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Judge Rules Games Are "Expressive Works"
There has been an ongoing legal battle over the past few years about how and when game makers can use the likenesses of football players without their permission. Former college football player Samuel Keller filed a class action suit in May against Electronic Arts for the publisher's use of NCAA players' information — including things like jersey number, height, weight, skin tone and hair style, but not names — to recreate actual teams within sports games. An earlier suit filed by NFL Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown brought up the fact that video games weren't even a consideration when contracts and licensing rights were negotiated in the '50s and '60s, yet many football players from that era (including Brown) are represented in the occasional sports game whether they like it or not. A ruling came down from a district court judge last Wednesday stating that video games are "expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment," and are thus protected under the First Amendment. Brown and fellow Hall-of-Famer Herb Adderley are now seeking to throw their support behind Keller's lawsuit.
Of course they are.
Its sad when we all applaud a judge actually making a good ruling. Shouldn't that simply be the assumed state of all rulings?
That's right. First amendment baby. woooooo hooooooooo USA USA USA
Osi Osi Osi Osi Osi
It's a very rare player that has rights to their own name, image, and likeness. For the most part, when you sign your contract with the NCAA and professional leagues you must turn over those rights to the league. This gives them the ability to license that data for things like games.
Whether the games are expressive works or not, the rights to those likenesses should lie with the leagues, not the players.
...does this mean I can create my own football game using the likeness/names of the players without having to license the information? (
Facts and figures cannot be copyrighted. And how can public information be abused? They just want money.
While I don't think an EA football title is the perfect example of artistic expression... it is nice to know that the supreme court is finally giving artists of the digital age their due. There's a reason game design and computer graphics is always filed in a colleges Art's and Sciences program. It's because these fields are the best of both worlds. We might be nerdy but don't forget the art part
Now I can submit my Michael Vick Dog Fighting game to the app store.
Ronald Katz, the lawyer representing Adderley and Brown, wrote in a filing Monday that allowing EA Sports to profit from the use of athletes' likenesses without their permission means "EA could use for free the identity of thousands of present and former collegiate and professional athletes, eliminating any legal reasons for EA to continue any licensing, and giving it a windfall worth hundreds of millions of dollars."
So if this stands, anyone else could produce their own sports titles to compete with EA? Sounds good. I suppose EA feels that the end of licensing fees will be more of a boon than any competition they face.
... if a game was created that had the faces and bodies of various judges (this judge in particular) and politicians and played like GTA complete with hookers and drug use I don't think that said figures would care very much about the first amendment. What if a game about hookers was created with a character that looked like the judges wife? Would he care as much then?
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
There has been an ongoing legal battle over the past few years about how and when game makers can use the likenesses of football players without their permission.
This is a case where people should stop thinking about lawsuits and royalties and start thinking of the children, because in the end, it's the kids that count.
The video game company is trading on the likeness of a person. This isn't a painting in a gallery, it is software sold by the millions around the globe, with millions in profit involved.
Personally, I think the obvious ruling here is that you can't put someone's likeness in a game without their consent.
That said, I don't NECESSARILY agree that stats and a hairstyle constitute a likeness.
paintball
Given the demographics of /. readers, as seen here http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.slashdot.org#demographics, I wouldn't be surprised if many here considers the original Doom series great art! :)
I don't even see issues the players would have unless they weren't being accurately portrayed...
Does that mean I can make an almost exact replica of a popular video game, change a few things, call it a parody and distribute it online free of charge?
I'd love to see what would happen if someone does this to an EA game to see if they would stand by the "first amendment" then.
Thats probally how he met her in the first place.
TT
Madden's "classic teams" all have the wrong numbers on their jerseys... It certainly stinks! Back in the old days, all the football games would have the correct player numbers, even if they didn't have a license for the names. You can't copyright numbers, but, apparently, some people want to. Let's hope this ruling stands.
In this corner, wearing the blue and yellow trunks, weighing in at 800 pounds, he's pure gorilla madness, we have -- Big Copyright!
And in this corner, wearing the green and pink trunks, weighing in at 800 points, he's the thrilla gorilla, we have -- Big Copyright!
Alright gentleman (and I use that term loosely), I want a dirty fight, with obscure legal references, wildly out of control laws, and frequent appeals to artistic freedom, the rights of the performer, and the advance of the useful arts when you really mean "money." We're also going to expect at least $1 million to go to lawyers on each side, and another $1 million each in extra campaign contributions this year. When you hear the bell ring, come out and start working the groin!
Let's get readyyyyyyyyy to rummmmmmbullllll. (am I going to get sued for typing that?)
Having purchased laws sufficient for them to eat their customers and finding their appetite still unsated, big copyright is now using its own laws against itself. There have been a few stories like this recently. That is so awesome. Mmmmm, mmmm, how does chewing on your own leg taste, buddy? Sure am happy to see that your laws are so strict, and your arrogant contempt has grown so complete, that you have actually started hating yourself. Have fun knuckleheads -- I'll be over here watching user generated content.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I want a pc NFL games and that may be a court case if some where to make one that may be far from a open and shut case.
Some quick observations:
To put the point another way: Just because you participated in historical events doesn't give you the right to influence the (fictional) depiction of these events. If you don't like your likeness appearing in the media then don't let yourself become a public figure.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I wonder how this is going to impact censorship? With any luck, the tides are (finally) changing against the Puritan 3% in this country, and we'll be able to get our wholesome drugs and child killing back in Fallout 3.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
what if I want to make a reality simulator and give it out for free?
Dwarf Fortress beat you to that.
I reserve the right to have a physical object so I can sell it later, and recover my money.
So whether it's art or not depends on what the creator's attitude to it was? It seems to me that the important thing should be the nature of the artifact produced.
But that's probably why I don't get "modern art": it seems to base the artisticness of an artifact on the story one crafts around the creator, the process whereby the artifact was created, and the artfact, rather than the artifact itself.
I think there should just be accepted nuance that if you make enough money (say 1 million a year) then you lose the right to bitch about how your 'likeness' is being used.
I know people here in Slashdot like to think that everyone else's information is just dying to be free (usually so they can then use it to make some money). However, there are limits, and the world of technology is not some separate universe where normal laws do not apply. If someone has the right to control and profit from their own image in a mass-produced, for-profit, magazine, poster, or other publication then the same should apply to games. If someone produced only one copy of a "game" as an art installation that would be different. But games are distributed en-mass specifically to make a profit. Claiming that Party B has a right to steal the intellectual property of Party A (likeness, description, history, etc.) just because Party B is using it in some electronic form is disingenuous.
Anyone who chooses to argue with me should first consider how they would feel if they had spent years building a career in some celebrity-or-image-based industry only to have someone else come along and use their image to make a profit, thus denying them income that they had worked years to earn.
I'm really sick of football.
For years I've listened to them pound the urine out of anyone, including fans, who said or did anything with the word or picture of a football player.
This is too much. The NFL has more than enough money. Certainly more than they ever EVER deserved for their contribution to society and whatever labor may be imagined.
Now its time for these queens in pads to man up and promote the general welfare , stimulate industry and creativity by getting off their high horse and letting the little guy make some money. Let the fans express themselves. Turn loose of this ill gotten revenue and show they are Americans by supporting the idea that copyright is " for a short time" then everyone else can use it to promote new works etc.
If they don't like it, they can just pick up all their hoodlum players, drug pushing coaches,and tax evading owners and take their show to another country.
They aren't welcome here anymore. They are just plain un-American . They no longer stand as role models for the young. They no longer represent dedication to physical perfection. They no longer stand as a banner of fair play and honesty. What good are they? They are just another money siphon to the citizens addicted to their "sport" and have more to do with crack dealers than heroes. They milk the legal system, taking up tax dollars and courtrooms for their own gain. They just don't care enough about the United States to do anything moral or right (that isn't a publicity stunt).
Let them go play in other countries where football is played without pads or referees who blow a whistle every few seconds giving the pansies a rest. They will be laughed at and put in their place. Send 'em to Austrailia where they can lose some teeth on the field. The wussy socialist profiteers!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
It's striking how far copyright is stretched in the entertainment industry. It goes way beyond "Look and Feel". You can't write a third-party "Harry Potter" book. "Quantum of Solace" has nothing but the title taken from the Ian Fleming short story. (Few people have ever read that short story, which consists of some British Brahman in a Caribbean outpost of the British Empire telling Bond a story about someone's failed marriage.) Yet copyright has been held to cover such a long reach.
If you see a painting and your only reaction is "oh, that's pretty" it's probably NOT art. If it takes your breath away and makes you say "WOW!" it is art.
No, that's the difference between good art and banal art. NOT the difference between art and not-art.
I heard a definition of art the other day that really seemd insightful (I studied art in college).
That's nice. Lots of people have studied art in college, and actually create art, and have a much broader and less elitist view of the definition of art.
Personally, I like Scott McCloud's definition of art: Everything that isn't directly and solely related to the base acts of survival and reproduction is art.
And a friend of mine, who is a professional artist, gets offended when I tell him that definition because in his view, the act of human reproduction is inseparable from art. His definition is even more expansive than McCloud's.
But hey, you studied art in school and thus can tell what is and isn't art based on how good it is. Tell me, by your own definition of art, have you ever created any? And does your answer imply that you are qualified to judge or not?
The enemies of Democracy are
The first thing that I though of was how EA effectively ruined the fantastic Sega NFL2k franchise by licensing the exclusive rights to player and team names from the NFL. Does this ruling effectively invalidate these exclusivity arrangements?
Come on now, there's no point to having a term "art" when you use it as a synonym for "almost everything that anybody does." When you refuse to define art specifically you're really just saying "oh look, EVERYTHING is beautiful, ART is beautiful, thus EVERYTHING is ART!" It's a very feel-good definition... but what's the point of having the term in the first place?
:).
I tend to think of art as something that is purposefully created with the intent to express some aspect of the human experience. Art should invoke emotion... and that emotion should match (somewhat) up to what the artist intended. I say somewhat because the interpretation of art is subjective, and not everybody can get at the artist's intention... but they still form a seemingly close reaction.
I think that the motion/intention matching is important in order to distinguish art that succeeds, art that fails, and everyday objects created. Yes, a pencil is beautiful and it allows us to do so very much... but was its creator's intent to move us? Not likely, they were probably just a factory worker (and even the designer of the first pencil probably was doing it for a functional purpose). Similarly, the movie "Date Movie" is not something I would consider art... the creators intended it to be funny, and all I could feel is disgust. My emotion and the author's (probable) intention happened to be polar opposites.
This "definition" has issues... yes. How do we know the author's intended meaning? How close should an audience's reaction be to the intent? Obviously interpretations of famous pieces have changed in some ways... and a lot of the time we interpret art in relation to current times and subjective feelings... and it's hard to account for that in a "definition" of art. I think that that's why people have such a hard time defining art and want to state it as broadly as your cited Scott McCloud. Maybe art is something that has a definition, but that definition is undefinable or incomprehensible. However, there has to be a distinction between "art" and "everything else", otherwise the term is meaningless.
On a side note - I have NOT studied art... only thought about it
Come on now, there's no point to having a term "art" when you use it as a synonym for "almost everything that anybody does." When you refuse to define art specifically you're really just saying "oh look, EVERYTHING is beautiful, ART is beautiful, thus EVERYTHING is ART!" It's a very feel-good definition... but what's the point of having the term in the first place?
But obviously not EVERYTHING is art by even this expansive definition. The point is that art is the things that we do that aren't what every other organism on earth does: Survive.
The specific examples McCloud uses of not-art, in reference to a prehistoric caveman, is the pursuit of food, the (physical) pursuit of a mate, and fleeing from a predator. When the caveman evades the predator, and rather than simply move on to the next survival-related task, he sticks his tongue out at it? That's art.
I tend to think of art as something that is purposefully created with the intent to express some aspect of the human experience.
Oh I agree, but we are expressive, emotive creatures, and there's precious little we do that doesn't express some aspect of the human experience. We've been expressing ourselves artistically for tens of thousands of years before there was a word for art, much less arguments about its definitions. It may not be a completely unique human characteristic, but it is certainly one of our defining ones.
I personally don't see a difference between expressing an aspect of the human experience, and deliberately setting out to make a statement about the human experience, other than one is more pretentious. If I paint a picture of two people with no explicit intention of saying anything about humanity, and yet nevertheless you can see an expression of love, or distance, or solitude, or whatever, how is that not art? You may not mean to say anything about the human experience when you give a flower to the girl you like, yet you are. The conversation we're having right now is art.
The essence of my friend's point about sex is that we, as social, emotional, expressive humans, can't make love without expressing your own humanity, without creating art. I disagree with him, I think there's fucking that's simply fucking as primordial and instinctual as that between lizards, but I see his point.
Yes, a pencil is beautiful and it allows us to do so very much... but was its creator's intent to move us? Not likely, they were probably just a factory worker (and even the designer of the first pencil probably was doing it for a functional purpose).
The factory worker was earning a paycheck, which is the modern-day equivalent of acquiring food and shelter. It's about survival. The same thing goes for the designer and his paycheck. Our day jobs aren't art; at least, not necessarily. When he chose an aesthetically pleasing color to paint the pencil? Art. The architect of the Empire State Building was earning a paycheck to ensure his survival, and building something completely practical, but also something beautiful and expressive. That's art.
Is it clear that not EVERYTHING is art? There is a distinction here, and it's an important one.
Similarly, the movie "Date Movie" is not something I would consider art... the creators intended it to be funny, and all I could feel is disgust. My emotion and the author's (probable) intention happened to be polar opposites.
This "definition" has issues... yes. How do we know the author's intended meaning? How close should an audience's reaction be to the intent?
And here I disagree with you very strongly. Date Movie is without a doubt art for any worthwhile definition... just crappy art. Who cares that your reaction was not what the creators intended? That doesn't turn art into not-art. That just means the creator failed. Bad art is still art. I categorically reject any definition of "art" where perceived quality of the art is the metric, as you al
The enemies of Democracy are
I tend to think of art as something that is purposefully created with the intent to express some aspect of the human experience. Art should invoke emotion... and that emotion should match (somewhat) up to what the artist intended. I say somewhat because the interpretation of art is subjective, and not everybody can get at the artist's intention... but they still form a seemingly close reaction.
Congrats, you get it!
I think that the motion/intention matching is important in order to distinguish art that succeeds, art that fails
I keep thinking of Van Gogh. He only sold one painting in his entire life, and that was to his brother. He committed suicide. Most would think a guy like that was a pathetic loser, yet he DID succeed. It was just that it took a long time for his success to be recognized.
I had a chance to see many of his works when they were building the Van Gogh museum and the paintings did a world tour. Many were indeed breathtaking. On in particular stood out to me -- it was visible way on the other side of the room, opposite the room's entrance, was the limb of a cherry tree in bloom, photorealistically rendered. Up close it was completely abstract; up close you wouldn't ba able to tell what it was a panting of.
I think the reason most people have a hard time telling what art is and is not is because their only experience with it was in high school art class, taught by a math or English teacher. Of course, these same people would argue quantum theory with a physicist and call the physicist "ignorant".
Free Martian Whores!
You're confusing an artifact with art.
Free Martian Whores!
You're confusing art with your personal opinion of what constitutes good art.
Whoever told you in school that art is only art if it's good art, and that if you don't like the art you can claim that it isn't art, was wrong.
The enemies of Democracy are
I had a chance to see many of his works when they were building the Van Gogh museum and the paintings did a world tour. Many were indeed breathtaking. On in particular stood out to me -- it was visible way on the other side of the room, opposite the room's entrance, was the limb of a cherry tree in bloom, photorealistically rendered. Up close it was completely abstract; up close you wouldn't ba able to tell what it was a panting of.
And... you know that the emotion you experienced resembled the emotion he was trying to evoke... how? You have, after all, accepted this as a criterion for defining art. Who knows, those paintings might actually not be art at all!
I think the reason most people have a hard time telling what art is and is not is because their only experience with it was in high school art class, taught by a math or English teacher. Of course, these same people would argue quantum theory with a physicist and call the physicist "ignorant".
Yeah, I'll just go tell all the professional artists who disagree with you that they don't agree with your pretentious ego-oriented definition because they're uneducated. LOL.
I think people like you have a hard time telling what art is because you took a couple courses in college, probably surrounded by a bunch of pretentious douches who liked to talk about "true" art, and got a big head that makes you think you are suited to judge what is and isn't art based on whether you like it or not. What professor told you that, anyway? I studied art some in college, and nobody ever told me that once I'd studied enough I could judge whether something was art based on its quality.
I ask again: By your own definition of art, have you ever produced any?
The enemies of Democracy are
By your own definition of art, have you ever produced any?
I like to think I have. I didn't just "take a few courses", it was my major.
Free Martian Whores!
I like to think I have.
Well as a purely hypothetical exercise to illustrate my point, let's say I saw your "art", and did not find go "WOW!" Would I then be completely correct to say that it isn't just art I don't like or don't approve of or don't think fits my personal subjective measure of sufficient emotional impact... but rather that it isn't art at all? And that, therefore, you are not and have never been an artist?
Or would that just be pretentious douchebaggery on my part?
In reality, I don't have to see your art to know that it's art. It is. I'd have to see it to know if I like it, or if I think it's any good (those not being the same thing), but not to categorize it as any kind of art at all.
I didn't just "take a few courses", it was my major.
And in what course was it, exactly, that you were taught that if something ostensibly claimed to be art is not sufficiently moving, or if it moves you differently than the artist intended, that it isn't art? What professor was it who told you that bad art == not art?
The definitions of art I'm talking about come from not just art majors but professionals. My friend never mentioned being taught that to qualify as art something had to meet a certain quality threshold, and that this was a standard accepted in the art world; he rather explicitly says otherwise. He did however mention cliques of self-important pretentious art students who jumped at the chance to turn their nose up at something and say "That's not art!", presumably on the basis that in their vast education and obvious superiority, they were capable of judging.
Sorry but if you're going to make an appeal to authority, then I'm going to pick from any equivalent or greater authority I choose, and I'm going to pick the one whose definition of "art" isn't inherently based on pretentious elitism.
The enemies of Democracy are
And in what course was it, exactly, that you were taught that if something ostensibly claimed to be art is not sufficiently moving, or if it moves you differently than the artist intended, that it isn't art? What professor was it who told you that bad art == not art?
More than one professor in more than one class. You hear it most often in an art history class. Of course, art history is taught by PhDs, who are too educated to do anything but teach art history. The working professors (all of mine had works in galleries that were selling well) all had master degrees.
If you're going to argue about biochemistry, are you going to use a professor of biochemistry at a university as the authority, or the kid who works at the pharmacy? After all, he's actually working in the field.
Note that it's almost impossible to judge a new work's worth; one history class showed stuff the galleries were showing during the time the impressionists were working, and the galleries were showing pure crap (and getting premium prices for it) while many of the impressionists you'll see in museums were having trouble making ends meet.
Free Martian Whores!
Wow, Joe, that was even more incoherent than your usual post.