An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
While libraries and church groups are increasingly turning to videogame events in order to attract teens, such get-togethers may havecopyright implications, according to the School Library Journal.
Check out this Q&A posted yesteday:
Q.
Lots of school and public libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, featuring popular video games like Guitar Hero and Madden Football. Since these games are intended for home use, isn’t that similar to purchasing a movie and showing it to a large audience?
A.
Everyoneseems to be asking that question! Video games come with licensingagreements, and before purchasers can play the games, they must agreeto their terms. The video-game licenses that I’ve seen are strictly for“personal, noncommercial” uses—not public ones. So when libraries hostgaming programs, they’re violating these agreements. Yet, lots oflibraries are doing just that—and they’re getting away with it. Andsome are even charging an admission fee to attend these events. Whatgives?
My guess is that video-game distributors neveranticipated their games would be used publicly. So when their lawyersdrafted the licenses, they simply used language commonly found insoftware contracts...
Librarians can: (1) continue tooffer video-game competitions and let the chips fall where they may;(2) contact the rights holders and ask if their licenses can bemodified to accommodate your programs; or (3) email the rights holdersand tell them you’re opting out of the portion of the contract thatallows only home use—and unless they tell you not to, you’re planningto offer gaming tournaments.
IVI:It's a fascinating question. Game publishers would look like bigmeanies if they tried to enforce this, of course. On the other hand, Ibelieve that Internet cafes pay for some type of multi-user license forsome online games.
UPDATE: A well-informed video game industry source dropped GP a line, offering some insight on this story:
Formotion pictures, schools, libraries, and other institutions getlicenses to exhibit the movies. It's pretty straightforward and no-oneseems to have a major problem with it. See http://www.movlic.com/ and http://www.mplc.org/aboutMplc.php. I'm not aware of similar services for video gaming. Probably should be.