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The Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation Richard Bruton T.D has set up the Copyright Review Committee to examine the current Copyright legislative framework to identify any areas of the legislation that might be deemed to create barriers to innovation and to make recommendations to resolve any problems identified.
More information is here. If reform is implemented this will probably have some impact on the gaming industry in Ireland. Submissions can be made to the review committee up to the end of June.
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Hi DeeK and others
I believe that the single greatest threat to the global and domestic video gaming industry is piracy.
I would urge everyone involved in the industry to make a submission to the Copyright Review Committee requesting increased Gardai powers, the creation of new offences and increased penalties but also a proper court system to effectively deal with piracy offences plus any other relevant matters that you think are appropriate.
If Ireland implements the proper legislation it could become the European (even World) Centre for protecting developers by effectively managing I.P. and copyright. This would encourage even more gaming companies to set up here and or encourage already established companies to increase their presence here.
Please make your concerns (whatever they are) know to the Copyright Committee by sending a quick email to the following address :-
Help protect the industry you built!
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Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion that "the single greatest threat to the global and domestic video gaming industry is piracy"?
The content industry has a long and ignominious history of essentially making up figures to validate its intellectual-property-theft-bogeyman narrative, such as is related here:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351331/how-uk-government-spun-136-people-into-7m-illegal-file-sharers
So I’m generally dubious when such sweeping generalizations are made.
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I suspect that the move towards reform is at least in part prompted by some of the judge’s comments in the UPC case, which sparked a lot of controversy and discussion.
Also, there has been quite a lot of lobbying for reform by certain interest groups, if rumours are to be believed. It looked like reform was going to come in without consultation in the dying days of the last government http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0225/1224290834397.html
Consultation is good, as it allows all to be heard and it makes people think about the monopoly rights created by the law, and their effect on the market. As a nerdy IP/IT lawyer I think its a really fascinating area! However, we have seen many reports that have suggested reform, but that have not been actioned (e.g. Innovation Taskforce report).
I think that its important that businesses built on IP creations, or that must give consideration to how IP is exploited/abused/used in their business models, think about reform. Its important we don’t get it wrong as it could be a disincentive to doing business here.
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Although not quite on the topic, I should have added that the involvement of the Gardai in the area of computer crime is already being looked at in the new Criminal Justice Bill 2011. See http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2011-05-12.722.0 and this is a link to the bill itself http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/bills/2011/1611/b1611d.pdf
I think a lot of people were surprised by some of the issues raised around the Anglo password debacle. Anyway, given the way that the relevant sections of the bill are currently drafted (quite broadly) it is conceivable that we may see these sections (once/if enacted) having a part in copyright issues also.
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I’m sure – DeeK – you’ve already seen this then, but the UPC/EMI case also featured "statistics" on piracy that were ignorantly sourced at best, willfully misleading at worst (links to comments made, then subsequently corrected on the record, by Sen. Paschal Mooney):
http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2010-10-12.6.0#g18.0
http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2010-10-20.6.0#g29.0 -
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Again, I’m sure this won’t be news to some here: a government commissioned report on intellectual property laws in the UK was recently completed by Prof. Ian Hargreaves. It, too, has some choice words for "lobbynomics" and a lack of evidence based data informing policy. Ars Technica has some commentary: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/uk-report-base-ip-law-on-evidence-not-lobbying.ars
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I don’t think anyone is arguing that there is piracy on the internet. Posting links to studies conducted at the behest of vested interests, whose veracity is demonstrably shaky, doesn’t advance the argument.
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I’m sure – DeeK – you’ve already seen this then, but the UPC/EMI case also featured "statistics" on piracy that were ignorantly sourced at best, willfully misleading at worst (links to comments made, then subsequently corrected on the record, by Sen. Paschal Mooney):
http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2010-10-12.6.0#g18.0
http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2010-10-20.6.0#g29.0%5B/quote:da98686f9d%5DThanks Colin, I had not seen that set of comments. They’re informative alright.
I think its interesting to see the tensions between the different business interests of those that operate the "pipe" and those that have their work channelled through the "pipe" played out the courts.
The law is constantly struggling to catch up with new developments (including new ways of doing business or of subverting business models) in the IT world, and it will never fully succeed. There’s been a flurry of reports advocating reform, the Hargreaves report in the UK (as mentioned above) and yesterday a publication of a EU report, which hopefully I’ll get to read at some stage this week: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/630&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en. Anyway, time to get back to actually working to try and help people apply law!
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Ok so what you are basically saying is that the BBC, CNN and Reuters (probably the three most respected and independent news organisations in the world) have vested interests and not trustworthy?
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Hi Peter Boyle,
Are you a paid lobbyist?
If so, in what industry, and who are you paid by?You sound like you could be a lobbyist, seeking to influence policy decisions here, by manufacturing grassroots support; it’d be nice of you to say, either way?
Ok so what you are basically saying is that the BBC, CNN and Reuters (probably the three most respected and independent news organisations in the world) have vested interests and not trustworthy?[/quote:af56261201]
You were asked to substantiate the claim that piracy was the greatest threat to the video game industry.
On the page you linked to, there are links to articles from these three sources you mention.
The BBC article says that other groups (UKIE) say money is being lost; but the BBC don’t say this. In fact, they also provide a contrary position.
The Reuters article is talking about piracy in Cuba. Piracy in Cuba is not going to end the global industry, or be affected by an Irish copyright law review.
And CNN conclude with "By making games more readily accessible, faster to skim and easier to pass along to friends, game makers may actually be doing more to combat piracy than any lawsuit or fancy technical countermeasure ever could." which is the polar opposite of your message here.
So your argument is not supported by the respected sources you claim it is.
But you probably already knew that, right? -
Insofar as I read those articles, they all seemed to accurately and uncritically repeat someone else’s figures (with the exception of the CNN opinion piece, which inaccurately says that an Australian man was fined $1.5 million for uploading Super Mario Bros.: that was a settlement, not a fine, as far as I know). So I am not "basically saying" that those news organizations have vested interests and are not trustworthy. Nor would I describe the contents of any of those articles as "investigative journalism".
The Reuters article is about piracy in Cuba, by the way. I don’t know what that has to do with anything.
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I am always curious as to how the red lynx (trials hd : xbox 360) tactic of pirating its own game played out. Novel idea.
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/trials-hd-developer-redlynx-pirated-own-game-2009116/
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By all means Peter do offer opinions, your experience, links, info, even your wishes and dreams.. arriving onto the forum and in your earliest posts urging people to do this and do that on behalf of ourselves?.. IMHO does make you sound like a…. lobbyist… also suffixes of letters in a signature may suggest more then mere ‘qualifications’
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I liked this recent Gamasutra article on smartphone piracy:
Smartphone Piracy: ‘Life’s Too Short To Worry About It’
I have no moral issue with cracking a console or owning an R4 cartridge for my DS – I use it to run unsigned 3rd party software (commonly know as "home brew") and write my own code for the device, not to pirate games.
I strongly oppose any restrictions on hacking around with a piece of hardware that I own. This is how I learned about computers and electronics in the first place.
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I also really dislike when people try to use words like I.P. to try and claim a broad legal right to something in a game.[/quote:271a468344]
Why? It just stands for intellectual property rights. Not sure I see the issue with using it. Its just a helpful description for a whole load of legal rights.
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Its just a helpful description for a whole load of legal rights.[/quote:c773152031]
That is exactly the problem with the term though – it compresses so many issues, politics and parties it affects. It is an over simplification, albeit a convenient one.
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I dont really agree with you. I have never encountered any doubt about what it encompasses. It just describes rights, not polictics or parties. Its just a collective term.
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What rights exactly?
Some people seem to think Intellectual property rights mean you can’t repair you car or TV.
Not that I am in no way in favor of piracy.
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The main ones are copyrights, trade marks, patents, industrial design rights and know-how…. there’s a very long list. It is never a particularly contentious definition to agree. If you make the test what "some people think" we’d all struggle to justify using a lot of words and phrases. I find those in the gaming business know what IP means, I guess they probably have to.
Incidentally this is a totally different tangent to talking about piracy. I am just talking about using the term "IP" generally.
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there’s a very long list. [/quote:972cc120fd]
But that is the point I’m trying to make, it is a term that is thrown around a lot and it can mean different things to different people. You said it is a very long list, and that is the problem. The elements of that list bring can bring up all sorts of potential issues that are not black and white. The term "IP" compresses all these into a single term that can confuse – Especially to people who do not understand them.
If we are talking about reform copyright and patent law it is going to involve lawmakers. Politicians are very good at taking a term that is a hot topic or important around and making bad law around it in an attempt to please interests or get votes.
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there’s a very long list. [/quote:f57795c011]
But that is the point I’m trying to make, it is a term that is thrown around a lot and it can mean different things to different people. You said it is a very long list, and that is the problem. The elements of that list bring can bring up all sorts of potential issues that are not black and white. The term "IP" compresses all these into a single term that can confuse – Especially to people who do not understand them.
If we are talking about reform copyright and patent law it is going to involve lawmakers. Politicians are very good at taking a term that is a hot topic or important around and making bad law around it in an attempt to please interests or get votes.[/quote:f57795c011]
I dont agree with you at all. It seems your suggestion is that every time we want to reference these IP rights generally you think we must list out all of the rights that we are referring to. I do not think the term means different things to different people. Just because the list is long does not mean that what is included in it is contested. Thats why it is so easy to agree the definition. We shall have to agree to differ.
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Some people might find Greg Lastowska’s book ‘Virtual Justice’ useful in terms of some of the issues raised here.
He is a legal academic and a game player and the book is available free to download. See http://lastowka.rutgers.edu/
I was at a games conference recently where clear differences between US and approaches elsewhere in the world were evident esp. when it came to IP and copyright.
Aphra.
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I also really dislike when people try to use words like I.P. to try and claim a broad legal right to something in a game.[/quote:9df85c1f2d]
Why? It just stands for intellectual property rights. Not sure I see the issue with using it. Its just a helpful description for a whole load of legal rights.[/quote:9df85c1f2d]That’s the whole problem with it. It’s deliberately used to create legal ambiguity, you’re not saying they infringed on your trademark, broke your copyright etc. You’re using it to try and cover a broad group of rights you think have been violated without ever pointing to one.[/quote:9df85c1f2d]
I don’t really want to prolong this aspect of the thread, but since I pilloried someone earlier for what I felt was a a groundless, evidence free assertion: do you have an example of these "broad legal right(s)" being asserted against someone?
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Well the very use of IP by default is an assertion to a broad set of legal rights, because it doesn’t specifically mean anything. All you have to do is search the term "intellectual property" on a games site and see that everyone uses it to mean different things at different times.[/quote:a04b94dfb2]
Property is just (lawyers avert your eyes, I assume this is a gross simplification) a thing that is owned by someone. The meaning is specific.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say – to pick a random example – that Activision owns Modern Warfare, is it? There’s a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous in the legal rigors to be sure but it seems reasonable to say that Modern Warfare is the property of Activision. But Modern Warfare isn’t a thing the way an office building is a thing (I assume Activision also own office buildings), so calling it intellectual property is a convenient means to distinguish it from, I dunno, furniture and the like.
Not a lot sinister or ambiguous in it when I think about it that way.
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I don’t know of any other meaning of the word property, and the definition of it isn’t at odds with your quote. Barlow is speaking to the conflation of copyright infringement and theft, which is a different thing to what I’m saying: I’m responding to your contention that intellectual property "doesn’t specifically mean anything". It’s a term that’s certainly abused, but not in the content of the links that you posted (with the exception of the EA guy talking about pre-owned games; I think he’s mixing up his tangible property and his intellectual property).
I’m simply saying, and argue with this if you like: Modern Warfare is the property of Activision but because of its intangible nature, we say the property is intellectual.
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Due to the low number of submissions the Copyright Review Committee has extended the deadline for the receipt of submissions to 14 July.
You might like to go along to the public meeting at 8:30am on Monday 4 July 2011, in the Robert Emmet Lecture Theatre, Room 2037 Arts Block, Trinity College Dublin. Attendance is free and open to anyone interested, but registration is necessary. I plan to be there, so say "hello" if you’re there too.
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So the CRC review submissions had to be lodged by last Thursday. If you searching using #CRC11 on Twitter you should be able to see a few that have been lodged. There are two other copyright related reviews still ongoing. For more detail see http://www.lkshields.ie/htmdocs/publications/articles/pub402_copyright.htm
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see a recording of the discussions from the Digital Rights Forum at the Science Gallery today – Sean Sherlock took part as well as Tom from boards .ie etc..
See http://www.digitalrightsforum.com/
a lively debate ensued..
Aphra.
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