Valve Sued By The Performing Rights Society Over Music Rights in Games Valve Doesn’t Make or Own
7 months ago by netweirdo to c/technology
The Performing Right Society (PRS) has "commenced legal proceedings" against Steam owner Valve over the use of its members' works on Steam "without permission."
The organization claims that while games right across the spectrum use music to "transform play into emotional, immersive experiences," Valve has "never obtained a licence for its use of the rights managed by PRS on behalf of its members, comprising songwriters, composers, and music publishers."
PRS claims "many game titles which incorporate PRS members' musical works are made available on Steam," including "high profile series" such as Forza Horizon, FIFA/EA FC, and GTA.
PRS said that as it had sought to work with Valve about the licensing issues "for many years without appropriate engagement from Valve," it has now issued legal proceedings under the UK's s20 Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 and requires any game that uses PRS' works to obtain a licence.
"The litigation will progress unless Valve Corporation engages positively with discussions and takes the necessary license to cover the use of PRS repertoire, both retrospectively and moving forwards," the organization said in a press statement.
Dan Gopal, chief commercial officer, PRS for Music said: "Our members create music that enhances experiences and PRS exists to protect the value of their work with integrity, transparency, and fairness. Legal proceedings are not a step we take lightly, but when a business’s actions undermine those principles, we have a duty to act.
"Great video games rely on great soundtracks, and the songwriters and creators behind them deserve to have their contribution recognised and fairly valued."
It’s like suing a grocery shop for selling the xyz branded milk for using their copyrighted font.
I came here to make this exact point.
The real reason they do it of course, is that Steam is big, and they can get more money from Steam if they win.
Juries are very unpredictable in such cases. And that's what they are playing on.
Juries are very unpredictable in such cases. And that’s what they are playing on.
This is in the UK, except in very rare exceptions, we don't have juries for civil matters.
That perception was largely created by McDonald's after they were sued for giving a lady third degree vagina burns and a fused labia. "Haha, Americans are so frivolous with lawsuits, they'd sue a company for serving coffee hot enough to make you need skin grafts".
Theres also the factor of suing steam is like getting to sue all the ofenders at once without actually putting in the work to sue each individual studio that used the music.
I mean many of those publishers, like it says in the article, are "high profile" and will have more than enough money to cover a music copyright issue.
But suing Valve means you only need to sue 1 company instead of dozens, and it also makes Valve responsible for keeping the songs out of its entire library of tens of thousands of games.
What are the odds that PRS doesn't represent the rights on the music they claim to?
I'd like to say highly likely but upon reading a bit on what they are, it's highly unlikely. They're a union focusing on publishing right of music, so they definitely represent the owner of the music. But still insane.
They do.
I think it would be reasonable if this was a problem of small indie titles that do not have a publisher and basically wouldn't exist without Steam. If Valve allows for content on their platform they have an obligation to ensure this content is legal. If a supermarket cooperates with a local farmer to sell their produce directly without middle men, it's partly their responsible if the produce is made using illegal pesticides.
However, it seems unreasonable when it's about stuff like Forza and FIFA. Then sue Microsoft and EA, for fucks sake. These games have publishers.
If a supermarket cooperates with a local farmer to sell their produce directly without middle men, it's partly their responsible if the produce is made using illegal pesticides.
No that's of how it works...well, anywhere. In your analogy, the supermarket relies on the supplier being truthful with their documentation for their production. That's as far as their responsibility goes legally, they have no obligation to investigate the suppliers claims any further.
relies on the supplier being truthful with their documentation for their production
So the supermarket needs documentation and to take precautions, because they are to a certain extent responsible for the legality of the stuff they are selling.
In the real world supermarkets don't just pick up carrots from some random guy showing up with a trailer full of them. In online markets, this is closer to how it works. Those running and profiting off online platforms should be accountable for what they sell. If Amazon lists electrical products that don't meet fire safety standards on their website they should be held accountable for selling these products, even if they only act as middle men.
If companies can just take the money without any responsibility we're fucked.
The seller is only responsible for checking that the product is legal, not whether or not the information and documentation provided by the manufacturer is falsified. In this case, if a game dev accepts that they of course have all the necessary licenseses for game assets (which valve definitely has a clause with), then valve has done their part. If it turns out the manufacturer mislead them, it's the manufacturer who's in trouble, not the seller.
Wait what? Why would valve need to license the music? They're not making the games...That should be the responsibility of the game studio or developer that makes the game that uses the music.
You always sue starting from deepest to shallowest pockets.
... but that only makes sense if you genuienly believe that Rockstar and/or EA have less cash than Valve, and/or Rockstar and EA never had their own relevant liscensing agreements.
I may be wrong, but as best I can tell, there is no precedent in UK law for a platform/retailer being found liable under the cited Section 20, unless the content being distributed/retransmitted/sold itself did not have proper liscensing arrangements, and it can be proven that the platform/retailer/retransmitter knew that to be the case.
I kind of find it unlikely that Rockstar and EA did/do not have liscensing agreements in place.
My theory?
The entire Publically Traded gaming world seems to be mobilizing and coordinating efforts to get every kind of secondary organization they are connected to, to sue Valve, right now.
Because they are all financially imploding, and they're trying to do as much damage as possible to Valve, who isn't a part of their club, as a means of trying to level the playing field.
All these people on the boards of top gaming companies... are also on the boards of other top gaming companies, they know each other, they have people and contacts who sit in all the gaming industry lobbying groups, and the astroturf fake 'gamer advocacy' groups, in the IP rights groups, etc etc.
So what you're saying is, this lawsuit, and likely many others, is publishers-and-their-investors-who-want-to-not-have-to-go-through-steam-and-have-or-want-to-have-competing-but-monopolies-on-their-own-games-and-storefronts backed.
Feels like petulant publishers. "If I have to get licenses, so should the storefront dis isn't fairrrrrrrr waahhhhhhhh"
That hurt my brain to read, but I think, basically yes.
Its a cabal of mostly vertically integrated companies vs basically a horizontal monopoly that gatekeeps all of them, that'd they've all tried and failed or are currently failing to break through.
And yeah, petulant publishers does sound like a match to me.
Its basically mob tactics, just higher class.
Yeah, this... doesn't really make sense, unless the goal is to get Steam to adopt a policy of delisting the specific offending games in the UK.
I am not a lawyer, but... this seems spurrious?
I don't know, I can't find a single example of a platform or 'retransmitter' being successfully ruled against, in cases where the content itself already had worked out a rights/royalties agreement with the rights holders... unless it can basically be proven that the platform operators / retailers knew that the content itself was not properly liscensed, and sold it anyway.
So basically they would have to prove that Rockstar and EA never had the proper liscensing, and also that Valve knew that.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that Rockstar and EA probably did/do have the proper liscensing.
That being said, the UK leaving the EU... makes all of this exceptionally confusing to my layman self, as to the exact current standards and precedents that are currently in play and relevant.
But that’s very different. People are uploading music on YouTube to be listened to as music and that directly infringes the copyright of another song on YouTube that is legit. It’s directly taking money from the owners of the song. Games are not (typically) intended to be a replacement for just listening to that song.
"The litigation will progress until Valve obeys" sounds an awful lot like extortion.
They are clearly trying to double/triple dip on shit that already been paid for and licensed.
Whats next?
Make us individual game owners pay license every time we download and install the game?
Unity never tried that? They wanted to charge the developer using Unity. It was stupid, but they pay for unity one way or another.
And tariffs are for charging the company being imported. They never tried pushing those lost costs onto the customer
They wanted to charge per game sale. It's not "per download" but it's close enough for most consumers.
They were changing their pricing model. It doesnt matter if its a flat cost or per download cost or tierd pricing on a range.
No matter what, unity is getting paid when usage reaches a limit, it was never entirely free at scale.
Customers were ALWAYS paying for unity one way or another, it wasn't anything new.
Make us individual game owners pay license every time we download and install the game?
This is how it’s been done for decades now? Every game you purchase off of Steam, Xbox, PlayStation is just a license to play that game.
Really?
I don't recall having to pay a fee every time I redownload or reinstall my game...ever
Suggest reading into software licensing and understand the different types of licenses that could be used.
Every time a company tries to restrict the number of downloads/reinstalls for a game that you buy a license for, it has backlashed so catastrophically that they've walked it back.
So it has happened, yes, but there is no situation currently with game distributors where you pay a license for a single download. They're all pay once, download in perpetuity.
Sure buddy.
Yeah, like isn't this steam's schtick? You give up a third of the purchases for them to just handle this kinda shit? I'm not defending them, just stating.
Edit: hive mind activated.
Half life 3 fans in shambles.
real disappointed all that HL3 hype a month or 3 back ultimately ended up being a big fat fart of nothing.
I feel like by this logic Amazon and Walmart would also need to obtain lisences to sell video games that have music in them...
That or I'm too tired and bread dead to understand the stupid shit I just read.
The only way I can see this being different is steam shows preview videos of the game which have music.
Amazon often only shows the box it sells in and pictures.
Its still stupid because the game developer has the rights and that page is their place.
As a general rule of thumb if something sounds stupid then it's probably been reported badly with some key information missing. I'm betting the music industry press reporting will be very different from that of a site called "gamesindustry.biz".
I've seen a lot of stupid patent and copyright trolling over the years.
I bet 100€ that they're trying to double dip and get valve to also pay for licensing songs that the individual game publishers already licensed.
Here's a music news site: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/...
It sounds every bit as stupid there, if not more so because it's apparently a normal aspect of distribution licensing in the UK.
Game developers and publishers typically secure sync licences to cover the embedding of music in their titles.
However, in the UK, those sync deals do not extend to the making available of that music when games are subsequently distributed via download or streaming platforms.
The ‘communication to the public’ right — i.e. the making available right — sits with PRS, not individual music publishers, meaning Valve requires its own separate licence as the platform operator distributing games that contain PRS members’ works.
So remove all those games from Steam, the largest game market on the planet. I'm sure that will get more people wanting to use PRS stuff if they can't distribute on Steam.
... fucking shakedown assholes.
There have been so many lawsuits against Valve recently from so many different angles. I'm not usually one for conspiracy but I wouldn't be shocked if this is a coordinated campaign to unseat Valve from their monopoly on the PC gaming market so that other games industry corporations can move in. They've been trying and failing to break into this market for years because Valve has built so much consumer loyalty.
If it isn't publicly traded, they can't take over it, enshitify it, and squeeze it until it's useless. So of course they hate it.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't microsoft angry at valve for pivoting to linux. Gaming is the last major stronghold for home computing dominated by microsoft, it's all been replaced by platform agnostic web apps and mobile devices for 90% of non-gaming use cases
See, this is why I fucking hate copyright law. It’s so fucked and even though this is clearly fucking bogus, watch them find some kind of loophole and set a precedent
Information should be free. It is as shackled as the rest of us under capitalism.
why stop there! lets go after keyboard manufacturers for allowing people to type words.
Or the dastardly USB Implementers Forum, who not only creates devices that allows those keyboards to function but a storage protocol commonly used by pirates!
What about second breakfast? I'm not sure they know about second breakfast Pippin...
Next in convenience store owners and employees need to get a music license for selling CDs and DVDs so the public.
Apparently PRS already took it to another level by threatening an employee for singing to herself at the store she worked at
What fuck that company lost their goddamn minds. Wonder they are fucking stupid enough to sue YouTube for something similar. Maybe because Google billion dollar corporation that would bankrupt them.
Lets hope judge smart enough to throw this lawsuit out, and they have to go bankrupt due to a counter suit.
Isn't this kind of like suing blockbuster over music in the films they rent? Seems a bit daft, but there must be a reason they think it might succeed.
It seems similar to the idea that you could sue Google for copyright infringement because it serves a website that infringes copyright. Like… valve just serves the content and facilitates sale, right? The act of infringement wasn’t committed by them, it was committed by the game developers. Am I mistaken?
From what I understand, the music was used under licence by the game developers. The plaintiffs want Steam to also pay them for a licence to offer the game, which is already legally using the music, on their store, which is absurd.
Interesting, but I can see how this might play into their favor too. If the developers license to the music doesn’t cover resale/relicense, and maybe they’re arguing that the music (by extension of the game) was licensed to Valve in a manner that isn’t covered by the original license? Effectively meaning, valve can’t profit off the music by any means; developers had a non-extendable license to it, allowing only for distribution to consumers who don’t resell?
But you still wouldn’t sue Valve over that, would you? You’d sue the developers for damages due to breach of contract?
If the games are using the music in violation of copyright and valve acquired it and is selling it, the distribution rights part of copyright law allows the copyright owner to sue anyone in the supply chain. If the music was originally licensed properly, then PRS is just looking for a settlement.
Once you purchase a legally distributed work, you are protected by the first sale doctrine, which allows you to do pretty much whatever you want with your single copy.
From what I've read elsewhere, precedent is already set. Other game storefronts providers, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, do make such payments to PRS. Valve is the odd one. I'd love it if someone here could confirm or deny this.
There is also the question of it that was set by court precedent, or settling. I would assume that settling doesn't effect precedent.
This was inevitable after valve caved to pressure from card processors. The sharks have smelt blood.
Gaben really just should've said "fuck you" to card processors and created his own PayPal-like system that doesn't expose purchase data to card networks and is big enough that the networks can't afford to lose them...
In case you're not being hyperbolic (or for anyone else legitimately thinking this because I've heard it multiple times), I think Valve really did the best thing they could. I know Valve feels huge, but MasterCard and Visa together are over a hundred times bigger, and any payment processing system Valve could make would definitely be a pushover.
Also, never underestimate the casual normie population. If Valve lost Visa and MasterCard support, I'm pretty sure that would mean losing two-thirds of their playerbase if not more. Those people would either prop up alternative stores like Epic or Microslop's or just pull away from PC gaming altogether.
Anyway, it's a bit like the people saying Valve should make their own DRAM to combat the shortage. It doesn't acknowledge how entrenched the existing manufacturers are and how far away Valve actually is from that level of manufacturing.
I hope that Valve is doing this in the backstage. If they teamed up with the EU, Canada, Brazil, and Japan, they could establish a pretty large global network for neutral transactions. Just a 1% fee, and extend the service to all platforms willing to use it, such as DLSite or OnlyFans. With that sort of backing, Valve can penetrate the American market. Especially if the transaction fees are waived for the first year after launching, with a pre-order phase for getting merchants ready for adding SteamPay to their transaction options.
Even if you only get your news from here, you can't possibly have missed that AI companies are getting sued...
Abolish piracy!!!!1
This kind of lawsuit only makes things worse for musicians who are already struggling with making money performing and recording. This will be challenged, beaten and leave a bad image for artists as not everyone is going to draw logical conclusions from it.
It’s not about artists anyway despite their claim, it’s about labels. The artists doing well are doing their own thing recording, touring, selling merchandise and making sure their followers are getting value for money. The traditional labels are losing control the same way the magazines did.
This whole thing is utter bullshit. It sounds like the game studios DO have a license, and they're claiming that Steam does not but should. Because you can't tell me that Microslop, EA, and Rockstar, three ENORMOUS giants in the gaming industry, have willingly opened themselves up to litigation by not licensing music in their games, something they've been making for decades. Why are they entitled to a license from the developer AND a license from the shop selling it? Of course, they're not, but let's hope this doesn't set precedent that says they are.
Next logical step would be to sue producers of radios, speakers, headphones and so on, I assume. Their devices "perform" the music, after all.
And then they can sue hospitals for helping bringing new ears into the world.
You joke, but this is actually how it works in places. As recently as 2015 we paid some % of all storage media sales (think HDDs, nvmes, flash drives, anything that can hold data really) to our RIAA equivalent to ”compensate for private copying”. Now it’s no longer baked into the prices, but they are paid directly by the government, as in through taxation.
PRS vs Testes
Cyberpunk 2077 has an option specifically for streamers to not play music in that touchy area. I know project red is big but not quite as big as those other guys, and even they had a mind to protect themselves and other public personalities.
Streamer mode is typically for one of two usecases:
- The streamer plays their own music, so being able to silence all game music simplifies things
- The game might contain copyrighted music by known artists, which can trigger automated enforcement. In most jurisdictions music used in a game is fine to stream/record because it's covered by the developer's/distributor's license, but that doesn't stop overzealous rights holders from placing bogus claims that can muck up your revenue, so it's easier to just not play music that you don't yourself have license to play
That makes sense.
Not that I love ActMan, but day to day news about Valve controversies do make me feel the same about these claims as ActMan. It really feels like if suddenly everyone wants to sue Valve to the ground so they got destroyed and other lesser fair gaming companies secure their market.
Valve is no angel. But if we compare to others, they are next best thing to a Saint.
Oh yeah M$ is definitely behind this
That last sentence. Fucking sucks this where we're at.
yes, when the a company that pretty much popularized loot boxes, skins and trading is the good one you know things are bad
Steam has by far the best user experience of any onljne game store and just softwarr store in general, with refunds, a good and accurate category system, accurate reviews, per game forums, a place to share community mods, achivements, cross platform support, a friends system, group system, cloud sync, a way to devs make availible private and public beta builds, good and granular regional pricing and many more
so many features, yet tim sweeny could never understand why people believe epic store is inferior
Valve does seem to have a clause in their partner contracts to say all music must have proper licensing so they got that covered. They'll just ask PRS to point out which one and those games are gone within the hour. They can also give PRS a temporary license to the entire library to help them. Things are different if a judge says Valve needs to proactively check licensed materials in the game files, but that requires a library and methods to check against, so that's another discussion.
I think what PRS is stating is that Valve needs a license for the music to even display the game in their store, which is utter nonsense.
They aren't claiming the games are infringing, if that were the case with something like Forza, they would go after the game publisher.
It looks like they are trying to say Valve is infringing by having the games in their store.
I've looked at a few other articles. It seems that PRS says the game publisher has to buy a license for the music in the games, and Valve needs to buy a separate license and pay PRS again for distributing the music in the game. And this would be retro-active, so Valve would have to pay a license fee for every piece of music in every game it ever sold with PRS music. They claim Microsoft and Sony do pay this.
Does this mean places like Walmart and Costco that sell games and media also need to now get licensing?
What about smaller shops and libraries that sell or loan media or other products.
Honestly this just seems like a tax on a tax on a tax. Next in the consumer will need to pay a licensing fee.
Next in the consumer will need to pay a licensing fee.
They do try. These are the same people that sued someone for singing while working, claiming it was a public performance.
They full shit. Fuck that double dipping motherfuckers, that company needs to burn to the ground and executives and CEO revoked from every doing business again. Or [retracted] from earth.
Valve been selling games for long as time funny suddenly it's a problem? This late stage capitalism at work here.
Well that just sounds insane. Why would valve also need a license? Its the game developers who need to work out an arrangement to use their music.
Also if valve looses this apple, google, and Microsoft would get sued for the same thing so I expect them to not have to fight very hard
no they wont, they dont go after big tech, you see, gotta keep capitilism going so that rhw wealth trickles down
in case you are not sure, this is a joke, about how there seems to be no rules for big tech
I agree but if they win against steam they'd have an open shut case against every other online store
They're arguing it under section 20, probably this part
the making available to the public of the work by electronic transmission in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
It looks like they're arguing that by hosting the games valve are acting as a pirate MP3 site.
I think they would have to prove that they did so knowingly, which can only really be done if they ignored takedown notices.
That is silly, though, since that's something that each developer should be arranging for as part of obtaining the rights to use the music. Either the developer has the rights to use the music as part of the game (and thus sell the game with the music), and by extension Valve can be granted the limited right by the developer to transmit and/or perform the music (in trailers), or the developer does not have such rights and they should not be selling the game in the first place.
There is much to critique Steam for... This? This is nothing but a cash-grab, in my opinion.
They're probably going after Valve because they have more money.
That is insane lol.
We've sold you the rights to include the music in your game.
We have not sold you the rights to sell your game to anyone!
everybody attacking Valve, maybe my tin foil hat is too cozy but it;s a concerted effort by the psychopathic elite to ruin our lives. may their glans be afflicted by a million paper cuts and a salty storm
Their chooks turn into emus and kick their shithouse down.
For the people that don't see how manufactured some of the attacks against Valve have been lately (not that this will help convince them regardless...)
Huh? The game studios pay the licenses, the artists etc. Why on earth would you then hold the store accountable? This is double dipping. That's like charging a CD store for selling your CDs.
This shit is why the music industry is despised.
It seems like an utterly vexatious, and banal one at that, lawsuit by the PRS.
Definitely feels like they were put up to it by the dark money private equity jackels who want to devour Valve.
Dan Gopal, chief commercial officer, PRS for Music said: "Our members create music that enhances experiences and PRS exists to protect the value of their work with integrity, transparency, and fairness. Legal proceedings are not a step we take lightly, but when a business’s actions undermine those principles, we have a duty to act.
tl;dr they're after the money.
They're extortionists. This outfit is doing RIAA moves and surely annoying as those IP litigators whose business is to let loose bots and flag anything with a DMCA that remotely smacks of what they define as piracy.
Looking through the things PRS does, I wonder why anyone would join. Why call yourself an artist when you contribute to an entity that stops people from playing music to animals or whistling to themselves?
Like seriously. It's a group of artists going around shutting down parties. Musicians telling everyone to go home. Probably thinking "it's not my fault, it's the industry, if I want my fair share I HAVE to bully individuals and small businesses."
They're an extortion racket for large music recording labels, who generally fuck over small music venues and individual musicians.
I think that these might be the same people who drove around to catch petrol and service stations playing the radio so that they could sue them for unlicensed public performance. This was right in the Napster days.
The price might not be worth it, but would be really funny if Valve just delisted the claimed games in the UK and notified the publishers that they need to remove the claimed music or resolve the licensing issue if they want their game back up. Instead of one tidy lawsuit, suddenly these guys are being contacted by the angry lawyers of hundreds of orgs they have existing contracts with.
That’s like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
No actually, it's like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library licensing a sample correctly.
Not that they like money from Steam despite the games having a licence for the music. If I read the article right.
This is probably bogus and already covered in steamworks' terms of use, I'm going to check but I expect them to have some kind of "you (the developer) are responsible for clearing copyrights stuff" clause
TOU doesn't supercede law, but this lawsuit is probably bogus anyhow (then again UK can have some crazy laws and their judicial system is weird).
Still, they as the storefront aren't (or shouldn't be, uk law is mental at times) responsible for licensing the content used in a product they sell made by someone else.
This would be like suing a grocery store because they sell a CD that didn't properly license their samples. They received a product and sold it, expecting the artist/manufacturer/publisher to clear rights prior to sale.
These idiotic lawsuits. First of all, this isn't even Valves responsibility. Second, Steam/Valve are small frys compared to Amazon/Apple/Google/Microsoft. In gaming they may be smaller than Sony and Nintendo and those two have full on closed software platforms. Steam is one software store among many on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. All these groups want to enshittify PC gaming. They want to enshittify personal computing in general. Turn pre-iPhone smartphone operating systems into iOS
What even is this lawsuit? Can somebody help me understand the accusation(s)?
Because it kind of reads like "you sell games that have our music, and don't pay us" which obviously makes no sense. Most of the article is absolute fluff.
P1: prs is suing valve.
P2: valve doesn't have a license to.... Do what? Is this extortion?
P3: prs music is on steam.
P4: valve ignores us. We want to sue them for infringing "the UK's s20 copyright, designs, patents act 1988"
P5: musicians work hard. Prs protec.
P6: music important. Musicians important.
Sounds a lot like a license troll. Probably the specific court and potential violation of a law were picked with care. Perhaps they looked through valve's terms in advance to find a loophole, design their own terms to exploit that etc.
I don't think it's a troll. I think it's specifically game publishers trying to carve out a niche and get more power to make more money, both from valve, and on their own digital distribution platforms by saying
"valve needs to pay us to sell our games because we are the license holders. And since we are the license holders, we can pay ourselves from sales on our own platforms"
So I think it's dumb on the surface, but ultra shitty underneath.
Like if they win, that's a bad precedent.
If they lose, that's still precedent.
And in the process, there's a SHIT TON of discovery, of a company that doesn't give out much information that competitors would love to get their hands on. Because if you know how a competitor operates, you can undermine them. Knowledge is power. It's super pathetic, but also scary, like a demon trying to figure out your style so they can steal your friends. Hopefully, we can rely on " just don't be shitty" to hold up.
All of these lawsuits popping up are like a distributed attack on Valve.
Honestly, if this case doesn't get thrown out before discovery, I'll be shocked. Stores don't licence music, the game devs do. If a game dev infringed, there is already a takedown process available to remove the content from Steam.
The dev studio company... or their publisher.
But yeah, insane lawsuit. It's funny knowing that in that article they say that Valve is ignoring them, and has been ignoring them.
Edit: which raises the question: who the fuck published this article? Who is giving this stuff publicity? Dark money? Or is it just because it's ridiculous, to begin with?
Except it's not game publishers who are suing. It is an organization representing musicians, some of whom have made music which is included in games which can be purchased through Steam.
[...]organisation representing musicians Large Corporate Record Companies who bought the rights off someone[...]
If they sued games like Beat Hazard for letting players use their own music in the game, that'd be like suing a media player for letting people play music with it.
So imagine how much dumber this is.
But the game publishers already had licence, and if they didn't have a licence then their beef is with the publishers not the storefront.
Anyway I've bought GTA V from physical brick and mortar stores in the past, so are they going to start suing the brick and mortar stores as well?
Hopefully they lose this case because copyright law is an absolute joke. It hasn't been fit for purpose for about 20 years.
My hate of the copyright-ownership side of Hollywood / Nashville / Atlanta, etc. has been burning white hot since the days that the RIAA was suing people using P2P networks. But, I had to admit that at least they could probably make a valid claim for copyright infringement. But this?!
It's interesting how it's the "Performing Right Society" (which I've never heard of). The "performing" part of that suggests that maybe they have an issue with people sharing clips containing music, or live streaming games where they share music. But, again, why Valve? Sure, people can share clips with friends. And, occasionally you see developers streaming their games. But, nobody is really "performing" live streams on Steam. I suspect they just think Valve is rich and so they can strong-arm them and Valve will settle to make them go away. I hope they bit off more than they can chew. Valve is indeed rich, and they have a tendency to be stubborn. I think they might well fight, and fight hard.
I wish a possible outcome was that the PRS ceased to exist. But, I suspect they're like a flea or something, and even if you knock them off from this attempt to suck someone's blood, you can't kill them, and they'll just find another victim.
Do these lawsuits backfire if the ones suing lose? Cuz this is very clearly not on valve to sort but the games. I'm guessing they are hoping to strike gold with 1 lawsuit as opposed to having to go after the game developers individually, who may just stop using their work in the future which valve can't do.. because they don't use their work already.
But is it just a case you made lawsuit you lost, oh well some lawyer fees and it's over? Or do they have to pay valve for wasting their time and their legal expenses too?
It's a common law court, the party that loses pays the majority of the others legal fees. In common law the risk of losing usually prevents stupid lawsuits.
Unless valve is ignoring court judgments that the content is infringing they can GTFO.
But that would make sense and be an effective way of making laws and governing and more importantly would stop those who haven't meaningfully added to society from being able to easily profit from it in a way that others can't.
I mean we could go the catholic church method of multiple layers of verification, strict requirements for entry, and all encompassing moral framework. It isn't guaranteed to be perfect, but it might just be good enough
Yeah it's probably like corruption the optimal number isn't 0 but as close as we can get without hamstringing society. Make it just hard enough so that those who would do it if it was easy can't do it easily and then you have 90% less corruption. Think of it like piracy, it was big in the 2000's when buying DVDs was a thing and storage was getting cheap but record labels and studios were not able to update their business model and the easiest way to get most media for the average user was something like Napster. When streaming came along and Netflix had a massive catalogue and was better in every way to cable and same with music streaming platforms at first piracy almost stopped completely and is only coming back due to enshitification. We need to implement a model like Netflix streaming which aligns incentives for politicians to make good policies and not sell out the country from under us for personal gain by making said decisions have actual negative and immediate consequences, be it trading in the stock market while in office or for a ster period of 2 terms after they serve their time in office, being a lobbyist for a set amount of time before or after presenting themselves as a candidate, and enforcing an open period after a law is drafted for public review and ability to lodge complaints and a 2-4 year reassessment of the law to see if it is actually doing what it was set out to do or not and repeal it if not (with exceptions for laws that govern long term policy such as schools where it can take 14 years for the policy to actually show concrete results.
Oh they do, at a great expense, and the committee writes a very long detailed document about why their idea is pants on head crazy, which of course they don't like, so they ignore the committee and then they do it anyway.
I think ever since Valve fought through their first lawsuit with Sierra and lucked out with them finding evidence showing destruction of evidence, they probably developed zero appetite to fold for frivolous lawsuits lol.
Can't they just leave the one company that's been consistently good to its customers alone?
No, Firewire400. They can't :(
Luckily, I think Valve has some good lawyers and big companies in the USA have to be used to this sort of bullshit.
"UK wants to extort US company for taxes on a product and service literally everybody likes"
Tea time.
What's the VPN uptake in the UK these days, considering the state of government restrictions and surveillance lately? If Valve just said fuck it and pulled out of the market, would they even take a financial hit? Or would most of that revenue magically shift to other countries/currencies?
My suggestion is that probably their lawyers have examined the case in rather more detail than the armchair lawyers on here pontificating based on an eight-sentence summary. Incidentally, PRS are a 175,000-member artists' rights collective that very often represent a significant portion of individual artists' incomes, they're not some sort of grubby billionaire-owned patent troll.
I dunno about that given what another person replied with about threatening someone from singing in a store.
Wait- that lawsuit is stupi- oh ok, it's from UK, it make sense
Lately a lot of stupid lawsuits were made in UK...
Steam will win against these trolls who spend more time in press releases and patent trolling .....than doing anything of worth.
What is it about AI that these daylight robberies are celebrated when that's involved? Maybe it's just that a bigger cash grab can pay for more bots?
Maybe that IS the why.
When the water dries up, you gotta get water from wherever you can. Unfortunately, there are dumdums out there fighting the water distribution company because they think they deserve more.
... idiot attorney took this case
Because Valve has money.
I have some experience in licensing music in the UK. it's simple and cheap and it means the artists get paid (well the record labels, but that's another problem)
You paid a tiny amount of the profits you made after filling in the form which is pretty much just name and address and the tracks you used. It was something like £20 to play 5-10 songs for a three week run of a live show
Not neccessarily a defense of the system, but I'd say this is for playing music on the shop screens before you buy the games, and other promotional material.
For example Borderlands GOTY uses a rock song with lyrics that's not part of the game's OST.
it depends on the contractuals. It may have been licensed for broadcast and Steams proprietary store may not count as a broadcasting platform
Rothschild loses their lawsuit against Valve and instantly Valve gets more troll lawsuits against them. What are the odds.
It can be. If you look on a lot of the websites for video games they grant licenses to stream the game's audio assets in the context of streaming gameplay.
awwe did you favorite multi-billion dollar company get sued for platforming IP theft? You are so justifiably butthurt and you are a reasonable, thoughtful person worth engaging.
@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
go to feed...
Insanity. It's like suing a grocery shop for selling the xyz branded milk for using their copyrighted font.
save