If It's in the Game: Is there Liability for User-Generated Characters' Likeness? (original) (raw)
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Information, Communication & Society, 2004
The focal point in this paper is our virtual selves, the avatars with which we interact with others in online virtual environments. The dispute is growing as to whom these digital manifestations belong to. The dispute is in part due to the ability of the technology to transfer the avatars and also in part on the desire of the software manufacturers to enforce the end user licence agreements. These licenses do not follow contract theory but have been enforced by the courts. Despite the actions of the court their validity as a whole is still questionable. This paper contains descriptions of the disputed objects and presents the arguments of both sides. There is also a presentation of the law regulating the area and its rationale, strengths and weaknesses. Then there follows a critique of the law as it is and a presentation of what the law could, and indeed in some cases, should be. In the conclusion this work both describes the importance of this issue and what is at stake if an equitable and reasonably balanced solution to the collective rights cannot be found.
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Throughout their short history, video games have posed challenges to intellectual property laws. This chapter explores how courts in the United States have struggled to apply traditional laws of copyright to video games given that video games, like all games, are interactive processes. Players of video games both experience the games and perform them during the course of play. From the perspective of copyright law, the interactive nature of video games undermines the authorial control of the game creator, who does not created a single scripted experience, but instead designs an interactive system. This interactivity opens another copyright possibility: an authorial role for players.
Image rights, creativity and videogames
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 2019
Videogames characters and avatars have been inspired by real people for decades, but now, technology and hyperrealism have increased the creative potential and consequentially the artistic and economic value of image rights 4 , thus creating new opportunities for celebrities to monetize image rights through licensing. The link between the videogame character and the real person from whom the developers have drawn inspiration may often not even be immediately recognisable, for instance, when only a few traits of the celebrity are reproduced and the level of decontextualization of the avatar is significant: it is hard to see Theodore Roosevelt behind Mr. Robotic, the arch enemy of Sonic, the iconic SEGA hedgehog, even in its most realistically designed version 5. Conversely, in other instances, developers might aim for the avatar to be easily and immediately linked to the celebrity, and this may, and often does, serve a specific creative purpose. The inclusion of a celebrity in a videogame may be intended to generate greater involvement and players' participation 6 , or to manifest endorsement and promote the game. For instance, the presence of Kevin Spacey as a villain in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, while not being necessary for narrative reasons, attracted the public's attention in very much the same way as the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo on the cover of FIFA served to promote the game within his supporters and followers.
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The concept of appropriation - of turning property into ones own (or "pwning it" [1]) - is common to art at least since the 1970s. Back then, Appropriation Art sought the de-contextualisation of consumerism's symbols: brands, advertisements and logos. Today, it is paralleled by the digital hijacking of mass-produced (cultural) products and the succeeding abduction of digital content. A number of pieces of Game Art can be regarded as contemporary Appropriation Art. These appropriations of games are critical comments on politics, playing, and society. The cases of deliberate misuse of the product "video game" described in this paper have in common that they change the position of the player/user from consumer to producer. Artists mold games into new forms. Of course, these new forms are targeted at players, again. And the deconstructed games tell these players something about how games work as social and cultural structures. Appropriating a game means meta-playing. It means playing with the game (as coded possibilities) rather than playing the game.
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Digital technology has been stressing copyright traditional balance between rightholders’ and users’ interests. In fact, it allows the move from a mere passive consumption role to a player-as-producer model that potentiates the creation of user-generated transformative uses. Since, traditionally, copyright reserves full control over derivative works to the author of the original work, that branch of law may be (mis)used a tool for controlling users speech. In the present chapter, the author briefly studies the particular tension between the current copyright paradigm, based on the dichotomy active creator – passive consumer, and the control over creative transformative usages of digital works in the field of computer games, such as mods or add-ons, and exposes some reactions that go from voluntary licensing schemes, such as copyleft licenses, to compulsory licenses.
2006
A virtual environment is a computer-generated world that can be used for training, data visualization, recreation, and commerce. The visitors of virtual environments include not only humans but also virtual avatars. The avatars can take on a range of shapes, characteristics, and personalities, and can perform a variety of tasks within the virtual environment. As the behavior of avatars becomes more realistic, sophisticated and intelligentand the avatars become more autonomous in their decision making, the question of whether virtual avatars should have legal rights separate from those of their owner becomes an issue. This paper discusses legal rights associated with the design and use of virtual avatars, commenting on the ownership rights of the creators of virtual avatars and the rights of avatars themselves should they gain intelligence and become independent decision makers and creators of intellectual property. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rights of the 'Displaced Avatars' in MMORPGs: A Study within Human Rights Interface
Human Rights jurisprudence is always about human enterprises in real world. This conventional attitude of human rights, at present, ignores the reality of human interactions in cyberspaces of Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) where real life is super-dimensional within the harbor of reality and materially vigilant human simulation through digital selves (avatars). Human being, the users, is often found displaced in MMORPGs depriving rights to properties, time, money, skill and persistence into such digital worlds. The rules of MMORPGs (EULAs) are fixed by developers and they do not accommodate universal principles of human rights jurisprudence. State silence, corporate showdowns and State protected End User License Agreements (EULAs) marginalize avatars of MMORPGs who represent human being. Most EULAs do not recognize avatars’ ethical and rational rights to ownership over virtual properties. The legislation of MMORPGs is vested only upon developers. This state of MMORPGs challenges the conventional human rights jurisprudence on the points of principles of equality, accountability, justice and non-discrimination in ascertaining rights to ownership of virtual property. The paper critically evaluates the characters of EULAs which ought to incorporate universal principles of human rights laws. Therefore, this is critically a choral approach to excessive authoritarian tendencies of developers in framing their Austin-motivated, one-sided and feudalistic EULAs which displaces avatars or forces avatars to be displaced in MMORPGs.