Geof

@def PD

"I was hoping that this would pre-date the Revolutionary War, and in a alt-history type way that this particular character was the reason why the Colonies beat Great Britain."

Ubisoft Montreal is a Quebec studio. Canadians are somewhat ambivalent about the American revolution. We were on the other side, after all, as the colonies that remained loyal then and in the War of 1812. I hope the game reflects the complexity of that history.

French Canada has an even more complex relationship. Quebec had recently been conquered by the British, yet supported the crown against the rabid anti-Catholicism of the thirteen colonies. That anti-Catholic sentiment was a major trigger for the war: Britain had granted French Canadians the right to maintain their language, religion and culture (to this day we have publicly-funded Catholic schools). Americans were also furious that the British had set a limit to westward expansion into First Nations (native) territory. (Not to let the British off the hook with their use of germ warfare, nor Canada for its racist policies, but the genocide that followed was pretty awful.)

Nor is to say there wasn't significant cooperation and friendship between colonists and natives. There is good evidence that the U.S. constitution was influenced by native governance models.

Personally, I suspect the Revolution turned out for the best. Though my protestant English ancestors were United Empire Loyalists (UELs) granted land in Ontario after their possessions in the 13 colonies were seized by the revolutionaries, I'm no anglophile or monarchist.

Phil writes, "As much as it sucks that they got shut down I do understand why Activision did it. In copyright law if you ignore a known infringement you run the risk of weakening your ability to sue over future infringements."

Untrue. While there is such a risk under *trademark* law, there is no such risk under copyright. It sounds as though this group removed any branding and therefore were not making use of any King's Quest trademarks, so this would not apply. Activision definitely do not need to policy anything in order to retain their copyrights.

From this story, it is unclear to me how the fan project would infringe copyright. It is quite possible a court would rule that the project is non-infringing. Activision's permission might not be required. On the other hand, it is also possible a court would rule that it is infringing. But this is a prohibitively expensive thing for an amateur team to find out: in practice, the law is tilted in favor of the professionals with the money regardless of the merits of their case. The real flaw is not with Activision's behavior, but with a law that (in this case) prohibits creativity and speech without producing a corresponding benefit.

(I am not a lawyer, but I am a copyfighter.)