Also, Dr. Mario's a bad example because the ONLY similarity it has to Tetris is that pieces fall and can be rotated. :P That's enough for some people to call it a Tetris clone :D. Also yes, as Kerr has pointed out, Tetris clones are pretty much everywhere. Patents are VERY specific, so you pretty …

As an example, The Tetris Company has had a LOT of success with defending their copyrights and blocking the sale of various Tetris clones because, quite frankly, it's difficult to make a Tetris clone which doesn't look and play an awful lot like one of the official releases. :P Heh, Dr. Mario says …

"Hey, you made this fun little game for free? Well, how about I get my team of people to take your idea, make a few modifications, market it better, and make tons of money off of it with minimal effort?" The current laws actually support people having this line of thought. No intellectual property …

and what makes you believe IA will be around forever? The kind of thing this thread is pointing out bring up issues that could jeopardize its 'reasons' for exemptions and close the archive. Of course. The Internet in general is more fragile than any physical medium, because its existence depends on …

In this case you clearly refer to copyright. Who does such long extended terms benefit? The answer is simple - the copyright holders, most notably the big corporations which own the copyrights to some very popular works (e.g., Disney). Well duh. The question here is, Disney, and pretty much any …

Two questions I want to ask related to this discussion: 1. Whom does such extended terms for intellectual property benefit anyway? I get that the idea is to keep the property safe for approximately as long as the original creators, or the average human being in healthy conditions lives, AKA 80 to …