Copyrights, Videogames, and LAN Parties?

mse61 writes "I'm currently the sole organizer for what will hopefully be a large gamer club/LAN party on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. While booking the room for our next event (March 4th 2004) I was casually informed that I had to secure permission from the copyright holders for the games we would be playing. I was quite confused as to why they needed this, and their only answer was that it would be considered a 'public showing of copyrighted work', and therefore I must secure permission. I asked a lawyer about the policy and his best advice was to get a hard copy of their policy and then comply to the bare minimum. The University was unable to provide much hardcopy, but largely referred me to the University rule that all State and Federal laws were in effect. Have any Slashdotters ever run into this problem, and would they have any advice for a gamer lost in the mire of copyright laws?"

Comments

Whoever told you that is an idiot

[IshanCaspian]

Seriously. Think about it this way. Ever been to a public lab? A public high school? A library? They all have computers, all running copies of Windows. Is that a "public performance"? No. As long as you have one license for each computer, you're in the clear. Whoever told you that must have been thinking of movies or music...that's what the legal catch phrase "public showing" comes from. A lan party is no more a public performance than twenty people standing in the same room, listening to the same song on individual cd players with headphones.

Re:Whoever told you that is an idiot

[IshanCaspian]

No, it couldn't. DVDs / VHSs are licensed for home performance. They sell you those things as an individual, for individual use. Therefore, it's not within your rights to turn around and use that license to show it to a hundred people. That's why there's a difference between public and private performance. Showing a movie to a large group of people is outside of the agreement under which you're allowed to watch the DVD. However, when you buy a computer game, the license explicitly allows you to install it on one computer and to play it online with other people. The point about the "public performance" law is not that you're doing something with other people, but that you're outside of the original parameters of your license to use the work. A LAN party is just a group of people using their individual licenses lawfully together. A public screening of a movie is outside of the permissable license on a DVD sold for private viewing. Your last two paragraphs are false and misleading. If I buy a laptop and sit on a park bench, using it, that would be a "public performance," according to you. There's absolutely no connection between this notion of "public performance" and computer software.

Re:Yes I have

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately your LAN parties violated at least the UT2003 EULA. The UT2003 EULA specifies that it can only be installed on one hard drive and only played on the system with that hard drive. It further goes onto say that you cannot sublicense the game. In a long winded sentence with a bunch of other things you can't do, public display is listed. I am guessing you didn't provide all the EULAs to the ethics advisor or lawyer since your contract is not clearly not a legal way to play at least UT2003. By the way all of those licenses were void when sublicensed.

Re:Yes I have

[castlec]

Unfortunately, for your argument anyway, it comes down to the exact wording of the eula. The and of the English language is both a mathematical or and a mathematical and. Final meaning must be interpreted. In the particular case sited, the and is inclusive, not exclusional. This makes it a mathematical or, not a mathematical and. If it had said "installed on one, and only one computer, and played on that same computer" then there would be no doubt of the intention; however, human languages are ambiguous and as stated previously, it can be interpreted as a mathematical or rather than a mathematical and. This is why contracts used to be in multiple languages, to counter the ambiguities of one language with the strengths of another.

true||false = true

Now, you may attempt to counter my statements by saying that if that was their intention, they would have used an or. The or of the English language is, however, a mathematical xor. This would create a purchase that would result in no playing because if you install, you no longer have the option to play. If you don't install, you have the option to play but how are you going to play if you don't install?

Always remember, mathematics and language don't always match. Just because you think you can prove language with mathematics doesn't mean you're correct. Languages are not logical.