I decided not to post it in the old thread i made since its a month old.

Even a month after release Sony proving their incompetence by taking off levels which were moderated and put back on again. Read about it here.

What more can be said on the matter except that Sony have screwed the game now. Even if they solve it now the bad press is sure to damage the game. On top of that not adding a seperate system for handling mature content, How can anyone defend Sony, i mean really?

I decided not to post it in the old thread i made since its a month old.

Even a month after release Sony proving their incompetence by taking off levels which were moderated and put back on again. Read about it here.

What more can be said on the matter except that Sony have screwed the game now. Even if they solve it now the bad press is sure to damage the game. On top of that not adding a seperate system for handling mature content, How can anyone defend Sony, i mean really?

Youtube takes tons of content down and will generally do so even at the slightest hint of legal trouble. The only reason so many fan films and parodies of existing IP's are readily available on Youtube is because the companies who own those IP's don't consider such things to be a viable threat to their own revenue source, though at any time they could demand those films be removed and Youtube would more than likely oblige without hesitation.

As to PC mods, those are created and distributed by private citizens. The PC game publisher has no official ties to those mods; they don't host them or distribute them; they merely allow their game engine to be open and malleable. If a game developer officially endorsed or hosted a mod that utilized an existing IP, they could be liable for copyright infringement.

MM and Sony host and provide access to all LBP user content, which means they have opened themselves up to a greater responsibility. Your allusion to PC mods and Youtube, as stated above, is flatly inappropriate. Copyright is not a joke and even a single case of copyright infringement can cost a company millions of dollars so while it's easy for a person on an Internet message board to flap their gums about Sony's "failure", the truth is that this response is probably the most reasonable course of action.

 

 

Grammaton-Cleric

See the thing is you've just proved my point. Youtube hosts and provides access to the content. They take down videos as soon as they're sent a cease and desist order. 

Why couldnt the same have been done with LBP. What was so wrong with allowing people to make levels and take down a level when a copyright holder complained? Then Sony would more than likely oblige without hesitation.

MSNBC explained the copyright problem.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27707170/

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The one, big, legal technical difference, says media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, is that to cover a song live, you are taking advantage of a compulsory licensing system that Congress set up to encourage people to play covers in bars and wedding halls.

But if you create a song or a level based on another game and publish it on an online service? Well, you're running smack up against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress in 1998. Back then, Internet service providers were more worried about digital piracy of movies and music than user-generated content based on an old Nintendo game.

"Congress never thought that this phenomenon would happen. In 1998, no one ever predicted 'Guitar Hero,'" says Vaidhyanathan.

And the law contains, he says, very little complexity or nuance. Copyright owners need only send an official letter to the service provider to say their rights are being infringed, and the service provider has to remove it, no questions asked.

Activision Blizzard's statement seems to indicate that they may have received some sort of complaint, but Sony would not confirm if they had or hadn't. Perhaps the company was acting preemptively, to fend off even the specter of legal action.

And right now, the law is stacked against players. Both Sony and Activision state in their terms of use that they own the content players create once it's posted to their service. Players can appeal the removal of their creations - the law affords that process - but the hosting services (Sony and Activision) would have to entertain the appeal.

Until the law is rewritten to include user-generated content, the companies are not to blame, says Vaidhyanathan. It's a drag for players, certainly, to put time and energy into making something for the community - only to see it yanked. It's also a drag for those of us who loved playing the "Sonic the Hedgehog" level in "LittleBigPlanet."

"This is the sort of practice that the law affords no space for," says Vaidhyanathan. "That doesn't mean there's not a solution, it's just going to take a bunch of lawyers a bunch of years to actually figure out whether this is worth pursuing."

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So writing to one's Congressman seems a smarter route than writing to Sony, since its the law that's the problem.

I do agree that what's appropriate content wise needs to be made clearer and probably less strict (I don't think Sony has ever said why the Azure Palace was moderated, but it didn't contain anything one couldn't find in the LBP levels that shipped on disk).

Also, one should keep in mind that Media Molecule pulls a level the second a complaint is made, and it is only reposted after the complaint has been investigated and disproven (before someone asks, no, I don't know how long the process takes).

CarnageHeart

Really, there was no need to pre-emptively start deleting levels due to fears of legal action. Most game companies have been openly supporting mods on pc for years, I dont see a lot of developers upset with users paying homage to their creations. Hell Resident Evil 4 on pc had a mod where leone was converted into link.

[QUOTE="byge"]

In conclusion i'll say that the game failed to achieve what it set out to do, Its motto play,create,share has become meaningless in the face of Sony's intervention in how user-generated content should be handled.

Grammaton-Cleric

While I agree that the situation with the user-generated content is anything but ideal, the fact remains that there are literally thousands of user created levels currently available, which frankly negates the assertion that LBP is a failure.

What you've done is taken one negative aspect of an otherwise brilliant endeavor and essentially dismissed everything else that LBP has gotten right, which is frankly an infantile and hyperbolic approach that immediately places your own credibility into question.

Copyright is a sticky legal area and while I agree that MM and Sony seem to be overreacting a tad, the truth is that this entire situation is very much new ground for everybody and I think it could take some time for all the issues to be fully ironed out. Was this situation causing a true dearth in user generated content, perhaps you'd have a more viable point, but considering that there are still plenty of excellent levels available makes your argument seem pretty flimsy.

I guess the bottom line is that employing the word "failure" to describe LBP is, at least to me, an offensive tactic and it really comes off as a pedantic, knee-jerk criticism. If that one unfortunate aspect of the game truly marginalizes everything else LBP does well, you seriously ought to get rid of the game and move onto something else.

What you seem to be ignoring is that the most major aspect of the game which is the creating and sharing levels aspect has been compromised due to Sony's actions. You claim that i took one negative aspect of the game but i took the most important one and which undoubtedly is the most used feature of the game by most gamers.

The Azure palace wasnt just a minor level, It was number 5 on 1ups top ten level list and the one at number 1 is the gradius level which will probably be deleted sooner or later due to copyright infringment.

Really you cant excuse Sony and Media Molecule for not proplery handling the copyright situation. They could have looked at how youtube deals with it and how mods have been doing it on the pc for years. To say that the situation doesnt have precedence is folly and uninformed. Was it that hard to implement a ratings system in the levels as one user above me stated?

Sony have obviously taken their stance on the issue and i dont see anything changing much besides moderators contacting level creators to remove blood, gore and copyrighted materials from their levels