The mass exodus

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Your Humble Narrator
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Re: The mass exodus

#41 Post by Your Humble Narrator » Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:09 pm

Instead of requiring notes during the game, perhaps we can agree to publish post-game reflections, whatever length each person is comfortable with. I remember doing that in the last.

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Re: The mass exodus

#42 Post by LeonWalras » Wed Oct 03, 2018 11:35 pm

ssorenn wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:17 pm
I’ve gotten games, just getting quality games is tough. There’s only people like you left.
What do you mean, people like me?

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Re: The mass exodus

#43 Post by Fishstudios » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:36 am

bo_sox48 wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:10 pm
Diplomacy is copyrighted. Hasbro holds a trademark on the name as well if I remember correctly. Selling something we do not own is illegal without licensing rights, which were given to Avalon Hill by the creator of the game and have been redistributed where they see fit, but not here. Hosting it without cost is not only legal but widely encouraged because it's free advertising. Avalon Hill and Hasbro are smart enough to recognize that out of the 100,000 users on our site and countless others on other sites, some of us will buy the board game from them.

If you have an actual question for me, ask away, but the point of this is that exchanging money over a game over webDiplomacy is not allowed. If you want to exchange money over a game without using webDiplomacy, feel free.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Whether or not you're making money is irrelevant as far as the legality of the site is concerned. Distributing copyrighted material without permission is copyright infringement, regardless of whether you're profiting from it. There are, of course, exceptions such as "fair use" (use for education, parody, news reporting, et cetera), but I doubt this site constitutes fair use.

Of course, in practice monetization likely makes a difference when it comes to the copyright holder's decision whether to actually enforce their copyright, and that may well factor into Avalon HIll's decision to not bother the site.

Furthermore, game mechanics are, as far as I'm aware, a shaky part of copyright law (at least in America-ish jurisdictions). Obviously the actual game (as in, the specific artwork on the board, the exact wording of the rule book, et cetera) is copyrighted, but it's not as clear that you can copyright (or patent, or otherwise claim ownership of) the game mechanics themselves. Here are some sources (admittedly just obtained by googling "copyright board games"):

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/interna ... 77320.html
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249 ... ademarks-a

So this site might not actually be infringing on copyright at all. The trademark is still an issue, but if it actually started causing problems it could be dealt with by changing the name of the site, and I think you might possibly be able to argue that it's being used as an example of "descriptive fair use".
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Re: The mass exodus

#44 Post by Hellenic Riot » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:06 pm

Oh for sure, you can just change the name of the game/site to get around board game copyright rules, the million "Word Games" that totally aren't Scrabble that you can find online prove that. The problem is that, unlike Scrabble, Diplomacy is already a very niche board game, and making it harder to find this place for the few people trying to find in the first place is very unlikely to be of benefit.

And, of course, just because legally you're in the right doesn't mean that you can afford to fight a lawsuit or be drowned in paperwork.
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Re: The mass exodus

#45 Post by MajorMitchell » Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:08 am

I would not want to play Diplomacy for money & that option would not entice me to return from my latest dummy spit in early August. & cosequent, current "sabbatical". Briefly looking in to see who sent me a good bye pm & thanks to the one person who did, & make this one post doesn't cause the Most Lovely Imperiousness The Beautiful Fire Breathing MemSahib to win her bet " that I'd be back" .. I'd have to join a game.plus I'm away from home & watching the Bathurst car race & visiting Princess Estelle. Bye bye for a while....
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Re: The mass exodus

#46 Post by TrPrado » Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:50 am

I don’t know, I’ll count it as her winning the bet.
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Re: The mass exodus

#47 Post by bo_sox48 » Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:46 pm

Fishstudios wrote:
Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:36 am
bo_sox48 wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:10 pm
Diplomacy is copyrighted. Hasbro holds a trademark on the name as well if I remember correctly. Selling something we do not own is illegal without licensing rights, which were given to Avalon Hill by the creator of the game and have been redistributed where they see fit, but not here. Hosting it without cost is not only legal but widely encouraged because it's free advertising. Avalon Hill and Hasbro are smart enough to recognize that out of the 100,000 users on our site and countless others on other sites, some of us will buy the board game from them.

If you have an actual question for me, ask away, but the point of this is that exchanging money over a game over webDiplomacy is not allowed. If you want to exchange money over a game without using webDiplomacy, feel free.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Whether or not you're making money is irrelevant as far as the legality of the site is concerned. Distributing copyrighted material without permission is copyright infringement, regardless of whether you're profiting from it. There are, of course, exceptions such as "fair use" (use for education, parody, news reporting, et cetera), but I doubt this site constitutes fair use.

Of course, in practice monetization likely makes a difference when it comes to the copyright holder's decision whether to actually enforce their copyright, and that may well factor into Avalon HIll's decision to not bother the site.

Furthermore, game mechanics are, as far as I'm aware, a shaky part of copyright law (at least in America-ish jurisdictions). Obviously the actual game (as in, the specific artwork on the board, the exact wording of the rule book, et cetera) is copyrighted, but it's not as clear that you can copyright (or patent, or otherwise claim ownership of) the game mechanics themselves. Here are some sources (admittedly just obtained by googling "copyright board games"):

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/interna ... 77320.html
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249 ... ademarks-a

So this site might not actually be infringing on copyright at all. The trademark is still an issue, but if it actually started causing problems it could be dealt with by changing the name of the site, and I think you might possibly be able to argue that it's being used as an example of "descriptive fair use".
If we were to get sued by a major industry player with a sum of cash exceeding what we have (practically a guarantee), fighting the lawsuit would be monumentally annoying and costly. The site would not survive a well-funded frivolous lawsuit. As such, we don’t want to invite one.

Likewise, as you pointed out, we are not only governed by American law. Other nations’ laws have changed what we are allowed to do numerous times in the past and will in the future. Being perfectly legal in the United States means very little when your site is not hosted there and your players visit you from all over the globe.

All told, when kestas founded this site, it was not expected to be as big as it was. It was open source code and the vast majority of online Diplomacy sites either used kestas’s code or were influenced in their code choices by it. His purpose was to make Diplomacy playable online, specifically but not exclusively on webDiplomacy, and making money off of it was not an important part of that equation for him. That is why we are 100% free to play and funded by completely optional donations and why we do not run ads of any kind. We have been offered significant sums of money from players, investors, and complete strangers to turn this site into a profitable machine and have said no without hesitation every single time. That is why we will never monetize this site. It has nothing to do with laws and everything to do with a commitment kestas made when he founded the site.

Gambling isn’t allowed on here because we’re not dumb enough to try that again after the last tournament involving money ended with a TD disappearing off the site with the prize winnings that he was supposed to distribute. Maybe I should have led with that.
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Re: The mass exodus

#48 Post by ssorenn » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:14 pm

bo_sox48 wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:46 pm
Fishstudios wrote:
Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:36 am
bo_sox48 wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:10 pm
Diplomacy is copyrighted. Hasbro holds a trademark on the name as well if I remember correctly. Selling something we do not own is illegal without licensing rights, which were given to Avalon Hill by the creator of the game and have been redistributed where they see fit, but not here. Hosting it without cost is not only legal but widely encouraged because it's free advertising. Avalon Hill and Hasbro are smart enough to recognize that out of the 100,000 users on our site and countless others on other sites, some of us will buy the board game from them.

If you have an actual question for me, ask away, but the point of this is that exchanging money over a game over webDiplomacy is not allowed. If you want to exchange money over a game without using webDiplomacy, feel free.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Whether or not you're making money is irrelevant as far as the legality of the site is concerned. Distributing copyrighted material without permission is copyright infringement, regardless of whether you're profiting from it. There are, of course, exceptions such as "fair use" (use for education, parody, news reporting, et cetera), but I doubt this site constitutes fair use.

Of course, in practice monetization likely makes a difference when it comes to the copyright holder's decision whether to actually enforce their copyright, and that may well factor into Avalon HIll's decision to not bother the site.

Furthermore, game mechanics are, as far as I'm aware, a shaky part of copyright law (at least in America-ish jurisdictions). Obviously the actual game (as in, the specific artwork on the board, the exact wording of the rule book, et cetera) is copyrighted, but it's not as clear that you can copyright (or patent, or otherwise claim ownership of) the game mechanics themselves. Here are some sources (admittedly just obtained by googling "copyright board games"):

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/interna ... 77320.html
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249 ... ademarks-a

So this site might not actually be infringing on copyright at all. The trademark is still an issue, but if it actually started causing problems it could be dealt with by changing the name of the site, and I think you might possibly be able to argue that it's being used as an example of "descriptive fair use".
If we were to get sued by a major industry player with a sum of cash exceeding what we have (practically a guarantee), fighting the lawsuit would be monumentally annoying and costly. The site would not survive a well-funded frivolous lawsuit. As such, we don’t want to invite one.

Likewise, as you pointed out, we are not only governed by American law. Other nations’ laws have changed what we are allowed to do numerous times in the past and will in the future. Being perfectly legal in the United States means very little when your site is not hosted there and your players visit you from all over the globe.

All told, when kestas founded this site, it was not expected to be as big as it was. It was open source code and the vast majority of online Diplomacy sites either used kestas’s code or were influenced in their code choices by it. His purpose was to make Diplomacy playable online, specifically but not exclusively on webDiplomacy, and making money off of it was not an important part of that equation for him. That is why we are 100% free to play and funded by completely optional donations and why we do not run ads of any kind. We have been offered significant sums of money from players, investors, and complete strangers to turn this site into a profitable machine and have said no without hesitation every single time. That is why we will never monetize this site. It has nothing to do with laws and everything to do with a commitment kestas made when he founded the site.

Gambling isn’t allowed on here because we’re not dumb enough to try that again after the last tournament involving money ended with a TD disappearing off the site with the prize winnings that he was supposed to distribute. Maybe I should have led with that.
You sound like a schmuck. Why would a lawsuit from Hasbro be frivolous if brought against any diplomacy site. ? Stop speaking, you end up sounding stupider every time you speak.
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Re: The mass exodus

#49 Post by ghug » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:46 pm

In addition to any concerns over Hasbro, there are also laws related to being a platform for gambling in numerous jurisdictions, and nobody on the mod team has the time, the inclination, or the knowledge to sort such things out. Organizing gambling on the forum is a no go, and that's that.

If you want to quietly arrange diplomacy for money on your own time, that's your prerogative, though frankly, I think it's a pretty terrible idea. It's quite easy to create a scenario in which someone gains more (say half, or slightly less than half) by throwing a solo with a promise of reimbursement than they do by playing to their actual win condition (say a three or four way draw). Differing incentives ruin games. And even if you banned any discussion of the money within negotiations, which has its own issues in that limiting diplomacy is no fun, the whole point of playing a game for money is to raise people's investment in it. I challenge anyone who's spent months playing a single high-quality game of Diplomacy to tell me that everyone wasn't already sufficiently emotionally invested in it. There's a reason this is known as the game that ruins friendships.
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Re: The mass exodus

#50 Post by Fishstudios » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:48 pm

ssorenn wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:14 pm
You sound like a schmuck. Why would a lawsuit from Hasbro be frivolous if brought against any diplomacy site. ? Stop speaking, you end up sounding stupider every time you speak.
That seems uncalled for? While in this case the outcome is unclear enough that the lawsuit wouldn't obviously be considered "frivolous", there's also a reasonable argument that the site isn't infringing (at least in the US, where Hasbro is headquartered), and I assume the choice of the word "frivolous" in this case was just intended to mean "a lawsuit that wouldn't ultimately win" rather than "a lawsuit that clearly has no merit whatsoever."

Obviously, though, bo_sox48 is right that regardless of the merit of the lawsuit, it would probably be very bad for a site like this anyways, and I agree that bringing money (especially gambling) into things is probably a bad idea.
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Re: The mass exodus

#51 Post by ssorenn » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:37 pm

1. It’s already understood that no ones going to gamble
2. Gambling has happened on the site before
3. Bo is a POS, who likes to sound like he may have a clue. He doesn’t
4. Bo may be an admin, but he’s a known cheater on this site. SMH
5. No one wants a lawsuit here. We just want to play the game.
6. Bo is a POS
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Re: The mass exodus

#52 Post by WarLegend » Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:44 pm

Damn, did Bo take a piss in your cereal or something?
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Re: The mass exodus

#53 Post by bo_sox48 » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:14 pm

My multiaccount back in 2011 when I was on the site for two weeks and ran out of points is your best talking point against me?

Ssorenn, you have clearly decided that I am satan and don’t seem to want to have a conversation, as has been your attitude toward me for many years. I’m sorry that I pissed in your cereal. Can we be friends now?

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Re: The mass exodus

#54 Post by ghug » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:16 pm

Hey, let's not forget about the time kestas banned you because he thought you were a spam bot.
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Re: The mass exodus

#55 Post by Valis2501 » Mon Oct 08, 2018 5:42 am

Praise kestas
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Re: The mass exodus

#56 Post by TrPrado » Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:25 pm

I mean he’s still definitely a spambot, he’s just a spambot we can’t ban.
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Re: The mass exodus

#57 Post by abgemacht » Fri Oct 12, 2018 11:23 pm

@ss
If you want to play with some quality players, you should join us in Marlborough in February!

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Re: The mass exodus

#58 Post by Wusti » Fri Oct 12, 2018 11:43 pm

Is this game (sans gambling) going to actually happen or what?

Also I thought everyone knew bo was a supercilious dickwad - how is it conversation worthy?

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Re: The mass exodus

#59 Post by Jamiet99uk » Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:19 am

I bet you a thousand Antarctician Dollars that it doesn't.

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Re: The mass exodus

#60 Post by ssorenn » Sat Oct 13, 2018 5:24 pm

It seems the politics forum, is on the verge of death.

I’d also like to know, what the capital raise dollars went to. If it was this new forum, seems like an utter waste. Is there anyone still doing DEV on the site now that ATC has backed away?

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