Conquer Club

Well hey, if you think you can manage to convince the admin of that, go ahead and try... I see little chance though, as obviously, CC is a business for him, it's how he feeds his family, so of course if there's even a chance that taking this action would enable Hasbro to close his business (and even a lawsuit by them could be harmful to the site: Hasbro has lots of money to hire lawyers for a legal battle, CC not so much) then it's no wonder he's playing it safe.

Yes Natty: I very much appreciate that.

However, these fears are largely unfounded. Conquer Club is very much a reality and Hasbro have been unable to do anything about it for the very reasons I have presented. Indeed, any lawyer worth his salt would advise them of the simple legal position: that unless copyright is breached (as outlined in my previous posting) there is no action that they can take! Any such action would be doomed and Hasbro would pick up the total bill, not just a part of it. There simply has not been a breach of copyright. Simple. The end!

I am certain that this is why they have not already taken any action. -They know they cannot possibly win it unless a direct copy of their design is (stupidly) used.

In any case, the success of CC is clearly not reliant upon a replica 'board'. But this does not affect Conquer Club's right to publish its own design, complete with proper borders instead of tacky 'link-lines'.

P.S. Do you happen to know who it is that is truly in charge of Conquer Club? I mean; who is it that actually owns this fantastic thing? I get the impression you know something.

Meantime, please accept my thanks for your responses and guidance. Cheers.

Thankyou very much Natty.

zeros wrote:However, these fears are largely unfounded. Conquer Club is very much a reality and Hasbro have been unable to do anything about it for the very reasons I have presented. Indeed, any lawyer worth his salt would advise them of the simple legal position: that unless copyright is breached (as outlined in my previous posting) there is no action that they can take! Any such action would be doomed and Hasbro would pick up the total bill, not just a part of it.

Unfortunately that isn't the case in the US legal system. We don't have a "loser pays" clause where legal expenses are concerned. There have been various attempts to push this through, but lawyers form a pretty extensive lobbying group here, and there would be a lot fewer lawsuits filed if tort reform were ever to go through. It is possible to counter-sue for legal expenses, however, a big corporation like Hasbro has a big team of high-power lawyers already on the payroll. In the US legal system they could easily keep filing motions, briefs, and counter-motions. The goal in such a situation is not to get to trial. What they try to do is drag the case on as long as possible and force the target (lackattack in this case) to continue spending money on his lawyer week after week. In almost every case, the target of the lawsuit agrees to settle out of court rather than spend millions taking it to trial with no guarantee of recompense.

Now, lackattack is Canadian, so I'm not sure how that would affect things, since Hasbro is in the US. My guess would be that lack did talk to a lawyer at some point just to find out what he could and couldn't do. It's likely on their advice that the various terminology, as well as the map, from the original game is not to be found in anything official created on the site. He probably could win the lawsuit, and he might even manage to keep said lawsuit in a jurisdiction that would be more favorable than the US, but the changes he's made do not adversely affect the playability of the site, and this way there is no risk of future legal problems.

As an aside, I believe Hasbro did come out with a computer version of Risk at some point, and they might be able to make an argument that this site was in competition with that game. That may actually be one reason why we won't see AI-controlled opponents on this site.

Hasbro was also planning their own online risk site... I don't know if they're still going through with it, but I'm worried that they'll see CC as competition if they do.

natty_dread wrote:Hasbro was also planning their own online risk site... I don't know if they're still going through with it, but I'm worried that they'll see CC as competition if they do.

there was an official site years ago which you could connect to if you had the CD (the swanky graphics of little soldiers shooting each other and so on) .. but i could never actually make it work.

No, that's not the one I mean... I think they were actually planning a site similar to CC.

Interesting.

Special thanks to Doc Brown for clarifying the legal system in the USA.

I must admit, I was not certain of the legal system there, and based my argument on the British legal system, in the expectation that it was similar.

I must express incredulity that such a system is allowed to continue where, rather like this game we like so much; the guy who starts stronger almost always crushes his opponent. One might argue that in warfare, it is only to be expected - and I'd agree. But to have a legal system that, at least in principle, has been established through some form of moral code (rather than a desire to actually destroy one's opponent, regardless of rights and wrongs, surely?); this obvious lack of 'justness' must fly in the face of its purported values!

That said, I see exactly why the legal profession want to keep it the way it is. - No surprise there but it's 'morality' is so obviously flawed. How hypocritical can it get?!!

I'm disgusted that my idealised view is so far from reality. The system is basically saying that the wealthiest person is nearly always 'right'.

-You've shattered my illusions ........

That's not entirely true.

Cases like this one aren't just about what's right and what's wrong. There's no obvious justice or injustice going on here. The laws can't foresee every given situation, they were probably not thinking "Oh hey what if someone invents a board game based on a world map, and then later on a website expands the idea using different maps and terminology, are they breaking copyright laws or not? We should include that clause."
In these sort of 50-50 situations, the better lawyer may indeed find the tiny detail that invalidates the other's argument. But that doesn't mean the whole law system is flawed, or that any lawyer is immoral.

It doesn;t matter which legal system you're referring to... If you're unable to afford the costs of a court case in the first place, then you'll never get the ability to win those costs back...

Anyway, let's try and keep discussion to the map, rather than further speculation about the whats and wherefores surrounding the reason for change... the only person who has those answers keeps his cards tucked inside his shell...

RIP Classic Art?

why didn't they put pictures in classic art anyway?

whats up with manila it dosen't correspond to the original game does it ?

Japan.

Mongolia.

It´s more realistic with the country´s borders, instead capitals.

Demonaire wrote:It´s more realistic with the country´s borders, instead capitals.

As I understand it, the key to making Classic sufficiently different to the board game, Risk, was to use those capitals and attack routes instead of countries and borders, thus dodging the various copyright restrictions.

I understand that, but in that case it would have been easily if it just changes the countries' names (e.g. Galia, Hispania, Cipango...)

The classic map is horrid !!!
Please could we have country's instead of cities and get rid of the wavy attack lines and go back to straight ones. I know it sounds condescending but why not use a classic risk board as you inspiration instead of changing everything you can for the sake of it. Put your new map with all the other variables and call it 'The messed up map' and I am sure some people will play on it and return the original

The classic map is horrid !!!
Please could we have country's instead of cities and get rid of the wavy attack lines and go back to straight ones. I know it sounds condescending but why not use a classic risk board as you inspiration instead of changing everything you can for the sake of it. Put your new map with all the other variables and call it 'The messed up map' and I am sure some people will play on it and return the original

So don't play it. There's 200 other maps to choose from.

skylark4 wrote:The classic map is horrid !!!
Please could we have country's instead of cities and get rid of the wavy attack lines and go back to straight ones. I know it sounds condescending but why not use a classic risk board as you inspiration instead of changing everything you can for the sake of it. Put your new map with all the other variables and call it 'The messed up map' and I am sure some people will play on it and return the original

These things were not changed for the sake of change. They were changed to avoid copyright infringement on Hasbro's property. The gameplay is identical, having equivalent connections and bonuses.

Is there any way to redo the XML to have 1 territ in each continent always neutral?