Germany and 'that' ban

In June, Germany's interior ministers asked the Bundestag to ban the creation and distribution of games involving violent acts against human or human-like characters. Government criticism of videogames had been growing since a school shooting in March was linked to online-shooter Counter-Strike.

At the recent GDC in Cologne the CEO of Crytek, Cevat Yerli announced that if the ban was passed by the German Bundestat (Parliament) then he would consider moving his operations to another country (Crytek produce the CryEngine on which two popular games were built, FarCry and Crysis, and on which the Blue Mars and Entropia's Creative Kingdom are based).

There is an online petition against the ban, that has garnered over 75,000 signatures, forcing the government to think again, although in the past petitions have succeeded in getting more than the 50,000 signatures needed to force a rethink, but bills have been passed anyway.

Depending on how the ban is worded, it could include SL, due to the presence of extreme violence in a number of sims.

If such a ban comes into force, and bearing in mind the number of German players in SL, what do you think will be LL's response?

Rock

Get the Obama administration to threaten WTO sanctions against the EU, retaliating with a tariff on prim lederhosen.

Depends on how the law is worded, of course, and, in particular, how "distribution" is defined. There's nothing in any code LL distributes that involves the depiction of violent acts, is there?

If the concern, though, is that products distributed by LL potentially provide access to images caught by this hypothetical law, then I would have thought that the German prosecuting authorities would need to go after individuals in Germany alleged to have broken German law in the German jurisdiction by actually accessing the images.

Potentially, I guess, they could go after ISPs, too, but that would run into a whole load of cross-border issues; I can't imagine other member states taking too kindly to attempts by a particular member state to block its citizens' access to services provided by companies based in their jurisdictions (and paying tax to them) in order to enforce a domestic law that had no equivalent in the jurisdiction where the ISP was based.

But as so many games can be played online as well as on CD/DVD I would have thought they would consider that as well.

Rock

Yes, but my point is that there's a distinction between distributing -- whether on CD/DVD or online -- code that *contains* certain material and code that *potentially provides access* to such material, created by a third party and hosted outside the EU.

Anything in the "online-shooter Counter-Strike" that might be caught by the proposed law was, I assume, put there by that game's creators and is an inherent part of the code. Most material in SL wasn't put there by Linden Labs and isn't inherent in the viewer.

In light of Linden Lab's response to that other issue brought up by people in Germany, the one that was staged.....

Should such law be passed in Germany they will ban anything and everything inside of SL that the German Government objects to. To the great delight of some who have a very long track record of posting messages in these forums opposed to such behavior, but to the ultimate demise of Second Life altogether.

It will not happen overnight, but it will happen. Such demise being further enhanced by the total ban of activities other Governments object to as well. Such as all the censorships required by the Chinese Government. There are Chinese people here, after all. Case in point, what happened in Tiannemen Square in Beijing in the 1980's. It is recorded fact. It happened. It is also something that the Chinese Government does not allow information about to be viewable in China. Google and Microsoft, Yahoo, and other companies have already been required to censor access to this material in order to allow their services inside of China. Linden Lab will agree to this form of censorship too, by imposing it on all Second Life residents across the board. Female avatars will be required to wear burkas in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of the ever-so-wise religious patriarchs of countries like Saudi Arabia. And on and on it goes.

Think I'm a crackpot? Just keep watching and remember my predictions. I'd love to be wrong.

It seems unlikely to me because like, why would they target games and not other media like movies? And if they target movies and other things, then my guess is the whole world will have trouble taking them seriously

I can't speak for others who may have "a very long track record . . . opposed to such behaviour," but I for one do NOT think that LL "banning" stuff is good. Even if it were not to lead to SL's demise. As I have said ad nauseam, I don't think banning, or imposing standards by fiat from above, is the route to go. I think communty discussion, compromise, and consensus is.


Well, yes, in this particular instance, I do.

This IS going to be come more and more of an issue, however. It's not just Germany: it's in the UK, and (as witness Rep. Kirk) even in the US. Equality Now a few months ago launched a successful campaign against Amazon and other distributors to remove the Japanese RP "RapeLay" (a particularly reprehensible game that combined simulations of rape with paedophilia); I suspect they and others will pursue their success in this sphere.

I know some people will take this as a veiled threat. It isn't; it's a prediction. If we don't get our own house in order as a community in SL, and find an acceptable means of safeguarding EVERYONE's rights here, someone else will do it for us.

Whtever happens, I expect LL's reaction to be ham fisted, ill thought, and wildly inappropriate and unneccesary for the situation.

Yep! Agreed. It'll be bungled at least as badly as the AC change.

Well, that would drive a bunch of MMO players onto SL and over to Zindra after picking up a complimentary free sex bed.

Worse. This will rival the manufactured Kiddie Porn scandal that showed up on german TV a couple of years ago that started the whole age verification/rat out your neighbor/kid avies are evil fiasco.

To what in the UK do you refer, Scylla?

Well, it is potentially more of a "hot button" issue than relocating AC, so, it will doubtless require an even more jerky and clumsy response.

Do I get to be tied up on this thread too?

If you are not Israel, Obama does not threaten.

There have been some strong calls in the UK to regulate internet porn of late; I can search for some links, I suppose, or perhaps someone else can respond with some.

Scotland is right now drafting some very strongly-worded legislation along the same lines, and I know for an absolute fact that there has been pressure to include SL by name in the language of that.

Well.....if you would really like to.....

The correct response would be to do nothing, as LL doesn't have offices in Germany, so they neither develop nor distribute such software there. I'm sure that will not be the Linden response.

One would hope Germany's elected officials would come to their senses and realize it's a monumentally stupid idea.

Unfortunately...History is not on their side in that matter.....

Sorry, Innula, I used to have references for this at my fingertips, but my main computer died a few days ago (restricting, incidentally, my access to SL for the moment )

The main push for anti-porn legislation in the UK proper is coming from a joint government/public sector organization called the UK Committee for Child Internet Safety. It has been pushing heavily for the filtering of online content at the ISP level. Here is its web site:

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ukccis/

It seems to be a global epidemic.

Japan was recently called to task by the UN (http://kotaku.com/5347531/united-nations-calls-for-explicit-japanese-game-ban), and due to culture, I am suspecting Japan will now have to take action.

/me watches the governments attempt to control and limit our choices more and more.

Ooooooooh!

Teetering on the brink of a knicker-waving event!

Goodwon!

The UN censure of the Japanese regulatory system is actually very much a part of the whole Equality Now "RapeLay" story.

There is such an engrained culture of hentai and lolicon in Japan that I don't think that international pressure is going to have much initial impact. But we'll see.

...which is really what I thought this thread was gonna be about.