It seems that US copyright law has now made the leap from content (the songs) to format (.mp3 file) to media (digital information) to means of dessimating media (university networks). Every single one of these conceptual leaps broadens the scope and power of the law and, further, increases the degree to which it can be misused or misapplied. A law regulating the distribution of digital information over university networks obviously has greater scope and potential for abuse than one regulating the encoding of.mp3 files.
As a chick who spends way to much time playing FF7, Half Life, ADOM, and anything by Sierra, I avoid games like QuakeX and LAN parties and that whole scene not because of the violence, but because of the explicit sexualization of the violence. While I really honestly enjoy watching someone's head blow up in HL, I DON'T enjoy the rape imagery implicit in Quake, from "riding rockets" to the players referring to a bad loss in a match as being raped.
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It seems that US copyright law has now made the leap from content (the songs) to format (.mp3 file) to media (digital information) to means of dessimating media (university networks). Every single one of these conceptual leaps broadens the scope and power of the law and, further, increases the degree to which it can be misused or misapplied. A law regulating the distribution of digital information over university networks obviously has greater scope and potential for abuse than one regulating the encoding of .mp3 files.
As a chick who spends way to much time playing FF7, Half Life, ADOM, and anything by Sierra, I avoid games like QuakeX and LAN parties and that whole scene not because of the violence, but because of the explicit sexualization of the violence. While I really honestly enjoy watching someone's head blow up in HL, I DON'T enjoy the rape imagery implicit in Quake, from "riding rockets" to the players referring to a bad loss in a match as being raped.