EU Gamers & VR Fans, Act Now: Regulation Voted on TOMORROW Would Drastically Impact Any Online World With User-Created Content -- Even Decentralized Ones Like Minecraft & High Fidelity

EU-based readers -- click here in the next 10 hours to register your objections to the to the European Union's Copyright Directive, set for a vote on June 20 or 21. If it goes into affect, any MMO/virtual world/multiplayer game with any amount of user generated content will be in serious jeopardy: 

"Under Article 13, companies that allow user-generated content of ANY KIND would have to design some kind of machine-learning-based censorship system that used catalogs of known copyrighted works to check user submissions for copyright violations," as the EFF's Cory Doctorow explained to me last week. "That means that everything from choreography to bitmaps to 3D meshes to music and moving images would have to be filtered by games companies; no one has ever tried to build this kind of filter, but the starting price is $60 million, so expect the cost to be upwards of that." (New virtual worlds like VRChat, let alone older ones like Second Life, don't even gross that amount of revenue in a year.)

Also, Cory told me in a follow-up, this EU regulation could even be used against the online game/virtual world where the user, not the company, owns/rents the server hosting their content -- for instance, against independent Minecraft or High Fidelity servers. Here's why:

"I think it affects the hosting company (an EU hosting company) but also the user -- [rights holders] may seek a judgement against a European and then try to attach a non-European hosting company with deeper pockets," Cory explains. "Disney or Tin Tin or whomever could target EU citizens for alleged infringements in virtual worlds and argue that [a] non-EU hosting company is party to the offense because it didn't filter."

 

So not only would players of these games be under threat, so would the companies whose servers they rent.

 

Once again, EU citizens, go here ASAP to register your concerns.

 

Pictured: European High Fidelity creator XaosPrincess 

Comments

[jimjane]

Corporate lawyers win again.

[Test Dpc]

Always it is to happen.

[Michael Lorrey]

This is exactly the sort of heuristic based algorithm which checks uploaded material against prior work that blockchain based smart contracts can handle best.

[Blokada]

Another shitty ting done by governments.