January 2009

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2009.

Still alive and working on Wagic  

January 17, 2009 in Wagic | 10 comments

The little activity in the forums and my lack of posts since we got the Lawyers of the Coast(R)(C)(TM) C&D letter may have let you think that the project is dead, but let me tell you it’s not.

I could post screenshots of what I’ve been working on today, but let’s face it, the game without its pictures is not as nice, so I’ll refrain from doing it right now.

If you’re following our dev “team”, you’ve seen that the svn’s activity is starting again slowly, after a break of almost one month ( 2 weeks holidays, 1 week jet-lag, and 1 week thinking about this whole C&D thing)

I can’t tell when next release will be here, but I can already tell it will not contain much new features related to the game itself. Hey, the priority is to get back on track, and I think everyone understand that. The good news is: Wagic WILL be back soon, with no copyright infringing material



Cease and Desist  

January 9, 2009 in Uncategorized | 26 comments

I guess it was to be expected at some point, but I wasn’t expecting it that fast, I must say.

I received a very aggressive email from WotC’s lawyers today.

It doesn’t seem to be a prank, and I do respect WotC’s work enough not to think about it twice. Downloads, videos and pictures have been (or will be soon) removed, until we can come back with a version of Wagic that doesn’t use any copyrighted material.

Please do not complain about downloads not working, we’ll be working as fast as we can to find a solution.

Below is a copy of the email I received (email address removed to prevent this poor guy from getting spam):

We are counsel for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (“Wizards”), the owner of the copyrights and trademarks for the MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading card game.  We have recently became aware that you are posting on YouTube videos and making available on your own website a game called Wagic that you admit to be a copy of the MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading card game.  This unauthorized copying of Wizards’ MAGIC: THE GATHERING® trading card game constitutes blatant copyright infringement in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501.
On behalf of Wizards, we therefore demand that you immediately cease and desist from providing, and remove or disable access to, the infringing content identified above, as well as to remove from your website infringing visual content copied from Wizards’ game.
In addition, to assist Wizards in determining the harm that has been done by this very serious infringement, we also demand that you furnish us with information concerning the length of time that you have been making the game available and any revenue you received from the downloads of the game.  We will then be in a position to discuss monetary compensation for his unauthorized use.
Please provide us with the requested information and your written agreement to the above, as soon as possible and in any event within five days.  This letter does not purport to be a complete statement of the facts or the law and is without prejudice to Wizards’ legal and equitable rights.
Kim J. Landsman
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036-6710
Direct Tel:  212.336.2980
Direct Fax:  212.336.2985
E-mail:  xxxxxxxxxxxx

PSP Hacking news  

January 3, 2009 in pandora, psp dev | 2 comments

It’s been almost 3 month since I got my psp3000 and made an “offer” to give half of the donations received through Wagic to the group of hackers who would allow me to run wagic on the new PSP.

Lots of things have been going on in the “underground” world of the PSP in those 3 months. Datel’s new battery (and maxconsole’s disgusting lies), brokencode’s “out of the blue” cracking of the pre IPL thingy, fake downgrade announcements… In the end it seemed like all attempts were leading to a dead-end, and Dark_Alex’s silence on the issue in the last 3 months didn’t help.

A few days ago, I myself gave it a try through a libtiff vulnerability, and managed to get the attention of a few hackers and psp sites… but honestly I don’t see my crash thingy getting any further, especially since a far better proof of concept has been revealed by MaTiAz on lan.st, using a buffer overflow in the game GripShift (but I’ll keep trying with libtiff).

After all, it seems part of the money from the donations is going to be sent to an ebay seller :p

Whatever this proof of concept leads to, I think there is one important thing to remember : people should not rely on only one guy to help them with their unhackable PSPs. This is just unhealthy for the scene. I’m against the deification of hackers.

Libtiff Crash by me :)

Gripshift buffer overflow POC by MaTiAz