The European Commission released their full position now on the Stop Destroying Videogames initiative, and it's not the response many will have been hoping for.
Even Value has tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service and that you don’t own Steam games but rather licenses to games on Steam.
If you open a printed, physical book, you’ll likely see something like this printed on the first page: “copyright [author name], all rights reserved”. If the book was printed in the last year, it might also include language explicitly forbidding AI training and other forms of data mining.
If you look at the back of the packaging of physical movie releases (so for example a DVD or Bluray case) you’ll find find something like “this movie has only been licensed for personal used. Public exhibition is not permitted”
Because media has always been licenced. The question therefore is less about license vs ownership and instead about what makes a fair license. SKG argues, that the licensing as it currently exists is deeply unfair. Unfair enough that it possibly already violates EU law. That’s what the lawsuit in France is about.
A group could take SWTOR, add content, and have people donate/pay for it despite the IP holder not wanting their IP used that way.
Not really. The game has, as you yourself noted, been licensed to you. The granted rights don’t include commercial activity. Publishers could even put the videogame equivalent of the language from the movie cases into their licenses to spell that out.
Disregarding license/ownership and asking if that license is fair use. That is one thing I really do agree with. As I mentioned, some things with SKG make sense, others not so much. MMOs is where the community breaks down on that, though. In no world would fair use licensing include handing over server code to the public at a product’s end of life. A publisher could if they chose to, but realistically that isn’t something that would happen and legally shouldn’t/wouldn’t be something a law would written to enforce. For something like a singleplayer game requiring online checks that’s different though. Its the scope of SKG and blanket opinion without real thought that I think is the main issue.
For MMOs, the question of fair use is interesting. When Blizzard shut down TurtleWoW they cited copyright infringement of their game assets. That includes game art. So one interesting question there (regarding the scope) what is fair use of the game assets? If I’m licensing those assets, under what constraints can I use them? Can I use to them to market my private server? Can I use them standalone outside the game or in a different project? I would think its obvious that you can’t just use them however you see fit, but I’m seen users here basically say they believe they own them outright which just isn’t true.
It’s not really about fair use because European law doesn’t really have that as a concept. I’m talking about contract law, since licenses are contracts. Now, I’m not a lawyer and shit gets complicated real fast but basically EU law states that contracts need to be fair. Unfair clauses are invalid (again really simplifying here). SKG argues that this is the case for games.
OK, I’ll bite.
If you open a printed, physical book, you’ll likely see something like this printed on the first page: “copyright [author name], all rights reserved”. If the book was printed in the last year, it might also include language explicitly forbidding AI training and other forms of data mining.
If you look at the back of the packaging of physical movie releases (so for example a DVD or Bluray case) you’ll find find something like “this movie has only been licensed for personal used. Public exhibition is not permitted”
Because media has always been licenced. The question therefore is less about license vs ownership and instead about what makes a fair license. SKG argues, that the licensing as it currently exists is deeply unfair. Unfair enough that it possibly already violates EU law. That’s what the lawsuit in France is about.
Not really. The game has, as you yourself noted, been licensed to you. The granted rights don’t include commercial activity. Publishers could even put the videogame equivalent of the language from the movie cases into their licenses to spell that out.
Ok, see that is a logical argument!
Disregarding license/ownership and asking if that license is fair use. That is one thing I really do agree with. As I mentioned, some things with SKG make sense, others not so much. MMOs is where the community breaks down on that, though. In no world would fair use licensing include handing over server code to the public at a product’s end of life. A publisher could if they chose to, but realistically that isn’t something that would happen and legally shouldn’t/wouldn’t be something a law would written to enforce. For something like a singleplayer game requiring online checks that’s different though. Its the scope of SKG and blanket opinion without real thought that I think is the main issue.
For MMOs, the question of fair use is interesting. When Blizzard shut down TurtleWoW they cited copyright infringement of their game assets. That includes game art. So one interesting question there (regarding the scope) what is fair use of the game assets? If I’m licensing those assets, under what constraints can I use them? Can I use to them to market my private server? Can I use them standalone outside the game or in a different project? I would think its obvious that you can’t just use them however you see fit, but I’m seen users here basically say they believe they own them outright which just isn’t true.
It’s not really about fair use because European law doesn’t really have that as a concept. I’m talking about contract law, since licenses are contracts. Now, I’m not a lawyer and shit gets complicated real fast but basically EU law states that contracts need to be fair. Unfair clauses are invalid (again really simplifying here). SKG argues that this is the case for games.