Irish Copyright Law Review

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 :-

copyrightreview@deti.ie

Help protect the industry you built!

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.

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

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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http://www.havocscope.com/black-market/counterfeit-goods/video-game-piracy/

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.

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?

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.

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/

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’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.