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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?"
i'm a grad student at BGSU in the music department -- let me know if you need help with this.
Call the companies. If there are any public performance issues they're the best ones to tell you if you need clearance. I suspect you don't, but it's always possible that if there is a audience (let's say you have a large bracket tournament for the best Halo player at BG), that the company might want you to get clearance, dictate that no cameras be present, etc...
Our LUG has a monthly LAN party. We picked a LAN game that was easy enough for everyone in the group to afford: Unreal Game Of The Year -- Retail $10.00 at our local Wal-Mart. We temporarily store it on lab computers as necessary, and remove it after the game is over.
We require everyone present to have a licensed copy to play. Most people bring in their own boxes, and each have their own copy.
I suppose it depends on whether the players are using College property or their own personal property to play the game. It is in no way infringing for a group of people to bring in their own personal computer along with their own licensed copy of the game to have a gathering.
Check the license agreement, for example you don't need a licensed "standalone" game server for Unreal Tournament. The standalone server is publicly licensed, because nobody is using it as a client.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Chances are you don't, but most of the people I know that run LAN parties routinely contact the companies when they have one coming up. Often times, the companies will supply a few copies of a game or some hardware or other merchandise. I have two heat.net shirts from such parties. Hell, I was at one where they had Razor Boomslang mice provided (when they were new and cost like $100)
Actually a LAN party could be viewed as a "public performance" because of the broad defination of a LAN party. Theres primarily two types. Theres the 'bring your own computer' system or the cybercafe style of 'walk in, pay and play' system. In a broad defination both are LAN parties, the thing is it only applies for the latter. For the former, yeah you'd need one license for each computer (to be on the safe side.)
It depends on how you view it. If you invited 20 friends over to your house to watch a DVD, yes that could be considered a "public showing". If you were some rich ass mofo and decided to buy 20 Alienware computer and run 20 copies of UT2k4, yes that could be considered to be a "public performance." (For both Alienware and Epic.)
As for running Windows on multiple computers at a place like a library or a school, thats not really a fair statement. Some schools and libraries recieve the equipment (and software) for free (at the very least, discounted) so I'm sure theres some kind of special license agreements for them.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
I had a similar idea a while back... the difference being that in mine it combined the "I'm not using it at the moment" idea with the "time shifting" idea. That is, you can use it for as long as I haven't used it. It's been a week or two since I've used it, so you should be good for well over two-hundred hours.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'm confused as to why this could even be an issue. Aren't lan parties GREAT for companies? I know that if I made a game and a whole bunch of people who didn't know each other got together to play it, I'd be totally psyced. Were there any previous instances where a game publisher took or threatened legal action as a result of a lan party? I really have a hard time beliving that any publisher in their right mind would do such a thing.
A computer person that doesn't know that both conditions must be met in an and statement? You should read it as "installed on one system" (Assuming you correctly copied the EULA.) If both machines had it installed you violated the licensing agreement.
Not that I really mind.
At Carnegie Mellon University they project a movie on a big ass 20 foot tall screen out on Flag Staff hill. They don't seem to be having any problems.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I guess it all depends on the nature of your LAN party. Is it commercial orientated or just some 'geeks' getting together to play some games?
For example, the product license agreement for my PS2 game Gun Grave reads:
-snip-
You Shall Not:
Exploit this Program or its parts commercially, including, but not limited to use at a cybercafe, computer gaming centre or any other location-based site. Activision may offer a seperate Site License Agreement to permit you to make this Product available for commercial use
-snip-
I'm sure PC games have similair terms in the license agreements. It seems that as long as you are not commercially exploiting the games you should be in the clear. But as usual, IANAL.
As someone who not only graduated from BGSU but did so with a Master's thesis written about videogames, I can tell you that there have been lan parties on BGSU before, so this seems like a case of someone who is ignorant of what is going on. I see two solutions.
One is to go and try to talk some sence into them tell them that this is not a public showing, everyone coming will have bought their own copies of the game, everyone has paid for the games, and that the games are designed for this exact purpose. Which office did you talk to? I have reserved rooms at BGSU for various reasons several times for some odd purposes and never had them question me. I would suggest trying to talk to someone else.
Secondly, baffle them with bullshit. I know that nothing is going to happen, You know that nothing is going to happen. Print out the user agreements to like 10-20 different games and I would imagine that they would just stick it in a file somewhere without even reading it. As long as they have some official sounding paperwork then in most cases they would be happy, unless you run into some power happy person -- again I think the best route is to try to talk to someone else. Don't say, "Can I talk to soemone else" just go over there at various times untill that person is gone and pretend this is the first time you've been there.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players