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Rockstar Finally Wins a Lawsuit
Eurogamer is reporting that Rockstar Games has finally won a lawsuit. It's an important one too, involving a strip club's objection to its appearance (in satirized form) in the streets of San Andreas. From the article: "Rockstar conceded that its artists worked from photographs of real life LA locations - including the Play Pen - when designing the game, but argued that they 'changed the names, building designs and overall look and feel of the locations... To make them fit the virtual, cartoon-style world of San Andreas and the series' irreverent tone.' Rockstar also referred to the lawsuit MCA Records successfully defended over the song Barbie Girl, when the judge ruled that trademark rights 'do not entitle the owner to quash an unauthorized use of the mark by another who is communicating ideas or expressing points of view.'"
It isn't that they don't like the pictures to be taken. It is someone taking the picture of thier storfront and image that they worked hard to create and then trying to profit from it.
Imagine you spent all night writing an award winning speech on dumb things people do with computers. Then i take a picture of you with this speech in hand, change the orentation around a little and put it in a game i made with the intent of people shooting objects at it. Of course there would be little value to this picture getting objects shot at it unless you wrote it, got it recognized, and won an award for it or at least popularized it. Now, in this case, the only reason it is worth anything to me in a game is because you did all the work. You are directly responcible for part of the success to my game. You might thing you should be compensated a little.
This lawsuite is no different. The exception is that rockstar changed enough of it to make a judge think they weren't trying to capitolize of the success of the stripclub. It is more of an issue of did people buy the game because of the strip club or discover the strip club because of the game.
So yea, it isnt't about taking a picture, it is about taking a picture in order to directly profit from someone elses hardwork.