Video Game Exec Wants DMCA Everywhere
from the some-people-are-never-satisfied dept
CNET is reporting that Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher argued in a recent speech that "very few countries follow the path of the DMCA." Which is a bit of a head scratcher; the EU passed its version of the DMCA in 2001, CAFTA included provisions requiring that Central American countries adopt the DMCA, and the US has also signed "free trade" deals requiring adoption of a DMCA clone with Chile, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and other countries. Japan has a limited DMCA. Canada doesn't have a DMCA yet but politicians there are hard at work trying to change that. Now obviously, that doesn't encompass the whole world, but it certainly encompasses the most important markets where video games are concerned. What Gallagher doesn't mention is that the DMCA has had a stifling effect on third-party experimentation with videogame consoles. Console makers have pretty much been able to lock their consoles down so that only "authorized" software manufacturers could produce games. It wasn't always that way. Some of the most important precedents concerning reverse engineering and copyright law arose from the creation of unauthorized games for consoles in the late 1980s. Back then, courts held that third-parties didn't need the console manufacturers' permission to create games for their consoles. Now, thanks in part to the DMCA, it's much harder for third parties create unauthorized games for modern consoles. That harms consumers by limiting competition in the video game market.
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Filed Under: dmca, video games
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It limit your market size when you don't let everyone who want to produce games can.
I am puzzled by idiotic CEOs who think more restriction on stuff lead to more profits. I have no idea why incompetent people are promoted to run businesses.
I supposed when you're big and have a marketing budget the size 100 salaried workers, it is easy.
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see, a small pie shared by only a few players means it's easy to keep control of the pie because there you only have to collude with one or two other players to control the majority.
a big pie shared by many competing players means that you can't control the pie, regardless of big your slice is, because you have to collude with many players in order to control the majority. it's hard enough to get one competitor to collude with you, let alone 3 or 4.
open platforms are open to competition, and everyone but the consumer hates competition.
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However if something like that were to happen I would very much hope that the party behind this open source console has their legal stuff in check. And one more thing. Most stores that sell games won't touch AO titles which mean they are paying attention to the ESRB. If the developers who make games for this console don't go to the ESRB for review they could find themselves with out any brick and mortar shelf space.
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I thought that Microsoft was trying to do this with XNA platform and the XBOX. The idea being you can develop a game and get it featured on live, or something like that. I don't have a 360 but I thought this was going on.
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XNA Games get listed with the demos on the console. But, yeah, that's the idea.
It's already built up a decent sized development community and has had quite a few contests for "Featured" spots on XBox Live.
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Peter Principal
This is clearly what has happened here with the majority of Game industry CEO's. Hopefully, it is purely a matter of time before we have the linux of the game console world.
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