More utilitarian bullshit, more sophomoric arrogance. I swear, more and more lately, the zealotry here is enough to make me want to root for the RIAA and MPAA.
And that wouldn't do, would it? So I'm on my way to remove the Techdirt gadget from homepage now. Had enough of the fucking rivers you guys keep crying.
I think this "free ride" you are talking about is based on the brand name more than on the original work itself. EA wouldn't keep paying to make new LotR games if we weren't all already familiar with the specific characters and settings of the books (regardless of whether we actually ever read the books).
I enthusiastically acknowledge that branding is much more about the businesses of marketing and promotion than about the original creativity of the work.
Brand names are passed down in all sorts of vocations, however. We may self-righteously hate the deceptive economic mechanics of promotion and marketing, but these endeavors require investments of time and money, too -- not purely a free ride.
To be clear, tho, there is a choice. Tolkien's estate corporation could release control of LotR if it decided to, the same way a plumbing company is free to give up its hard-earned brand name.
In any case, I'm still pretty sure that the public is not forced to buy any books or movies or games that it doesn't want to buy. Am I forced to support Disney just because nobody's giving away free copies of High School Musical?
If the value is in the brand, the work is in maintaining the brand. As long as he keeps sending acceptable employees out to fix your pipes, I don't see why you would care that the son works as the company accountant instead of out in the field like his dad.
What if your favorite brand-name plumber company is so successful that it has to sub-contract with other plumbers, whom you have trained to provide the brand-name style of service that your customers expect?
If one of those contractors provides the quality of service you expected when you called, how does it make any difference whether the actual inheritor of the brand name is back at the office working on the financial books? You still got exactly what you wanted when you decided to call your favorite brand name plumber. You'll probably call them next time your pipes are clogged, too.
I think the kid should still be allowed to inherit the family plumbing business, even if he decides to become an accountant instead of a plumber like his dad.
Don't the inheritors continually reinforce the business' public goodwill by maintaining the same quality of service their ancestor provided?
Isn't that (arguably) the same thing Tolkien's estate corporation tries to do, by approving or denying proposals for new LotR games and movies, according to (interpretations of) their quality?
'Hereditary IP rights forever' does seem like an unfortunate solution in many ways, but if you accept the idea of IP rights at all (many here don't, I know), I am not convinced it is unfair.
Disney corp. has invested millions promoting Mickey Mouse for the last 70 years. Walt died in 1966 -- how long should it be till I am allowed to exploit that promotion and start publishing my own Mickey Mouse cartoons?
I agree that forever seems like too long a time, but I think that wherever you draw the line short of forever will arbitrary, and it is difficult to defend anything arbitrary as ideologically "fair."
Many new movies and video games based on LotR have been created since JRRT passed away. In your analogy, wouldn't this count as maintaining the business and generating new income?
The real value of the business that the plumber hands down to his kids is not in physical assets such as buildings and wrenches, but in the clientele that have grown to trust that particular plumbing business through years of solid work and good service. Being a good plumber is only part of it -- to succeed, you also have to become the guy they call when they need a good plumber.
Isn't that part of the value of LotR too? It's not just that it is an entertaining and well-written story, it's that the story's characters and settings are known and loved by millions and millions of people around the world.
That's a pretty big assumption, I think, considering the way that most of the grandparents I know feel about their grandkids.
But why does intention have anything to do with it in the first place?
The plumber's intention is to to fix the pipes, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't invest his profits in a business his children will inherit, or use them to buy presents for his grandchildren.
The public isn't forced to support anything. If individuals in the public decide that they want to purchase new copies of LoTR, they have to pay something to the Tolkien estate.
I'm not necessarily saying this is the way it should work. I'm just saying it doesn't do me any good to look at it as some evil, sweeping repression of the public at large.
If a plumber wants to charge clients some sort of ongoing subscription fee for his work, to support his family after he's dead, he can write up his contracts that way. The only problem is that there are lots of other plumbers out there, and most people will instead choose one who only charges a one-time fee.
There is only one LoTR. You don't have to buy a copy if you don't want to.
I feel your pain. Our Ann Arbor home value totally tanked when Pfizer shut down and left town. Alas, poor drug companies. Once humankind finally mastered boner-pill technology, what's left?
I'm not sure that would work. Texas has 6.25% state sales tax, and California has 8.25%, but Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Delaware have no state sales tax at all.
Under your plan, Amazon/New Egg/etc could just set up a small "shipping office" in Delaware and charge the local sales tax from there -- which is nothing.
According to the story, that's how much the State of Texas is getting paid already. If this is the problem, I don't think you've solved it.
Texas doesn't get the $600M it thinks it's owed, and Delaware doesn't really gain anything either, except for whatever small, indirect boost there might be from having that single, skeleton-staffed shipping office operate in the state.
As the story points out, no tax can be charged the retailer for moving its own merchandise from state to state, so Amazon/New Egg/etc can claim to ship from anyplace they have a brick-and-mortar office, can't they?
IRT#35
Hi again Enrico. Yes, it is the game manufacturer's rights that are being quashed as they can't exercise their freedom of expression in the market-at-large, to which everyone (including some children) has access.
I didn't mean to imply that those outside the U.S. don't understand and value the general principle of "freedom of speech" -- very sorry if I did so! I only meant to say that those outside the U.S. may not fully grasp the importance of the First Amendment to us in particular, and of the precedents it has established, and of its perceived importance to our ability to treat everyone by the same rules.
All I meant to say is that in the U.S., our common definition of (and greatest bastion for) free speech is the First Amendment, and this is something people from outside the country (such as yourself, it seems) might not fully grasp. It's not just a set of rules written on a piece of paper by some dead guys; It is a principle that has been refined and upheld countless times over hundreds of years. Laws don't exist in a vacuum, and we Americans don't have the benefit of thousands of years of history and tradition, so many of us value that 200-year-old piece of paper very highly.
I don't want to confuse the issue any further, but pornography works under a different set of rules than mainstream games and movies. At least here in the U.S. The pornography publisher voluntarily classifies its publication as "unsuitable for minors," and no rating board is involved. It's essentially an tacit agreement to surrender First Amendment rights that ultimately benefits the publisher -- ie "I'll agree to restrict my distribution of this material to informed legal adults only, and therefore I cannot be held liable for any harm it might cause to anyone else."
There are pornographic video games as well as magazines and movies, but they voluntarily classify themselves as porn and willfully abide the extra distribution restrictions. They are not presented as mainstream games and they not rated by the ESRB in the first place (just like pornographic movies are not rated by the MPAA). These porn games, and porn in general, have nothing to do with the legislation proposed by Brownback.
Yes we already have the ESRB, but like every other rating system ever created, it ultimately relies on subjective opinions about appropriateness. These opinions may be widely held and highly useful, but they are still just opinions. Another important tenet of the First Amendment is that we cannot restrict one person's freedom of expression based solely on another person's subjective opinion.
Re: 15
As for the "solution," I think maybe we should do a better job of defining the "problem" first. What exactly are we trying to solve? Is it simply that parents want to have control over the media their children consume? I think we already have many different solutions to that problem, and none of them violate anyone else's rights to free expression.
To be honest, I think a lot of politicians use "video game violence" the same way they use "terrorism" -- as a vaguely defined bogeyman to keep the populace scared, and to give the politician an opportunity to look like he's acting as a protector.
Re: 16
The fact that many lawmakers are attempting to restrict free expression based on age-appropriateness is secondary -- the main point is that (slander, libel, and undue endangerment aside) they cannot restrict free expression based any reason at all. Free expression protection applies to all citizens, including game publishers, game retailers, and game buyers.
It is true that minors can't vote, and it is interesting to me that you consider this an age-based restriction on free expression. But, for the purpose of this discussion at least, children in the U.S. don't really have full rights as citizens. Perhaps we could make it illegal for minors to possess cash or make any purchases at all, but we still couldn't single out video games (or any other forms of media) just because of their expressive content.
ESRB, PEGI, ELSPA, and even NIMF provide standardized content guidelines for parents. I do not see how making these guidelines legally enforceable would make them any more effective in the home. You say you yourself violate these guidelines at times, even though I believe they are legally enforceable in your country. You also say you are glad your minor child cannot go purchase a copy of an adult-rated game, but even if he could, where would he play it? On the console you bought him (with the parental controls you never turned on)? I'm guessing that whether there's a law or not, you are a good enough parent to monitor what goes on in your own household.
We already have a organization in the U.S. that views storyboard-like information and mission descriptions provided by the game publisher, and then notes all controversial material in a standardized way. This is exactly how the ESRB operates, and it is a far more effective method than anything like the plan that Brownback is proposing.
It may seem foreign to most Europeans, but Freedom of Speech is a cornerstone of American politics and ideology. If we were to make an exception for video games, it would be like saying that games are not a valid form of free expression. Or worse, it would open the door for governmental censorship of other forms of expression, like movies, music, books, and even journalism.
In any case, laws that restrict free expression in media are exactly what JT has been demanding for the last 20 years. I doubt that giving in to him now is going quiet him down. We're not going to re-write our whole Constitution, and undo 200 years of precedent, just because some misinformed grandma in New Jersey thinks that PS2 is going to turn her grandson into a psychopath. At least I hope to God we're not....
There are no laws in the United States that enforce content-based restrictions on the distribution of video games. In other words, almost all retailers have age-appropriateness policies in place, but these policies are private -- none are criminally enforceable.
Why? Because restricting games based on a judgment of the appropriateness of the content would be an unquestionable violation of the First Amendment's protection of "free expression." Furthermore, this would effectively transfer authority for making all legally binding decisions about age-appropriateness from "the people" (you and your elected representatives) to a private organization based in NYC and funded by the biggest game publishers in the industry (the ESRB).
This is why essentially every anti-game law to date has been overturned, and why Brownback's is guaranteed to be overturned as well, if it ever passes in the first place.
Worst off all, most of these Reps and Senators understand Constitutional law far better than I do, and they make these anti-game proposals knowing full well they'll never stand up in court. Even if people aren't upset about the First Amendment violation, I wish they'd get upset about being pandered to and played for fools.
"Driving is a privilege?" I find it sad and defeatist when people adopt the attitude that the government owns the roads and we may only use them with its explicit permission. This forgets the important point that in America, we own the government.
Saying that "driving isn't a right" doesn't solve anything -- it only twists the issue around to a "guilty until proven innocent" perspective. It's sort of like saying that voting isn't a right. The fact is, we all begin with an equal right to secure driver licenses and to make use of the pubic roads that our tax dollars pay for.
I am a taxpaying citizen with no points on his license -- who's going to tell me I don't have just as much a RIGHT to drive on my public streets as any of the other license-bearing taxpaying citizens in my community?
Yet I am even more discouraged by those who would legislate by statistic. I imagine it would be easy to produce studies that show an "average person" is more likely to commit a traffic violation when performing nearly any other particular activity, but real people drive in the real world -- not in the abstract speculations of overambitious social reformer's "research." It's my opinion that there is no such thing as an "average person" in the real world.
We already have laws against unsafe driving. If I drive unsafely -- for any reason, regardless of the particular distraction you think may have led to my violation -- take away my license or throw me in jail. But keep the pretentious "I know you better than you do" legislation out of my car and out of my head. People are smarter than laws; laws that try to outsmart people never work.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Thwacht.
More utilitarian bullshit, more sophomoric arrogance. I swear, more and more lately, the zealotry here is enough to make me want to root for the RIAA and MPAA.
And that wouldn't do, would it? So I'm on my way to remove the Techdirt gadget from homepage now. Had enough of the fucking rivers you guys keep crying.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think this "free ride" you are talking about is based on the brand name more than on the original work itself. EA wouldn't keep paying to make new LotR games if we weren't all already familiar with the specific characters and settings of the books (regardless of whether we actually ever read the books).
I enthusiastically acknowledge that branding is much more about the businesses of marketing and promotion than about the original creativity of the work.
Brand names are passed down in all sorts of vocations, however. We may self-righteously hate the deceptive economic mechanics of promotion and marketing, but these endeavors require investments of time and money, too -- not purely a free ride.
To be clear, tho, there is a choice. Tolkien's estate corporation could release control of LotR if it decided to, the same way a plumbing company is free to give up its hard-earned brand name.
In any case, I'm still pretty sure that the public is not forced to buy any books or movies or games that it doesn't want to buy. Am I forced to support Disney just because nobody's giving away free copies of High School Musical?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If the value is in the brand, the work is in maintaining the brand. As long as he keeps sending acceptable employees out to fix your pipes, I don't see why you would care that the son works as the company accountant instead of out in the field like his dad.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
What if your favorite brand-name plumber company is so successful that it has to sub-contract with other plumbers, whom you have trained to provide the brand-name style of service that your customers expect?
If one of those contractors provides the quality of service you expected when you called, how does it make any difference whether the actual inheritor of the brand name is back at the office working on the financial books? You still got exactly what you wanted when you decided to call your favorite brand name plumber. You'll probably call them next time your pipes are clogged, too.
I think the kid should still be allowed to inherit the family plumbing business, even if he decides to become an accountant instead of a plumber like his dad.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Don't the inheritors continually reinforce the business' public goodwill by maintaining the same quality of service their ancestor provided?
Isn't that (arguably) the same thing Tolkien's estate corporation tries to do, by approving or denying proposals for new LotR games and movies, according to (interpretations of) their quality?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
'Hereditary IP rights forever' does seem like an unfortunate solution in many ways, but if you accept the idea of IP rights at all (many here don't, I know), I am not convinced it is unfair.
Disney corp. has invested millions promoting Mickey Mouse for the last 70 years. Walt died in 1966 -- how long should it be till I am allowed to exploit that promotion and start publishing my own Mickey Mouse cartoons?
I agree that forever seems like too long a time, but I think that wherever you draw the line short of forever will arbitrary, and it is difficult to defend anything arbitrary as ideologically "fair."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Many new movies and video games based on LotR have been created since JRRT passed away. In your analogy, wouldn't this count as maintaining the business and generating new income?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So what about branding and name-recognition?
The real value of the business that the plumber hands down to his kids is not in physical assets such as buildings and wrenches, but in the clientele that have grown to trust that particular plumbing business through years of solid work and good service. Being a good plumber is only part of it -- to succeed, you also have to become the guy they call when they need a good plumber.
Isn't that part of the value of LotR too? It's not just that it is an entertaining and well-written story, it's that the story's characters and settings are known and loved by millions and millions of people around the world.
Re: Re: Re:
That's a pretty big assumption, I think, considering the way that most of the grandparents I know feel about their grandkids.
But why does intention have anything to do with it in the first place?
The plumber's intention is to to fix the pipes, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't invest his profits in a business his children will inherit, or use them to buy presents for his grandchildren.
Re: Re: Re:
The public isn't forced to support anything. If individuals in the public decide that they want to purchase new copies of LoTR, they have to pay something to the Tolkien estate.
I'm not necessarily saying this is the way it should work. I'm just saying it doesn't do me any good to look at it as some evil, sweeping repression of the public at large.
If a plumber wants to charge clients some sort of ongoing subscription fee for his work, to support his family after he's dead, he can write up his contracts that way. The only problem is that there are lots of other plumbers out there, and most people will instead choose one who only charges a one-time fee.
There is only one LoTR. You don't have to buy a copy if you don't want to.
Re:
I feel your pain. Our Ann Arbor home value totally tanked when Pfizer shut down and left town. Alas, poor drug companies. Once humankind finally mastered boner-pill technology, what's left?
Indeed there is government waste, but there are also highways and schools and state police and fire departments and garbage collectors.
It costs money to run a government -- even a "government of the people."
If you think your tax money is being poorly spent, the honorable, patriotic option is to vote for the politicians you think will spend it better.
There is nothing noble about not paying the taxes you owe under current laws, just because you can get away with it.
Re: Who actually pays tax on online purchases?
I do.
Re:
I'm not sure that would work. Texas has 6.25% state sales tax, and California has 8.25%, but Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Delaware have no state sales tax at all.
Under your plan, Amazon/New Egg/etc could just set up a small "shipping office" in Delaware and charge the local sales tax from there -- which is nothing.
According to the story, that's how much the State of Texas is getting paid already. If this is the problem, I don't think you've solved it.
Texas doesn't get the $600M it thinks it's owed, and Delaware doesn't really gain anything either, except for whatever small, indirect boost there might be from having that single, skeleton-staffed shipping office operate in the state.
As the story points out, no tax can be charged the retailer for moving its own merchandise from state to state, so Amazon/New Egg/etc can claim to ship from anyplace they have a brick-and-mortar office, can't they?
IRT#35
Hi again Enrico. Yes, it is the game manufacturer's rights that are being quashed as they can't exercise their freedom of expression in the market-at-large, to which everyone (including some children) has access.
I didn't mean to imply that those outside the U.S. don't understand and value the general principle of "freedom of speech" -- very sorry if I did so! I only meant to say that those outside the U.S. may not fully grasp the importance of the First Amendment to us in particular, and of the precedents it has established, and of its perceived importance to our ability to treat everyone by the same rules.
All I meant to say is that in the U.S., our common definition of (and greatest bastion for) free speech is the First Amendment, and this is something people from outside the country (such as yourself, it seems) might not fully grasp. It's not just a set of rules written on a piece of paper by some dead guys; It is a principle that has been refined and upheld countless times over hundreds of years. Laws don't exist in a vacuum, and we Americans don't have the benefit of thousands of years of history and tradition, so many of us value that 200-year-old piece of paper very highly.
I don't want to confuse the issue any further, but pornography works under a different set of rules than mainstream games and movies. At least here in the U.S. The pornography publisher voluntarily classifies its publication as "unsuitable for minors," and no rating board is involved. It's essentially an tacit agreement to surrender First Amendment rights that ultimately benefits the publisher -- ie "I'll agree to restrict my distribution of this material to informed legal adults only, and therefore I cannot be held liable for any harm it might cause to anyone else."
There are pornographic video games as well as magazines and movies, but they voluntarily classify themselves as porn and willfully abide the extra distribution restrictions. They are not presented as mainstream games and they not rated by the ESRB in the first place (just like pornographic movies are not rated by the MPAA). These porn games, and porn in general, have nothing to do with the legislation proposed by Brownback.
Yes we already have the ESRB, but like every other rating system ever created, it ultimately relies on subjective opinions about appropriateness. These opinions may be widely held and highly useful, but they are still just opinions. Another important tenet of the First Amendment is that we cannot restrict one person's freedom of expression based solely on another person's subjective opinion.
Re: 15
As for the "solution," I think maybe we should do a better job of defining the "problem" first. What exactly are we trying to solve? Is it simply that parents want to have control over the media their children consume? I think we already have many different solutions to that problem, and none of them violate anyone else's rights to free expression.
To be honest, I think a lot of politicians use "video game violence" the same way they use "terrorism" -- as a vaguely defined bogeyman to keep the populace scared, and to give the politician an opportunity to look like he's acting as a protector.
Re: 16
The fact that many lawmakers are attempting to restrict free expression based on age-appropriateness is secondary -- the main point is that (slander, libel, and undue endangerment aside) they cannot restrict free expression based any reason at all. Free expression protection applies to all citizens, including game publishers, game retailers, and game buyers.
It is true that minors can't vote, and it is interesting to me that you consider this an age-based restriction on free expression. But, for the purpose of this discussion at least, children in the U.S. don't really have full rights as citizens. Perhaps we could make it illegal for minors to possess cash or make any purchases at all, but we still couldn't single out video games (or any other forms of media) just because of their expressive content.
ESRB, PEGI, ELSPA, and even NIMF provide standardized content guidelines for parents. I do not see how making these guidelines legally enforceable would make them any more effective in the home. You say you yourself violate these guidelines at times, even though I believe they are legally enforceable in your country. You also say you are glad your minor child cannot go purchase a copy of an adult-rated game, but even if he could, where would he play it? On the console you bought him (with the parental controls you never turned on)? I'm guessing that whether there's a law or not, you are a good enough parent to monitor what goes on in your own household.
We already have a organization in the U.S. that views storyboard-like information and mission descriptions provided by the game publisher, and then notes all controversial material in a standardized way. This is exactly how the ESRB operates, and it is a far more effective method than anything like the plan that Brownback is proposing.
It may seem foreign to most Europeans, but Freedom of Speech is a cornerstone of American politics and ideology. If we were to make an exception for video games, it would be like saying that games are not a valid form of free expression. Or worse, it would open the door for governmental censorship of other forms of expression, like movies, music, books, and even journalism.
In any case, laws that restrict free expression in media are exactly what JT has been demanding for the last 20 years. I doubt that giving in to him now is going quiet him down. We're not going to re-write our whole Constitution, and undo 200 years of precedent, just because some misinformed grandma in New Jersey thinks that PS2 is going to turn her grandson into a psychopath. At least I hope to God we're not....
Re: TheDock22's comment
There are no laws in the United States that enforce content-based restrictions on the distribution of video games. In other words, almost all retailers have age-appropriateness policies in place, but these policies are private -- none are criminally enforceable.
Why? Because restricting games based on a judgment of the appropriateness of the content would be an unquestionable violation of the First Amendment's protection of "free expression." Furthermore, this would effectively transfer authority for making all legally binding decisions about age-appropriateness from "the people" (you and your elected representatives) to a private organization based in NYC and funded by the biggest game publishers in the industry (the ESRB).
This is why essentially every anti-game law to date has been overturned, and why Brownback's is guaranteed to be overturned as well, if it ever passes in the first place.
Worst off all, most of these Reps and Senators understand Constitutional law far better than I do, and they make these anti-game proposals knowing full well they'll never stand up in court. Even if people aren't upset about the First Amendment violation, I wish they'd get upset about being pandered to and played for fools.
good idea for most people != good law for all peop
"Driving is a privilege?" I find it sad and defeatist when people adopt the attitude that the government owns the roads and we may only use them with its explicit permission. This forgets the important point that in America, we own the government.
Saying that "driving isn't a right" doesn't solve anything -- it only twists the issue around to a "guilty until proven innocent" perspective. It's sort of like saying that voting isn't a right. The fact is, we all begin with an equal right to secure driver licenses and to make use of the pubic roads that our tax dollars pay for.
I am a taxpaying citizen with no points on his license -- who's going to tell me I don't have just as much a RIGHT to drive on my public streets as any of the other license-bearing taxpaying citizens in my community?
Yet I am even more discouraged by those who would legislate by statistic. I imagine it would be easy to produce studies that show an "average person" is more likely to commit a traffic violation when performing nearly any other particular activity, but real people drive in the real world -- not in the abstract speculations of overambitious social reformer's "research." It's my opinion that there is no such thing as an "average person" in the real world.
We already have laws against unsafe driving. If I drive unsafely -- for any reason, regardless of the particular distraction you think may have led to my violation -- take away my license or throw me in jail. But keep the pretentious "I know you better than you do" legislation out of my car and out of my head. People are smarter than laws; laws that try to outsmart people never work.