Digital licensing laws need to be updated

[msilcommand]

I think my issue with the licensing is this strange need for exclusivity. It feels like it simply comes down to the deal that will bring in the most money to the company contracting the rights to their product.

It so many people feel Zen is superior, there should be no problem with both them and Farsight having access. The market will determine a winner. Additionally, given Zen's reliance on bells and whistles, what incentive do they have to release some nice vintage EM machines? Farsight was and is far from perfect, but I appreciate their mission.

This all reminds me of the Madden/2K battle. Once 2K sports started to outshine the behemoth that was Madden Football, EA bought exclusive rights to the NFL.

I get what both sides are saying in this discussion. Unfortunately, it simply comes down to money. It always does.

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Definitely. Exclusive licenses for something like digital replication of pinbal tables stifles competition and innovation...thus the reason TPA still had pretty much a Windows XP user interface, and no real online match modes after many years. They had no competition.

Imagine how amazing digital pinball would be right now if multiple companies were licensed. We've all lost out because of stupid old school licensing practices.

 

[1adam12]

Definitely. Exclusive licenses for something like digital replication of pinbal tables stifles competition and innovation...thus the reason TPA still had pretty much a Windows XP user interface, and no real online match modes after many years. They had no competition.

Imagine how amazing digital pinball would be right now if multiple companies were licensed. We've all lost out because of stupid old school licensing practices.

The corporate mindset doesn't help either. It could be a win/win with Zen publishing tables with all kinds of goodies and challenges and extras while Farsight stuck to simple recreations. They wouldn't even have to follow the same release pattern, and Scientific could still be paid appropriately.

Instead it's a case of one company winning by making the other lose. But that seems to be the American way.

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[trash80]

No, Bob invested money to build that digital pinbal table, which he was licensed to build, and he should own it on that specific platform to sell access to into perpetuity. No greaseball company should be allowed to come back a couple years later and turn him upside down on it. Just because he didn't yet turn a profit doesn't mean he wouldn't have. Game development and sales are tricky. Some core games make squat, which is why so many companies go f2p now, and then monetize in other ways.

There's no way for you to excuse or explain away a bad and wrong system. As Millenials age, and start becoming our country's leadership, these things will change, because they came up steeped in the digital world, and they won't still be thinking in 1995 terms.

Ignorance is bliss isn't it? You clearly are young, naive and have little (if any) professional (employed) software development experience. You know, you may want to actually get some real-world knowledge of licensing and publishing and then get back to us. Or has this been just a long trolling expedition?

 

[trash80]

The corporate mindset doesn't help either. It could be a win/win with Zen publishing tables with all kinds of goodies and challenges and extras while Farsight stuck to simple recreations. They wouldn't even have to follow the same release pattern, and Scientific could still be paid appropriately.

Instead it's a case of one company winning by making the other lose. But that seems to be the American way.

Hilarious. You and msilcommand should go into business together.

 

[msilcommand]

Competition is the American way. Exclusivity is the right wing corporate greed way.

 

[shutyertrap]

You are looking at this purely as a consumer. As a consumer, of course you want as many options available to you as possible. You are projecting your satisfaction into success for all companies involved. That simply doesn't happen.

So let's look at something real world, purely digital, and happening right now.

Netflix is responsible for subscription streaming as we know it today. They more or less created the model that all other paid streaming sites follow today. For a while there, they had this market almost exclusively to themselves. A few years back, Netflix entered a contract to license Disney distributed theatrical films up the end of 2019. Netflix would have exclusive streaming rights, would also have a first showing window of ____ amount of time before those movies could make there way to paid cable, basic cable, etc. Amazon and Hulu would not be able to stream those movies at all though. The contract renewal came up, and Disney chose not to renew it, mainly because they are starting there own streaming service and want all their film library under one roof for now. All those films Netfilx had during that agreed contract will be pulled from the service at a specific date.

Now under the thread originator's logic, Netflix should be able to show these films that were under this contract license in perpetuity. When they signed the contract, they did not know what films specifically would be made, nor how successful they would be, and neither did Disney. Yes they knew there'd be a Star Wars movie or two, a Marvel movie or three, and some Disney animated stuff. All of that could have failed spectacularly by the way, but an agreed upon license fee was set with a date to review those terms in order to renew or end said contract. The question is, why would Disney grant them the licensing rights for digital streaming in perpetuity? They didn't need Netflix, those films are assets to Disney's overall worth. As a matter of fact, no major studio would have given them those rights. In which case Netflix would have never become what it is today, and instead would have failed as many predicted when they started streaming in the first place.

You speak of competition, well look what has spawned; Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, CBS All Access, YouTube Red, and soon the Disney service and one from Warner Bros.

There are certain titles shared among the platforms. Each platform probably paid the same licensing fee, and none were exclusive. Once those contracts are up, those titles may or may not continue being available to the service. Again with Netflix, the number one streaming show they have is Friends, which is a Warner Bros owned show. Although it is available to watch in syndication, the only place to stream it is Netflix. With Warners about to launch their own steaming service, it was assumed the contract with Netflix would expire and the show removed from the service. Instead Netflix backed up a truckload of money to keep it on the service for a little while longer. See Netflix actually underpaid when they secured the streaming licensing rights, Warners never suspecting that it would be a huge hit for Netflix when it has long been off of first run television, and can be seen daily in syndication. If Netflix had it in perpetuity, this would be seen as the steel of the century. But what if it had played out like Warners thought, and Netflix overpaid? Well they likely would cut all their future bids, to which no studio would agree.

During all this, Netflix started building a content library of their own. It started with House of Cards, expanded to Orange Is The New Black, and they saw subscription rates go up. This further encouraged them to invest in yet even more shows, and eventually they made their first feature film. Now they have a new film coming out every other week. Hulu started out only carrying old TV shows and the ability to stream network television shows the day after they air. They started making shows of their own, creating a library that was exclusively theirs, because otherwise you are at the mercy of the people you license with. These services need these early license agreements to build up the customer base and the financial assets to create for themselves. Netflix isn't sweating the soon to be loss of all those Disney titles from their service, they are sweating another streaming company competing for consumer dollars.

So that competition you are worried about? It drove Netflix to make their own content, it drove Disney and Warners into creating their own services, and the only reason they can even do that is because they have a vast library of content that is the very worth of their companies.

I put in bold the word contract repeatedly for a reason. That's what these are. Have you ever signed one for yourself? I do every single time I work on a new television show or movie. I have to sign a new contract at the start of each season of a televsion show regardless of if I worked on it in the past. Why? Because we are agreeing upon my rate of pay and what conditions I am being hired under. I don't have an exclusive contract with any show, I am free to work wherever. If I were a writer, I would be locked into one show because they view any story ideas as their intellectual property and don't wish to share those with the competition. Essentially these shows I work on are licensing my skills. If this license was in perpetuity, then I'd be earning the same rate of pay that I was 20 years ago. Same goes for any work contract anyone signs. You want a pay raise, you're signing a new contract. Company doesn't like how you work? Contract isn't renewed (ever heard of a yearly review?) and you are let go. Doing so well that other companies are head hunting you? Well now you have negotiating power and can secure the best deal for yourself, thanks to competition from companies that didn't have your service.

The Pinball Arcade is a pinball platform. Zen is a pinball platform. Zen has created enough unlicensed content that even if all the licenses got pulled, the platform would still exist with content. TPA has created one table, Masters of Time, and even that is license dependent. In other words Zen is very much just like Netflix, while TPA is Hulu at launch. The key difference in all of this though is that we the consumers, so long as we made our purchase prior to content being removed, will have access to it as long as the platform exists. The same cannot be said for these streaming services.

 

[1adam12]

Hilarious. You and msilcommand should go into business together.

Do you actually bring ideas to the table or just stand back and lob insults?

I'm still kinda new, so I thought I'd ask.

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[1adam12]

You are looking at this purely as a consumer. As a consumer, of course you want as many options available to you as possible. You are projecting your satisfaction into success for all companies involved. That simply doesn't happen.

So let's look at something real world, purely digital, and happening right now.

Netflix is responsible for subscription streaming as we know it today. They more or less created the model that all other paid streaming sites follow today. For a while there, they had this market almost exclusively to themselves. A few years back, Netflix entered a contract to license Disney distributed theatrical films up the end of 2019. Netflix would have exclusive streaming rights, would also have a first showing window of ____ amount of time before those movies could make there way to paid cable, basic cable, etc. Amazon and Hulu would not be able to stream those movies at all though. The contract renewal came up, and Disney chose not to renew it, mainly because they are starting there own streaming service and want all their film library under one roof for now. All those films Netfilx had during that agreed contract will be pulled from the service at a specific date.

Now under the thread originator's logic, Netflix should be able to show these films that were under this contract license in perpetuity. When they signed the contract, they did not know what films specifically would be made, nor how successful they would be, and neither did Disney. Yes they knew there'd be a Star Wars movie or two, a Marvel movie or three, and some Disney animated stuff. All of that could have failed spectacularly by the way, but an agreed upon license fee was set with a date to review those terms in order to renew or end said contract. The question is, why would Disney grant them the licensing rights for digital streaming in perpetuity? They didn't need Netflix, those films are assets to Disney's overall worth. As a matter of fact, no major studio would have given them those rights. In which case Netflix would have never become what it is today, and instead would have failed as many predicted when they started streaming in the first place.

You speak of competition, well look what has spawned; Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, CBS All Access, YouTube Red, and soon the Disney service and one from Warner Bros.

There are certain titles shared among the platforms. Each platform probably paid the same licensing fee, and none were exclusive. Once those contracts are up, those titles may or may not continue being available to the service. Again with Netflix, the number one streaming show they have is Friends, which is a Warner Bros owned show. Although it is available to watch in syndication, the only place to stream it is Netflix. With Warners about to launch their own steaming service, it was assumed the contract with Netflix would expire and the show removed from the service. Instead Netflix backed up a truckload of money to keep it on the service for a little while longer. See Netflix actually underpaid when they secured the streaming licensing rights, Warners never suspecting that it would be a huge hit for Netflix when it has long been off of first run television, and can be seen daily in syndication. If Netflix had it in perpetuity, this would be seen as the steel of the century. But what if it had played out like Warners thought, and Netflix overpaid? Well they likely would cut all their future bids, to which no studio would agree.

During all this, Netflix started building a content library of their own. It started with House of Cards, expanded to Orange Is The New Black, and they saw subscription rates go up. This further encouraged them to invest in yet even more shows, and eventually they made their first feature film. Now they have a new film coming out every other week. Hulu started out only carrying old TV shows and the ability to stream network television shows the day after they air. They started making shows of their own, creating a library that was exclusively theirs, because otherwise you are at the mercy of the people you license with. These services need these early license agreements to build up the customer base and the financial assets to create for themselves. Netflix isn't sweating the soon to be loss of all those Disney titles from their service, they are sweating another streaming company competing for consumer dollars.

So that competition you are worried about? It drove Netflix to make their own content, it drove Disney and Warners into creating their own services, and the only reason they can even do that is because they have a vast library of content that is the very worth of their companies.

I put in bold the word contract repeatedly for a reason. That's what these are. Have you ever signed one for yourself? I do every single time I work on a new television show or movie. I have to sign a new contract at the start of each season of a televsion show regardless of if I worked on it in the past. Why? Because we are agreeing upon my rate of pay and what conditions I am being hired under. I don't have an exclusive contract with any show, I am free to work wherever. If I were a writer, I would be locked into one show because they view any story ideas as their intellectual property and don't wish to share those with the competition. Essentially these shows I work on are licensing my skills. If this license was in perpetuity, then I'd be earning the same rate of pay that I was 20 years ago. Same goes for any work contract anyone signs. You want a pay raise, you're signing a new contract. Company doesn't like how you work? Contract isn't renewed (ever heard of a yearly review?) and you are let go. Doing so well that other companies are head hunting you? Well now you have negotiating power and can secure the best deal for yourself, thanks to competition from companies that didn't have your service.

The Pinball Arcade is a pinball platform. Zen is a pinball platform. Zen has created enough unlicensed content that even if all the licenses got pulled, the platform would still exist with content. TPA has created one table, Masters of Time, and even that is license dependent. In other words Zen is very much just like Netflix, while TPA is Hulu at launch. The key difference in all of this though is that we the consumers, so long as we made our purchase prior to content being removed, will have access to it as long as the platform exists. The same cannot be said for these streaming services.

I like your analogy to the streaming services. You did a great job including exclusive and non exclusive content.

The specific example I remember ages ago was watching old episodes of family Guy. On one platform they were still censored. On another they weren't. When I inquired, I was told it had to do with the broadcasting rights they had.

I think the conversation had diverged a bit, and some of us were addressing some points differently. Personally, I get the licensing issue and companies owning the rights. What ticks me off is the greed involved, and by unofficial accounts, Farsight was caught off guard on this.

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[shutyertrap]

I like your analogy to the streaming services. You did a great job including exclusive and non exclusive content.

The specific example I remember ages ago was watching old episodes of family Guy. On one platform they were still censored. On another they weren't. When I inquired, I was told it had to do with the broadcasting rights they had.

I think the conversation had diverged a bit, and some of us were addressing some points differently. Personally, I get the licensing issue and companies owning the rights. What ticks me off is the greed involved, and by unofficial accounts, Farsight was caught off guard on this.

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FarSight had no idea Scientific Games had sought out Zen to take over the license, that is true. I think in their own hubris, they just never figured it would be something Zen was even interested in. They were the 'real' digital pinball platform, Zen was the 'originals' digital pinball platform. You can call SG greedy, I mean they didn't even let FarSight put an offer on the table. FarSight themselves though were set to ramp down the number of tables they were going to produce, as there weren't that many WMS titles left that seemed to be worth the development cost. So even if they had been able to renew, I think the output would be what it is now and them just collecting what they could from new consumers. In other words, they were relying on a large content library that never was really theirs to rely on. If someone could explain why they haven't put out any new Gottlieb tables, why even with the Stern license there's been next to no output, I'd love to know. FarSight themselves could be accused of greed, in that they failed to reinvest in their own product, never upgrading the engine, putting the game out on as many systems as possible without fulling debugging, never exploring design of their own tables, and now it withers.

 

[trash80]

Do you actually bring ideas to the table or just stand back and lob insults?

I'm still kinda new, so I thought I'd ask.

Interesting that you perceived that as an insult... and should you take a look at my previous posts, you may find that I have brought a few ideas (and actual experience) to the table.

 

[1adam12]

Interesting that you perceived that as an insult... and should you take a look at my previous posts, you may find that I have brought a few ideas (and actual experience) to the table.

I tend to notice the content of the posts more than the names. The pseudonyms are meaningless to me. I'm just tryina have a reasonable discussion. It appeared that along the way you lumped my views in with someone else. I'm not debating the merit of licensing itself, I'm talking about other ways this situation could have played out that would have been better for the consumer.

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[Narc0lep5y]

What ticks me off is the greed involved, and by unofficial accounts, Farsight was caught off guard on this.

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I don’t think greed is the only
motivating factor with the license change. We don’t know what kind of partners FS was with SG. We don’t know what Zen is now either but I think assuming FS did no wrong to get to this place is a faulty assumption.

FS might have been caught off guard but that is as much their fault too. If SG was ready for the change and didn’t tell them there was competition that lets us make some pretty good supposition about that partnership as well.

Certainly from a technical standpoint PinballFx3 offers more than TPA. If there were a pitch meeting and I had to pick between the two i can’t fault SG for this choice.

 

[trash80]

I don’t think greed is the only
motivating factor with the license change. We don’t know what kind of partners FS was with SG. We don’t know what Zen is now either but I think assuming FS did no wrong to get to this place is a faulty assumption.

FS might have been caught off guard but that is as much their fault too. If SG was ready for the change and didn’t tell them there was competition that lets us make some pretty good supposition about that partnership as well.

Certainly from a technical standpoint PinballFx3 offers more than TPA. If there were a pitch meeting and I had to pick between the two i can’t fault SG for this choice.

+1 post.

As someone who gets to deal with suitors on a regular basis, direct monetary compensation isn't usually the defining factor in choosing to go forward with a deal. Many times it comes down to what we call stewardship. Will my name and intellectual property be treated with respect? Will the proposed association augment the value of my brand in a way that I can't do through my current agreements and channels? I'm not privy to all of the Stern and Farsight licensing particulars, but had I been a part of any deal that resulted in the customer response that SPA received on release and shortly afterward, there would have been an immediate and serious reevaluation of Farsight's 'stewardship.'

 

[1adam12]

I don’t think greed is the only
motivating factor with the license change. We don’t know what kind of partners FS was with SG. We don’t know what Zen is now either but I think assuming FS did no wrong to get to this place is a faulty assumption.

FS might have been caught off guard but that is as much their fault too. If SG was ready for the change and didn’t tell them there was competition that lets us make some pretty good supposition about that partnership as well.

Certainly from a technical standpoint PinballFx3 offers more than TPA. If there were a pitch meeting and I had to pick between the two i can’t fault SG for this choice.

I can't argue with this in the least.

A previous post reminded me of the fact that TPA on iOS at least, exists in 3 apps. The original TPA free, the original TPA premium, and the Stern app. If you downloaded tables on the free version of the app and the old "premium" version, you must keep both so all of your purchases are available to download.

On top of that, there is crossover with titles between the Stern app and TPA. The Stern app has the polish that TPA should.

That being said, I'm sure it helps Zen in their discussions. They are definitely focused and zoned in. I may purchase some future tables, but while they are putting out titles I own through TPA or just don't care about I'll do the slooooow grind.


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[shutyertrap]

+1 post.

As someone who gets to deal with suitors on a regular basis, direct monetary compensation isn't usually the defining factor in choosing to go forward with a deal. Many times it comes down to what we call stewardship. Will my name and intellectual property be treated with respect? Will the proposed association augment the value of my brand in a way that I can't do through my current agreements and channels? I'm not privy to all of the Stern and Farsight licensing particulars, but had I been a part of any deal that resulted in the customer response that SPA received on release and shortly afterward, there would have been an immediate and serious reevaluation of Farsight's 'stewardship.'

And that in a nutshell is why if license agreements were to last in perpetuity, none would ever be granted.

You thoughts on ‘stewardship’ are spot on too. It’s why after the initial Kickstarter for TZ and ST:TNG I thought it a huge mistake to do more. It made FarSight look like they were financially struggling, it cheapened the licenses themselves in terms of desirability when they didn’t quickly fund, and I think ultimately prevented certain IP holders from even being talked to.

 

[trash80]

And that in a nutshell is why if license agreements were to last in perpetuity, none would ever be granted.

You thoughts on ‘stewardship’ are spot on too. It’s why after the initial Kickstarter for TZ and ST:TNG I thought it a huge mistake to do more. It made FarSight look like they were financially struggling, it cheapened the licenses themselves in terms of desirability when they didn’t quickly fund, and I think ultimately prevented certain IP holders from even being talked to.

This is a very interesting point you bring up. The whole concept of third party IP themed widget Kickstarter campaigns can be a dangerous proposition for the IP holder, and I see this more often than I'd like with the whole high-end (Fantasy Flight/Games Workshop) style board game phenomena. Even with the campaigns that get fully funded or far exceed all stretch goals, still have a higher than I'm comfortable with chance of becoming PR nightmares (for the IP) due to fulfillment and what seems to be speculator (flip for loss) remorse.

 

[Pete]

I think were all missing the important facts about the whole thing. Jay Obernolte just like Mickey Mouse is immune to copyright laws because both of them are illuminati. TPA still has all the bally/williams tables just not here on earth. Our human brains couldnt handle more than 100 recreations in the same game we would implode.

 

[wolfson]

good one Pete , that sounds about right haha!!!!

 

[msilcommand]

Hilarious. You and msilcommand should go into business together.

Nah, you just represent the dinosaurs of digital business practices, and the meteor is coming.

 

[msilcommand]

True, Farsight shouldn't have sat around just making virtual copies of tables. They should have made their own tables like Zen did. Maybe they can start by reskinning the SG tables, change them a little, program core code themselves and add new sound, and make them their own, maybe.

But all of Farsight's mistakes still come back to the main point of this thread: licensing practices need to change. Farsight sucked it up because they had exclusivity and no competition. If Farsight and Zen and whomever else all were licensed to compete, we'd be looking at a totally different digital pin world right now.

Why any of you in digitalpinballfans would support and argue for the licensing laws that are stunting the pastime you supposedly love...is an enigma. Unless you're just shills for one of the companies involved in this trash, and you think you're fighting to protect the racket that pays your bills?