LittleBigPlanet Creations Raising Copyright Questions

Joystiq's Law of the Game column uses the recently released LittleBigPlanet to address the question of intellectual property rights for user-created content within and for games. At this point, Sony's ToS claims a great deal of control over users' work, unlike Second Life's, which is much more permissive. GiantBomb has a related story pointing out creations within LittleBigPlanet that are copies of other games, and how they could lead to legal troubles for Sony if they aren't quick about taking them down.

Comments

Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is one of the worst offenders with draconian EULA's. I am not surprised by this. They don't want to have people creating their own content to own their own content. They want to own our content.

I learned a long time ago to just say no to Sony.

Re:Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. The only thing really new in this whole thing is that Sony is claiming ownership of their users' creations - something that even Microsoft wouldn't attempt. If Sony hadn't claimed ownership, there would be no issue.

I mean, really, PCs have had user-created content for ages. And by ages, I mean "since the start of the PC," since I recall using a level editor to create new content for a simple sidescroller 20 years ago on the PC. Level editors? Not new.

PC game publishers have never had an issue with user-created content. If the user creates it and it infringes, that's their problem, not the publisher or developer or anyone involved in the original game.

The only new thing that Sony brings to the table with LittleBigPlanet is their restrictive license where they claim ownership of your creations. Otherwise LittleBigPlanet is just a generic sidescroller with lousy jumping controls and the world's creepiest avatars.

Sidescrollers with level editors have been done before. It's just that no one before Sony was stupid enough to claim ownership of content that users created, so this issue has never existed before.

Sony's dumb license, Sony's dumb problem. End of story.

Re:Sony

[Chaos Incarnate]

Sidescrollers with level editors have been done before. It's just that no one before Sony was stupid enough to claim ownership of content that users created, so this issue has never existed before.

As far as I know, nobody's ever had built-in distribution for end users' content before like LBP does. It's much simpler for Sony to do so if they are assigned the copyright; then they know they have the right to distribute it wherever they want to.

Re:Sony

[xhrit]

second neverwinter nights. the first was a mmo run by aol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(AOL_game)

Re:Sony

[Chaos Incarnate]

Did you read Sony's TOS yourself? (The section in question is #10.) I see no claim of ownership there; in fact, they explicitly deny ownership.

EA's license does not let you do whatever else you want with it; you grant them exclusive rights to it. Sony will still allow you to use your work non-commercially (and implies that commercial use can be negotiated, unlike the EA license.)

sigh

[thermian]

They could just say 'anything you do here is your own responsibility' and leave it at that.

If they were stupid enough to allow claims of copyright or copyright infringement in their game it'll die like a jolly fast dying thing, of death.

I mean seriously.. its a game...

Re:sigh

[DaveV1.0]

You forget that here in the U.S., one can be sued for anything and thus Sony, who has deep pockets, can be sued if a map you created and shared damages little johnny's morals or psyche or happens to be an exact duplicate of the beginning level of Super Mario.