ESA Lobbying Against ‘Stop Killing Games’: Hosting Private Minecraft Servers Is Illegal Piracy

from the um-no-it-isn’t dept

As we mentioned previously, the Stop Killing Games movement has come to America and there is currently an effort to get some legislation based on the movement’s goals on the books in California. The movement hit a snag recently when the written version of the bill failed to make it out of committee on a vote of 4 in favor, 3 against, and 4 abstaining. It’s the abstaining votes that were the problem, resulting in not enough yes votes to move forward. But, importantly, the committee also left the door open to reconsider the bill at a later time.

The committee unanimously voted in favor of granting the bill reconsideration, meaning it could come back before this group of state senators. Assemblymember Chris Ward introduced the bill in February and it passed the California State Assembly 43-16 in late May.

That said, the abstentions prevented the bill’s progression for now. “Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session,” a volunteer with the Stop Killing Games campaign (which supported the bill) noted on Reddit. “That is the loss.”

There was active lobbying against the bill in committee hearings, primarily from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). And what is now getting a great deal of attention is the fact that ESA’s lobbyist either lied to the committee in those hearings, or else they have absolutely no fucking clue what they’re talking about. And if you need the prime example of what we’re talking about here, you need only understand that one lobbyist claimed that anyone hosting a private Minecraft server is doing “illegal piracy.” The lobbyist in question would be Jennifer Gibbons, the ESA’s VP for State Govt. Affairs.

Gibbons was responding to a comment made by California state assemblymember Chris Ward—who introduced the bill—regarding the possibility of keeping games alive with private servers. “Minecraft is currently hosted by community servers, Call of Duty [has] community servers, so it’s an option that is out there, in existence here today.”

Gibbons cut in: “They’re illegal. They are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.”

Asked by California state senator Caroline Menjivar as to whether this was “like the black market of videogames?” Gibbons responded “Yes. In fact, we consider it piracy. We have lawsuits, two pending lawsuits, against private servers right now, and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in their Notorious Markets Reports on counterfeiting and piracy has named some of these big private servers as a notorious market.” A notorious market refers to a market where intellectual property infringement is rife—think something like The Pirate Bay.

The ignorance here, if that’s what this is, is astounding. As PC Gamer goes on to note, it is true that select private Minecraft and COD servers have been designated as notorious markets by the USTR in some cases. Those are servers that actually do make some games playable without the otherwise required subscription. World of Warcraft servers are a common target for this sort of designation.

But to map that onto Minecraft private servers, which are not only allowed to exist, but actively encouraged in use by Microsoft directly, is insane. The way you host a private Minecraft server, to start, is by going to Microsoft’s own site to get the .jar file you need to run it. The company is making it available, knowingly and on purpose. In no sense is that piracy, copyright infringement, or illegal. Like… at all.

Given the opportunity to correct themselves, however, the ESA doubled down.

In a statement to PC Gamer, the ESA wrote that, so far as it’s concerned, “Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them.”

Private servers only infringe on the IP of game publishers if they restrict their use. That’s the entire point that the folks at Stop Killing Games are making. If publishers don’t want to keep their online games available, they could simply allow, or be compelled to allow, private servers to do the job for them. If it’s allowed, it’s not piracy. This really isn’t that hard.

I honestly have no idea whether this is ignorance or malice at work. I find it very hard to believe that someone in Gibbons position could possibly be this confused on a topic she’s been tasked with lobbying against. On the other hand, the claim is so plainly wrong that it’s an incredibly stupid lie if that’s in fact what this is.

Hopefully this sort of thing will be part of the discussion when, or if, the legislation is reconsidered in the future.

Filed Under: california, call of duty, jennifer gibbons, minecraft, private servers, stop killing games, video games

Companies: esa, microsoft