Blizzard, Microsoft Codify Licenses for Machinima

Wired has up a piece looking at two recent licenses released by Microsoft and Blizzard clarifying their policies towards player use of their games to create Machinima. It's an interesting discussion, because while Blizzard's license grants rights for the first time since World of Warcraft was released (essentially deliberately opening holes in their EULA), Microsoft's new policy takes rights away from enthusiastic Halo players at a time when everyone has just been given the capability to create their own in-game videos. Despite some trepidations, both licenses seem to be well received: "Even digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation signed off on the rules ... Fred von Lohmann, an EFF senior staff attorney who examined both sets of rules, said the main difference between them lies in a user's base set of rights ... 'It's great news that both of these companies are taking machinima seriously enough that they have been willing to come out and authorize some kinds of machinima ... That's a huge improvement over where we were before, which was (that) no one wanted to give machinima guys any kind of guidance at all.'"

Comments

Well received?

[apdyck]

Despite some trepidations, both licenses seem to be well received How can one really say if a license is well received? Doesn't everybody just click "I accept"?

Re:Well received?

[toleraen]

A while back the Everquest EULA was modified to read that SOE was able to dig through your processes to see if you're running any programs that were hooking into the client (back then it was mainly for ShowEQ). It was not well received (a whole lot of complaining on the forums, subscriptions canceled, etc), and that part of the license, as well as their process identifying program, got removed.

People can and have stood up to overly infringing EULAs, but it doesn't happen too often.

Re:Well received?

[HTH NE1]

It does seem to make Rooster Teeth's sale of any new DVDs of Red vs. Blue in the future to be against the terms, unless they negotiate alternate terms. Everything they've made so far predates this license.