 Punch-Out!! for the Wii was developed in Vancouver by Next Level Games. |
By Danielle Parr
The video-game industry is the fastest-growing sector of the entertainment industry in Canada, and one of the most vibrant, fastest-growing industries in the world. Canadian video-game companies are renowned for producing high-quality games, and are behind some of the world’s most successful titles. In fact, 20 percent of the top-selling games in North America and Europe in 2008 were developed by Canadian video-game companies, many of them in B.C., and Canada recently overtook the United Kingdom to become the third most successful producer of video games in the world.
See also
Bill Henderson: Voluntary music file-sharing fee would benefit songwriters and fans
Geof Glass: How Canada's new copyright law will affect you
Elizabeth May and Griffin Carpenter: Canada needs principled approach to copyright
Charlie Angus: Will the Conservatives get the message on copyright reform?
Marian Hebb: Collective licensing would help Canadian writers get paid on-line
With increasing popularity, however, comes increasing instances of illicit activity, specifically piracy of video-game software and circumvention of digital locks (called technological protection measures or TPMs) that are built into consoles and handhelds that prevent illegally copied games from being played. According to industry research, some 34 percent of Canadian gamers have acquired pirated games (compared to only 17 percent in the United States), while 22 percent of gamers have modified their video-game consoles or handhelds to play pirated games. Furthermore, Internet piracy of video-game software in Canada has undergone explosive growth, and we detected a stunning 300 percent increase in the number of games illegally downloaded via Canadian ISPs between 2007 and 2008 (and this reflects but a fraction of the total illegal downloads in Canada detected by the industry as a whole).
Today, it costs between $10 and $30 million to develop a top-tier video game, and few games actually sell enough to achieve profitability. In light of the substantial investment required and the high degree of risk associated with the production of entertainment software, piracy fundamentally undermines the industry’s ability to recover its investment, resulting in fewer games as well as lost revenue and employment opportunities.
Particularly in this economic climate, where jobs are an especially precious commodity, it is critical that the government play its part in adequately protecting the Canadian video-game industry from piracy. Specifically, new copyright legislation must provide legal protection for TPMs, prohibit trafficking in “mod chips” and other circumvention devices and services specifically designed to facilitate piracy by defeating TPMs, and implement deterrent criminal and civil remedies against those who provide such services and tools—those who are profiting from piracy at the expense of legitimate businesses.
For the video-game industry, TPMs are not only used to prevent piracy and cheating (e.g. “modding” game code to give an unfair advantage over other players); they also enable access to a greater range of features and options that would otherwise be unavailable. Things like parental controls (which allow parents to control what games are played by their children and what kinds of content they are exposed to), “trial” or “demo” versions of games, and new digital distribution platforms like Valve’s Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, or the PlayStation Network, all provide greater choice and access for consumers.
Ultimately, implementing legal protections for TPMs will benefit consumers by providing greater certainty in the digital marketplace, which will, in turn, spur investment in the development of new digital products, services, and distribution methods; more consumer choice; and lower prices. Furthermore, legal protection for TPMs also enables a vibrant ecosystem of digital business models. If a creator or company chooses to sell their work as a digital product or service, legal protection for TPMs helps ensure that this choice is respected, much in the same way that locks on the doors of a bricks-and-mortar store allow the owners to determine when and how consumers can access their product. However, if they choose to give their work away and make money in some other manner (or not at all), they are free to do so.
By ensuring that consumers have a variety of digital offerings to choose from, legal protection for TPMs allows market forces to protect consumer interests, so if a consumer does not like the conditions of sale or terms of service for one digital product or service, they can simply take their business elsewhere. Failing to protect TPMs under the law effectively means that the government is dictating the business model, which is bad news for business and for consumers.
Canada urgently needs an updated copyright regime that protects our creators and rights holders, in recognition of the important role they play in the digital economy and in terms of Canada’s future prosperity. We have a lot to lose.
Danielle Parr is the executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, the industry association representing companies that publish and distribute video and computer games for video-game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers, and the Internet.
Comment (24)
Comments
The ESA's pension for freely spewing unsubstantiated and exaggerated statistical data with the sole intention of striking fear into the hearts and minds of lawmakers is appalling. I think that the Government's recent move to launch public consultations on copyright sends a clear indication that decision makers in Ottawa also have doubts about the misinformation they are bombarded with by the likes of Ms. Parr and the lobby group she represents.
Make sure that your voice is heard today by participating in the on-going consultations on copyright being conducted by the government of Canada. http://copyright.econsultation.ca/
Similar arguments can be made for the movie studios, since people are forced to circumvent region encoding on DVDs by obtaining "cracked" versions posted on the internet. If, instead, consumers were given the right to do what they want with their products, or if the studios offered services meeting consumer needs, the demand for "cracked" versions would be less.
I am also tired of corporate-shills drawing inappropriate and incoherent analogies of current technologies. The internet is not a series of pipes and tubes, and it is not a large pool we are all swimming in: the internet is a ground-breaking technology that really only deserves comparison with itself.
Similarly TPM is not analogous to "...locks on the doors of a bricks-and-mortar store allow the owners to determine when and how consumers can access their product": this would be the case if we, the consumer, bought the store, only to find that we can only get inside the store whenever the previous owner decided it was okay. No, TPMs and DRMs place strict limits on what consumers can do with products they have purchases; they are kind of like TPMs and DRMs.
If we do have fair dealing rights, we cannot allow these rights to be overridden by corporations who don't like them. What good is a right if it becomes illegal to exercise that right? None. Providing legal protection for TPMs is simply giving corporations the ability to override our fair dealing rights at their whim.
Either we link TPM protections to infringing activities, or we remove all fair dealing rights. Anything else is disingenuous, misleading, and logically inconsistent.
DRM is a failure : the music industry is going away from it because the consumers don't want it. The video game industry should get the message now because walking down further the DRM path is likely to reduce their sales.
I really don't like Parr's fear-mongering tone. The industry of video game is flourishing, without DRM inforcement
TPM protection has a place in the new copyright law, but only if protection for consumers in the way of fair dealing usage/ personal use language accompanies it. Anything else only serves to alienate intelligent consumers who would side with you but for your short sighted view of the topic.
If they don't work, then anti-circumvention laws are pointless.
Either way, there's no need to protect the protection hardware with laws. The ESA is pushing for laws that will give a teensy tiny extra little bit of protection to them while handing way too much power to companies and greatly undermining the rights of ordinary people.
If they persist in this boneheadedness, I think a boycott may be in order.
Paragraph 1: the video game industry is doing super-great, and is experiencing explosive growth even with current copyright laws.
Paragraphs 2-4: but if we don't change those laws, this trend will reverse itself for no apparent reason and we will lose all sorts of vital jobs.
Paragraph 5: but TPMs are really about preventing cheating in online play and allowing parental controls, and enabling digital distribution. Even though we already do all of these things successfully, we need to make a law that will let us throw your kids in jail if they try to crack our TPMs, otherwise, they might get around the parental locks you put in place, and there won't be anything you can do about it, because without digital locks, you can't control your kids!
Paragraphs 6-7: besides, TPMs are actually for the consumer because, somehow, adding restrictions to how you can acquire or use a game is all about consumer choice!
Paragrpah 8: so you see, if we don't change copyright law so that we can prosecute people for modding their consoles or getting around the restrictions we put in games, the economy will collapse; people will cheat at WoW, and your kids will see boobies.
All of this is old hat. The video game industry has claimed to be on the brink of collapse due to piracy since the 1980s, and yet it somehow continues to grow bigger and more profitable. About all that has changed is throwing in the argument that making it illegal to do anything the game companies don't want us to do is really all for our own good.
Personally, I would encourage the game industry to concentrate on making good games rather than bad locks. There will always be free riders who don't pay for their copy, but that isn't relevant. It's how many games you sell, not how many you don't sell that matters; reducing the piracy rate doesn't necessarily increase sales, and may even have the opposite effect. This control-freak mentality is not helpful and serves only to create hostility between the industry the customers it expects to support it. Make good games, make them easy for people to buy and use, make them feel good about supporting the industry, and don't try to control what they can and can't do when they get them home. Honour and respect your customers, because without them, you are nothing.
Moreover, once you throw in an anticircumvention law like the American DMCA, your platform monopoly becomes a state-enforced monopoly. Danielle would literally make it a crime to compete with Microsoft in the market for Xbox games and peripherals, or to compete with Nintendo in the markets for Wii and DS games. East India Company, anyone?
In the 1980s and 1990s Nintendo was repeatedly hammered with fines by U.S. courts for monopolistic practices (enabled by their use of the 10NES chip) Now, however, it seems they expect the government to enforce their monopolies. Danielle is even arguing is that if the government doesn't give Microsoft and Nintendo and Sony the state-enforced monopolies they want, then it's "dictating the business model". If nothing else, I admire her chutzpah. Freedom is slavery!
For years we've been told that we need Technological Protection Measures. Unfortunately TPM doesn't protect the consumer. And anything which isn't in the consumer's best interests should not be allowed to be sold in Canada.
Ms Parr, you are not convincing. You really must Show. Your. Work.
Where do these numbers come from? Who paid to have them compiled? What were the sources of raw data? What were the analytical methodologies? Have they been independently reviewed? Have the figures been replicated by other studies?
Until you can offer satisfactory answers to these questions, your claims of harm are merely that -- claims. Unless you can prove these claims with honest data, your whole premise goes out the window, doesn't it, and your biggest reason for insisting on legislated protection for your TPMs goes right along with it.
The ESA of Canada does not represent all Canadian video game creators, I for one do not agree with a single word Danielle Par has said. I hope to never have any business dealings with her organization.
A final note: ms. Parr's claims of a 300% increase in game piracy is pure BS. For one, prove it. Second, the stats you do have are BS. I dont even have to see them to know, why you may ask? Well an extremely religious-baptist neighbor got a letter from a paid company of the ESA. The letter accussed him of infringement of a game to which he never downloaded let alone seen. That was proof enough for me, Ms Parr what evidence do you have to substantiate your claims?
This is a disgusting show of contempt for canadians brought to you by the ESA "of Canada" .
No.
*Protecting* TPMs under the law effectively means that the government is dictating the business model, which is bad news for business and for consumers
Their fixed your typo Ms. Parr. Now it reflects reality instead of delusion.
Brett Schenker
Online Advocacy Manager
the ECA
I believe it is paramount that laws which forbid the circumvention of copy protection that may be placed on copyrighted works should not be outlawed unless the intention of a person making a copy of a copyrighted work that is so protected is OTHERWISE infringing on copyright. Such a provision would still be compatible with the WIPO treaty, and would have the upshot that people who may be using alternative technologies that currently enjoy whatever measure of interoperability its users find amenable would not suddenly find themselves effectively excommunicated from digital society without resorting to breaking the law. To pass a law that outlaws any and all unauthorized copy protection circumvention without regard to the intent of the copier is overwhelming biased towards currently popular technologies only, even without explicitly mentioning them, and implicitly limits the directions that future technologies might take.
If, and ONLY if, a law prohibiting circumvention of copy protection necessitated that the person who was doing so was *OTHERWISE* breaking the law, could I agree with any anti-circumvention amendment to the current copyright act. The idea that if it's only illegal if they infringe on copyright would mean that people would exploit the legality of circumventing for otherwise legal reasons to break the law loses complete sight of the fact that there are going to be people who are going to infringe on copyright *REGARDLESS* of any proposed law, so the only people that are actually affected by it are people who have a desire to follow the law, and may simply have wanted to employ a mechanism for circumventing the copy protection that otherwise would have been perfectly legal, such as for personal archiving or backup purposes.
Until a little while ago, I still played my Playstation2, using a memory card exploit (softmod), to jumpstart a harddrive that I had copied all my games to. It also allowed me to play the backup disc copies of the games I had made, should anything happen to my originals.
Why did I do this? The harddrive part should be obvious - convenience of not putting discs in and out, and also to reduce loading during gameplay.
Here's the other part which some pro-TPM/DRM people miss:
2 of my games, which happened to be limited and rare now, stopped working. I did actually call the respective companies for replacements, and I would have sent them my non working discs (at my cost no less). This is what they are supposed to do as "support". What did I get? F-off buddy, your problem. Of course that wasn't exactly what I was told, but it pretty much sums it up.
I still have the non-working original discs and the "working" backups I made. So according to the law, would I have the right to "circumvent" the PS2 to play the backup I made, of a non-working disc I have, that the producing company will not support or replace? In this case, I already read the letter of the law and it's on my side. It's called protecting your investment.
If companies can't seem to get their crap together to help the consumer protect that investment they made, then they need to shut up and sit down because they obviously aren't thinking about the everyday consumer.