Interactive Entertainment Law Review最新文献

{"title":"Regulating loot boxes as gambling? Towards a combined legal and self-regulatory consumer protection approach","authors":"Leon Y. Xiao","doi":"10.4337/ielr.2021.01.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ielr.2021.01.02","url":null,"abstract":"Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetization innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays a set amount of money for each attempt, the opportunity to obtain randomized virtual rewards of uncertain in-game and real-world value. Loot boxes have been, and continue to be, scrutinized by regulators and policymakers because their randomized nature is akin to gambling. The regulation of loot boxes is a current and challenging international public policy and consumer protection issue. This article reviews the psychology literature on the potential harms of loot boxes and applies the behavioural economics literature in order to identify the potentially abusive nature and harmful effects of loot boxes, which justify their regulation. This article calls on the industry to publish loot box spending data and cooperate with independent empirical research to avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this article identifies the flaws of the ‘regulate-loot-boxes-as-gambling’ approach and critiques the alternative consumer protection approach of adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing the probabilities of obtaining randomized rewards and setting maximum spending limits. This article recommends a combined legal and self-regulatory approach: the law should set out a minimum acceptable standard of consumer protection and industry self-regulation should strive to achieve an even higher standard.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43765088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bringing Balance to the Antitrust Force: Revising the Paramount Decrees for the Modern Motion Picture Market","authors":"J. Schwartz","doi":"10.5070/LR8271048853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/LR8271048853","url":null,"abstract":"Author(s): Schwartz, Jonathan A. | Abstract: Concentration of market power is nothing new in the media industries—and neither is government intervention to break it up. For over seventy years, the entertainment industry has operated under the shadow of agreements between the historically powerful film studios and the Department of Justice to stay out of the exhibition market, where the studios had cemented their dominance in the naissance of the American film industry. During the same period, however, understandings of antitrust law have evolved and what was once a discrete “film” industry has ballooned into a massive entertainment marketplace. While today’s streaming and technology giants battle the threat of increased regulatory oversight and calls for bolder antitrust enforcement, the general trend of legal and practical developments suggests a far less bleak outlook than that of their Hollywood progenitors.In fact, the policies and arguments supporting the consent decrees that emerged from the 1948 Paramount decision have been severely weakened with the passing of time. The acceleration of diversification in content and content providers has created new industry leaders like Netflix, HBO, and Hulu—and a proliferation of innovative competitors like Quibi and Peacock—that are apparently excused from Paramount’s constrictions. Instead, the Paramount Decrees’ narrow focus risks stifling the competitive flexibility of “traditional” producers and distributors of theatrical feature films as they seek to combat these new market entrants. In short, the Paramount Decrees appear obsolete given the realities of the film industry today. This Article argues for revisions to, or rescission of, the Paramount Decrees in order to better align the permissible activities of traditional film studios with those of their modern competitors. It provides a thorough review of the concerns underlying the Supreme Court’s holding in 1948 and determines that the Court’s concerns have been undercut either by subsequent developments in antitrust law or the practical realities of new and dynamic market entrants. While the Court’s anticompetitive concerns may still be valid, they appear misplaced when focused solely on those parties still subject to the Decrees. Future antitrust enforcement will instead need to reframe the picture in order to more accurately address risks of market concentration.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80547543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sending Agents to the Principal’s Office: How Talent Agency Packaging and Producing Breach the Fiduciary Duties Agents Owe Their Artist-Clients","authors":"Brian T. Smith","doi":"10.5070/LR8271048857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/LR8271048857","url":null,"abstract":"Author(s): Smith, Brian T. | Abstract: Talent agents have always been indispensable to writers, actors, and other creative workers in the entertainment industry, providing independent representation to their artist-clients in dealings with sophisticated corporate employers. But following a historical shift in their revenues from commissioning clients to lucrative television packaging fees, the power and profits of the biggest agencies grew exponentially. Revenues from packaging fees allowed these agencies to diversify into other businesses and attracted outside investment by private equity firms leading to further vertical integration. Now, the largest agencies have turned their eye toward a new revenue stream: producing and owning content through agency-affiliate production companies. These innovations have come at the cost of the independent representation agents are supposed to provide their clients. Packaging and producing by talent agencies and their affiliates breach the well-established fiduciary duties agents owe their clients under the law by aligning the agency’s own interests with the interests of its clients’ employers. Outside investment in the agencies only exacerbates these conflicts. These departures from traditional agenting undermine the avowed purpose of the California Talent Agencies Act: to protect vulnerable artists from the conflicted practices of their agents. While these issues are at the heart of the ongoing industry dispute between the Writers Guild of America and the big agencies, their importance should concern all agency clients and their unions. The California Legislature should amend the outdated Talent Agencies Act to enumerate and reaffirm the fiduciary duties talent agents owe their clients under common law and prevent the erosion of legal protections for creative workers in one of the state’s largest and most important industries.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85586608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Precise imprecisions","authors":"","doi":"10.4337/ielr.2019.02.00","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ielr.2019.02.00","url":null,"abstract":"During the past year we have witnessed an ever increasing number of streamed, televised and written discussions respecting fundamental legal and regulatory issues involving games and interactive entertainment. These events were led by Politicians and public relations (P.R.) practitioners and often appear to offend both facts as well as technical details. With a particular penchant for word games, mind games, allusions and forced metaphors, these supposedly strategic emanations result in the clear impression that issues are only superficially understood, that something entirely different in meaning was actually intended, or that what is being declared is nothing more than superficial posturing for posterity. Let us call these intellectually empty modalities ‘precise imprecision’ and let us further resolve to oppose them. As sworn officers of the court committed to the rule of law, of necessity we lawyers have both different obligations and a higher standard to adhere to. As academics we must be intellectually honest in judging whether the debates are supported and informed by appropriate and independent research. We also have to ensure that research is not misquoted or creatively interpreted. During many of the policy debates prevailing in today’s political, social and cultural climate, ‘precise imprecision’ is often utilized in concert with pure ambiguity to create a mind-numbing broth of confusion and stupor attributable almost wholly to intentional and calculated obfuscation. The strategy seems intended so that the speaker always has a place to retreat to or attack from depending on the dragons, real or imagined, being faced ... All these rhetorical gyrations might all seem eerily familiar as the interactive entertainment industry collectively contemplates the place of regulation in video games. One possible interpretation of what went wrong for the video game industry around violence, addiction, loot boxes and legal regulation is that those issues were treated as part P.R. problem/part political problem. What they didn’t seem to be, was actually exactly what they really are – a legal problem. Perhaps most urgently needed on the battleground would have been a real, thoughtful and detailed legal strategy. Plain and simple. Moreover, it is now clear that where regulation is contemplated, everyone involved needs to be a good deal more serious when it comes to the dialogue. Nay, a good deal more serious when it comes to the words being used. In particular, precision will have to be just that. Precisely so that governmental action deals with the real problem and nothing more, because dealing with more could be contrary to the rule of law. So, who is best at parsing words with real, and not make-believe precision? Yes indeed. Lawyers. Moreover, preferably lawyers acting as lawyers, doing what we were trained to – not in some other more vague personification that is not practicing law. The truth is that video games are earthly wares that have always b","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/ielr.2019.02.00","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46187315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Withdrawal right waivers for in-game currency under EU law","authors":"F. Hilgert","doi":"10.4337/ielr.2019.02.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ielr.2019.02.04","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers in the EU have a discretionary withdrawal right for online transactions. For 14 days (or longer, if they have not been properly informed of this right), they can cancel the contract and claim a refund. This right is generally mandatory and can only be contractually waived in advance in contracts for the provision of digital content. German courts have handed down a series of judgments confirming that virtual in-game currency qualifies as digital content for the purpose of this exception and clarifying the conditions under which such waivers can be obtained. Most decisions indicate waiver language can be integrated into the purchase flow prior to the final purchase decision, with some courts requiring a separate checkbox. One decision would force providers to implement separate consent mechanisms after the consumer has made the purchase but before the virtual currency is made available to them. In any event, implementing the requirements set out by German courts also requires the cooperation of distribution platforms.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/ielr.2019.02.04","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43698982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regulating interactive ‘creativity for the bad’: camgirls, video games and fake news","authors":"Chris Dent","doi":"10.4337/IELR.2019.01.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.01","url":null,"abstract":"Interactive entertainment poses particular regulatory challenges. More specifically, the democratization of technology and creativity has meant that there is no capacity for a governmental agency to effectively regulate the spread, and enjoyment, of allegedly problematic expressions. This article will explore this by contrasting the regulation of non-interactive entertainment (including Dada art and punk music) with more recent forms of (at times) transgressive expression (amateur pornography, video games and fake news). The analysis will be carried out in terms of the different motivations of the range of parties involved in the process (including creators, distributors, consumers and the broader public) and of the different conceptions of the consumer that are implicit in different modes of regulation. The complexity of the interactions means that there is no single regulatory solution; the historical exploration of the issue, nonetheless, suggests that interactivity may be no worse for society than the earlier forms of expression that were, at the time, deemed to be a threat to its moral fabric.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41929910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Restrictions on freedom of expression in the video games industry in Russia","authors":"A. Abyshko, M. Mironova, Alfia Mutygullina, I. Ponomarev, German Sabirov, A. Chuvaeva","doi":"10.4337/IELR.2019.01.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.02","url":null,"abstract":"The video games industry is expanding globally, and such markets as Russia have a potential for further growth attracting more and more publishers, and pushing compliance with Russian law into the business frontlines. The aim of this article is to give to the video games developers a survival kit on the Russian market highlighting the most problematic areas for foreign publishers, such as censorship, age ratings and restricted content.\u0000\u0000The most recent trends in judicial and administrative practice show that Russian jurisdiction is extended by official bodies to foreign businesses targeting the Russian market. The LinkedIn case discussed in this article is a representative example of such an approach. More recently, the district court of Kirov decided to block access on AppStore and Google Play to video games promoting criminal subculture.\u0000\u0000On the one hand, there are some positive trends for the game industry, like the activity of the Russian government in the field of regulating video games, namely, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation has recently recognized eSports as an official sport. On the other hand, the Russian market conceals many pitfalls, for example, with regard to restricted content. The situation with respect to freedom of expression, ideas and information continues to deteriorate in all spheres of public life with video games being no exception.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41732662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The shadows within","authors":"Gaetano Dimita, J. Festinger, M. Mimler","doi":"10.4337/IELR.2019.01.00","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.00","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.00","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42284777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"GDPR challenges for blockchain technology","authors":"Anne K. Rose","doi":"10.4337/IELR.2019.01.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.03","url":null,"abstract":"As the adoption of blockchain technology increases, those wanting to leverage it will need to consider some of the legal challenges under GDPR. The aim of this article is to explore the unique characteristics of blockchain and to identify some of the issues that might arise under GDPR when implementing this technology in an interactive entertainment context.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43155811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Nintendo v. MariCar: is street kart rental business free riding on the popular video game characters prohibited in Japan?","authors":"M. Shimada","doi":"10.4337/IELR.2019.01.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/IELR.2019.01.05","url":null,"abstract":"You must not make a profit by using a well-known character belonging to someone else without licence. This is a commercial common sense, but a question is on what legal basis such an activity is banned? A character business may involve various intellectual properties, including copyright, trademark, design rights, etc., however, none of these IP rights is directly aimed at protecting characters. Besides, trademarks and design rights shall not take effect unless they are registered at the Patent Office, and characters are not always copyrightable. In several cases, Japanese courts suggest that the Unfair Competition Prevention Act of Japan takes a certain role to protect characters. This case review examines a recent judgment in the case, which deals with the application of this Act for the prevention of free riding on the video game characters.","PeriodicalId":36418,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Entertainment Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44508066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}