Comment on Valve Sued By The Performing Rights Society Over Music Rights in Games Valve Doesn’t Make or Own
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
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.
jeffep@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
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”
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.
All of these lawsuits popping up are like a distributed attack on Valve.
qaeta@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
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.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
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.
Eranziel@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk 3 days ago
[…]organisation representing
musiciansLarge Corporate Record Companies who bought the rights off someone[…]SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
You know, if they didn’t have music… In games… That could be purchased through steam… Then this would make even less sense. Don’t you think?