European Rights Reform and its Effect on Project Plans

[Mr. Detective]

Not very knowledgeable on this, but some European folks on reddit pointed out that it will take at least 2 years or so for this to go into effect, and that is if it has even a chance of being passed or voted on. Something along that line. I don't know how the laws and voting process works over there, though.

Obviously, sites like reddit will start banning itself from the EU because no one can check all the contents being posted. If they hire someone to censor contents, people will also spam memes all over the place just to troll these checkers. And then European users will start becoming experts in VPN like Chinese users. Now, that will be a good time for us to start investing into VPN companies' stocks.

 

[Philosophus Vagus]

Just going to plop this down right here. Dude does a really good job of explaining the new laws and their potential ramifications.

https://edri.org/files/copyright/copyright_proposal_article13.pdf Also a summary with documentation and links to the actual legislation.

 

[BreakerZero]

Not very knowledgeable on this, but some European folks on reddit pointed out that it will take at least 2 years or so for this to go into effect, and that is if it has even a chance of being passed or voted on. Something along that line. I don't know how the laws and voting process works over there, though.

Obviously, sites like reddit will start banning itself from the EU because no one can check all the contents being posted. If they hire someone to censor contents, people will also spam memes all over the place just to troll these checkers. And then European users will start becoming experts in VPN like Chinese users. Now, that will be a good time for us to start investing into VPN companies' stocks.

Disconnection from the EU is more accurate considering the fact that some news services and other websites already have a problem with what the GDPR did, and this is just more than of same from typical "career politicians". If this keeps up, Google could be forced out of business leaving only the electronic automobile research, Android and G Suite business to fend for themselves. And there would probably be no such thing as search or YouTube if this happens, because they would essentially break the law simply because of their existence.

EDIT: This is admittedly an extreme outcome but very possible between the censorship potential and the fact that we also have a "link tax" issue that Google and other companies cannot possibly is literally impossible to pay.

 

[Kes]

[mod]Reminder to everyone
Some remarks/posts in this thread are getting very near to a political discussion. As you all know, we do not allow political discussions on this forum.[/mod]

Taking Mod hat off, and speaking personally, the suggestion that Google will be forced out of business is, imo, laughable. Similarly, to suggest that Youtube's very existence would break the law indicates a misunderstanding of the legislative proposals. I really do suggest that wild speculation about this subject is actually not very illuminating/helpful.

 

[MushroomCake28]

Google and Youtube won't die, but they'll have to adapt to split their services into EU and non-EU countries, and that will be to the disadvantage of the consumers and the companies. Even if that company has almost limitless resources, they can't afford to pay a fine PER copyright infringement with the number of videos out there. It's not even just a monetary issue, but also a huge legal hassle. They'll probably just tweak their services (and it won't be to our advantage for sure).

 

[BreakerZero]

Which is why I called it an extreme outcome considering they may as well over this, even if it doesn't come from the literal sense of actually doing so. There's just too much in terms of unknown aspects for such businesses to even survive as we know 'em.

 

[Ryisunique]

It could be interesting to see how Steam and Itch.io deal with this. If there are already region locks to deal with ratings, they could do the same to deal with this.

And as someone working with Lovecraftian lore, this might nix everything Curious Cases related due to the complex copyright problems related to the books. Even publishing it free may not be possible.

 

[Kes]

@Ryisunique J.P. Lovecraft's books are out of copyright, so unless you are basing your game on something which itself is a derivative of those books, you are fine. In the same way as you could do a game version of Romeo & Juliet, because Shakespeare is out of copyright, but not West Side Story, because that's still in copyright.

Which illustrates the more general point that each of us, as developers, should be alert to our sources and their limitations. That, imo, is no bad thing.

And as has already been said, it will be at least 2 years before the legislation is passed (if it does get passed) and it might not be passed without amendment. Speaking personally, I think it highly likely that it will be amended before being presented in the EU Parliament - but on that point I am, just like every one else in this thread, merely speculating. And I think it hazardous to treat speculation as objective fact, which some people seem to be doing.

 

[gstv87]

Disconnection from the EU is more accurate

*cut to the UK laughing in British*

I know, the split was caused by totally unrelated reasons.... but it turned out to be the best choice.

 

[watermark]

I think sometimes we use a character or concept in our game not because we want to make any money out of it, but just because we love that character and want to pay it homage. So what exactly would constitute a copyright infringement? Say I really like Luke Skywalker. Which of these would be infringement? So in my hypothetical game there will be...

1. A character called Luke Skywalker and looks like him. But can’t I say it’s not THAT Luke Skywalker, but rather another Luke who happens to look like him?
2. A character called Luke Skywalker but looks totally nothing like him. A female purple Martian with three arms for example.
3. A very fat Luke Skywalker, used in comedic situations.
4. An Asian guy called Luke Skywalker who has a similar haircut and clothing and wields a “beamsword” and uses “Chi” powers.
4. A tombstone that says “R.I.P. Luke Skywalker”.
5. All of the above but called just “Luke”. No Skywalker.
6. All of the above but only referred to as “L.S.”
7. All of the above but called “Lupe Skysucker”.

 

[Animebryan]

As far as copyright goes, only exact full name & likeness count. Using the name Luke is perfectly fine on its own (that first name can't be copyrighted). But if your 'Luke' just happened to bear any resemblance to the official one & have similar or same 'powers' & 'light/beam sword', that may be grounds for infringement. However, I've seen cameo appearances in games & anime where all they did was change like 1 letter in their name & they get away with it. Heck, in some cases the references/homages to certain copyrighted characters are so blatantly obvious that its amazing when they don't get sued by the copyright holders.

 

[Ryisunique]

@Ked There is a company, Chaosium, that has been doing tabletop RPGs that was granted trademark license from the original copyright holders back in the 80s. D&D put in some monsters and didn't know it. That book is hard to find, they couldn't republish. The books are public, but in relation to games, I'm not sure on. Could writing a report on elements from those games for the AUEI and having Alex come across it cause trouble?

Generally, I'm wondering on how companies will handle this. I know YouTube already has region locking with music, but are they going to merely step that up or go with something completely different? Are game companies going to have to come up completely different characters for Europe if the original character is a reference? How far are companies willing to push on people making content to not have anything copyright related? I think, one major point, that instead of making EU specific sections, websites might just carry it over the entire world for simplicity issues. That's what they did with the privacy changes.

 

[Kes]

We can wonder, we can conjecture, we can speculate, and each person would come up with something different. As things are so fluid right now, I think we need to let things settle down a bit and see what concrete responses come from the companies involved. Then we will be able to have an informed discussion.

@Ryisunique Writing a Report about elements would be a legitimate application of 'fair use'. However, I have absolutely no idea what AUEI stands for, so maybe there is something about it which raises the question in a different way?

 

[MushroomCake28]

Anyways I think countries of the EU have 2 years to actually implement policies to execute article 13. Two years is a lot of time for them to change their mind, and probably more for big companies to find a solution.

 

[Ryisunique]

@Kes I don't like my autocorrect and didn't realize tagging didn't work. Sorry about that. AUEI is my fictious organization. I hoping for the case of getting it through the books will keep it as public domain, but incorporating possible parts of the Mythos in Curious Cases could raise flags.