Why? Four words: Cease and Desist Order

Within the coming few days, all material pertaining to The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, Bullseye, Russian Roulette, and High Rollers will be removed from our website. It's unfortunate but when you consider how long they have survived for what will be almost seven years, it's still a nice feather to have in your cap.

We thank all of our fans, as well as people within the entertainment industry who've supported us.

http://www.flashgameshows.com

-Dan Berger
FLASHGames²

The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, Bullseye, Russian Roulette, and High Rollers

--One of these things is not like the other. Is there a connection between RR and the H-Q games?

'T any rate, thanks very much for the fun these games have provided us.

DAMN! I guess Sony played hardball with you Dazztardly, like they did with JoyTube when they discovered clones of WOF and J! on JoyTube's site.

I too enjoyed the TJW, TTD, Bullseye ,HR and RR games on the site, and thank you for bring them to game shows fans all across the world wide web.

I am looking forward to new games soon.

For one thing, The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, and Bullseye were all Barry-Enright, not H-Q games.

The one that surprised me was High Rollers. The other four have connections to Sony; I wasn't aware that HR had a Sony connection.

Somewhat roundabout, but yes it does now. H-Q to Orion to MGM to Sony.

I think we had mentioned this before, but it deserves repeating:


If Sony plans to make their own versions of these games, then I can understand a C&D order. But if Sony has no plans to rerun/remake the shows nor make their own computer versions of these games (especially if they weren't the original owners of the shows), then why go through the trouble, even when you never intended to make a dime off of it?

Sony needs to lay off the easy targets and go after those who illegally download their music or videotape their movies in the theaters. 'Nuff Said!!!

Simple, they feel like waving their d*ck around. Others companies have done it before. Nothing anyone can really do about it.

The best thing for the world would be for someone who gets hit with one of these lawsuits to question authority and countersue. I know there's a culture of fear and backscratching out there, but one voice to stand up and object would possibly set a much-needed, much-delayed precedent. A court of law should decide this, not a corporation.

"Question authority"? You're kidding, right?

Yes, it's true that no one thinks that Dan, Chris & Co. were out to steal from Sony, and no, there's nothing for Sony to gain in ordering the site to come down — any more than there was anything for King World to gain in going after people who made Hollywood Squares fan sites not long ago. But Sony owns the rights, period, and the authority you want to question comes from copyright and trademark law. Yeah, they're being jerks, but you're seriously deluded if you think that a court wouldn't back up their right to be jerks.

I'm not a law student by any means, but how do you countersue a corporation when no lawsuit has been filed in the first place?

The phrase "...who gets hit with one of these lawsuits..." should have been a clue. :-) Obviously the Flashgames folks haven't been hit with an actual lawsuit, they've just been threatened with one (or hit with a potential one, if you prefer).

I feel sorry for Flashgames...this just goes back more to the Greed of TV channels and companies,why are they holding onto rights for shows that are honestly off the air? I think the creators of Flashgames should counter and file a complaint to sony corporate,or whomever and find out who is making the decisions about this kind of stuff...because theres no reason to go around attacking small sites when there are a lot more bigger problems with as someone above mentioned earlier Pirating and all that other kind of stuff,I can see maybe a current show thats on the air that theyd like to hold onto rights for,but TTD,HR....? I mean come on those shows are way older and it dosent seem like they are coming back in any revamped form.

What I don't understand is why they decide to say something NOW, when they could have (and probably should have, if they were going to) done so years ago when the site was first launched.

Someone probably wants a promotion now.

This is totally gonna be a popcorn-worthy thread.

/it's their IP, folks
//yes, Sony sucks
///but it's their IP

What's ironic is that the underlying concepts of the games are adaptations based on games that were around long before television.

Medium with extra butter, please.
IP = Internet Provider? But wouldn't someone at Sony have to initiate the C&D? I'm confused.

Intellectual property.

-Jason

I was going to keep out of this, but the following is too absurd to go unchallenged.

This makes no sense at all. The "money" aspect is a non-starter. What makes one form of intellectual property an easier target than another? They're all illegal. Sony is completely in the right to protect their interest, even if that means they're going to take the ball and go home.

It's easier to whine and mount an "us vs. them" David and Goliath type of thing where Sony are a bunch of right asshats for picking on the little guy, rather than accepting of the facts that Sony can do whatever they want to within the bounds of the law in the name of protecting their property.

/One jumbo kettle korn and a large Diet Pepsi, please.

Actually, since when have doing something completely legal and being an asshat been mutually exclusive? ;-)

Thanks for the games. I will cherish them like they were collector's items.

So...true. I don't cheer for those taking either strong David or Goliath-type stances in the IP wars. This C&D action by Sony should surprise absolutely no one. While the action is a fully legal move, I shake my virtual head at Sony.

Kids, there may be an allure to being "David" on this-here Intertubes, but the energy would be better spent doing something constructive. Oh well.

RIP Games of FG^2. You Will be missed.

Well This had to Happen. Wish it didn't though. I remember on their (Old)forums that If a company (Sony in this case) finds fault with said product, It'd just get removed. Yep that's the Long arm for ya. I don't see any reason, fighting for this. I'm pretty sure we all remember what happened to that one guy who had his site removed due to a C&D and Then tried to Defend his work. (Not saying How ) And just got into deeper trouble.

Well anyway I did Enjoy the games, and wish you guys best of luck with whatever you do.





/Sorry if i sound late to the party.

I know I'm a little late, but I just got back home. That really stinks, especially with all the work put into them. Seven years is a good run for those games, though.

I have not one idea what you are possibly referring to.

Sounds like Ben Schumin, who ran a Squares fan page during the show's first and/or second season. Someone referenced to it earlier in the thread.

I think I'm going to be the one to at least bring a small positive spin on this topic, especially since it sounds like some of us our eulogizing something that isn't entirely gone. Yes, I think the fine folks over a Sony's legal department are morons (to put it lightly), and it's a great disservice to the fans who not only spent the hours putting together the code to create the games, as well as the fans who ejoyed played the games on the site as well.

It's not a total loss for FlashGames, it's just a setback. Yes, let's mourn the loss of some great material, but we still have a handful of great games to play over at FG. I myself still try to challenge my personal best on the Concentration car games, Scrabble Sprint, and I've yet been able to get a single word right on the Caesar's Challenge game. I'm sure there are many other games that in due time can be created to kinda re-bolster the roster, but that's for the mighty webmasters over at FG to decide. :-)

What exactly happened there?

Ya never know, in the near future maybe Sony will turn to FlashGames to develop something that can make them some internets moneys.

No they won't... If they wanted to do it, wouldn't they have approached FlashGames with such a proposition already?

I don't think Ben is the one William's referring to, because Ben didn't get into "deeper trouble" trying to defend himself. He merely declared King World attorney Marci Shuster to be She Who Is The Cause Of All That Is Evil In The World™ and went completely nuts. :-)

William's description sounds more like Jay, whose trials and tribulations begin here.

Not if Sony doesn't think that this is the right time to do it. Granted, it's a longshot, but if Sony someday wants an official version of one of its properties, who knows? Certainly, if Dan, Chris & Co. comply with the C&D, it would increase the chances that they'd be the ones asked to do something in the future.

D'oh!

Right. I knew it was one of those... ;)

At the same time it can mark them as a mark of sorts to hold under a microscope rather than cooperate with them.

I'll cite this non-game show case as precedent: A key website for media discussion got a C&D from Arbitron several years regarding usage of ratings and a list of conditions that would be fulfilled to get a valid license. Even though they complied with Arbitron's demands, Arbitron put more restrictions on them while letting sites that would be harder marks slip by without a thought. The original site now has their Arbitron license, but not until leadership of the site passed to new ownership after a bizarre situation regarding next-of-kin status after its business principal died in a freak accident without a will while the site with the other principals is still looked at by Arbitron under a microscope.

Given how FlashGames helped Fremantle with the PYL board on Gameshow Marathon, could Fremantle be looking the other way on their end? Just something to wonder...

Sony's free to keep a closer eye on Flashgames², to ask the owners to work on future projects, or to do whatever else it wants as long as it's following the law. But you said that if Sony had wanted to ask the Flashgames² staff to work on an official project, it would have already, and I was merely pointing out that that wasn't necessarily so.

FWIW, The games under the C&D are now officially toast:

Lightning Struck the Bullseye Games,
The Joker's Wild Game Has Faced the Devil,
The Dragon Flamed Tic Tac Dough,
Russian Roulette is Shot,
And the Big Numbers encountered a Bad Roll.

I should have clarified what I said: Such a precedent could lead Sony to basically bully FlashGames and lead to shockwaves that will effect a lot more than FlashGames. What if Fremantle ends up cracking down and forces things such as the Money Cards (or the PYL and Blockbusters Gold Run games at Pacdude) because they'd follow Sony's example? What if there's a fear of anyone wanting to make any game based off of a game show for fear of lawyers intruding even with vague enough differences? Regarding the example I gave earlier, it is pretty much verboten to say something as simple as, citing something in your neck of the woods, "WHAM and WBEE are #1-2 again" for fear of Arbitron suing the site even if Arbitron doesn't know of its existance.

The IP Wars could at least use some diplomacy and backscratching and, dare I say it, bribery. Sending out C&D's and having everyone fall to their knees only makes corporations and lawyers look like bullies and asshats and leads to a greater cynicism by the common people against corporations (especially those with ties to entertainment) and lawyer and even a greater cynicism on the state of the US because you rarely if ever hear stories of this coming out of Europe/Canada/Japan.

America needs copyright reform, badly. Clinton punted and Bush is oblivious, who do I vote for who will stop this madness?

You're really, really paranoid.

I mean dude, it's just games, it's not life or death.

In his defense, copyright issue cover much much more than just games.

Actually, had you read the post to which I linked earlier, you would have seen that indeed, Fremantle has gone after another site for a similar offense. Did it suck? Sure, but guess what? The world is still standing.

As to the larger question: should copyright law be changed? If a site's getting in trouble for quoting a small portion of a ratings report, yeah -- that sounds to me like fair use. (I'd actually like to know more about that case.) But the fact is that you're not going to get changes to copyright law until you find politicians who cannot be bribed, or someone both more able and more willing to pay bigger bribes to Congress than Fremantle, Sony, and their ilk. As a citizen since birth not only of this country but also of the state of New York -- where the only difference between Democratic and Republican politicians is the source of their bribes -- I can state with certainty that the first group does not exist in any shape, manner or form. I also suspect that the second group does not include Guys Who Like to Make Free Internet Versions of Game Shows, and that in any event, this probably isn't going to arouse enough interest to make the best test case.

Ah, it sucks that some of FG's finest have to go. But, if Sony says it's gotta go, sadly, it does, and there's not really anything within the rule of law that can be done about it. I just wonder why they decided, seven years in, that suddenly FG was an issue worthy of a cease & desist order. Ah, the whims of corporate oligopolies will likely always lay well beyond my fathoming.

Oh, BTW, Scrabble Sprint = Internet crack. It's a good thing the vast majority of flash is disabled on my work comp. Thanks for all the quality content, guys.

Probably some bored attorney who needed some busy work, found FlashGames on Google, and sent out a letter for the sake of work. What happens the day when everyone in America has been hit with a C&D and everybody is too afraid to do anything, does our lawyered-up nation go to pieces? Would any lawyers possibly lurking in here want to comment?

Before all of this, I was considering buying a Vaio when I go shopping for a new laptop soon. I know that $1000 is nothing compared to billions, but I now know that Sony will not get my money when I make that purchase. I can't do a full-out boycott though...their headphones are just too durable;).

...okay, now you're definitely overdoing it.

If you're going to refuse to buy a Sony laptop because Sony's involved in overzealous enforcement of intellectual property rights, you'd better not buy any laptop with Windows on it. You know how overbearing Microsoft's DRM can be, after all, especially in Vista. Better get a Mac... oh, wait, you can't do that either. Aside from the presence of DRM in iTunes, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on the board of Disney, and no one's ever accused Disney's attorneys of being lenient on IP matters.

In other words, enjoy your new Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux. :-)

To put a different spin on Zinkin's last comment:

The big problem with outright boycotting something the size of Sony is that, quite literally, the left hand doesn't pay attention to what the right hand is doing. The Sony music group screams bloody murder about digital rights management while the Sony consumer electronics group sells just the kind of thing to kill digital rights. The Disney theme parks get accused of discriminating against gays while someone who is positively flaming appears as a contestant on an ABC game show. Etcetera, etcetera.

If you are serious about the boycott, quit watching their shows. Not buying the computer really doesn't do anything important.

...not that that's a bad thing. :)

How did you know what was tops on my list;) Regardless of what I buy, it's probably ending up partitioned to run Linux given how buggy Vista is, the Vista ordeal a good friend had led him to do that after only a week.

As for corporations being so big that they contradict themselves, I cite the standoff between Time Warner Cable and assorted ".2" CW affiliates in that Time Warner was depriving access to Time Warner's (partial) product.

/and in all of this, the CEO's are oblivious and don't know anything of what goes on...
//Maybe it's time to spend $52.47 of my own money to get into the shareholder meeting;)

Seeing how this has turned into a discourse on how government corruption/indifference and the draconian reaction of intellectual property vis a vis to new technology have fused into something depressing and un-American, I'll try to keep this as short as I can.

The site in particular is Radio-Info, and what happened was this. When the website went through a much ballyhooed relaunch in mid-2003, Arbitron within 48 hours sent them a letter that flagged them for things such as mentioning such phrases as "KXXX is down to a 3.1 this book" or even linking to newspaper articles on ratings because it'd be a violation of their agreements with the press even though Arbitron had never subjected any website to this before (or, to my knowledge) since. Radio-Info had applied for a license and Arbitron had wanted to see "meaningful content" before granting them said license.

In the ensuing period, just about EVERY message board on the media clamped down on mentioning ANY ratings for fear of getting the wrath of Arbitron or Nielsen or even smaller insignificant companies. A year later, Arbitron sent another warning shot, solely to Radio-Info, that barred even posting rankings of who did what. Of course, Radio-Info did everything Arbitron said in the hopes it'd expedite the granting of the license though that didn't come.

Eventually, a convoluted situation happened in which the site's business principal died in a freak accident and the site was given to his parents via probate law and his parents fired the other principals. The actual Radio-Info website did get their license...nearly four years and a controversial ownership change later when "meaningful content" did take place, the site the original principals run (RadioInsight) still lacks a license...and all that other stuff.

/this is the stuff that could use an off-topic board...

Just remember one thing... even if the man won this round, once stuff is on da net, it's everywhere. In other words, those games are fun and will remain fun for many years to come.

<rant>
Since all information is "leased", the "owner" (as in Sony) can do whatever they want with their content (since we don't actually own anything anymore) even if it means flushing it down the toilet into oblivion. Do you think that Sony wants to resurrect these games? (I doubt it but if you don't protect your property, you can lose it). That's related to screwed up copyright and patent rules we live with today. Sony could've placed a modified license to Flashgames for creating games with Sony's IP but I guess that would've been too much trouble but a Cease and Desist Order is plenty easy.

I'm actually pissed about this but nothing can be done about it since nothing was meant to harm Sony but to emphasize that these games were fun (and a lot of time was spent designing them in the first place). Sony never gave a damn to create something themselves since it may not generate enough $$$ to even make it worthwhile. Oh yeah, 7 years would be enough time for Sony to make a kickass Bullseye game by now.
</rant>

You didn't make one single bit of damned sense up there. Unsurprisingly.

You do understand that your "in other words" is a complete tangent from the point you claim you're restating. It's the same as saying "I like the color blue. In other words, Pac-Man is fun.".



Not with the way current copyright law is structured in this country. Sony can sit on Bullseye for the next 50 years, and never once do anything with it, and it's still Sony's property.



You obviously don't think things through. Yes, Sony *could* grant FlashGames a license, but that would probably cost FlashGames an awful lot of money, which would undoubtedly be more than any independent outfit could afford. But even then, FlashGames created the property pre-license, so if your the studio, why negotiate with someone *already* infringing on your content when you can just fire off a C&D.




Whoa there, you shifted points again. I'd at least attempt to respond to what you said, but I don't really have the first damn clue what you were trying to say here. At least with a lot of the other stuff I can almost sort of make out a coherent point, but here? You lose, sir.



At some point, a Bullseye game might even have been pitched at a development meeting. And, more than likely, some overacheiving little MBA grad at the meeting promptly asked "Bullseye? You mean a darts game?". And that was that.

Well, it is a darts-based game in the UK. :)

On a more serious note, doesn't NBC Universal own the format rights to "Tic Tac Dough" and Sony just owns the 1978-86 shows and the associated logos, characters and music? Although NBCU owns the format (and would license any board/card/video/computer version of the format), would the use of logos/characters/music in the FLASH version be grounds for a C&D from Sony for that particular title?