By Kevin Dent

I started to play Triple Town as of last weekend; I had a blast and even more so when I see that they were actively supporting it with frequent updates. Then I started to hear some rumblings in the industry about how another game basically ripped it off.

Since then, we have seen Spry Fox issue proceedings against Lolapps. Most of us have read about it and shook our heads; I want to take the rhetoric out of it. I wanted to just look at the basic facts.

In an exclusive interview with GameBeat, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus denied accusations that it copied a rival developer's Facebook Bingo game, but also said that social game developers refine and improve game concepts on the market to create the best products.

Over the weekend Santa Monica, California-based Buffalo Studios claimed that the upcoming Zynga Bingo was a cheap knock-off of its Bingo Blitz game, which already has a million daily players on Facebook.

DICE is looking for an anti-cheat security expert, according to a new job listing on its official site. The Battlefield series developer is looking for someone willing to take up residence in its home office (Stockholm, Sweden) where they will be charged with "secure the online experience for all DICE titles." Whoever dons the mantle of "Anti-Cheat Administrator" will have their work cut out from them, given all the hacking and cheating going on with its latest title Battlefield 3.

Another day, another developer accusing Zynga of swiping its game design. Bingo Blitz developer Buffalo Studios has accused Zynga of copying its design for its recently announced Bingo game. They say Zynga has "obviously played" its Bingo game. Last week iPhone game developer Nimblebit accused Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower.

The company put together a side-by-side comparison of its game against Zynga's recently announced Bingo game here.

The internet certainly isn’t wanting for videos that focus on the particulars of why legislation like SOPA and PIPA are unmitigated piles of horse dung.  Heck, this week’s Extra Credits episode is just such a video.

But if you’d like to see something a little different, check out the latest Game OverThinker episode in which Bob Chipman, better known as MovieBob over at The Escapist, forecasts what our post-SOPA futures might look like.

iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title, Tiny Tower. Last week the company launched Dream Heights, a free tower-building game for iOS with in-app purchases that shares a number of similarities to Nimblebit's Tiny Tower. The popular iOS tower building game received Apple's 2011 iPhone Game of the Year.

Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got his point across about the similarities between the two games by releasing an image via Twitter. The image puts the two games side-by-side for comparison.

Story time!

Last month, musician Dan Bull rapped his thoughts about SOPA in a YouTube video called SOPA Cabana (you should watch it.  It’s really well done).  This video went viral and racked up over a million views.  As it happens, it was through this video that most people discovered Dan’s second album, Face, which he offered for free on Megaupload.

Yeah, I think you see where this is going.

According to popular Fallout fan site Duck and Cover, Interplay and Bethesda have already settled their long-running legal battle of the Fallout IP. The site claims that it has confirmed that a settlement has taken place, though the details of that settlement are still unknown. The post on the site goes on to say that an official announcement will be made sometime later this month. From the site:

According to iOS game developer Black Powder Media, Atari is removing games from the App Store (with the help of Apple, of course) that resemble anything from its extensive back catalog of classic games. The company developed a game called Vector Tanks 3, which bears a slight resemblance to Battlezone. Atari has also threatened legal action against iOS developers who are developing games that it deems are rip-offs of its owned IPs.

Anti-virus and security software maker Kaspersky is not happy with the Business Software Alliance's early support of SOPA and Protect IP in the U.S. Even though the BSA later walked back its support of SOPA, the Russian firm has had enough. It announced that it plans to leave the BSA over its support for SOPA. Kaspersky has announced that on January 1st 2012 it will withdraw its membership of the BSA.

While the United States has groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation to fight against unfair copyright law and government encroachment on internet freedoms, Canada has the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC for short). CIPPIC will be making oral arguments in what it calls the "Copyright Pentology" - five copyright cases that the Supreme Court of Canada will hear from December 6-7.

In these trying financial times it's nice to see a developer care about the little guy. Spiderweb Software is one of those development studios. The one-man operation run by the outspoken Jeff Vogel has cut prices across the board for its entire catalog of role-playing games for Mac, iPad, and Windows by 20 percent. In addition, for the month of October Spiderweb has slashed an additional 10 percent off of all of its games.

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson spent the weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle showing off new features in the latest Minecraft update (1.8) and the first official trailer for its upcoming game Scrolls. While there, he answered some questions about his pending lawsuit with Bethesda over the Scrolls game name. Bethesda alleges that the name "Scrolls" infringes on their trademark for "The Elder Scrolls."

When asked if he had any back-up names for Scrolls in the event that he lost the legal fight with Bethesda, Persson joked:

Youness Alaoui, known better by his online persona "KaKaRoTo" and for being the first man to develop modified firmware for the PS3, sits down for an interview with PlayStation LifeStyle to talk about the PS3, piracy, black hat hackers, and whether Sony owns its system or consumers do. Alaoui, who describes himself as a software engineer of Moroccan origin currently living in Canada, says that his passions are programming and open source development, which he has been doing for over 10 years.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a hold on the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968), ensuring that the bill will not make it to the floor of the Senate for a full vote. This news comes from Ars Technica, who also received a lengthy statement from Wyden's staff on the particulars of the Senator's action this week. The bill, which was overwhelmingly approved in committee by both political parties, gives the U.S. government the power to blacklist and isolate web sites allegedly trading in counterfeit or pirated materials.

A similar bill was put on hold by Wyden last year because he said it went too far in dealing with copyright and patent infringement on the Internet. The new bill gives the government the ability to blacklist or shut down a web site it believes is engaging in illegal activity, compel advertisers to sever relationships with accused sites and tell search engines to remove sites from their index.

Ars Technica offers a sit-down interview with Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He is also a co-author of a2009 paper on Internet piracy, which was influential on the development and adoption of the U.S. government's Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) legislation.

In the interview, Castro says that the United States government needs to blacklist and censor web sites that traffic in pirated and counterfeit goods. Further, U.S. credit card companies would be "forbidden" from doing business with any of these blacklisted sites and U.S. advertising networks would not be allowed to advertise in these places.

Here is a choice quote about why COICA is the right way to deal with piracy:

From the this-is-probably-a-conflict-of-interest-department comes a story from TorrentFreak on U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell. Apparently, before she was a U.S. District Court judge, Howell was a Recording Industry Association of America lobbyist and helped with the DMCA.

Howell’s resume shows that she is very familiar with U.S. copyright laws. In fact, she may have helped write some of them. She served as General Counsel of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and helped draft several prominent intellectual property protection laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Deterrence Act and the No Electronic Theft Act - according to TorrentFreak.

According to a report in UK paper The Guardian, European Customs has been ordered to seize "Playstation shipments" because of a preliminary injunction against Sony - the result of a recent patent infringement claim filed with the civil court of justice in the Hague.

Because of the court's ruling, European Customs has been ordered to confiscate any new PS3's imported into the UK and the rest of Europe for at least 10 days.

For now, Sony has to rely on hardware already on store shelves or shipped prior to the injunction. The Guardian estimates that the company has enough stock on store shelves to last two - three weeks.

"We are currently looking into this matter, and cannot make any comments at this point in time," a representative for Sony Playstation told The Guardian.

LG declined to comment, although sources close to the company confirmed with the paper its current legal position.

The Recording Industry Association of America and its partners at the International Intellectual Property Alliance recently submitted their ‘piracy watchlist’ recommendations to the Office of the US Trade Representative. The RIAA pointed to two countries as being the worst of the worst when it comes to intellectual property theft: Spain and our comrades to the north - Canada.

This is particularly interesting because this week Spain passed a tough new law to combat piracy. The Sinde law (nicknamed for its sponsor) is aimed at shutting down file-sharing sites that traffic in illegal downloads. Even though the public and some in the Spanish movie industry opposed the law, it will become the rule of the land by summer, says TorrentFreak. But the RIAA claims this is just a baby step and that even more needs to be done to combat theft.

A case started by porn king Larry Flynt that targeted thousands of John Doe defendants has been tossed out of court, creating a potential problem for lawyers representing the entertainment industry's fight against file-sharers. Last year Larry Flynt Publications filed lawsuits against thousands of anonymous defendants for a porn parody film called "This Ain't Avatar XXX." The problem for lawyers representing the company was that ISP Time Warner was reticent to reveal the real identities of the IP owners lawyers had obtained. Without those real names, it was next to impossible to find out who exactly was illegally downloading and sharing the film.

According to a C|Net report, the Obama administration has drafted a new set of proposals to deal with intellectual property infringement online that it plans to send to the U.S. Congress very soon. The administration is also applauding  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which it says will "aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement" once it enters into effect.

As the C|Net report notes, the 92-page report penned by intellectual property enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel reads as if it was ghost-written by lobbyists groups. There is some interesting data in there like the fact that the number of FBI and Homeland Security infringement investigations jumped 40 percent from 2009 to 2010, praise for ACTA, and details on various law enforcement operations.

Consumer electronics company LG has asked the International Trade Commission to block the sale of the PlayStation 3 console. The company is having a patent dispute with Sony over several Bravia television sets and Blu-Ray players that it claims infringe on four of its patents. The PS3 includes a Blu-Ray player, which is why LG has named it as one of the products it wants an injunction against.

LG has also filed a lawsuit against Sony in California, seeking unspecified damages. The court action is due to the ITC's inability to award cash damages.

Bloomberg reports that these patent infringement claims related to the PS3 revolve around "a way of dealing with multiple data streams, such as different camera angles, as well as a system to reproduce data that's stored on a read-only device."

Wolfire is a bit ticked off today, after finding out that someone was selling their game on the Mac App Store for around $9 less than they were selling it (Thanks E. Zachary Knight). Two weeks ago, the indie developer added the game Lugaru HD to the Mac App Store for $9.99. However, shortly thereafter they were shocked to find another game, listed under "Lugaru," for $.99. Even more shocking, the game was showing up right next to their game for the full price. When faced with spending a dollar or $9, you can imagine which way consumers might go. The counterfeit game was apparently compiled using the source code and posted to the store by someone using the pseudonym of "iCoder" / "Michael Latour."

According to a new study commissioned by the recently (Comcast) acquired NBC Universal and carried out by Envisonal, 23.8 percent of Internet traffic involves "digital theft." Of this 11.4 percent of this is done using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.

Focusing on the United States, the study estimated that 17 percent of Internet traffic is engaging in "infringing activity," with BitTorrent traffic accounting for 9 percent of that number.

Envisional's analysis of the top 10,000 peer-to-peer "swarms" found that 99.24 percent of non-pornographic material being traded was copyrighted material.

Finally the study concluded that “infringing cyberlocker sites" accounted for 5.1 percent of global Internet traffic, while "infringing video streaming sites" made up around 1.4 percent of global traffic.

Sarien.net, a web site that used to serve up classic Sierra On-Line adventure games to the masses, recently found itself on the receiving end of a cease and desist letter from Activision. The web site's creator recently shared the bad news with visitors, posting the letter from Activision on its front page. Activision holds the rights to Sierra's classic games and apparently doesn't appreciate what the web site is doing. Sarien.net has been up and running since April of last year, but Activision didn't really take notice until the site decided to add iPhone and iPad browser support.

Here is what Activision said:

A new crowdfunding website dedicated exclusively to the video game industry called 8-Bit Funding launches today. Much like Kickstarter.com, the site gives "investors" rewards and perks related to the game project in exchange for funding the project.

"The gaming community has always been independent and almost always supports an internal, exclusive community as opposed to a catch-all," says founder Geoff Gibson. "The idea behind 8-Bit Funding comes with this same idea. While there are similar websites out there, their broad focus immediately makes them less appealing to gamers and game developers who have to create a project and market it to a community who might not understand what an indie game even is."

The site launches with seven projects that need funding: Cardinal Quest, The Bookeeper, Dreamcasters’ Duel, Kung Fu Kingdom, Excruciating Guitar Voyage 2, Galactic Adventure, Inc. and One-Eyed Monsters.

This week Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said that one of her top priorities this year is to ramp up intellectual property rights and "rogue websites" legislation this year. She called on fellow conservatives to join her in this fight.

This is the same representative that introduced a bill earlier this year to gut the FCC's net neutrality rules. The two positions seem at odds with each other if you consider that the conservative mantra is smaller government, less regulation. Apparently, less regulation is only good when it serves the interest of corporations and lobbyist groups you support.

Her call for better intellectual property rights legislation includes the introduction of - you guessed it - more regulations and rules. Speaking this week at the "State of the Net" conference in Washington, DC this week, Blackburn laid out three propositions to deal with intellectual property rights issues (from Ars Technica):

Lawyers for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook, Apple, Google, and others has been amended to target Google's Android mobile operating system. In total the suit targets AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Google subsidiary YouTube, Netflix, Yahoo, Office Depot, Officemax, and Staples.

Allen's company Interval Licensing filed a lawsuit in August alleging infringement of four U.S. patents related to search, multimedia and database management. In early December a U.S. district court judge dismissed the lawsuit, calling it too vague. But the judge gave Allen until December 28 to file an amendment providing more details of the claims.

On December 28 Allen's lawyers responded with a 35-page amendment (obtained by the Seattle Times) detailing features of various defendants' websites that allegedly infringe on the patents.

Motorola has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Microsoft, alleging that its Xbox 360 console infringes on several of its patents. The action is in response to a Microsoft claim that Motorola was infringing on some of its patents.

According to the complaint, Motorola says that Microsoft is in violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 related to the import and sale of gaming and entertainment consoles. The company is asking for a cease-and-desist order on the sale of all Xbox 360s. The USITC has voted to begin an investigation.

Here is more from the USITC:

TorrentFreak reports that a coalition of file-sharing sites will go offline to protest a new law in Spain. The sites, TorrentFreak says generate 70 percent of Spain’s Internet traffic, will display a black page warning if the "Sinde Act" is approved. Some site owners say that their sites could disappear forever if the law is passed. Earlier this month, leaked diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks showed that Spain had bowed to US pressure to introduce the new law.