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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?"
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 $10.00 at our local Wal-Mart. We temporarily store it on lab computers as necessary, and remove it after the game is over.
We require everyone present to have a licensed copy to play. Most people bring in their own boxes, and each have their own copy.
I suppose it depends on whether the players are using College property or their own personal property to play the game. It is in no way infringing for a group of people to bring in their own personal computer along with their own licensed copy of the game to have a gathering.
Check the license agreement, for example you don't need a licensed "standalone" game server for Unreal Tournament. The standalone server is publicly licensed, because nobody is using it as a client.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Hi, I was in charge of LAN parties for ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) at the University of Delaware. We had similar issues to the same ones you did and there's multiple ways to resolve it.
1) Some games have implied licensing. For example, say a certain game allows you only one copy of a key per internet server, but 4 copies of a given license per LAN server. Since this was done deliberately, it can be seen as an implicit contract since surely this was no accident.
2) I did multiple LAN parties. One of the things I realized reading the EULAs was that it was for one copy of the game to be "installed and played on one system". I then thought of the word "and". What I ended up doing, is making a contract (doc format sorry) through which people gave us permission to use a copy of their game for our events. Given the above "install and use" restriction, the person isn't required to attend the event, merely not be using their copy of the game at the same time. From there, I noticed I had large pools of licenses for two games and simply split each LAN party into two parts (one playing each game). I'm fairly certain the general idea is kosher. I talked to our University's computer ethics advisor and a professional IP lawyer and both thought it sounded great.
I had further ideas, but since I graduated, I never got a chance to implement them. One was to buy copies of a game that for extra licenses and then sell them (at no profit) to people who attended the parties who liked the games (I got a lot of approval for this, but no funding in time for me to implement it before graduation).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Talk to Dr. Paul Cessarini and Dr. Chase Wilson, both very interested in copyright law and digital rights.
Also, why don't you post some details about the club online?
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Playing games at a lan party isn't a public showing, unless you're providing both the games and the computers. If the participants are providing thier own machines and thier own copies of the game, then you need no such permission. If you want to play it on the safe side though, just call a few of the games' publishers and ask permission, or ask what you need to do to go about getting permission. My money's on the fact that not one of them will say 'no, you may not play our game at your lan party', and some might even provide cheap door prizes.
:)
I've been running a LAN party with some friends for the last few years btw, so I'm not completely talking out of my ass.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
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.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
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.
They got fined for not obtaining public performance rights. article about fines . It's best to be safe than sorry.
When I was graduating from high school, we wanted to have a gaming party (There was a LAN party, but a lot of people brought in their consoles as well), and we were told to get permission from the copyright holders.
We contacted a bunch of companies of games we figured people would bring (I know we didn't get half of the developers that were actually present, but we seemed to have satisfied the school), and none of them gave any trouble. Most of them responded quite graciously, in fact.
Several companies sent us promotional posters/flyers and such, and asked if we'd display it at the party. One sent a gift certificate for Poppa John's Pizza. The coolest thing is that probably half of them even sent us disks with game demos or the partial releases they package with some video cards to raffle off and such.
Technically, you can have the LAN party without permission (I think, anyway - IANAL), but if the university says they want you to get permission, don't worry about it, and just get permission. I'd be very suprised if any company said no (and frankly, if they do, I wouldn't buy their games anymore), and you'll probably score at least a couple freebies if you word your letters well.
As with most legal topics there is an endless continuum of possibilities.
[no violation --- probably not --- maybe a violation --- probably --- definitely a violation]
If you change one fact in your scenario, that can change where you may fall. Little by little the edges of the categories gets pushed. Usually, plaintiffs try and make it as broad a reading as possible, while defendants try to narrow the interpretation. The 1976 Copyright Act is the best place to start in determining the extent of the question at hand.
> Section 106 - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works: states generally that ". . . the owner of a copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:"
> Section 106 (4) - in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audio visual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly"
> Section 100 - Definitions
To perform or display a work "publicly" means -
- to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
- to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different.
The best thing to do is try and figure out how your particular set of facts will fall within this framework. If you are unsure, be safe and ask for permission.