For developers of online multiplayer games, a game is only as strong as its community. The problem is that publisher’s can’t fully control the social aspects of their games. So how does a game company foster the type of online community that provides the most value to players?
Monday, July 28, 2008
Virtual property is a topic that gets lots of attention from legal scholars. There is something intriguing about the lawlessness of virtual worlds. Second Life and World of Warcraft create places where people from every legal jurisdiction in the world can connect and share one virtual space. Most of the legal writing in this area focuses on which laws apply and whether traditional legal principles can be transfigured to apply to virtual worlds. As I have mentioned in earlier posts in this series, the focus of these articles is not the theoretical, but practical information for people who make games.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Copy of the complaint below for anyone that is interested. Hasro Vs Scrabulous - Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: Hasro Vs Scrabulous
Monday, July 21, 2008
This article covers the first and second parts in a series about Video Game Law. There is a wealth of academic information on the topic of game law on the Internet, but my hope is to provide more practical legal insight in a way that could actually help a game developer or startup tackle some of these issues in practice and understand the lay of the land. As much fun as it is for lawyers like me to contemplate hypothetical issues like whether there is such a thing as rape in a virtual world like Second Life, these issues don't generally help people make games. The goal of this series is to give game makers a practical look at the legal issues that they should consider when running a game company. My clients don't pay me to wax philosophic about laws that don't exist yet, but I do spend a lot of time answering real questions that game makers face. This series of articles will share that insight with you.
Friday, July 18, 2008
I was in the Bay Area Tuesday to give a talk at WSGR’s Palo Alto office on recent developments in interactive entertainment law. My practice focuses in large part on helping game companies develop and commercialize products, and the legal issues involved in making games are part of what makes me love my job. Since I [...]
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Image via Wikipedia In response to my open call for questions post, I received an email asking, “when does it makes sense to file a copyright?” The short answer is that if you have a copyrighted work worth protecting, file early. Copyright applications are fairly inexpensive and (for better or worse) provide very long term protection. [...]
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Despite my legal background, this blog focuses primarily on technology. I write about technology because it is what I find interesting, but recently I have had some requests to touch more on legal issues. So with that in mind, I am asking for readers to submit questions they have about the law. [...]
Thursday, May 15, 2008
United Kingdom supermarket chain begins using child face recognition to help prevent selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors The New York Times peeks into the emerging world of online social-networking for pre-teens The Wall Street Journal’s tech blogger wonders if trends in business IT spending have bottomed out or will continue spiral downward The first space lawyer!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
If you negotiate lots of contracts I am sure you are familiar with the guy who thinks it is a great idea to lock the contract down so that it can't be edited. It is incredibly frustrating when you go to markup and agreement only to find that it has been "Protected." Fortunatly there is an easy hack that will get you around this frustration and will save you or your assistant from having to retype the agreement. Dependeing on the governing law in your jurisdiction, this may be a violation of the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions, so be sure to only use it on your own documents that you have accidentally locked yourself out of :)
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Find Your Attorney General Or Better Business Bureau [Tools]: “ Bookmark this: MSNBC has a nice interactive map you can click to find your state Attorney General and/or Better Business Bureau. If a company is being really bad, it’s important to file an official complaint so it’s on the record. If a company gets enough complaints, [...]
Saturday, September 6, 2008
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