Scott Stilphen
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Posts posted by Scott Stilphen
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I didn't say you ever called anyone a Nazi.What I meant was I never used any spiteful comments, such as your comment (and from a moderator, no less).
I just want to know why you always wave DP flags and why are you so angry all the time ?I have no absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I contribute to both sites fairly equally; in fact I'm much more active on AA's message boards, but it's clear you have some issue with DP in general. And I gather from your Nazi comment and your sig that you're a pacifist, right? Right....and I'm the 'angry' one....
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LOL - what spiteful comments? Like the one you just made to me?
Sorry, but I've never called anyone a Nazi. In fact, you might be the first person here to ever do so. At least you'll be remembered for something... What I want to know is, why do people refuse to admit when they're wrong
It's easy- I'll start. I'm wrong to even bother replying to your post.
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Scott, I don't know why you want protect John and Sean's interests so much.Yeah, I don't know either
I'm not - I'm merely pointing out why Mark is blatantly wrong in regards to the copyright issue (something he seems adverse to admitting).
The company Commavid is DEAD. All copyrights do is protect profits. Clearly they want to profit off of someone else's ideas otherwise they would not care. Obviously is more than just the love of the hobby.Not dead- under new ownership
Copyrights can also help a product's (or company's) image from being damaged by knock-offs.
Mark sold his products before any of this came to light with no intent to infringe on anybody and should not be required to shut down.Mark, Sean and John all want to make profits. Let them earn it by producing the best product.
The orginal run of carts maybe, but definitely not the multicarts.
Sean and John bought some stuff off of someone that was part of a Dead Company. This is merely a private transaction and doesn't give them any automatic copyright protection- no public record of anything.Wrong. Some off that "stuff" they bought includes the copyrights to all of CommaVid's properties.
'nuff said.
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Sniderman- the difference between those is one was a moral request (Thomas) and the other is a legal one.
Why don't you go back to your Digital Press World where you belong.If Albert and Alex feel that way, then I'll stop posting here. But coming from you though, that means nothing, so I'll continue to express my opinions.
I started making the Magicard six monthsbefore they announced anything.
Which is why your copyright search didn't show that they currently own the rights! It's not 2001 any more...
Submitting an application doesn't mean a thing. I have submitted hundreds that were denied for one reason or another.Since their application wasn't denied, and seeing there's no reason to expect it will be, it does mean something, especially to you.
Has all of this gone over your head?? It was on a BARE circuit board. There was no NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT!! Game companies put thecopyright notice on the case, which is valid notification. Atari put it on
the ROM chips, which is valid. Computer Magic sold a BARE board, with
a standard EPROM with NO NOTICE. Is that clear or do you need a more
detailed answer??
CommaVid sold Magicard as labeled carts with manuals. The label states "Program content © 1982 CommaVid"The manual states "Copyright 1981 by Computer Magic, Inc. So it sounds like all you have is a copy (and we all know copies are worthless).
Also, the last page of the manual states a patent was pending on the design. I'm guessing you simply duplicated the board design with your copies, right? Strike two...
Obviously, you have trouble understanding what you are reading, so I will explain. The above is true if the works were DONE AFTER 1989. The MagiCard was done in the very early 80's. So, they had to conform toSTRICT notification. Do you understand that??
Any reasonable person who , after reading that entire page, would understand why your arguement is pointless. That 1976 law comes into play if you're trying to establish any copyright ownership b/c the item doesn't have any notice on it. Read my last post (again), and read the info on that site (again). In this case, there's no question of ownership - there's no doubt as to if it was copyrighted then, and there's no doubt as to who owns that copyright now - case closed. But don't take my word, or Len's, or John's or Sean's....go spend another $500
Like I said, have Sean STOP violating copyright law and I will stop making the Multicart...that is very simple to understand, isn't it??Sure, except you're asking the wrong guy
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Which year are you talking about 2002 or 2001??Well, since it's the year 2003 now, that would mean the last CGE was in 2002. Do you know who the president of the U.S. is?
Despite what they tell you, they can not file for a copyright. Again, I have THOUSANDS of copyrights. I have a large law firm representing me and I know copyright law inside out.Thousands, huh? John and Sean already mentioned they submitted (past tense) an application, and Len just proved you don't know squat about copyrights. Instead of digging yourself a deeper hole, just admit you're wrong.
Just for EVERYONE's information, the MagiCard binary is PUBLIC DOMAIN! Anything written BEFORE 1989 had to conform to STRICT notification which Computer Magic did not DO!! What do I mean??? Their original release of MagiCard did NOT have proper notice, which makes it PUBLIC DOMAIN. Am I sure?? I am POSITIVE!! It was released on a bare circuit board with NO case. How do I know?? I bought one!! I have one!!So any game w/o a case is public domain? Game companies don't have any rights to their properties unless they were actually sold in a case? If you had bothered to read the info on that page you listed, you would have learned that:
(1) "Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright", which is exactly what they did.
(2) Not only can they file for a copyright (skip down to section "Who May File for Copyright?"), it tells you exactly how to! Plus it states "registration is not a requirement for protection" (under "Copyright Registration").
(3)
The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial. Because prior law did contain such a requirement, however, the use of notice is still relevant to the copyright status of older works.Notice was required under the 1976 Copyright Act. This requirement was eliminated when the United States adhered to the Berne Convention, effective March 1, 1989. Although works published without notice before that date could have entered the public domain in the United States, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) restores copyright in certain foreign works originally published without notice. For further information about copyright amendments in the URAA, request Circular 38b.
The Copyright Office does not take a position on whether copies of works first published with notice before March 1, 1989, which are distributed on or after March 1, 1989, must bear the copyright notice.
Use of the notice may be important because it informs the public that the work is protected by copyright, identifies the copyright owner, and shows the year of first publication. Furthermore, in the event that a work is infringed, if a proper notice of copyright appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such a defendant's interposition of a defense based on innocent infringement in mitigation of actual or statutory damages, except as provided in section 504©(2) of the copyright law. Innocent infringement occurs when the infringer did not realize that the work was protected.
The use of the copyright notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require advance permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office.
In short, an actual copyright notice on the item (ex. your Magicard board) is not required for copyright ownership. There's no doubt as to when that product was made, and who the original copyright owners were (and the fact that you ordered a copy direct from the company excludes you from using 'innocent infringement' as an excuse) so it is most certainly NOT public domain.
But, being the reasonable person I am, I will not make another MagiCard or Video Life game IF Sean Kelly stops selling his Multicarts which is in violation of hundreds of VALID copyrights.Yeah, how reasonable of you
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The point that angers me the most is they PROFIT from material that has valid copyrights!! And then they have the nerve to point their finger at me!!Now you don't know what you're talking about. Len's point (which you missed) is that these games have copyrights, even if the company that produced them are no longer active. Have your 200 copyright lawyers do another search when John & Sean's app goes through
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Sean's reply on DP's board:
I had no real desire to participate in this thread, but I can see I have no choice.First of all, John has nothing to do with any multi-carts. Let's get that straight right out of the box.
The multi-carts do not contain any games that there is any chance will be released on cartridge. For example, Cubicolor was being sold by Rob Fulop...I never included it on the multi-cart. I don't have any homebrew titles on it. If it's something that someone might make some money from, I don't put it on there. If you or someone else were to obtain the Spectravision, for example, library, I would remove all those titles.
I don't make any claim to ownership of any of the titles on the Atari multi-carts. If any copyright holder feels they are doing them any harm whatsoever, all they have to do is say the word.
NO, we are not making the games you listed (Elevator Action, Save the Whales, Crack'ed and Pick-Up) without permission. I have a pretty good idea which moron told you this. Had that person been at CGE, he would have known that the author of Pick Up was there the whole time. How would it be possible to sell the guy's game right in front of him without having some sort of agreement with him? We had the author's permission to make Pick Up and the others and they were paid for their work.
As for our deal, you want to know what happened? Simply put, we didn't have the money. We thought after CGE that we would be able to afford to spend money on something that we would never recover, but we didn't. So we figured we'd just wait until you sold the rest of your stock and got your investment back which was supposedly all you wanted to do according to our conversations. We figured, being the reasonable person you claim to be, once you sold out of the 15-20 carts you claimed to have left, you'd stop making them since you knew we had paid the programmers of those titles for the rights to their work.
As to why John didn't respond to your emails...he doesn't respond to anyone's emails - including mine.
In regards to the copyrights on CommaVid games not existing, let's assume for a minute that this big, 200-lawyer copyright law firm was unable to find any record of them. You mentioned that you paid this law firm $500 for their work. In my experience, that's only about two hours worth of attorney fees. Regardless, I don't think you dispute the fact that the three former owners of CommaVid wrote all the CommaVid games. I also don't think you dispute the fact that we paid these three gentlemen for the "rights" to their work (we do have written, signed proof of our purchase). So essentially, John and I wrote the CommaVid games. Did you file copyright paperwork for your Hollex cartridge? If not, would I be within my rights to go ahead and duplicate it's design and sell them myself? You see, I would NEVER do that. It's your device, you designed it (I assume), and you're trying to make a buck or two off it.
The whole copyright issue where classic games are concerned is fairly laxed and, for the good of all, it should stay that way. Nobody is making anything more than pocket change on any of this stuff including me with the multi-carts, you with the various devices that you sell, and others with the prototype reproductions that are floating around. All of us are guilty of some "copyright infringement" if we went by the letter of the law. The only thing that keeps the various people doing these projects civil is respect for the other person's efforts. If laws have to be substituted for respect in this regard, many of these types of projects will be nothing but memories.
Sean Kelly
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I don't know the whole story here, and I'm not claiming to- I'm simply responding to your comments, and those of John & Sean that you posted.
They contacted ME and offered to buy my inventory and I agreed.You stated the opposite in your first post ("I agreed to stop making the games IMMEDIATELY if they would buy my remaining inventory". Doesn't sound like an offer they made, but rather a demand you made.
I backed out of the CGE and lost $600 on two plane tickets.Didn't they make the CommaVid annoucement after the last CGE show?
And furthermore, I asked for a copy of their contract with Commavid. I have not seen one, they did not send me one. Have you seen one?? Has anyone seen one?? Where is this Contract???What good would that do? You stated the only document that would change anything for you (legally) would be one stating they have copyright ownership, and they stated they now have one being processed. So the question is, once that application goes through, would you then continue to sell carts?
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The timing of "getting the ROM out" traditionally has had more to do with when a certain convention organization thought it would be the best time to promote their conventions, deliberately paced out from year to year.You mean like with Bugs Bunny at last year's PhillyClassic? Or with Lord of the Rings at Eurocon? It's called having good "business sense" - every show promoter in the world uses that strategy! And PC and others seem to agree. You think CGE has like 3 "shows" worth of prototype ROMS sitting around or something? If so, you couldn't be more wrong. Say for example, if I found an Incredible Hulk proto and decided to sell carts of it, I'd announce the sale at the same time as the movie's release this summer. Companies do this all the time. Hell, the Hulk movie is 'in the can' already, but you don't expect it to be released in January, do you? (an even better example would be the Lord of the Rings movies). You seem to forget it takes time to produce a few hundred boxed carts (and with most of the work falling to 1 or 2 people) - they're not made up on demand ala Hozer or AA. If it weren't for shows like that, you probably wouldn't have most of the unreleased games that are out now b/c odds are it would end up in the hands of some hardcore collector who would refuse to share it. So the choices are wait a year and get something, or wait forever and get zilch. Is waiting a year that hard? At least you know the game will be made available!
I have no doubt AA will release the UA protos (and most likely sells carts of them...I hope), but I am doubting their reason for the wait. It's just a bit hard to believe, with some of the talented people we have in this hobby, that none of them (if asked) couldn't collectively decipher an 8K bankswitching technique after 3 months...
And it's no secret you have some personal issue with CGE, so stop veiling your comments already.
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They asked you not to make the carts, so out of courtesy the right thing to do would be to respect their wish. Sounds to me you tried to force their hand by either a) buying out your stock or b) forcing them to respond with legal action. At the least, you could have set up some kind of royalty settlement with them, but I'm guessing you didn't even try that approach. So basically what you're doing right now is no different than what Hozer Games was doing (and the majority of the community opinion was against them for it).
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Yeah, but since Kool-Aid Man (Thunderground? Anteater...) is about the only game affected by this,Both Kool-Aid Man and Anteater were both done by Stephen Tatsumi. Wonder why he chose to display the score differently from earlier games like Burgertime?
Anyone know who programmed Thunderground?
... and presumably no new games are going to do this (at least on purpose) given the compatibility problems it introduces between the two flavours of consoles it's information of dubious value.Future programmers may not be aware of the TIA problem (or even the Stellalist), so it's good to know and have readily available.
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Great pics .. Is your video out composite? The TIA in the Jr is soldered in place .. so mono sound only?What does that signal boost switch do?
Video out is composite on both. I didn't hack with the JR - already did it with the 4-switch, so no need to. Besides, there's only a handful of games that really sound good in stereo. I did the stereo mod by tapping off the pcb traces, so it doesn't matter if the TIA is soldered or not.
The signal boost isn't really much of a boost- all it does is remove the power from the RF circuit section (which does sig. affect the picture).
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I would guess that it'll probably appear in a few months....just in time for PhillyClassic
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I just answered my first question
I was going by an actual screen photo, not the emulator one:
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Since this only seems to affect one game (OK, the Anteater screenshots indiate a similar problem, but there is no binary available to try it out) we decided to be lazy and cheat.It seems most of the M-Network games use the same scoring display kernel (well, the same font style). What is it you see in the Anteater screen that would tip you off to a potential problem?
Btw, Thunderground also suffers from the same TIA incompatibility. Paul Slocum mentioned this a few months ago - http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14625
One of the Z26 programmers must have been aware of it, since the score is shown properly with later versions. Does anyone know if any other games are affected by this??
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If you use the driving controllers, how will you implement forward/reverse shifting? Using the difficulty switches (esp with a 6-switch model) would be neat, but a joystick (with a Y-adapter) would be more practical (and if carts are made, the Y-adapters could be an optional pack-in). Or you could just do away with reverse ala Indy 500.
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I played it quite a bit back then. It was a great "trainer" for later games like Asteroids and Omega Race. FYI: the ships are referred to as star ships (and not space ships)- somebody was a Star Trek fan
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The way I found it was I usually play games in ALT+0 mode (they run a bit slow in default mode), and when you switch to it, usually the screen isn't centered. Is this a problem with the program, or something with my computer? Also, will the upcoming Windows version allow for more features/options? It could really use a 'save game' one
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Thanks for releasing it, Chris! Excellent work.
The UFO is a bit too fast for me, but there's another disadvantage with it I noticed- it appears sooner (farther from the screen edge) on the right than on the left.
Thomas: there's already a 11x5 version of S.I. - called INV. Although the invaders aren't very detailed, there is some animation to them, plus there's an "explosion" of sorts when each is hit (which isn't in Instigators).
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Any idea why some of the screenshots look like they've had stuff edited out?Glare on the plexi from the camera's flash.
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I've done most of those hacks, but I made the tank and button controllers seperate - I wanted to be able to use them with any system. Here's some pics of mine:
4-switcher with A/V and stereo output (switch is for either stereo or mono)
JR with A/V (switch is for signal boost)
dual joystick tank controller (still useful if Jentzsch's Battlezone and Robotank hacks aren't handy
button controller (great for doing certain game tricks). There used to be a similar one (not the Starplex one) advertised in the old game mags, but I could never find one.
I have a couple other controller mods - NES controller for Omega Race, another for Ms. Pac-Man/Kangaroo screen warping, modded Track & Field (with full-speed option), and a standard Atari joystick which has served as a test controller for all of these and more (it's pretty ugly). I also used to have a joystick with a VTP fastened to it ala a 5200 controller.
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Atari 2600 pleadies!! When? Anyone know?
in Atari 2600
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If anyone believes that, then I have an Airworld cart to sell you. Know what makes me mad? People who believe their own b.s. statements such as that. So, 24 hours ago you call me a Nazi and since then you became a mod?? I wasn't aware AA had that kind of reward system here. Guessed I missed those announcements.
You mean ever, or since yesterday? You know what, you're right. You better drop it b/c without long-term memory, you're hopeless.