Since I wrote my original call for the regulation of eBay, I've occasionally looked back on it and wondered if I was too harsh. eBay has now helpfully assured me that they'll keep abusing their monopoly position given the opportunity. (Backup link.) As of next month, sellers can't accept payments by check or money order. It's cash-on-pickup or online only. Want, say, Google Checkout? "Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay." That's a surprisingly honest statement that they're using their monopoly in running auction to leverage and advantage in the unrelated area of payment handling. eBay are scum. At this point my primary hope is that they screw up badly enough that they implode, creating a vacuum for real competition. Unfortunately their monopoly power is so great that the screw up would need to be mind-bogglingly large.

(Via Slashdot.)

I love The Princess Bride. I first saw the movie as a kid and loved it's simple, magical story. It's aged well and I still enjoy watching it every few years. As an adult I found the novel, a grimmer tale wrapped in a decidedly dark framing story. I loved it too. So I was excited to hear that a video game was coming out. The game is now out. And it's utter garbage.

Demos of three of the five minigames are available online. What do we get? The exciting adventure in the Fire Swap has been turned into a mediocre platformer. Having tiny versions of Buttercup and Westley jump around on platforms doesn't really seem to capture anything about the movie. Matching wits with Vizzini is a trivia game about the movie. Who knew that Vizzini's keen mind turned to asking questions about what metal a crown is made of. For bonus points, there are ambigious questions. "If two people are holding a clock, how many hands are on the clock." It's possible that the two people are each contributing one hand each, plus the two on the clock face, for a total of four. Or maybe two hands each plus a second hand for seven. Sorry, the right answer is 6. The visit to Miracle Max mixes a hidden image search with a potion mixing game. The image search is like all image searches: boring and pointless. The potion mixing shows promise, but after several levels of play and failing to be challenged in the slightest, I'm unimpressed.

The reviews page is borderline fraud. Many of the entries aren't reviews in any way shape or form. The Time "review" just mentions that it's coming. The same goes for the quote from Game|Life at Wired, the quote from Joystiq, and the quote from Gamespot. For the USA Today quote, they've taken the image caption! The remaining reviews? There is an anonymous web comment, short mentions, and a bunch of sites not known for video game reviews.

It's a damn shame. Someone took the brilliance of The Princess Bride and crapped out some of the worst license shovelware I've seen since Enter the Matrix. I hope the developers are ashamed of themselves.

While Disney is running around stretching copyright so that Micky Mouse will never enter the public domain, Disney is perfectly willing to engage in legal trickery to destroy someone else's copyright.

Take the saga of Bambi, by Austrian Felix Salten. The story of the fawn was first published in Germany in 1923 without a formal copyright notice, which wasn't required there. Three years later, Salten republished it with a notice.

In the 1930s, Salten's rights were assigned to Disney, which made the famous 1942 movie. When Salten's heirs renewed the copyright in 1954, they correctly listed 1926 as the year of Bambi's first copyright.

But in a 1994 dispute over royalties with a small publisher that had acquired the Salten family's rights, Disney lawyers said the 1954 copyright was void because it was filed three years too late -- based on the fact that the story was first published in 1923. A federal judge sided with Disney, ruling Bambi was in the public domain.

Though that finding was reversed on appeal, the legal ordeal bankrupted the publisher.

Scum. I hope they lose the copyright to Mickey because of a similar minor detail. They've clearly established that they feel the law should be applied that way.