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Lawsuits That Changed the Games Industry
Gamasutra has up a piece looking at litigation that changed the way the games industry works. Deep, interesting questions like "Is modding legal?", "Are games covered by the 1st amendment?", and "Are games protected by copyright laws?" have all been decided in legal cases within the last 20 years. The site explores these issues, and ponders issues that are likely to affect the business of the games hobby in the future. From the article: "A variety of laws have been put forth by state legislature to act toward censoring game content or controlling the sale of games. As a rule, be immediately suspicious of any legislation proposed in the name of 'security' or 'protecting our children.' The result is often a jumbo size bite taken out of artistic expression and individual liberty. To date, the ESA has fought and won nine out of nine cases on these issues, having the state laws declared unconstitutional. Furthermore, the ESA has sought and won more than $1.5 million dollars in attorneys fees."
Although the PS3 isn't selling that great, Sony removed rumble from the PS3 (although they cite some other reason) because they lost this case.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Electronic Arts overtime lawsuit.
And that's why parents exist, to say "No!" to stupid requests from their kids. :)
Eating the occasional fast food meal isn't necesarilly bad for you, eating them habitually most definitely is.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Agreed. I don't think a lawsuit is going to solve this problem. If this is really about the children who are not of age to make rational decisions, then we must wonder where the parents were and are.
How many kids, who aren't within shooting distance of being "legally" rational, do you know are even able to get to a McDonalds without their parents? I can't say that before age 12 at the earliest would a kid find themselves able to say, "Mom, I'm going to bike down to the McDs for lunch." That's twelve years where the parents have to make the decision to take their children to the McDonalds.
Similarly, how many people before high school get laptops? Unless you're in a very rich family you're probably stuck using the family computer for World of WarCraft, EverQuest, EvE or whichever poison you pick. Between parental controls and the fact that the computer rests rather immobile in a major room of the house I can't see how parents aren't willfully involved in letting their children be addicted to these games.
In my opinion, while the children may not have the rational capacity to make a decision in these matters they aren't the ones ultimately deciding. The best they can do is put the MMOG on their christmas wish list, or beg their parents for McDonalds. The parent ultimately has to give in or choose to do these things.
Now, if we're talking about rational adults becoming addicted to these games, that's a whole different story.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
There was the Nintendo vs. Galoob (the Game Genie lawsuit), and the Sega vs. Accolade (meaning that, basically, other companies could make unofficial carts legally).
No reference to the first modder that I recall who ran afoul of Fox Studios intellectual property - the Alien TC mod for Doom.
... am I on crack? I could have sworn he was served with cease-and-desist letters to completely halt his mod given his usage of images/logos/intellectual property.
... getting "Foxed".
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http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Aliens_TC
And no mention of it here
Oh, here's a reference. Yeah, it coined a phrase for that time period
http://www.unfetteredblather.com/nucleus/index.ph
Nintendo vs Tengen over who owned the rights to produce Tetris on the NES. Without this lawsuit in favor of nintendo, would we have had Tetris for the Game Boy? (and would Nintendo have become king of the handheld market?)
Nintendo vs Bung over cart copying devices. I believe this was one of the first lawsuits filed under the newly implemented Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
There is another Nintendo lawsuit involving the copy protection for the Nintendo Gameboy. Basicly the gameboy will not boot a cart unless it has the Nintendo logo data in the right place on the cart. There was a lawsuit over this (I dont know the particulars or who the other party was) where Nintendo argued that copying the nintendo logo was a copyright violation. I believe the court ruled that (like in the Sega vs Accolade case) it was OK to use the copyrighted nintendo logo for the specific purpose of making gameboy carts.
I am surprised that Nintendo didnt use stronger protection on the Gameboy Advance (such as encrypting the cart data somehow and having decryption done on the fly by the GBA). It may not have stopped chinese pirates from decapping the GBA CPU or decryption ASIC and reading out the secret key. But it would have meant that anything to do with GBA en/decrption falls squarely under the DMCA.