Comment Blizzard sued (Score 1) 72
No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney
Blizzard disagrees. It filed suit.
No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney
Blizzard disagrees. It filed suit.
No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney
Technically they do, at least if they're streaming the tourney to the public. The graphics of StarCraft and StarCraft II are copyrighted.
so... again... what is the restriction?
It's considered performing the video game publicly. Video games are considered audiovisual works in U.S. copyright law, and the owner of copyright in an audiovisual work has the exclusive right to perform that work publicly. Doing so without express permission is copyright infringement, as if you were offering to stream . Please see the article "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland and this appellate brief from a moot court.
This lack or presence of ownership allows or disallows you from doing what exactly?
The lack of ownership of a sport allows a competing league to begin operation without having to first seek permission from the owner of the sport. This allows for competition among leagues.
The kids need to buy baseballs and bats.
From any of several competing equipment manufacturers. Only Blizzard can sell copies of StarCraft.
And if you play professionally you're going to sign on with an official team or you won't be professional.
In any of several competing leagues, not just the one endorsed by the owner of a sport.
Then seal arrest records six months after a person leaves custody.
A knowingly false DMCA claim is perjury. A copyright owner that cries wolf with the big megaphone of the DMCA could be looking at doing hard time.
I think the idea is that too many Carols and Bob ought to lose the right to cry wolf against Alice.
But again, the scene speaks for itself in that it has:
...copyright strikes from a game's publisher against a league for broadcasting the league's matches.
That's the one big difference between physical sports and electronic sports: electronic sports are almost always non-free. See "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland.
Activision Blizzard owns the exclusive rights to its games [...] Publishers [can] deny a license entirely and shut down a tournament's stream. [...] By contrast [...] Baseball leagues independent of MLB have existed and continue to exist.
that is different from professional sports in what way?
I just explained that. In professional sports, no entity has a government-granted exclusive right that lets it act as a gatekeeper for that sport. MLB has no power to prohibit another league unaffiliated with MLB from forming, playing baseball, and selling tickets to watch the match or stream matches on Twitch. Nor did the USFL and XFL need the NFL's permission to commence operations. Broadcast a video game, on the other hand, and expect a copyright strike.
When the kids were playing baseball and then grew up to play in the MLB... would it make sense to point at the crowd and talk about kids?
There's a difference. Activision Blizzard owns the exclusive rights to its games and has shown itself eager to enforce them (as in the bnetd case). Publishers of fighting games have been known to demand public performance royalties from tournament organizers or even to deny a license entirely and shut down a tournament's stream. I can fetch citations from Ars Technica and elsewhere if you want. By contrast, nobody owns the exclusive rights to baseball. Leagues like MLB can't ban people from baseball; they can only ban people from playing on MLB teams or MLB-affiliated minor league teams. Baseball leagues independent of MLB have existed and continue to exist.
They weren't extermination camps, but they weren't "sit around and play card matching game all day" camps either. Perhaps we can split the difference and call them "detainment with criminally inadequate nutrition and enrichment" camps.
Please explain to all of us how the privilege of reading up on the subject is worth $12 for the first article and then $29 per month if we forget to cancel afterward.
How is a debit card linked to a checking account any less "monitored and tracked nearly all the time" and "selling your freedom in the name of convenience" than a credit card set to auto-pay in full each month from the same checking account?
It's a shame we can't do something similar to get some changes made
well... how about a cookie?
Or how about a few quintillion cookies?
Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
