cloning – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Vehicle Cloning — Another Reason Not To Use Automated License Plate Readers

from the you-wouldn’t-copy-a-car dept

Over the last decade, increasing numbers of automated license plate readers (ALPR) have been installed on roads, bringing with them a variety of privacy problems, as Techdirt has reported. It’s easy to see why ALPR is popular with the authorities: license plate readers seem a simple way to monitor driving behavior and to catch people breaking traffic laws, by speeding, for example.

Since the whole process can be automated, from reading the license plates to sending out fines, it looks like an efficient, low-cost alternative to placing large numbers of police officers around the road network. There’s just one problem: the whole system is based on the assumption that the license plate on the car is genuine, and can be used to identify the person responsible for the vehicle. As an article on “car cloning” in the Guardian reports, drivers in the UK are discovering that this assumption no longer holds.

The problem is that people are making copies of other drivers’ license plates, and using them on similar-looking vehicles — generally the same model and same color — to break the law with impunity. When the ALPR cameras catch the cloners speeding, or failing to pay fees for entering special zones like London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), the fines are sent to the actual owner of the license plate, not the perpetrator. The result is misery for those unlucky enough to have their license plates cloned, since it is hard to convince the authorities that automated license plate readers have made a mistake when there is apparent photographic evidence they haven’t. The experience of one driver interviewed by the Guardian is typical:

The most recent incident happened in July 2021, when he received two penalty charge notices from different London councils — one for driving in a bus lane and the other for an illegal left turn. Both notices included photos purporting to show his five-door Audi A3 car.

Despite him providing extensive evidence that at the time of one of the offences his vehicle was in a car park, and demonstrating that the one in the photo appeared to be a three-door Audi A1, the council concerned rejected his appeal.

Only when he sent in photos of his vehicle type and the one in the CCTV image where he had “circled all the differences” was the matter dropped.

Even when no fines are involved, vehicle cloning can cause financial problems for innocent drivers, as another case mentioned by the Guardian shows:

Late last year, the Guardian was contacted by another driver who had fallen victim to car cloning. The 88-year-old’s insurance doubled at renewal to £1,259 [about $1600] and she was told this was because her Ford Fiesta had been involved in an accident on the M25 [London’s main ring road] .

Despite her pointing out that she had not driven on the M25 for more than a decade, and that she had been either at church or at home at the time of the accident — and the fact that she had reported that her car had been cloned to Hertfordshire police — her insurer, Zurich, refused to take the claim off her file. Only after the Guardian intervened did the firm restore her no-claims bonus and reduce her premium accordingly.

The more automated license plate readers are installed in order to stop people breaking traffic laws, the greater the incentive for criminals and the unscrupulous to use cloned plates to break those laws without any consequences. What may once have seemed the system’s great strength — the fact that it provides photographic evidence of law breaking — turns out to be a huge weakness that can be turned against it.

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Filed Under: alpr, automated traffic enforcement, cctv, cloning, insurance, london, police, the guardian, ulez
Companies: zurich

DailyDirt: Playing With Biological Fire By Reviving Ancient Organisms

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Life has existed on the Earth for a pretty long time, perhaps longer than you might imagine. Biology seems pretty resilient, though, there have been five major mass extinctions (the last of the five killed off the dinosaurs) — and at least 20 total mass extinction events over the last half billion years or so. Maybe we’re working on the sixth major extinction event by messing around with nuclear weapons or the Large Hadron Collider. Or perhaps we’ll bring back something from the past that we’ll regret. Here are a few of examples of ancient organisms that we might not want to revive.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biology, biotech, cloning, extinction, moss, permafrost, resuscitation, silene stenophylla, virus, woolly mammoth

DailyDirt: Making Extinction Extinct

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Jurassic Park was just a movie — there isn’t really a practical way to pull intact dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes. But recently-extinct animal species might be cloned because we can actually gather intact DNA and cell fragments that can be manipulated more easily. Here are just a few examples of projects that could create animals that are now considered extinct.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biology, chicken, cloning, dna, duck, extinction, frog, genes, goat, species

Back And Forth Cloning Battles With Zynga Continue With New EA Chapter

from the karma-slapped dept

Our first introduction with Zynga was back in 2009 when the maker of Mob Wars sued Zynga over its Mafia Wars game. Zynga was accused of copyright infringement and ended up paying a pretty penny. Later on in the year, Zynga turned around and sued Playdom over what it claimed was trademark infringement. Shortly there after Zynga was sued for trademark infringment over the name Mafia Wars. Then last year, Zynga decided to sue a Brazilian company, Vostu, for various claims of copyright infringment and even some claims that the company copied its entire business model. This lawsuit resulted in a very interesting ruling from a US Judge telling Zynga not to enforce its win over Vostu, because the US Judge wanted first dibs on the ruling. Remember this last case, because it is the most important one when reviewing this next lawsuit.

Just last week, word came in that Zynga was being sued yet again over allegations of game cloning and copyright infringement. This time the player doing the suing is none other than EA, the makers of the game The Sims Social. In its complaint, EA accuses Zynga of pretty much copying the entirity of the Sims Social in its game The Ville. In a press release about the case, EA states:

As outlined in our complaint, when The Ville was introduced in June 2012, the infringement of The Sims Social was unmistakable to those of us at Maxis as well as to players and the industry at large. The similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga’s design choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social. The copying was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable. Scores of media and bloggers commented on the blatant mimicry.

Compare that to Zynga's statement about its lawsuit against Vostu:

Let’s be clear – it is one thing to be inspired by Zynga games, but it is entirely different to copy all of our key product features, product strategy, branding, mission statement and employee benefits lock, stock and barrel. We welcome Vostu into the arena of social games, but blatant infringement of our creative works is not an acceptable business strategy—it is a violation of the law.

In both statements, the accuser is stating that outright copying was taking place. That each accused game was a near replica of the other game. Such a claim from EA after Zynga made very much the same claims has got to be one of the largest legal karma slaps in history. One that Zynga will be very much lucky to walk away from.

Elsewhere in the filing, EA shows that Zynga's cloning is not limited to this one case. It lists numerous instances where Zynga had been accused of cloning other popular games. It lists the afore mentioned Mafia Wars, Dream Heights, Farmville and Zynga Bingo, all games that had been publicly accused of being clones. This was done to show that Zynga has an extensive history of cloning games.

EA's filing is also full of interesting screen shot comparisons in which it points out some of the more common similarities, such as the almost exact duplication of skin tone selections and personality types. EA even provided a video showing other similarities in animations.

Something to note in these examples is that they follow a very similar pattern to the filing Zynga made in its case against Vostu. In that filing, any time Zynga wanted to show off the similarities of the two games in question, it would show images that use as many similar elements arranged in as similar a fashion as possible. Something that EA does as well. This tactic is deployed as a method to project as much of a feeling of copyright infringement as possible. Unfortunately, it also clouds the fact that much of what is shown are in all actuality user made choices.

In response to this lawsuit, Zynga has sent a comment out to the media.

The Ville is the newest game in our 'ville' franchise — it builds on every major innovation from our existing invest-and-express games dating back to YoVille and continuing through CityVille and CastleVille, and introduces a number of new social features and game mechanics not seen in social games today. It's unfortunate that EA thought that this was an appropriate response to our game, and clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic copyright principles. It's also ironic that EA brings this suit shortly after launching SimCity Social, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Zynga's CityVille game. Nonetheless, we plan to defend our rights to the fullest extent possible and intend to win with players.

Since we are in a compare/contrast mood today, let's take a quick look at how Vostu responded to Zynga's lawsuit.

Zynga has been accused of copying so many games that they’ve sadly lost the ability to recognize games like ours that are chock full of original content and have been independently created. Vostu has 500 brilliant employees working night and day making hand drawings and writing proprietary code for online games that our 35 million users worldwide enjoy. Zynga’s anti-competitive effort to bully us with a frivolous lawsuit — especially when we have some of the same key investors — is pathetic. While Zynga plays games with the legal process we will continue focusing on using our substantial resources to create games that entertain our customers.

There are two key similarities between these two defensive statements. The first is that both companies make the claim that their work is original and built with the companies' creative talents. The other is both are claiming that the lawsuits are less about copyright and more about attacking a competitor. It really boggles the mind that a company like Zynga has missed the poetics of this situation.

While we have repeatedly stated that the practice of game cloning is something that can be dealt with outside of the legal system, it is interesting to see these two players go toe to toe. What makes this case even more interesting than a typical cloning case, as I have tried to portray, is that Zynga set itself up for this lawsuit. Not just by copying EA's game, but also by providing the exact kind of legal precedent EA needs to win. If Zynga is to defend itself in this case, it is in effect defending Vostu's actions. Something that Zynga probably isn't looking forward to.

Filed Under: cloning, copying, hypocrisy, video games
Companies: ea, vostu, zynga