Deeplinks Blog posts about Video Games
When you buy a video game, you expect to be able to play it for as long as you want. You expect be able to play it with your kids many years from now if you want (well, maybe not Grand Theft Auto). And you would hope that museums and media historians could preserve the games that were so important to your childhood. But unfortunately, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions (17 U.S.C. § 1201, or Section 1201) creates legal risks for players who want to keep playing after game servers shut down, and curators who want to preserve games for posterity. That’s why I’m spearheading an effort to win legal protection for game enthusiasts and preservationists who want to keep abandoned games alive by running multiplayer servers or eliminating authentication mechanisms.
When you buy a book, a record, or a movie, you can expect to be able to enjoy it, on your own terms, for as long as you want. But the same cannot always be said about video games. Over the past several years, video game publishers have increasingly required connection with one of their own servers in order to "unlock" core functionality for gameplay. Publishers often take those servers offline once they stop being economical to run, leaving a typical gamer unable to play her lawfully purchased games. And this affects not just video game players, but archivists and researchers who want to preserve and study the history of games as cultural artifacts.
In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, players engage in a variety of missions. In some, they encounter nonfiction characters, including a character based on General Manuel Noriega, the former military dictator of Panama. As with movies or books, a creator of a video game might include real-world people as part of its historical narrative, to heighten realism, or for purposes of political satire or social commentary. The First Amendment should provide robust protection for this kind of creative expression. But some terrible court decisions regarding the so-called ‘right of publicity’ have opened the door to censorship by persons depicted in creative works.
A Microsoft executive has confirmed that, contrary to earlier reports from the company, the upcoming Xbox One console will not require the Kinect sensor to be activated at all times after all. This change comes after a widespread backlash from gamers concerned about the privacy implications of an always-on camera pointed from the television back at the couch.
Should a minor celebrity's right to wring every drop he can from his fame trump the right to create a realistic work? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals put its thumb on the scales today, issuing a terrible decision holding that a celebrity’s right of publicity is more important than any First Amendment right to depict real people in a video game. This ruling follows closely on the heels of a similar decision from the Third Circuit and threatens a wide range of speech—such as biographies and documentaries—which seeks to realistically depict famous people.
Pages
Subscribe to EFF Updates
Deeplinks Archives
Deeplinks Topics
- Fair Use and Intellectual Property: Defending the Balance
- Free Speech
- Innovation
- International
- Know Your Rights
- Privacy
- Trade Agreements
- Security
- State-Sponsored Malware
- Abortion Reporting
- Analog Hole
- Anonymity
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
- Biometrics
- Bloggers' Rights
- Broadcast Flag
- Broadcasting Treaty
- CALEA
- Cell Tracking
- Coders' Rights Project
- Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform
- Content Blocking
- Copyright Trolls
- Council of Europe
- Cyber Security Legislation
- CyberSLAPP
- Defend Your Right to Repair!
- Defending Digital Voices
- Development Agenda
- Digital Books
- Digital Radio
- Digital Video
- DMCA
- DMCA Rulemaking
- Do Not Track
- DRM
- E-Voting Rights
- EFF Europe
- Encrypting the Web
- Export Controls
- FAQs for Lodsys Targets
- File Sharing
- Fixing Copyright? The 2013-2014 Copyright Review Process
- FTAA
- Genetic Information Privacy
- Hollywood v. DVD
- How Patents Hinder Innovation (Graphic)
- International Privacy Standards
- Internet Governance Forum
- Law Enforcement Access
- Legislative Solutions for Patent Reform
- Locational Privacy
- Mandatory Data Retention
- Mandatory National IDs and Biometric Databases
- Mass Surveillance Technologies
- Medical Privacy
- National Security and Medical Information
- National Security Letters
- Net Neutrality
- No Downtime for Free Speech
- NSA Spying
- OECD
- Online Behavioral Tracking
- Open Access
- Open Wireless
- Patent Busting Project
- Patent Trolls
- Patents
- PATRIOT Act
- Pen Trap
- Policy Analysis
- Printers
- Public Health Reporting and Hospital Discharge Data
- Reading Accessibility
- Real ID
- RFID
- Search Engines
- Search Incident to Arrest
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
- Social Networks
- SOPA/PIPA: Internet Blacklist Legislation
- Student and Community Organizing
- Surveillance and Human Rights
- Surveillance Drones
- Terms Of (Ab)Use
- Test Your ISP
- The "Six Strikes" Copyright Surveillance Machine
- The Global Network Initiative
- The Law and Medical Privacy
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
- Travel Screening
- TRIPS
- Trusted Computing
- Video Games
- Wikileaks
- WIPO
- Transparency
- Uncategorized
eff.org/nsa-spying
