UK
White Paper: Virtual Items and Public Policy
7 February 2011. Today the Virtual Policy Network has released a White Paper on Virtual Items and Public Policy. The Paper provides an overview of virtual items and virtual currency are – covering the spectrum from Xbox points to MMO characters. The paper defines what the key public policy interests are in virtual items, and provides a survey of the legal responses to issues involving virtual ‘goods’ from jurisdictions as diverse as China, Korea, Finland the US, citing a number of cases of virtual ‘theft’.
Released today as a .pdf under Creative Commons, the white paper will also be a living document held as part of the Virtual Policy Network’s database of resources. See the new Global Policy section of the site for details.
the Virtual Policy Network is looking for people to support this work, extend the number of countries covered and keep our database up to date with legislative changes impacting convergent media – if you would like to become an associate of tVPN or support our work in other ways please contact us at: info AT virtualpolicy DOT net.
UK Consumer Protection & games
In July 2009 the UK’s department of Business Innovations and Skills (BIS) issued a White Paper titled: A Better Deal for Consumers – Delivering Real Help and and Change for the Future. While this paper was introduced by the previous UK administration the current coalition administration has not indicated any willingness to halt the modernisation of consumer protection .
In light of this tVPNs wishes to draw attention to Chapter 4 of the White Paper: Modernising Consumer Law, which deals with ‘new “digital” products’ and explicitly mentions computer games. the Virtual Policy Network suggests that the online games industry and other online industries consider their positions in respect products and services as a whole and elements such as digital download, episodic updates, digital artifacts and digitally currency in the light of the principles outlined in the paper.
DISE:10 Games, Media Law
Digital Interactive Symposium: Edinburgh
27 August 2010 (10:00 – 16:00)
John McIntyre Conference Centre, Pollock Halls, the University of Edinburgh.
Overview
The Digital Interactive Symposium: Edinburgh (DIS:E) is an annual event organized by the Virtual Policy Network in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh.
The Digital Interactive Symposium: Edinburgh 2010 focuses on the legal issues of computer games, virtual worlds and the issues that arise from the convergence of new and traditional media. Speakers include both academics and practicing lawyers.
DotGovLabs: Games & Government Workshops
DotGovLabs is an R&D project co-funded by Directgov, NHS Choices and Business Link have commissioned tVPN to run a series of workshops. The aims of the workshop are to gather feedback on how the UK Government should (and should not) use games to interact with citizens, businesses and other stakeholder groups.
The feedback from the workshop will feed into a government report that will support future funding decisions. Workshop attendees include: games developers, academics and officials from the three sites, and the Technology Strategy Board.
The spirit of the workshops is to share ideas and steer government thinking in ways that will benefit the UK and use tax money wisely.
Topics covered are likely to include:
• Opportunities for presence in platform menus/dashboards
• How can we get government in the space where gamers are?
• Partnerships and placement with 3rd parties
• Online communities
• Being involved in storyline
• Likely costs
London evening workshop
2nd March 18:30 – 20:30
Event supported by London South Bank University’s BA in Game Cultures, and held at London South Bank University and facilitated by Feeding Edge.
London day workshop
3rd March 14:00 – 16:00
Event supported by and held at London Knowledge Lab (just off Theobald’s Road) and facilitated by Feeding Edge.
Brighton workshop
Details TBD
Scotland workshop
Details TBD
For more information and to request a place email info [at] virtualpolicy [dot] net.
tVPN supports UK’s DotGovLabs R&D project
tVPN is supporting the UK’s DotGovLabs with it’s engagement with academics and the games industry as part of the ‘Games’ R&D project.
DotGovLabs is “is a shared R&D programme backed by Directgov, Businesslink.gov (including the RDA face-to-face arm of Businesslink) and NHS Choices. DotGovLabs looks to identify, explore and test areas of innovation to determine what benefits they could offer to provide better services to businesses, patients and citizens.”
The Games project is summaries as ” This DotGovLabs project is exploring whether there are any opportunities, in the games medium, that the government could be exploiting. The remit is wider than just building games in that the project is looking to gain input from industry experts into all elements of this medium. For example can the technologies of games (in terms of how it visualises context through computer graphics or virtual worlds) be exploited outside of a games scenario to allow us to communicate particular concepts better? Are there opportunities around gaming platforms to access different users groups?”
Internet Governance – A Brief Timeline
In this context the term ‘Internet Governance’ or IG as it is often termed denotes the on-going global discussion about how various aspects of the internet should be run and buy whom. There is no agreed scope of Internet Governance. Narrow interpretations suggest that it is confined to matters such as IP addresses, whereas wide interpretations suggest it should be a multi-stakeholder process and encompasses issues such as free speech and other Human Rights.
UN IGF: Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age
The UK Government’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has proposed a workshop on virtual worlds and public diplomacy to be held as part of the 2009 United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum meeting being held between 15 and 18 of November 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Wednesday 18th (Day 4) 15:30 – 17:00 Room 9 – Siwa Room.
tVPN / UK Government 2009 IGF workshop on virtual worlds – Official Workshop Summary (.pdf)(.doc)
Tax breaks, Game Ratings & the UK Game Dev
24 September 2009 LSE: tVPN in conjunction with the IGDA (Independent Game Developers Association) hosted a policy evening at the London School of Economics.
UN IGF 2008 Workshop Proposal: Virtual Worlds for Delivering Public Service & Innovation
For the 2008 UN Internet Governance Forum meeting in Hyderabad India the UK Government proposed the workshop detailed here. The workshop did not occur due to the disturbances in India at the time.
The official workshop proposal can be found in the IGF site here: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops_08/showmelist.php?mem=46
A summary of the workshop is as follows:
The workshop will showcase Virtual Worlds as a way of providing an innovative and effective way of delivering public services, engaging with citizens and society, inclusively discussing the fact that there may be a number of possible legal/investment barriers to the achievement of the benefits of Virtual Worlds. The aim will be to facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, making full use of the academic, scientific and technical communities; showing how stakeholders have helped to find solutions and have used virtual worlds as an effective way of delivering public services.
Digital Britain: Interim Report
Digital Britain is a report published in January 2009 by the UK Government’s Departments of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).
The report promotes the use of digital technology by citizens of the UK and sets out a number of recommendations that seek to enhance the use of digital by individuals and businesses.
In the main the report covers topics such as:
- Next generation networks
- Universal access to broadband
- A new deal for digital content rights
- Enhancing the digital delivery of public services
In respect of computer games and virtual worlds the report should be read in light of the Byron Review of 27 March 2008 and the subsequent establishment of The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) on 29 September 2008; as well as the Power of Information Taskforce Report of February 2009. In these respects the Digital Britain report has little to add to the Byron review other than setting the importance of digital literacy, particularly though not exclusively for children, in a wider social and economic context.
While the report makes no specific reference to virtual worlds it does mention ‘virtual communities of interest’ p3. In specific reference to video games the report notes:
“UK content production is in turn an important part of the overall creative industries sector that in total accounts for more than 6 per cent of UK gross value added, which as a sector is equivalent in scale to the financial services industry. Radio and TV, along with software, computer games and electronic publishing account for around half of this total.”
Digital Britain pP36
“The UK games industry continues to make a significant financial, creative and cultural contribution to the UK, but is facing particular challenges.”
Digital Britain pP37
“There is now a growing expectation that content can be found and shared for free. There is a corresponding resistance to paying for content, or accepting that an inability to pay means an inability to access the content. The collective impact of small scale individual infringement is considered to be significant [...]. Film, games, broadcasters and the publishing industry are also increasingly being affected. Indeed, it is a phenomenon all the digital content sectors will have to face sooner or later.”
Digital Britain pP41
“ACTION 11 By the time the final Digital Britain report is published the Government will have explored with interested parties the potential for a Rights Agency to bring industry together to agree how to provide incentives for legal use of copyright material; work together to prevent unlawful use by consumers which infringes civil copyright law; and enable technical copyright-support solutions that work for both consumers and content creators. The Government also welcomes other suggestions on how these objectives should be achieved.
Such an approach would need rights-holders and distributors of all digital material (e.g. music, film, television and radio, software, computer games, e-books) to work together to develop ways of making this kind of piracy more difficult to do and easier to trace and prevent. This could involve working with authorities in other countries to act against damaging sources of infringing material. It could also include the exploration of new technical approaches…”
Digital Britain p42
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