South Korea Continues To Criminalize Behavior Around Online Gaming At The Behest Of Video Game Industry

from the give-me-a-boost dept

While we've spent some time here talking about the emergence of eSports and online gaming generally, it's safe to say that South Korea was one of the trailblazers in this space. This has led to a remarkable ecosystem in the country for online gaming and competitive gaming. But it's also led to South Korea introducing some fairly problematic laws at the request of the gaming industry. For instance, criminalizing cheating in online gaming is very much a thing in South Korea, though this is actually done by making it illegal to break a game's ToS, which nobody reads.

Now, however, South Korea is going a much more targeted and direct route by criminalizing "boosting", the practice of experienced players of a particular game contracting their services to help less-able gamers to climb the level ranks.

An amendment has passed in Korea’s National Assembly that could charge players found guilty of boosting with a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine up to $18,000 (20 million won), according to Korean news site Inven.

The law, an amendment to the Game Industry Promotion Act, was first proposed in June 2017. Working with game developers in the country, the government will target boosters and boosting companies that charge for rank inflation across a number of games, including Overwatch and League of Legends.

This is yet another one of those situations where it's important to fight off the initial normal reaction, which is typically to decide that anything that negatively impacts those cheating within online games is just fine. There is such a thing as overkill, in other words, and assessing five-figure fines for the crime of playing an online game for somebody else so the game thinks he or she is better at it then they actually are should certainly fall into that category.

This isn't to say that boosting isn't a problem for these online ecosystems of course.

Boosting is a problem in games that rank players by skill; artificially inflating one’s rank disrupts the normal flow of play. The business of boosting is complex and far-reaching. A number of Overwatch League players have been punished for past boosting in the league’s first season. Philadelphia Fusion player Kim “Sado” Su-min was suspended for 30 games for the practice, while Son “OGE” Min-seok sat out four gamesfor boosting. Blizzard continues to issue large scale bans against boosters nearly every month.

The problem is that these developers are outsourcing the enforcement of their own platforms to the South Korean government, often to the tune of large sum fines and potential jail time. Does nobody else remember when we were kids and couldn't pass a level in a game, so we handed the controller to an older sibling to get past it for us? That's essentially what this is, with the big difference being that doing so effects the experience and rankings of everyone else playing as well. That's certainly annoying, and no doubt a problem.

But worthy of this kind of litigation? It's hard to make sense of that argument.

Filed Under: behavior, boosting, cheating, criminalize, south korea, video games

TPP Leak Confirms Measures To Criminalize Corporate Whistleblowing

from the no-public-interest-or-free-speech-exemptions dept

As Mike has reported, the core of the newly-leaked TPP chapter is about granting Big Pharma's wish-list, with other worrying stuff for the copyright industry's benefit thrown in for good measure. But hidden away in the chapter's 70+ pages there's something very different -- and very dangerous. Here's how the Australian newspaper The Age explains it:

The draft text provides that TPP countries will introduce criminal penalties for unauthorised access to, misappropriation or disclosure of trade secrets, defined as information that has commercial value because it is secret, by any person using a computer system.

That's clearly an incredibly broad definition of trade secret, and will allow a vast range of materials to enjoy this kind of protection. And by requiring criminal penalties, TPP aims to make that protection very serious indeed:

TPP countries may criminalise all such disclosures or, if they wish, limit criminal penalties to cases that involve "commercial advantage or financial gain"; are directed by or benefit "a foreign economic entity"; or are "detrimental to a [TPP] party's economic interests, international relations, or national defence or national security."

Notice that those are simply options: the default position is to criminalize everything. Moreover, even those "limited" cases could be applied very widely. Particularly troubling is the following aspect of the proposed text:

There are no public interest or free speech exemptions. Criminalisation of disclosure would apply to journalists working for commercial media organisations or wherever the leak was considered harmful to the "economic interests" of any TPP country.

The chilling effect that this would have on investigative reporting is evident. It would also represent yet another powerful reason not to become a corporate whistleblower.

The presence of this section in the latest TPP text is not a complete surprise: a slightly shorter version was already in the previous leak of this chapter, as we reported earlier this year. Moreover, its appearance in TPP seems to be part of a larger push for stronger protection of trade secrets around the world. In 2013, the European Commission proposed new rules "to help protect against the theft of confidential business information." One of the questions in the accompanying FAQ was whether trade secret protection will be part of TAFTA/TTIP. Here's the reply:

Trade secrets will be discussed in the TTIP negotiations, and has a heightened level of relevance with the recent allegations of economic espionage carried out by the national Security Agency (NSA). One goal could be to make sure that the two legal regimes are inter-operative facilitating recognition and enforcement of judgments on either side of the Atlantic. The EU and the US also have a common interest in pursuing protection of trade secrets against misappropriation in third countries.

That's a clear signal that trade secrets will indeed be part of TAFTA/TTIP. Unfortunately, the latest TPP leak gives a pretty good idea of just how bad they are likely to be.

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Filed Under: criminalize, leaks, tpp, trade secrets, ustr, whistleblowing

Nintendo Doesn't Want To Criminalize Obsessed Fans... But Sometimes Will Anyway

from the well,-that's-comforting dept

A whole bunch of you have been sending over a blog post from Kotaku quoting Nintendo president Satoru Iwata responding at a shareholder meeting to a question about how the company handles "fan activities" that technically infringe on Nintendo's intellectual property. Iwatu said they don't want to criminalize fans doing something out of appreciation, but that there's a lot that goes into the decision making process:

As the principle, please understand that the question is regarding a rather delicate issue to which no one can perhaps identify a clear-cut criterion. Of course, we cannot say that we can give tacit approval to any and all the activities which threaten our intellectual properties. But on the other hand, it would not be appropriate if we treated people who did something based on affection for Nintendo, as criminals. It is true that some expressions are detrimental enough to diminish the dignity of our intellectual properties, and others destroy our intellectual properties' world-views by connecting them with something not based on fact. We think one of the criteria for deciding how to respond is whether the expression in question socially diminishes the dignity or value of our intellectual properties or not. Of course, it is very hard to have a blanket standard as this problem involves many complex elements that are very difficult to judge.

In these meanings, we cannot say OK to any and all such activities and, at the same time, it is not feasible for us to immediately respond to each small issue of this nature every time. However, these days an individual can easily transmit information through the Internet. Hearing your question today, as we cannot find these problems only by ourselves, we feel that a kind of contact window should be set up so that people can somehow report to us any inappropriate uses of Nintendo's intellectual properties which diminish their dignities or values, so that we can respond appropriately.

While a lot of people are suggesting this is a revelation, I'm not so sure. Lots of companies give this kind of wishy-washy answer on such things. I remember hearing something quite similar from Warner Bros. general counsel concerning how it views fan fiction as well. But, again, the proof is in the pudding, and when we hear stories about Nintendo shutting down a fan-made film based on The Legend of Zelda, it suggests that perhaps they're not necessarily living up to the claims made by Iwatu.

Filed Under: criminalize, fan fiction, fans
Companies: nintendo

UK Politician Vacations With Hollywood Big Shot... Suddenly Wants To Criminalize Sharing

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Calvin alerts us to the news that, just days after dining with entertainment industry honcho David Geffen while on holiday, at the Rothschild family villa on Corfu, Lord Peter Mandelson, the UK's Business Secretary suddenly returned to the office and demanded that the Digital Britain report be beefed up to include criminalizing file sharing. Even the press reporting on this seem pretty skeptical of the reasoning behind it (which is a first). While a spokesperson for Mandelson insisted the wining and dining with Geffen had nothing to do with things, someone else in the office seemed to disagree:

'Until the past week, Mandelson had shown little personal interest in the Digital Britain agenda. Suddenly Peter returned from holiday and effectively issued this edict that the regulation needs to be tougher.'

Perhaps you can't take a single anonymous quote seriously, but it's at least worth finding out why Mandelson suddenly thinks it's a smart thing to criminalize a large portion of the online activity in the UK.

Filed Under: copyright, criminalize, david geffen, file sharing, peter mendelson, uk