German release/translation gaff

[Kolyana]

Oh god, *LET'S DO IT!*

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by krzysiek
Now we can flood them with e-mails like:

"Can I modify strength of Privateer form 1 to 2?"

I support this, but I'm afraid they want a written letter with a prepayed envelope just to reply... very "lawyer oriented" IMHO.

[ScottVib]

Awesome idea... anyone who edits anything should send them a seperate email asking for express permission to make the one change.

Something tells me Infogrames would get sick of that really quick...

[MarkG]

can someone translate the full thing?

thanks

[Adm.Naismith]

DanQ and MarkG, what's your opinion?

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
MarkG, I have enjoyed your (and DanQ) site for more of a couple of years. Usually I had liked a lot, sometime not, but I have a "positive feeling" with the site and its community in general.

So I hope you consider to shut down your file section: let's admit it , you are risking a legal action just for your support of the game, from the same people should award you two for yours efforts (and most of the game community, too).

I understand you risk to lost hits while removing mod/map files, but as the things are twisting you and everyone in Internet Game Community should step back from this kind of Civ 3 support.

Until Firaxis AND Infogrames clearly define what a fan can and what can't do with the game "largely editable" feature, I humbly suggest you to play the safe side.

Sorry if I quote myself, but I'll be happy to see Mark and Dan taking an official position about the "MOD & others files" and the "CIV 3 Strategy" area, considering the last two legal move of Infogrames.

Are you speaking with Firaxis/Infogrames to achieve some kind of legal, official permission to keep up that part of the site?

Are you taking personal financial risk just to keep up your right of expression?

Are you cooperating with others "fan sites" to manage this unbelivable mess?

Are you speaking with your lawyer right now at the phone?

Seriusly, I don't like the idea that the whole Apolyton site and Forum may suffer a sudden closure because of some stupid abuse of copyrights vs. what the same company mentioned on the game box

Would you please reassure me and all the others Apolytoner?

[MarkG]

First of files, i dont think there is any kind of issue with the strategy forum

As for the files, we contacted Firaxis yesterday, sending them the url of the files forum and asking them to notify us if there is a illegal file.
We have not recieved any note from Firaxis or Infogrames that there is an illegal file on our site.

[Lemming]

Originally posted by MarkG
can someone translate the full thing?

thanks

ok, i tried to translate the stuff, forgive me if there are any errors, english isn't my primary language...however it should be quite understandable;

------------------------------------------

Infogrames Statement

Hi alltogether! (Comment: Wow, how “buddy-like”)

During the last days we’ve received numerous questions and complaints regarding the unofficial Civ3-Translation-project. So we will explain the reasons for our actions in the following statement:

Generally we would like to say that we welcome ideas and concepts coming from fans and/or members of our community. We have already supported various projects in the past and will continue to do so in the future. However, in some cases – like the current translation project – we are forced to refuse any support.

The game Civilization III is, like many products of all kind, protected by copyright. Firaxis, who (directed by Sid Meier) has invented and created the game, is actually holding the rights. Now if someone wants to change parts of the product or to use parts of the product in any other ways as intended, the involved group or person has to ask for a written permission from the copyright holder or his legal representation (in this case Infogrames). This procedure should be common knowledge after all. For example no private person has tried to translate the latest Harry Potter novel into German and put it onto the internet, just because the English version comes out first. The author or his publisher would try to stop that for understable reasons. So this is also true for Civilization III. Certainly the creators of the translation project tried to reach Infogrames per Email – but that is no privilege to start the project without an appropriate permission. Regrettably the response time of these emails (email-adresses) is much longer than we would like it to be. However you can also contact us everytime by phone or mail. Unfortunately the project group didnt use one of these possibilities.

Our contract with Firaxis says that we have to take immediate action in case of any copyright violation, so we had to take the necessary legal steps. Because the initiators of the project are actually part of the Civilization-Community, we decided not to react with an interim order but only with an injunction order (I hope i got this right). This is the most lenient action we could have taken to preserve our and Firaxis’ claims. This injunction order was delivered (?) not only to the head of the fan-project but also to the operator of the website www.civ3.de, where we first read of the translation project. In both cases, Infogrames paid the costs which usually arise from an injunction order. We reached a settlement with the operator of the website, after he signed the injunction order and there are no further steps planned against him. Unfortunately the head of the project has only insufficiently signed the order and threatened multiple times to have a bad influence on the public mood in the forums, if we dont agree to his demands of taking back the injunction order. In his last Email he suggests to admit his own negligence if Infogrames publically apologizes for various points, which in the end have only arised because of his actions and not of ours, and if Infogrames considers hiring him as a community manager. But for us that’s out of question not only because of what has happened in the last few days.

Finally we want to say that we are sorry for the fact that a project, that in the end was started to help other Civilization-fans had to go this way...Moreover we are hoping that the project leader reconsiders his point of view, so that we dont have to take any further legal actions.

----------------------

BS if u ask me...

i didnt translate the last part...it was about the status of the german translation and they will do it much much better and that the work of the project team was rather incomplete...so why do they even care??

IG FU!!!

[Farmer Jimbo]

Silly naive me thought that this couldn't get any worse. How stupid could I have been! Even the rough systran translation of the newest infogrames.de announcement has several obvious new peices of information:

1.) We continue to hide behind the veil of protecting Sid and Firaxis (when we are really only trying to protect our second quarter earnings). Even though we claim we are protecting Sid and Firaxis, we will continue to insist that any communications go through us since we would rather that Sid and Firaxis know nothing about this.

2.) We will now start our campaign to slander Kai and the actions of the translation team. Our first step is to imply that by posting his project on our message board, and by sending us an email about it, he deliberately tried to hide the project from us knowing that we never read our email or discussion forums. We will also equate his actions with that of someone who sells pirate copies of Harry Potter books.

3.) We will also claim that the way we handled this was very mild and as kind and benevolent to our poor misguided Deutch fans. We will imply though that we can be very nasty very quickly if you don't all stop pestering us about this.

4.) We will come right out and say that the project itself was crap, and would never have amounted to anything approaching the glorious localized product you will buy in March. Further, you would have waited well beyond March anyway for the lackluster drivel that Kai and company was working on.

5.) Finally, thank you fans for all your support and don't ever dare bother us again or we will sue you for all your worth.

All the best
Infogrames.de

[Timeline]

What all this means for mod makers? Well, if you take it strictly and want to be safe, the next time you modify a text or graphic file of Civ3 you have to mail or better to write a letter or phone them.

Ahh, nope, I don't think so, not me.

If I do this I am *more* likely to be receiving a nice fine in the mail 2 months later. After all, this is how this German guy got into all this trouble in the first place . . . by informing IG. If he hadn't said anything they never would have known, or cared. - not that I am saying he shouldn't have done this, I just mean we should all learn from his experience.

IG will never get involved if you don't involve them IMHO.

[Timeline]

Thumbs Up Farmer Jimbo!

IG is a lazy, rotten, piece of trash . . . .

. . . . and I am only now beginning to see it.

[Robert]

beat me insult me call me names and all that,
but after reading this, I think I agree with IG.

translating is something completely different then modding btw.
don't by silly on that.

and again it's been shown: don't insult big companies, just sign their stuff or you'll have to pay much money. I don't see why you need a lawyner to sign such a thingy.

just put your authograph on it, return it and you're done.

again: insult me, beat me and call me all names you know.

[Timeline]

Well, I am not going to beat you CyberShy, you are entitled to your opinion, and this is a "civilized" forum after all .

But I am going to disagree with you . . . I think IG went to far, and I hope Meier steps in and corrects matters (fat chance, I know).

Like I said before, don't mess with big companies and they (usually) won't mess with you.

[Mergle]

I must say, I think the comparison to pirating a Harry Potter novel is off-beam. Kai and the others were not offering a ripped version of civ3 translated into German - they were offering a *mod* which could only be used if someone had bought an English-language version.

I don't think IG do themselves any favours with spurious comparisons like that.

That said, I think IG has a perfect right to protect its intellectual property. If they wish to monopolise translations, so be it. They did it in a very cack-handed fashion, however. They should simply have replied to Kai's email saying "please stop", and then set the (lawyer) dogs on him if he hadn't. Charging him for lawyer's fees is completely unnecessary.

I think they are making a bad decision business-wise, however. This treatment of the fans has convinced me, for one, not to buy civ3 (and I'm the sort of mug who bought CTP2 on the first day). I was vacillating after hearing mixed things about the game on the forum, but now my mind is made up. I'll buy MOO3 to show support for Quicksilver (who have been excellent communicators with the fans - something that makes me suspicious that Firaxis is so tight-lipped and everyone blames IG for everything- surely alan emrich can't have more clout than sid when negotiating with IG? If he can actso independently, why can't Firaxis), but other IG games are off my list.

I will observe that I'm not convinced IG would have won in court against Kai - the mod-friendly approach trumpeted by Firaxis up to now seems to me to at least suggest an implied licence. However, that argument no longer applies, as IG has made its position clear. I would strongly recommend anyone considering posting *any* mods on the Internet to think twice - IG has given you clear warning that it will not tolerate such things. In the absence of any implied or explicit licence, you will be slaughtered in court. There has been no indication from IG that it considers translations to be different from other sorts of mods.

I'm afraid that advice also applies to the Apolyton file store for mods. I think IG would have to be brain-dead to threaten to sue Apolyton, but I haven't seen a great deal of inspired PR from them recently.

[EEKthedog]

Bureaucrats!



Ok, so Infogrames say they defend Firaxis, but Dan just said they had nothing to do with it??

And trying to compare Harry Potter to civ3 is total bullcrap. If i were to change some characters or made other small adjustments to the book, and publized it on the web, i'd find myself in court the day after.
Firaxis (equiv. to J.R Rowling) supports and advertises with changing the "book"

[Ecthy]

After reading all this, I have decided to start my own tranlation project