As a September deadline looms for submitting amicus briefs in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court case, both sides are still hard at work recruiting advocates.

In an excellent Law.com story on the subject, a few claims and quotes jump out, including a comment from Activision Blizzard EVP and Chief Public Policy Officer George Rose, who said, “We wouldn't be surprised if the number [of states siding with the industry] was equal or exceeded the number backing California.”

Meanwhile both California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Zackery Morazzini, who will argue California’s side on November 2, and Louisiana Department of Justice Appellate Chief S. Kyle Duncan, who authored the brief for states backing the California law, seem to think that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff “is taking the lead in drafting a brief supporting the industry and discussing it with AGs of other states.”
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An editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune calls Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s decision to possibly support the videogame industry in the upcoming Schwarzenegger v. EMA SCOTUS case “baffling.”

It appears the paper has sided with pro-life groups and a handful of politicians in condemning Shurtleff (pictured) for a decision he hasn’t even made yet. Titled, “Let it Go,” the editorial stopped just short of labeling Shurtleff a hypocrite, saying instead that opposing the California law was ironic for someone representing a state “that trumpets its devotion to family values.”
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The European Service Network (ESN), operating under a budget of 275,000 Euros (approximately $349,000 U.S.) from the European Parliament's Directorate-General for Communication, is developing an online role-playing game—and social networking forum—that it hopes will capture “the essence of European Parliament.”

Named Citzalia, the online experience was compared to Second Life and will have users create an avatar before being able to,  “navigate around a virtual recreation of the actual Parliament, to create content, and to involve themselves in virtual law-making.” Read More

As Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff considers submitting an amicus brief that would support the videogame industry side in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court case, "pro-family" groups and other legislators from his state held a press conference to try and get him to change his mind.

Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka, Laura Bunker (pictured), Chairwoman of United Families Utah and State Representatives Jim Dunnigan (R) and Julie Fisher (R) all gathered at the Capitol on Tuesday, according to a story in the Deseret News.

Bunker stated, “As the most family-oriented state in the nation, Utah should support this law that promotes the protection of children.”
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Sony's PlayStation 3 has remained remarkably resilient to piracy, until now perhaps.

An article on a EuroGamer blog (thanks The Escapist) uses a pair of YouTube videos (here’s the first, the other is embedded above) from user OzModChips as the basis for its article.

The movies were made after OzModChips apparently received an anonymous package from Hong Kong, which was sent to various resellers of mod chips.

The process described: Read More

As each side in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA case attempts to lure state attorney generals to sign on to their respective amicus briefs, Common Sense Media Chief James Steyer is turning up the pressure on one particular person.

The LA Times features an excerpt from a letter by Steyer to Utah Attorney General, and a one-time target of a certain disbarred attorney, Mark Shurtleff (pictured). While Shurtleff might seem like a natural to sign on to a brief in favor of the California law—he argued for a ban of the game 25 to Life in 2005—he has also demonstrated considerable backbone, once challenging a proposed Utah law introduced by a now disbarred attorney as unconstitutional.
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A longstanding loophole that has allowed mobile application developers to avoid submitting their wares for classification in Australia has been vowed to be sealed up by the country’s Labor Party.

The Australian reports that the issue is on the agenda of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting, which was postponed three weeks ago due to the looming state elections (that take place on August 21).

Labor’s Brendan O’Connor, and Minister of Home Affairs, said that he was, “… concerned about the classification of games playable on mobile telephones and had put the wheels in motion to address this with his state and territory counterparts.”

Meanwhile, a Sydney Morning Herald story notes that such submissions could cost developers between $470 and $2040 per entry, which didn’t sit well with some creators.
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The sleepy hamlet of Beacon, located in upstate New York, is not a fan of pinball machines.

A CNN story details the problems a local man had after opening a retro arcade museum in the town. After 18 months of operation, Fred Bobrow was forced to shutter his operation because of an “arcane” law in town that bans pinball machines within the city limits.

George Mansfield, a member of Beacon’s City Council explained how the law may have come about:

Arcades in the '70s may have represented something, you know, maybe, that a community wouldn't want on their main street, or that it would attract a bad, you know, kids or whatever.

While the town, reportedly, is looking into reversing the ban, the City Council is moving very slowly and any changes will not be enacted in time to benefit Bobrow. Beacon Mayor Steve Gold stated, “Uh, the legislative process really does take its time and council's really looked very closely at all of the letters of the law, and look ahead to the future.”

Elena Kagan, in a 63 to 37 vote, has been confirmed as the 112th Supreme Court Justice.

Five Republicans from the Senate supported her, while a lone Democratic member—Nebraska’s Ben Nelson—voted against her appointment.

While the Supreme Court now features three female Justices for the first time, perhaps more startling is the fact, as pointed out by the Washington Post, that all nine current Justices come from one of three Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale and Columbia.

The 50-year old Kagan replaces 90-year old John Paul Stevens.

The Post also says to keep an eye on the relationship between Kagan and Chief Justice John Roberts, which the paper billed as “intriguing,” writing: Read More

A teacher arrested after making a threat to kill hundreds of people was acquitted by a jury after clarification emerged that his remark was meant to reference the taking of virtual lives in videogame play, so that he could relieve stress.

Jason Davis was a teacher at Knox Central High School in Barbourville, Kentucky, when a student, and fellow online gamer who Davis often played with, hid some of Davis’ markers. Davis, according to Kentucky.com, was apparently having a rough day and this bit of tom foolery caused him to issue utterances about killing people to relieve stress, which was apparently taken out of context by students and resulted in his arrest in May of 2009 for second-degree terroristic threatening.

A jury needed only 10 minutes to conclude that Davis was not guilty. Davis spent a month in jail before coming up with bond, and is now unemployed as the school, before the incident, informed him that he would not be rehired.

In advance of the August 21 Australian federal elections, GameSpot Australia has put together an election primer for gamers.

The article provides information on where candidates and political parties stand on issues like adding an R18+ videogame rating category, implementing a mandatory Internet filter, boosting broadband speeds and generating more governmental support for videogame makers.

Responses below from political party members on the subject of R18+:

Brendan O’Connor (Labor) Minister for Home Affairs:

This is a matter for classification ministers and an agreement must be reached that satisfies all states and territory governments before changes can be made to that nation's classification system. The strength of arguments on both sides must be considered. What is needed is the right decision, not a rushed decision Read More

By all accounts the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has been a ho-hum affair lacking any great theater or overtly obnoxious partisanship and will result in her ascension to a position on the nation’s highest court.

As the Senate debates her nomination (a vote seems likely for this Friday), here are a few takes on the process and thoughts on what could happen from around the Internet.

Politico:

Conservative and liberal judicial activists generally agreed that the struggle over Kagan’s nomination has produced fewer fireworks and drawn less public attention than any nomination since President Bill Clinton tapped Stephen Breyer in 1994.

Los Angeles Times:

The sense of anticlimax was palpable in the Senate chamber, as the debate got underway to scores of empty desks. Read More

The government of Vietnam has implemented a few (previously alluded to) measures restricting online games as it bides time in order to formulate an overall master plan for dealing with the industry.

Minister of Information and Communications (MoIC) Le Doan Hop called for the immediate  implementation of a trio of stop-gap measures reports Saigon Daily: until new laws are drafted and propagated, all new licenses for online games will be suspended, all public media ads for online games are banned and Internet cafes will have to shut down game services between 11PM and 6AM every day. Vietnam News stated that these measures will be in place through year-end.
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The CBI, a self-proclaimed advocate of and lobbying organization for UK creative industries, has issued a manifesto which serves up detailed recommendations on how to stimulate expansion within that sector.

Entitled Creating Growth: A Blueprint for the Creative Industries (PDF), the document puts the onus on elected officlas, stating that “The government should develop a strategy to deliver the right business environment.”

Among its suggestions, the CBI wrote that the government must: Read More

A proposed bill currently sitting in front of France’s Parliament seeks government assistance in promoting the risks that the overuse of videogames might have on that country's youth.

GP Reader Soldat_Louis pointed us towards the possible legislation (translated) and also broke down for us exactly how the bill made it from the country’s “Children’s Parliament” all the way to the real one: Read More

The Library of Congress’ Copyright Office looks into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) every three years in order to ensure that its harms are “mitigated.” The latest such inquiry has led to the establishment of legal protections for those who choose to jailbreak their cell phones, as well as for those who break protections on videogames in order to “investigate or correct security flaws.”

An AP story stated that the triennial investigation offers exemptions to the DMCA in order to “ensure that existing law does not prevent non-infringing use of copyrighted material.”

Other exemptions handed down included: Read More

Children’s advocacy groups Common Sense Media and Eagle Forum have filed amicus briefs in support of California's Violent Video Game Law, according to Gamasutra (thanks E. Zachary Knight). Both pro family groups believe that violent media can have an adverse affect on the mental well being of children, so their support for the California law does not come as a surprise.

In its legal brief, Common Sense Media said that it supports the law because "children are more likely to be harmed by the effects of exposure to violent video games than adults, and the potential damage to their psychological development differs from any damage caused to adults." "Denying the existence of a right of children to obtain violent video games would strengthen parents’ ability to determine what content is appropriate for their children, and would be consistent with the Court’s precedents," it said. [PDF] Read More

MCVUK carries word from the Video Standards Council (VSC) that a mandatory shift to the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) ratings system in the UK will not be legally enforceable until April 1, 2011.

The UK’s Digital Economy act dictated that PEGI would become the single system for rating games, replacing a current implementation that utilizes PEGI in conjunction with British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) ratings.

While the Digital Economy bill passed in April of this year, the delay was blamed on it not yet being “made effective.” A portion of a statement MCV obtained from the VFC reads: Read More

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin was given the opportunity to make a post on Sony’s PlayStation blog in order to talk about why Schwarzenegger v EMA should matter to American gamers and to urge them to sign the ECA’s Gamer Petition.

Halpin began by stating, “At stake: gaming in America. Yes, you read that correctly.” He continued:

In the time since the Court’s announcement there has been a lot of media coverage, both from the enthusiast outlets and the national press. A disturbing theme that you’d find too often in the consumer comments is one of apathy. Perhaps it arose from winning in each of the violence in video game cases. Maybe because, from our perspective, it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that we could lose — the logic seems pretty obvious. Read More

Around 11,000 e-mails - written by and to Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan - were released late last week by the Clinton Presidential Library. The e-mails paint an interesting picture of President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, particularly when it came to violent video games.

Kagan apparently helped draft the language in a response to the Senator Joseph Lieberman - sponsored bill to ban the sale of violent video games to children. The response conveyed "strong doubts" on its constitutionality of the law, which the Clinton White House ultimately opposed. From Politico: Read More

Charging videogames and consoles to government credit cards has helped to take down a Baltimore Mayor and may also lead to arrests in a probe of Nova Scotia House of Assembly members. Now, the lure of putting the burden of payment on the public has proven too hard to resist for yet another piece of bureaucracy, the Los Angeles Probation Department.

A Los Angeles Times article states that “mayhem has reigned for years” in the LA County Probation Department, and claims 170 cases of employee misconduct over an unspecified time frame. The author turns us on to “a story you haven’t heard yet”: Read More

As Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski grapples with a decision on whether or not to reclassify broadband service in order to wield influence over it, AT&T is playing hardball by threatening to cut back on its U-Verse spending in light of additional government authority.

U-Verse is an AT&T IPTV service that offers high-speed Internet, phone and television programming and counts 2.3 million current subscribers. It is currently available to 24 million homes, a number expected to reach 30 million by the end of 2011. AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told the Wall Street Journal however, that FCC reclassifying of broadband from Title 1 to Title 2 would mean, “…we have to re-evaluate whether we put shovels in the ground.”
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As the hopes of tax incentives for UK game developers continue to tread water, industry group TIGA has stepped up its pressure, now stating that UK videogame makers could aid the economy by occupying a “valuable role” in an “export led recovery.”

TIGA recently commissioned a research report entitled “The UK Video Games Industry: An Export Success Story,” which it claimed showed that 91 percent of UK game developers export their products. That compares to figures cited from other research indicating that only one-third of small and medium sized, non-game producing businesses in the UK exported their products.

Richard Wilson, TIGA’s CEO, stated: Read More

If you already rage when losing online game matches (with nothing really tangible on the line), imagine the way you might feel if the outcome of the bout cost you real cash.

The Ottawa Citizen details the business strategy of Titan Gaming Inc.—a company backed by $1.0 million in venture capital—that plans to allow gamers to wager on the outcome of online contests. Native Ottawan Francisco Diaz-Mitoma created the system's platform, which will allow participants in an online contest to pony up their own money, before a game starts, in order to create the prize pool. Titan would make its living by taking a cut of the winnings.

Diaz-Mitoma moved to India in order for cheap assistance in developing the technology. The entrepreneur is hedging his bet that gambling on games based on skill is legal, which Royal Mounted Police Constable Bill Casey seemed to agree, stating that there doesn’t seem to be any laws prohibiting wagering on a game of skill, like video golf for example, over the Internet. Read More

Facing a budget shortfall of $1.2 billion, the state of Oklahoma is looking to zap vending machine and arcade operators with a fee increase of about 300 percent.

Effective July 1, the cost of a license for such machines will rise from $50 to nearly $150, which will make life more difficult for arcade operators like Mike Sefcovick, who operates Cactus Jack’s in Oklahoma City.

Sefcovick pays about $17,000 a year currently to license his 350 machines, a number that will skyrocket to around $52,000 (approximately $145 per machine) following the implementation of the increase.

Sefcovick, speaking to News9, said about the increase, “It’s going to hurt us bad.”

Governor Brad Henry's spokesperson Paul Sund added, “The question was simple, do you raise fees or do you lay off teachers. Do you raise fees or furlough troopers; we thought it made more sense to raise fees.”


Thanks E. Zachary Knight!

Inspired by a plotline from the 2003 movie Runaway Jury, University of Southern California researcher Kwan Min Lee, and associates, conducted research under the title “Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People’s Judgments of Violent Crimes?”

The inspiring scene from Runaway Jury involved “the lawyer for a defendant accused of committing a violent shooting tried to have a hardcore video game player selected as a member of the jury.” The lawyer carried the belief that a hardcore gamer would judge the shooter less negatively because of “similar, though virtual,” experiences.

52 undergrads were involved in the study—who had never played the game used in the experiment (True Crime)—and were randomly assigned to either a game-playing group or a control group. The game-playing group was tasked with playing True Crime for 2 hours.
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While the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) won a partial victory (preliminary injunction) earlier this year against the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) over an ordinance that attempted to prohibit Mature (M)-rated game advertisements, the trade group now has an even clearer win under its belt, as a Judge has permanently banned the CTA from “enforcing or directing” enforcement of the ordinance.

In a ruling (PDF) handed down on May 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer—who granted the preliminary injunction as well—ordered judgment against the CTA and dictated that prompt notice of the judgment be given to CTA officers, and any agents, servants, employees and attorneys. The CTA also agreed not to “appeal or otherwise attack the validity or enforceability of the Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction.”
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Law firm Reed Smith LLP has hired interactive entertainment lawyer Patrick Sweeney as counsel in its Corporate and Securities Group. Sweeney previously served as counsel at Nixon Peabody LLP, where he worked with the firm’s interactive entertainment and new media team.

Prior to that he served as general counsel for Brash Entertainment LLC, where he handled major motion picture licenses. While at Brash, Sweeney negotiated 30 license agreements with major motion picture studios, supported Brash’s $400 million investment, and negotiated a varied array of game development agreements, technology licenses and various supplemental agreements in regard to ancillary rights opportunities.

Prior to joining Brash, Sweeney was counsel at Haight, Brown and Bonesteel LLP, where he headed the firm’s multimedia practice group; and senior corporate counsel at Vivendi Universal Games; and at Paramount Pictures Television Group. Read More

United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Czar Coordinator Victoria Espinel authored a blog on the White House website to outline some of the public feedback she has received in regards to assembling an IP enforcement strategy.

Espinel, the first to serve in the newly created position, indicated that she discussed the matter with parties from all walks of life:

I sat down with book publishers, movie studios, music companies, and videogame companies, all of whom are faced with widespread problems resulting from internet piracy.  I heard concerns from many other sectors as well: our airplane industry, small manufacturers, automobile industry, steelworkers, textile manufacturers, and biotech, software, and telecommunication companies. Read More

A probe into improper spending by four former members—and one current member—of Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly may evolve into criminal charges.

Auditor General Jacques Lapointe today issued a report (PDF) detailing his investigation in which he stated that the members in question “may have committed illegal acts related to their constituency expense claims.”  Due to “the serious nature of his findings,” Lapointe said it was inappropriate for his office to continue exploration and turned over his files to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
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