Thanks, GamePolitics!

This Wednesday, The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is scheduled to review a lower court holding that declared California’s violent video game law violates the First Amendment. The impending appeal has been on our radar for a long time, first discussed by LoP correspondent Matthew Razak. Legislators and game developers have been very vocal about the case, including the oft-discussed author of the legislation, Democrat Senator Leland Yee. Senator Yee offered to repeat his factually-dubious battle cry for reporters:

This is the same technology the armed forces use to help soldiers kill the enemy… All we’re saying is, “Don’t sell it to kids.”

The law would prevent minors from purchasing games that “appeal to a deviant or morbid interest of children and are patently offensive to prevailing community standards.” Retailers violating this law would be subject to a $1000 fine.

Curiously, the bill also calls for an “18″ label to be placed on excessively violent games, but this seems to be the exact function of the current ESRB ratings.

Laws similar to California’s have been repeatedly struck down by courts around the country. But, with the notoriously wacky Ninth Circuit involved, who knows what will happen? In all honesty, I doubt this case will be any different. The link between violent video games and real-life violence in so scientifically tenuous that we shouldn’t be attempting to abridge speech because of it.

[via Mercury News]

President Bush on Monday signed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (“PRO-IP” Act) into law. The law increases both civil and criminal penalties for copyright and trademark infringement and creates a new executive branch office, the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). This office — colloquially referred to as the “IP Czar” — will report directly to the president and is charged with protecting copyright and trademarks both domestically and internationally.

The bill originally introduced a controversial provision that allowed the Department of Justice to conduct civil suits on behalf of private copyright holders or, as Electronic Frontier Foundation spokesman Richard Esguerra said, turned Justice Department lawyers into “pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry.”

While the ESA has praised the new law as a “critical step[] that support[s] job growth and investment in the video game industry,” other groups remain skeptical. The Justice Department has expressed concerns that the newly-created “IP Czar” may undermine some of the department’s authority and advocacy group Public Knowledge expressed dismay that the bill did not introduce “something to benefit the public and artists instead of big media companies.”

After a brief hiatus, Law of Play is back in action. Unfortunately, I recently found myself doing some work that required me to briefly stop running Laws of Play. But, now that there is no fear of breaking any promise not to compete, expect plenty of new content.

Now, here are some of the stories across the Internet that you may have missed:

New York Signed a Video Game Bill into Law

Ubisoft was Sued for a Bunch of Money

Denis Dyack is Back and Claiming Epic Defrauded the Entire Industry

A Lot of Gents in the UK are Being Sued for Piracy

Matthew Sweet Wants to Sue the Makers of Guitar Hero II

Some Attorneys and Law Profs Weighed in on the ‘Video Game Defense’

Stardock Published a ‘Gamer Bill of Rights’

A Game Pirate was Sent to Prison…

…and the ESA was Ecstatic About it

The state of Ohio is once again engaged in battle with bar owners and distributors of a popular bar-top video game known as “Tic-Tac-Fruit.” Tic-Tac-Fruit first ran into trouble with the state in 2006 when police raided more than a dozen bars, unplugging the slot machine-like video games and confiscating thousands of dollars in cash.

In Ohio, slots gambling is illegal, but distributors of Tic-Tac-Fruit previously claimed that the game is based on skill, which put it outside the reach of laws targeted at games of chance. However, current Ohio law states that a player’s ability must have at least a “50 percent” bearing on the outcome to be considered a game of skill. Ohio state prosecutors earlier proved that even a perfectly played game of Tic-Tac-Fruit can result in the loss of money.

According to the Pittsburg Post-Gazette:

The game works like this — you feed in your money, then video fruit strips spin, as they would in a regular slot machine. When they stop, you’re left with a nine-square box that resembles a tic-tac-toe board.

The “skill” comes in deciding, as a clock ticks, which of the squares to turn into a wild card in order to produce three in a row of a certain fruit. Rows of lemons and cherries drain your account. Plums and oranges fatten it. If you’re ahead when you quit, you can redeem points for cash.

In order to circumvent Ohio’s gambling laws, Tic-Tac-Fruit machines no longer provide cash payouts. Instead, the machines allow players to redeem “points” for $10 Speedway gas cards, which distributors claim are “prizes” well within the realm of safe rewards. However, Matt Lampke, an assistant Ohio attorney general, said that the gas cards are prohibited as prizes under a law passed last year.

The first decision by the Ohio Liquor Control Commission for the new “gas card cases” is due this month.

The Weston & Somerset Mercury reports that parents, public officials, and a “major video games manufacturer” are pushing for a new law that will require games to be screened for photosensitivity compliance before being sold.

Support for the new law comes following an epileptic seizure triggered in a ten year old boy by Ubisoft’s Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Nintendo DS. The seizure was a result of the boy’s dormant photosensitive epilepsy, an incurable life-long condition that afflicts thousands and is triggered by bright flashing lights and colors.

While most games currently provide warnings about potential epileptic seizures as a result of play, Parliament Member John Penrose argues that these warnings are insufficient because those suffering from dormant photosensitive epilepsy do not realize that the warnings even apply to them until it is too late.

California State Senator and outspoken critic of violent video games, Leland Yee, recently sat down to answer questions about the medium and his policies. GameCyte has a full transcript of Sen. Yee’s interview. Read on to watch the two part interview.

Part 1:

Part 2:

A $149.1 million euro fine levied against Nintendo by EU regulators has recently been challenged by the video game company as being irrational and discriminatory. Lawyers for Nintendo claim that the penalty is “unfair, illegal, even shocking” and “one of the biggest single fines in EU competition law.”

The fine, imposed by the European Commission in 2002, was a penalty for alleged price fixing and collusion between Nintendo and seven distributors. The fine totaled $167.8 million euros and covered activity between 1991 and 1998.

Xavier Lewis, a lawyer for the European Commission stated:

The fine was not of a capricious nature, or based on wild estimates…. This fine was for an infringement that was considered very serious.

LOP Comment: Apologies for the lack of updates recently. Laws of Play has been dealing with some hosting issues and spotty Internet service. Posts written over the last few days should slowly be coming online tonight.

A Canadian bill designed to amended and strengthen Canada’s existing Copyright Act has met further delays. The bill, originally placed on the House of Commons order paper in December, is said to closely mimic the United State’s copyright scheme and will effect the level of control Canadian consumers have over the media and products they purchase.

Currently, recording television shows and ripping music from a compact disc for use on an MP3 player are against Canadian law, but there is no practicable enforcement mechanism. The new bill hopes to remedy this situation.

Jason Kee, director of policy with the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, has stated that the organization is in favor of the new bill. The video game industry hopes that the bill will allow Internet service providers to monitor downloads and disable the unauthorized transfer of video games and related files — an action that was previously disallowed by Canadian courts. Kee stated:

“It’s clear the ISP’s have this capacity … Similarly, they actually do have the capacity of basically disrupting particular communications, and that’s essentially the kind of activity we’d be seeking.”

Despite numerous delays, Industry Minister Jim Prentice recently stated that the bill is still a work in progress. It appears that the bill will not come to a vote before the end of the spring session of Parliament. As a result, there will not likely be any change to Canada’s aging Copyright Law before Parliament’s long summer recess.

[via CTV.ca]

In an effort to increase incentives for entertainment developers to conduct business in Georgia, The Weekly reports that Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue recently signed into law the 2008 Entertainment Industry Investment Act. The bill creates a twenty percent tax credit for qualified movie, TV, commercial, video game, and music video productions created in the state of Georgia. Qualified productions that feature an animated promotional logo for the state are then eligible for an additional ten percent tax credit.

Government officials hope the new bill will create jobs and “jump start the Georgia film industry.”

The new bill replaces the 2005 Entertainment Industry Investment Act, which used similar incentives to introduce $475 million to Georgia’s economy from the television and video game industry. Previously, the television and video game industry were responsible for only $124 million of Georgia’s economy.

While numerous states provide tax incentives for in-state entertainment production, Georgia’s law is one of the few that supports the $17.9 billion video game industry.