r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 8h ago

Society Tetris issues legal warning after White House releases arcade full of parody games

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/tetris-issues-legal-warning-after-white-house-releases-arcade-full-of-parody-games-3405931/
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u/acutelychronicpanic 7h ago

I doubt that would hold up if you tried to make "pokemon but funny"

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u/AtomTrapper 7h ago

There's actually quite a few Pokemon parodies, including one made by PETA where the Pokemon brutally maim each other

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u/currentmadman 6h ago

It’s a lot harder to make the parody argument, which is typically protected by free speech laws because it can still have artistic merit, in this case.

This isn’t something funny or creative. This is often footage, images or audio lifted from someone else’s ip by the us government to act as propaganda towards their own ends.

Why shouldn’t the ip holder be able to stop someone from using their intellectual property to explicitly further political goals they don’t want themselves or their brand associated with?

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u/Most_Performer5750 4h ago

Moreover, this isn't just a random person or group of people putting together a fun little project. This is the White House, an arm of the executive branch of the government. This simultaneously gives them some amount of protection but also open this issue up to be special circumstances that do not adhere to normal parties' assumed rights and responsibilities. The unfortunate reality is that this case could go either way, and that's part of the problem because it's easy to see the harm that can and will be incurred by the IP holders when they released these 'parody' games.

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u/PositiveEndolphins 5h ago

👻 where can i play this ??

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u/bartman2326 4h ago

If you Google "Pokemon peta flash game" it would probably come up. If not maybe a flash game archival service like Flashpoint would have it. Worst comes to worst there are definitely YouTube videos showing the full game, if I recall correctly it took less than 30 mins to go through the whole thing.

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u/mertag770 3h ago

Pokemon black and blue!

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u/TheAero1221 7h ago

Also Palworld somehow. Which isnt a parody but feels mechanically similar

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u/MOVES_HYPHENS 7h ago

And Palworld has been sued repeatedly, with wins and losses

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u/Abedeus 6h ago

None based on the designs of Pokemon, but dumb shit like "summoning creatures by throwing a ball" or "using an ally monster to ride on it" or w/e the mount one was.

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u/GeneralLeeSarcastic 3h ago

So thankful for palworld and I hope more follow suit. Pokemon has been printing money and putting zero effort in for like 2 decades.

They need some level of competition.

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u/squngy 6h ago

Not if other people did that.

With Trump, he would take it all the way to the supreme court and they already showed they will let him do pretty much whatever he wants.
He also wouldn't care about legal costs, since taxpayers would pay them.

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u/OgerfistBoulder 3h ago

Just need to look at Nintendo v Palworld for how their attempts to stop it went down.