Rogers Cadenhead got to declare victory today in his fight against the morons at MGM over the Wargames.Com domain name.
Cadenhead registered the domain years ago to sell wargames, but MGM contended that the only possible use for the Wargames.Com domain name was for the sequel to its 1983 film War Games (and WTF is MGM thinking making War Games 2?)
The funny thing is the lengths MGM went to convince the domain arbitrator that Cadenhead clearly meant the site to reference its movie. For example, in the introduction to one of his books on Java, Cadenhead wrote,
The quote “Shall we play a game?” is from the 1983 movie War Games, in which a young computer programmer portrayed by Matthew Broderick saves mankind after almost causing global thermonuclear war and the near-extinction of humankind. You’ll learn how to do that in the next book of this series, Sams Teach Yourself to Create International Incidents with Java in 24 Hours.
According to MGM, this reference (and a few other similar references) shows the extent to which Cadenhead was obsessed with the movie which led him to register the domain.
Yeah, every time I ask my wife “Shall we play a game?” what I’m really thinking is, “I wonder how I can steal MGM’s intellectual property.”
As an aside, I saw “Wargames” during its initial theatrical run during one of my rare summer visits with my father. I never saw it again until a few weeks ago — man, the movie that looks great when you’re 14 or 15 sure looks like shit when you’re approaching 40. All I can say is that Matthew Broderick is certainly not Bill Shatner.