I doubt they would ever come down on us. Diplomacy has such a cult culture around it that they'd never stomp out people playing for free. Also, I'd bet that a good number of us own the board game (I know I do.) and I'm sure some that have found this site have gone to buy it. I'm sure even if they looked into it they wouldn't have a problem.

"I doubt they would ever come down on us. Diplomacy has such a cult culture around it that they'd never stomp out people playing for free."

This logic doesn't fly. Just ask the RIAA.

Well maybe Hasbro can learn from the RIAA's mistakes... is the RIAA winning? Or simply alienating an entire generation of music listeners?

Also, I think like a year ago this question came up because a Facebook adaptation of Scrabble became hugely popular and Hasbro took it down.

Based on Wizards of the Coast's recent boneheaded decision about taking down all D&D related PDF's from various PDF stores, I'd say that Hasbro has not in fact learned much of anything from the RIAA's situation.

I wouldn't be worried until Playdiplomacy gets busted. They charge for premium accounts and as such would be the first to be taken down.

And it would also depend where this site is run from, which I assume is Australia?

premium accounts: the only account that gets access to the specila "convoy" move

all normal accounts may not convoy

I suspect that it was likely pressure from Hasbro, rather than anyone at Wizards that actually made that decision happen. It does little to nothing to stem piracy, and only makes it difficult for people to get their products in the form they want them in.

Even stupider is the fact that they took down the PDF's of older classic materials (1st and 2nd edition etc) that are completely unavailable in any other legal form. So if you want to get a copy of say... The Temple of Elemental Evil, or Keep on the Borderlands, you have to find a used copy somewhere, or download a pirated version, neither of which gives Wizards any money.

@Akroma - Is that true?! That's terrible! I'm REALLY glad I don't play there!

no, I was just joking.

...

I hope I was. Because I have no idea what features in diplomacy are actually worth to pay money for

@Akroma: All I can say is: "Don't Get England!!!!!"

Not only did Scrabulous get taken off Facebook by Hasbro (with a DCMA order, which I think is inappropriate), but rather conveniently, Electronic Arts put up a licensed version something like one week later. Then Scrabulous came back with different graphics and a few extra options and I believe it's still up and running.

It would be sort of ironic if variants were the safe refuge...

Yeah, Scrabulous is now called 'Lexulous'. They've moved the bonus squares around and you now have eight, not seven letters. They seem to think that makes it different enough from the original Scrabble that they'll avoid being taken down again this time. So far they appear to be right.

Interesting. From the government's copyright website:

"Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form."

So it would appear you can make a Diplomacy site, call it Diplomacy, use all the same rules, and as long as you produce your own maps and other imagery, you're good to go.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

i think the intelectual property protected in games includes the characters and story, fortunately for diplomacy the countries and war they psuedo imitate are not works of fiction owned by hasbro (or anyone else) I'm pretty sure Germany is in the public domain...

... Germany's a real place?

That's what people say, but I've never been there so I can never be quite sure that people aren't just tricking me.

It's no more real than Valhalla, Hell, or Disneyland.

*shattered that there is no Disneyland...*

Wait, you're telling me that Germany and Hell are two distinct places? My view of the world is shattered.

I play Risk at a site called conquerclub and they have no problems because they produce tons of cool variant maps.

Germany being in the public domain (which it really isn't how public domain is organized to begin with...), is irrelevant. What would be protected by a copyright is the game itself, and not the countries like Germany being used. It's like streets in Monopoly.

As to the quote from the government website, I don't know if that would apply to board games. Hasbro definitely has a copyright so Parker Brothers can't make the exact same game, but then again intellectual property law is pretty complicated so I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly how it would work.

My guess, and it's just a guess, is that since the site uses stuff owned by Hasbro it ought to be paying royalties. Since it's based in Australia where Kestas is from and it's such small beans I doubt there will be any action.

Most importantly, however, the site is free so since Kestas doesn't make money off it I don't think anything illegal is even going on.

@Invictus: It does apply to board games and card games. If it didn't, Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro) would have killed off Apprentice, a program that allows people to play Magic: The Gathering online.

Is that a pay site?

Premium account on playdiplomacy get access to premium features like "finalizing". If you don't pay, all turns take the full time.

I'm playing one game there. The "surrender" button sucks.

@invictus: The site doesn't use anything owned by Hasbro. That's the point. The government site pretty clearly states that copyright protects the specific rules documentation (e.g. you can't copy them word-for-word) and things like the game artwork -- physical elements relating to one specific implementation of the game. The game itself -- the parameters, the play process, the name, all the things that really matter -- appear to be unprotected, from my un-lawerly interpretation.

After all, they even go as far as stating "Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it," and from what I've seen, it's pretty rare for copyright law to state what is NOT protected...

If that definition of copyright is accurate (which would be very useful) then I guess the best they could do would be to force us to rename stuff. However, I'm not quite sure where the law is but i'm pretty sure there's one that means if they can prove what you're doing is clearly based on their intellectual property you're in the wrong.

Oh, and the site is in America

I think as long as we're using our own maps etc, we should be fairly safe. Just don't quote the rules verbatim from the rule book (at least from any one that still has a copyright), don't use any artwork or any other copyrighted aspects and we should be in good shape.

Not, of course, that that wouldn't stop lawyers from trying to bring suit anyway...