Digital licensing laws need to be updated

[msilcommand]

Exclusive digital licensing kills healthy competition

Exclusive licensing in digital pinball kills competition, which slows progress in digital pinball. These antiquated, myopic licensing practices have been slowing and stunting digital pinball for far too long. Imagine where digital pinball would be if Farsight and Zen and whomever else had all been licensed to build and sell digital replicas of the same tables 10 years ago, competing with each other to make the best and most desireable version of each of those tables, and the best gameplay and accoutrements around them. Would we still have TPA with a Windows XP user interface, no online matching or multiplayer to speak of, and awful inconsistency across platforms? If Farsight hadn't had exclusive licenses, and had been competing all of those years, where would they be right now: facing extinction, or standing tall and confident on top of years of competitive innovation and progress?

What needs to happen to change the outdated licensing practices, mindsets, and laws that created this? Sure, Zen is innovative now, impressive, pushing the envelope, but if Farsight sinks, Zen will be on the same lonely island, without competition in licensed pinball simulation, and could very well fall victim to the same mistakes Farsight made.

 

[wilbers]

Don't think that analogy quite works. When a physical table is sold the purchaser is (generally) free to do with it what they want. With Farsight they still own the files that make up all the tables, and presumably the secondary (non-WMS) licenses are all still valid but without the Williams license they can't sell any more of those tables as the Zen license is an exclusive license. The only ones that can be resold are those on a physical disk, which is only the first 2 seasons on PS3, but again they can't make any more discs without the license. You can argue that Farsight should have better lawyers/negotiators so they would have had at least 6 months notice that the license wasn't going to be renewed and that they had full control over the pricing (could have had a 50% off everything sale at the end then, except were prohibited from doing so), but they didn't.

If it got to say 4 years hence and Williams decided to grant non-exclusive licenses to both Zen & Farsight (which doesn't seem that likely) they could then start selling them again - if anyone would pick their tables over those in FX3 if both versions were available that is another matter entirely as they are getting trounced on quality.

 

[Citizen]

"Williams" (Scientific Games) isn't taking advantage of any sort of legal ambiguities. This is the absolute most basic type of boilerplate licensing agreement that exists. And it ran out. And SG declined renewal. Which is their right to do.

FarSight does not own the table rights nor do they legally have the right to continue selling a licensed product they no longer have a license for (pretty basic concept). FarSight hasn't challenged this in court because there's nothing to challenge.

 

[1adam12]

Don't think that analogy quite works. When a physical table is sold the purchaser is (generally) free to do with it what they want. With Farsight they still own the files that make up all the tables, and presumably the secondary (non-WMS) licenses are all still valid but without the Williams license they can't sell any more of those tables as the Zen license is an exclusive license. The only ones that can be resold are those on a physical disk, which is only the first 2 seasons on PS3, but again they can't make any more discs without the license. You can argue that Farsight should have better lawyers/negotiators so they would have had at least 6 months notice that the license wasn't going to be renewed and that they had full control over the pricing (could have had a 50% off everything sale at the end then, except were prohibited from doing so), but they didn't.

If it got to say 4 years hence and Williams decided to grant non-exclusive licenses to both Zen & Farsight (which doesn't seem that likely) they could then start selling them again - if anyone would pick their tables over those in FX3 if both versions were available that is another matter entirely as they are getting trounced on quality.

I like this idea. It would be in the license holders best interest to let Zen develop their own library and then open Farsight back up.

This lets players choose between game formats, and it also opens access to tables Zen may not publish.

The Addams Family and Terminator were both made possible by crowdfunding I think. I'm not sure about Twilight Zone. Would Zen pony up the money to get the rights?

It would even be fair to say Farsight could only sell tables they had already offered and Zen could continue to add tables.

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[trash80]

They're not selling tables on TBA. They are selling access to their arcade.

You are mistaken. And Farsight was selling end users a LICENSE to access specific tables, and depending on storefront, this license comes with finite end user access terms.

 

[shutyertrap]

I like this idea. It would be in the license holders best interest to let Zen develop their own library and then open Farsight back up.

This lets players choose between game formats, and it also opens access to tables Zen may not publish.

The Addams Family and Terminator were both made possible by crowdfunding I think. I'm not sure about Twilight Zone. Would Zen pony up the money to get the rights?

It would even be fair to say Farsight could only sell tables they had already offered and Zen could continue to add tables.

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Twilight Zone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terminator 2, and The Addams Family were all crowd sourced. Zen has stated they have no need to nor ever will make the audience fund their game. If you look at the licenses Zen carries, clearly they have figured out a way to fund licenses without our help. Which is the proper way to do business, by the way.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

Twilight Zone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terminator 2, and The Addams Family were all crowd sourced. Zen has stated they have no need to nor ever will make the audience fund their game. If you look at the licenses Zen carries, clearly they have figured out a way to fund licenses without our help. Which is the proper way to do business, by the way.

This x1,000,000.

And we can't forget Dr Who, which was the #5 crowd sourced license, and the only one they are actually still able to sell (partially) in their Master of Time table.

 

[shutyertrap]

I forgot about Doctor Who! AC/DC was also a few days into funding before Oculus stepped in a funded the whole thing. That one would have failed by the way, which would not have been a good look for FS or the license.

 

[1adam12]

Twilight Zone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terminator 2, and The Addams Family were all crowd sourced. Zen has stated they have no need to nor ever will make the audience fund their game. If you look at the licenses Zen carries, clearly they have figured out a way to fund licenses without our help. Which is the proper way to do business, by the way.

I don't think you can make that statement until it's actually happened.

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[Citizen]

They were already able to afford to fund licensing Star Wars and Marvel from Disney without crowdfunding, so it kinda already has happened. Not with the specific third-party licenses FarSight had, but the point that was being made was that Zen can afford AAA licenses without help. This has already been proven.

 

[shutyertrap]

Plus I was told directly by Zen that they will never crowdfund, that they more than have a handle on licensing. As Citizen points out, they did just fine with Star Wars and Marvel, they have those Universal titles including Jurassic Park and Back To The Future, a little title by the name of Aliens, so yeah. It’s not going to be about money, it’s going to be about getting parties to okay it.

 

[trash80]

They were/are selling levels of access to their digital pinball arcade structure. That is how the digital world works. Thus my point in that Scientific Games is taking advantage of antideluvian licensing laws. If a big enough company went up against these silly legal structures, they'd win. No matter how the old school licensing worked for building and selling pinball machines, the reality remains that if SG licensed Bob to build AFM, and Bob built it and added it to his Arcade, SG could not come in and tell Bob later on that he can no longer sell access to free-play on that machine. Bob was licensed to build and own it, and now it's his. Farsight owns the tables, and they can sell access to them. I'm a developer, and this is a basic concept of application development. The problem is that old school people just don't want to accept that this is how the digital world works now.

And this is why it is usually a bad idea to let "developers" make business decisions.

You see, you may in fact be a developer, but you are certainly not a property rights lawyer. The agreement(s) that Farsight had with SGI never included any sort of rights ownership. The agreements with the third party IP and likeness holders never included digital reproduction access to these properties in perpetuity, and for you to continue making these statements just underscores that you have no idea whatsoever how licensing works currently, in the digital space, or otherwise.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

They were/are selling levels of access to their digital pinball arcade structure. That is how the digital world works. Thus my point in that Scientific Games is taking advantage of antideluvian licensing laws. If a big enough company went up against these silly legal structures, they'd win. No matter how the old school licensing worked for building and selling pinball machines, the reality remains that if SG licensed Bob to build AFM, and Bob built it and added it to his Arcade, SG could not come in and tell Bob later on that he can no longer sell access to free-play on that machine. Bob was licensed to build and own it, and now it's his. Farsight owns the tables, and they can sell access to them. I'm a developer, and this is a basic concept of application development. The problem is that old school people just don't want to accept that this is how the digital world works now.

You're confusing a license with ownership. Using your example, Bob was licensed to build and sell machines, but he does not own the AFM license. The machines he builds can only be sold while the terms of that license is active, and each machine he builds might even require license owner approval before he can sell anything.

Any end user who buys a machine from Bob, owns the physical machine, and can resell those machines, but they also did not get a transfer of licensing rights to AFM, so they can't take that machine and build 3 copies of it and sell them.

If Bob loses the license, he might be able to still sell his remaining machines, but depending on the licensing agreement and the method that he lost the license, he may not.

 

[shutyertrap]

trash80 and Narc0lep5y have this spot on. This is not a video game only thing either, as it applies to any license.

Here's a fun one...

20th Century Fox owned Star Wars: A New Hope, but Lucas owned the rights to all the sequels and merchandising. Fox only had distribution rights. When Disney bought LucasFilm, they got Empire, Jedi, and the prequels, but Fox still retained the distribution rights and ownership to A New Hope, which kinda sorta screws up putting everything into a box set. Agreements were made, one of which was to remove the 20th Century Fox logo from the front of the movies and just have it be the LucasFilm logo (which sucks because I need the Fox fanfare at the beginning of the movie, dammit!). Well now that Disney has purchased Fox, guess what they own outright?

So mslcommand, if you had your way, (prior to the Disney purchase) Fox would still be able to put out DVDs, Blu Rays, and digital downloads, yes? I mean they made the first movie (Lucas self funded the others) and owned the rights to it, why should they not be able to continue making money off of it? Because that makes no business sense. But again, all of that is moot now that George sold everything but that to Disney, and then they bought Fox. Now it's all tidy again with rights ownership.

For full details of the initial Fox deal with Lucas, read this...

https://deadline.com/2015/12/star-wars-franchise-george-lucas-historic-rights-deal-tom-pollock-1201669419/

 

[Narc0lep5y]

Bob is not selling the machine. He is selling access tp his arcade that contains his machine.

Bob is selling access to his arcade (part owned by Steam or Microsoft, Sony, etc) but it is not "his machine". It's not one AFM machine that everyone has access to, it is hundreds/thousands/millions? of unique AFM machines that only 1 account has access to as denoted by it's digital license key.

 

[trash80]

[MENTION=5223]When Farsight bought a license to build a digital AFM, and add it to their arcade,

First, Farisght didn't BUY a license to build anything. They secured a license that allowed them to SELL an end-user license to a digital reproduction of the original table for a set amount of time. This license that Farsight secured also had an expiration date and would require it to be renegotiated and/or extended.


The idea that Farsight has this "Free Play Arcade" is where you are fundamentally wrong, it isn't Farsight that has this "arcade," it is you, the end user. You purchased a license from Farsight to add the virtual pinball machine to your arcade and the key ownership to this arcade is linked to your storefront (Steam, PSN, etc) account which is the entity that manages your key licenses.

I'll agree that some of the licensing terms in the digital space can be problematic, but what it seems you are wanting is a complete removal of intellectual rights protection and management, which is never a good idea.

 

[1adam12]

They were already able to afford to fund licensing Star Wars and Marvel from Disney without crowdfunding, so it kinda already has happened. Not with the specific third-party licenses FarSight had, but the point that was being made was that Zen can afford AAA licenses without help. This has already been proven.

IIRC, the licencing had less to do with the title names and more to do with obtaining the rights to use the original actors voices.

It's like Shout Factory publishing WKRP on DVD. It had been done before, but most of the music had been replaced. Shout Factory published the series with most of the music intact.

This was a big deal for Farsight and it's notable that the titles we're talking about feature the voices of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Raul Julia, and others.


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[wolfson]

even knuckle head here knows the licence finished , was not renewed , offered to Zen , who took it up , end of bloody story hey hey a new day tomorrow !!! it`s KISS formula , keep it simple stupid !!!

 

[Pete]

I know people keep writing me off when mentioning this but... farsight does still have timed rights to 3rd party properties just not the table rights. If farsight wanted they could still retheme any stern as addams family and use it till their time expires so long as its not really the williams/bally table. Not that these frankenstein property tables would be very good... but it would keep them out of zens hands for a while

 

[Nomorestalker]

Would Zen pony up the money to get the rights?

Yes.