entertainment-consumer-association
Latest
The Lawbringer: Letters to Rogers, letters to Congress
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? We've got two stories to talk about on The Lawbringer today, both interestingly involving letters. That's right -- letters. To you from me, that sort of thing. These letters, however, are instruments of change in a world where we as consumers seem not to have much control or ability to change the big picture concepts that dot our path to consistent entertainment. The amount of energy that we have to put into just getting in a decent WoW session is staggering at times. The first story revolves around Rogers, one of the largest Canadian internet service providers, famous for its lame bandwidth caps and my old Canadian guildmates shouting "Rogers sucks!" as much as they could on Mumble. Yes, it is another chapter in the Mathew McCurley Guide to Awful Bandwidth Throttling -- but hopefully, this new information and story chapter will get us on the path to better WoW experiences in the face of the immense throttling of WoW data as peer-to-peer traffic. The second story is all about letters that you will want to send. Last week, I wrote The Lawbringer about Senate Bill S.978, colloquially being referred to as the anti-streaming bill. While not directly prohibiting video game streaming or even mentioning video games anywhere in the proposed legislation, video games are nonetheless obliterated in the crossfire of the entertainment industry and would-be illegal streamers making millions off of pirated entertainment, movies, music, and more. The Entertainment Consumers Association has begun a letter-writing campaign to inform and implore Congress to not pass a bill with such broad and language lacking description.
Alter-Ego: DCUO's console conundrum
With the first month of DC Universe Online now in the past, the time has come for that all-important MMO decision -- is the game worth renewing? For some, the answer is no. The first major patch still has not dropped; it's meant to offer us many fixes and the new content we've been told is coming. Some players have hit the level cap and aren't interested in leveling alts or doing endgame content. Whatever each person's reason may be, the shine is wearing off for some. Meanwhile, Hal Halpin, President of the Entertainment Consumer's Association, recently wrote a piece that presented another reason that some may not be renewing: Console gamers are feeling that Sony Online Entertainment has been less than open about the game's being locked to a single account. Many are upset about not being able to trade DC Universe Online in for another game now that their free month is up. His reasoning? "The problem, of course, is that console games are sold and the ownership conveyed, along with rights." There's only one flaw in that statement: This isn't anything new -- not even on consoles.
Violent video game case gets its date in Supreme Court on Nov. 2
It's been a long road for the California bill backed by Governor Schwarzenegger that seeks to keep violent video games from being sold to minors. But the end is finally in sight: The Entertainment Consumer Association has announced that the case, known as Schwarzenegger vs. EMA (Entertainment Merchants Association), will go before US Supreme Court on November 2. As an outside party, the ECA will submit an amicus brief in the case and has set up a website for a petition and more information about the pending arguments. So far, lower courts have judged the proposed law, which would set up legal rules and penalties against selling violent video games to minors, to be unconstitutional. Of course, this time around, we're talking about the United States Supreme Court, so any decision in favor of the bill would overturn previous rulings in lesser courts. Take that, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals! Oral arguments in the case begin November 2, and the judges should have a decision soon after that. This will be the first time the Supreme Court looks at video games and the First Amendment, so a ruling either way should be pretty historic.
