that kind of valuation determination to be generally accepted.

The cost for commercial use of a work, even if that work is freely provided for non-commercial use, is whatever price the author decides on for a differently-licensed copy. Look at the business model used by Trolltech -- do you think that the availability of a GPLe

Re:Bullshit.

[RenHoek (101570)]

Here ya go.. an extremely enlarged view of the icecube images used in both flashes

cubes.png [palli.nl]

You can look hard you can see the gamma is a little different between them, but how are they not the same image?

Are you willing to tell me that these are images made by two different persons that just happen to make it look exactly the same?

Re:

[mrstu (1253256)]

I'm calling bullshit on that... it uses the same fonts in many places, the graphic for the bar on the side is identical, pixel for pixel, as is the sprite for the clouds, among other things. And if you actually follow the link and RTFA, you'll see that there are several resources in the olympic edition that PROVE the link, including the splash screen for an earlier game made by the same person that he forgot to remove when he re-used the engine.

Re:

[cheater512 (783349)]

You obviously didnt RTFA.

They didnt strip out a lot of the unused resources.
Many of the original game files are still in there even when they arent used.
It doesnt take a genius to realise that many of the graphics and sounds are identical as well.

It appears like they did rewrite the code but its still a blatant copy.
They based it from the original swf, they didnt start from scratch.

Re:Bullshit.

[mrboyd (1211932)]

The funny thing is that the chinese source code looks cleaner than the original. If I had to choose a company by looking at those two samples I'd probably go for outsourcing in china.

Smells like trouble for the US job market :)

Re:Bullshit.

[phulegart (997083)]

Odd that the variable names are the same in both scripts. What's the possibility that two different programmers working independently and exclusive of one another, would come up with the same abbreviated variable names for the same functions and same elements in two games that appeared to be same and played the same? What are the odds?

Odd that the graphics are just about all the same in both games. The differences are trivial.

Looks more like someone purposefully made the scripts different, so that they could point and say "Lookee, it's different. See? It's not the same at all. Look at the code. Different." As if they knew ahead of time that there were potential copyright conflicts, and were trying to make an end run around copyright law.

Not just a copy...

[Veroxii (51114)]

They actually re-used the code, not just copied it. From TFA:

I'd also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn't see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I'll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren't being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

Re:

[nawcom (941663)]

i feel like i'm defending this guy, so just as a note, i look at this at the same viewpoint as most of the commenters here. I rtfa, and according to the creator the olympics game even had some of the sound files, and other resources that he designed packed into the swf - even though their version doesn't use it, or use replacement resources, hence they obviously decompiled it and changed it to what they saw fit - without getting rid of the originals.

Unfortunately, if my assumption is true, since this is

Re:Chinese copies?

[cgenman (325138)]

Even if you don't make a bit-for-bit copy of a game, you can still be liable for infringement. See also K.C. Munchkin. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, and whether a copy of that expression happens mechanically or at the hand of a person, the result is still either direct copyright infringement or the creation of derivitave work (which is also copyright infringement).

However, they clearly did decompile the original Flash file and just swapped a few (though not all) art resources. The clouds aren't suspiciously similar... they're the same. The snow, mechanic, ice art, launching art, health bar, etc aren't just similar, they're identical. The tuning seems to be the same, with the same launch times, etc.

It's true that the Chinese are known for copying things. And that flash games get copied a lot more than they should. But the olympic games are notorious for enforcing their copyrights over the slightest infraction by others. Having the Olympics casually steal other developer's work in this fashion seems extremely self-contradictory.

Re:

[coaxial (28297)]

It's not a clone. They decompiled the swf and changed some of the graphics. It's obvious from a hex dump. If you bothered to read TFA you would have known that.

Re:Chinese copies?

[JavaRob (28971)]

Have you? Its actually a complete rewrite with a few copied images and sounds (which are not even used).

I'm starting to think they just tweaked the source code to make it look different, specifically to dodge legal trouble.

I mean, think about it -- in the Chinese game, your goal is to make the clouds *go away* so you have blue sky.
So, obviously, you hit them with ice cubes. And they go away?

NO, they start snowing on you.

The fact that they didn't even change that detail from the original game -- and it would have been a fairly trivial change! -- looks pretty bad to me.

No copyright on game idea, title, rules, gameplay.

[tomhudson (43916)]

Remember, you can't copyright the rules of a game - not even in the US of A.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html [copyright.gov]

The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.

Copyright protects only the particular manner of an authors expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merc

Its legal in China ...

[tomhudson (43916)]

Here's the relevant clause of the Berne Covention [wipo.int]:

Works originating in one of the contracting States (that is, works the author of which is a national of such a State or works which were first published in such a State) must be given the same protection in each of the other contracting States as the latter grants to the works of its own nationals

Since they don't exactly give their own nationals very much in the way of individual copyright protection, the use of a foreigner's material is no more protected

Re:Chinese copies?

[lazy_playboy (236084)]

The author of the 'orignal' claims that he has decompiled them and that the games use identical resources, even down to resources that the original author accidently left in but isn't actually used in the game.

If true that's beyond coincidence or imitation.

Re:Chinese copies?

[Khyber (864651)]

You don't decompile flash, FYI. It's code and play, no compilation needed. I've grep'd the sources for both, they're nearly identical.

Re:

[cduffy (652)]

Decompilers are few and hard to come by (and one which was open source years ago has gone closed... though some of us still have copies of the OSS code), but flash disassemblers are plentiful. Folks may have a pre-license-change copy of the Free decompiler that went closed (sorry, don't remember the name, would have to check the hard drive on a separate machine that's turned off right now to find it), or they may be using a disassembler and describing it badly. Does it matter?

Re:

[cskrat (921721)]

Follow the link given in the Summary and then read what was written by the original author of the game.

Seriously RTFA.

Re:Article presents no evidence of copying??

[Anthony Boyd (242971)]

Perhaps it is a rip off, but then either way the Slashdot article should provide evidence of this.

Ummm... what? Did you read the article? It specifically does exactly what you say it does not do. It includes screenshots to show that many of the graphics are stolen (pixel for pixel exactly the same, not an approximation). And it includes text from the creator of the original game, documenting how he reviewed their game code and discovered that it was completely stolen, not clean-roomed. From the article:

I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren't being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

I'm pretty sure that if the game the Olympics is using contains sound files that are basically leftover stubs from his other games then that's pretty damning evidence.

Re:Article presents no evidence of copying??

[Bazman (4849)]

He also mentions that the Olympics site contains games very similar to those wonderful Ferry Halim games from www.orisinal.com - of course, they might be licensed from him. Anyone asked Ferry?

Any lawyers out there fancy taking on the Chinese Olympic Committee? Might not be a good idea... [guardian.co.uk]

Actually, It works EXACTLY like that.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Disregard that the games is similar. The reality is that the music, the clouds, the ice cubes, etc were STOLEN straight out from it. Not a bit changed. This is akin to somebody lifting 100 pages out of 120 page book. Copyright is designed to prevent just that. How did you get modded up?

Re:

[RedWizzard (192002)]

RTFA. It's written by the author of the original game. He's hardly like to give them permission and then accuse them of theft, is he?

Re:Copyright doesn't work like that

[by Anonymous Coward]

Copyright works precisely like that. Maybe if you didn't shoot your mouth off so quick you would have noticed that the article is talking about theft of assets, not code. And then maybe if you knew anything about the history of copyright you wouldn't have tried to claim "fair use" on the art assets because of their byte counts. The inclusion of unused assets from the original demonstrates beyond any doubt that this whole game is a derivative work. There's a reason why legal reverse-engineering is done with two sets of engineers and a spec handoff.

This is good old-fashioned copyright infringement, with no ambiguity at all. And not only are you wrong, you're being a dick about it. What do you have against the author of the original game?

In other news...

[Chapter80 (926879)]

In other news, Chinese hackers finally figured out a way to get tech savvy people to "click that link", without sending a fake greeting card, ad for prescription meds, or an important fake announcement from Bank of America or Paypal. Make it a copyright issue and get it posted onto Slashdot.

I hope there are no vulnerabilities in Flash.

Re:

[ta bu shi da yu (687699)]

That still makes no sense. Copyright does work like that.

Re:

[MrNaz (730548)]

Umm... dude, reread your two posts before that one. They're about as choc full of content as kdawson's head.

Re:

[ta bu shi da yu (687699)]

Interesting.

Comment 1: That's not how copyright works. No explanation of why.
Comment 2: Really? How so?
Comment 3: Bad summary.
Comment 4: Actually, copyright does work that way.
Comment 5 (your comment): I have nothing to say, but I'll try and take you down a peg or two by making an inane comment.

The bottom line is: you haven't actually contributed anything yourself. Reread your own comment - it's not exactly full of information - interest or insightful.

Re:Copyright doesn't work like that

[Workaphobia (931620)]

Quantum, I think you forgot to log out and post anonymously before trolling, or perhaps you have some sort of split personality. Please explain what you're talking about.

Re:Don't get mad, get even

[Ma8thew (861741)]

I would suggest that is not sound legal advice. Maybe it would be, up until the bit where you say they should use Olympic copyrighted stuff. I think that would result in only the lawyers getting any money out of this.

Re:Don't get mad, get even

[1u3hr (530656)]

Put up some copyrighted Olympic stuff to the advantage of your business, have a link explaining what you are doing.

Right. Because when the IOC sues you, "they did it first" is a perfect defence.

Re:So let me get this straight

[One Childish N00b (780549)]

It's OK for Scrabulous to essentially copy Scrabble because you can't copyright or patent game rules, but it's not OK to copy this game?

You are looking at two different uses of the word 'copy', or rather, at two different levels of copying. Scrabulous copies the rules of Scrabble in a game developed by different people, and if there was a lawsuit for every internet game that - to put it mildly - took a great deal of inspiration from another, none of us would be able to move for the boxes full of litigation papers. This, on the other hand, is different, because it copies actual code and graphics from the original. You cannot legally protect game rules, but you can legally protect code and artwork.

There is also an irony issue here, in that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has always gone after people even vaguely infringing *it's* copyright with all the teeth-baring viciousness of a rabid attack dog, so to have a website associated with them involved in blatant copyright infringement is more than a little amusing, but that takes a back seat to the difference between the actual legal issues of the two.

Re:So let me get this straight

[1u3hr (530656)]

Don't forget that copyright is ridiculous when it applies to the RIAA and MPAA, but it's incredibly important when it applies to flash games and the GPL. This isn't the first set of blatant hypocrisy around these parts.

Please name the posters that have demonstrated this hypocrisy. Fiding posts FROM DIFFERENT PEOPLE that are inconsistent is not unexpected when there are upwards of one million members.

Re:

[rfunches (800928)]

Let's try that argument out again, with a small difference:

Since the original OTA television show is FREE and the copied television show is FREE nobody is losing or gaining here so I don't see a big problem with it.

Let's say the original show is "Firefly." I create a work called "CowboyNeal in Space." I shoot some of my own scenes with their own dialogue and characters, but for the most part "CowboyNeal in Space" still uses scenes, music, dialog, CG from "Firefly." Some of those copied scenes reference th