A-Avatar (lawsuits in Madden, Guitar Hero, and Second Life for actions of avatars)

B – Banned in Games (lawsuits by Estavillo vs Sony, SD Cal Estavillo v. Sony Computer Entm’t Am. Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86821; along with others)

C-China – China shuts down World of Warcraft… twice. (Good story on Gamasutra)

D - Developer’s Corner ( a regular feature on this blog spotlighting a developer’s role in promoting fun and reducing lawsuits)

E-Everquest (the first, the groundbreaker)

F-Facebook (lawsuits over privacy and “scamming” games cause major changes in the principles on the Facebook platform)

G-Gamer’s Rights (Here, and on my own site)

H Harassment (Sexual) Article in the Guardian.

I- In-game bank (In Eve Online, a real in-world bank is embezzled)

J – Joystiq legal - still the best read every week; blazes the trail

K-Kurt Cobain …. his use in video game causes controversy and widespread comment about use of dead celebrities in video games

L-Lineage (the largest MMO in China)

M – Madden Football (sued by retired players for using their likenesses)

N-No Doubt …. sues Activision, is sued by Activision (lawsuit here)

O – online petition (for online game, Modern Warfare 2); gamers try to launch intiative for dedicated servers outside Activision control (FAILED)

P – Playstation Network (sued for updates which crippled add-on firmware)

Q – Questing – In WOW, Shacknews has an article about 9 problems of questing [[Author's Note - seriously, unless Qbert was sued in the last six months, just scraps here]].

R - Runescape; Jagex is the parent of Runescape

S – Second Life… a slow year for litigation, but these important lawsuits worth note (Bragg v Linden Labs, No. 06-08711, for land taken by LL, citation here)

T – Turbine sues Atari ; also Turbine mentioned here

U – User Interface; usability From the always worthwhile Gamasutra, a daily read.

V-Voice Actors (voting to decline union’s recommendation for new agreement)

W-World of Warcraft (sues to close Wow Glider add-on as an illegal “bot”; Virtually Blind still your best source)

X – Xbox; 1 million Xbox users banned

Y – Youth market; youth endangered

Z- Zynga (sues former developer for trade secrets)

My apologies to “bots”, “Lords of the Rings Online”, “virtual goods”, and others for the 26-sided tyrrany and limitations of the alphabet. Additions and corrections welcome; but if you think this type of a list is easy (complete with relevant links) try just doing a list with household goods.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

(People ask me all the time what my blog is about; when you find out, tell me in the comments?!)
Today’s post, however, is strictly informational. The full URLs are for your reference.

http://www.daz3d.com/sections/aboutus/eula/EULA_Content.pdf

DAZ3D
b. Governing Law, Jurisdiction, and Venue. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the
State of Utah. Jurisdiction and venue for the enforcement of this Agreement shall be found
exclusively in the courts within Utah County, State of Utah.

http://www.gizmoz.com/newsite/presite/terms.jsp?partner=studio

GIZMOZ
These Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy and the relationship between You and Gizmoz shall be
governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, USA,
excluding its conflicts of law rules.

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/web_info.php?section=Info&topic=terms_of_service

IMVU
These Terms and Conditions of Sale will be governed and interpreted pursuant to the laws
of the State of California, United States of America, for contracts to be executed and fully
performed therein and notwithstanding any principles of conflicts of law.

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html

Yahoo Avatar maker
You and Yahoo! each agree that the TOS and the relationship between the parties shall
be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict of law provisions

And a couple of newer ones:

http://www.evolver.com/account/termsandconditions.aspx

EVOLVER
This Agreement and your use of the Site is governed by, construed and enforced in
accordance with the internal substantive laws of the State of California.

http://www.frenzoo.com/beta/information.php?chapter=tos

Frenzoo
Frenzoo Limited, a Hong Kong registered company and the owner of www.frenzoo.com hereby authorises you to use, view and download this Web Site and animations, information, names, images, logos and icons (“Materials”) at this web site for non-commercial purposes only.

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I hope you can use or at least reference these Terms of Service in your choice of an avatar. Remember, except for copyright, right of publicity, “bad light cases”, plagiarism, and other concerns, why should you worry about your avatar? In my opinion, you should either have one designed (and pay for it) or you should compose one on your own and take the correct steps to copyright it. Failing that, read these agreements carefully before you click “Yes” in the box.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

Let’s break down the component parts first of all. No discussion of legal terms is complete without a glossary, so I’m going to give you the abridged version. There will also be a referral for outside reading to understand the history of community in video games.

Universal banning – A pipe dream. Not yet technologically possible from an economic standpoint. For example, that would be Sony (or Activision) or Microsoft feels you have created a grievance so heinous, or repeated on so many occasions, that your personal ID (not just your gamertag, or your machine-tag, or your IP address, but you PERSONALLY, are banned from their games online at any computer, any console, or any IP address.) Developers can only dream of this type of power.

Banned by gamertag – this is the way of most online games. Depending upon whether player is paying for the gaming, or whether it is free-to-subscribe (and paid via optional add-ons) the banning varies in effectiveness. Tracks you by username and billing/registration information. Obviously if free-to-subscribe it is simple (if you are dishonest) to give an email address and a fake name.

Banned by game console or IP address – This is the most used these days. Especially with Xbox360 and PS3 accounts now updating regularly so as to tie these to the internet, the difficulty of “just playing” and not connecting is very complicated. And so the banning effectively “bricks” the Xbox360 or the PS3 to any additional updates through the company servers.

Starting from most recent to a little earlier: here goes…

Bragg vs. Linden
A great article on Law.com about the banning of Bragg. It is insidiously complicated or notoriously simple, depending upon how you look at it. Here is your legal citation and synopsis, “After a dispute over a land auction, Linden seized Bragg’s virtual land as well as an account with $2,000. Bragg v. Linden Research Inc., No. 06-08711 (Chester Co., Pa., Ct. C.P.). ”

Dailytech tells the story of the estimated one million X-box live customers banned from using the service for having modded consoles. The quote from Microsoft is “When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban”

Activision’s proactive legal strategy to give cease-and-desist orders to Websites running programs/addons that Activision feels violates the terms of use. (The Cease and Desist letter posted at Play No Evil video-game security blog).

Blizzard bans WOW glider from ingame use, and is victorious in the lawsuit. This is another version where the users are permanently banned.

Amicus brief filed by Public Knowledge in the case. Incredible background if you’re asking “what’s modding?”.
Ongoing coverage of the case given by Virtually Blind from 2008. Still the superior coverage of the older cases.

Kotaku has a story about Blizzard banning 350,000 users in Battle.net. The justification and method listed is “The Diablo II CD keys associated with the closed Diablo II accounts are now restricted from playing on Battle.net for approximately 30 days. Repeat offenders will have their accounts closed and their CD keys permanently banned from Battle.net. As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net. ”

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Here are a couple of places to find some background on the philosophy of games, choices, and banning.

Interview with Raph Koster :A point he brings up during the discussion is that the biggest and most successful games on the market are the ones that present very little choices for the gamer, and pegs them into roles that need to be fulfilled or they fail (World of Warcraft is the example).

So to this lawyer, it makes sense that the games with the fewer choices would be the most vigilant about enforcement to restrict those choices (i.e. mods, add-ons, etc.).

2. Commentary on a video-games Website; “is there a banning quota?”

3. Again, a good sampling of the response from developers as far as banning games.

4. Posts tagged banning at Massively.com (A great resource for MMO news)

5. Why Governments aren’t Gods and God’s aren’t Governments. Great article, especially concerning the whole philosophical reasoning of why an operation must be able to govern in games.

6. And lastly, of course, one for the eggheads. Basically, an article that gave me a headache, so it MUST BE GOOD.

If you’re looking for a broad statement of philosophy from me about this subject, you can move on. It is like all games, the choices on banning reflect the choices of the developers. Whether that is an actionable offense by the developers to kick out a player forever from their world, that legal decision is in my opinion at least 5 or 10 years away at least.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

Mysteriously, most of the sites that list EULAs that I use as reference have dropped away over the past year or so.

All of these EULAs that I am sending your way are off the publisher’s front page, no deep-linking, and no commentary at all. Enjoy and use this as a resource for your gaming decisions.

1st Part:

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php Second Life Terms of Service

http://www.lotro.com/support/policies/218-eula (Lord of the Rings Online)

http://www.ea.com/1/product-eulas (All major EA games)

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html (World of Warcraft)

http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bin/soe.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=12248 (Everquest)

http://www.eveonline.com/pnp/eula.asp (Eve Online)

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/legal/user-agreements/aion-user-agreement.html (Aion)

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/legal/user-agreements/city-of-heroes-user-agreement.html (City of Heroes)

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/legal/user-agreements/lineage-2-user-agreement.html (Lineage 2)

http://www.habbo.com/papers/termsAndConditions (Habbo Hotel)

2nd Part: Choice of law and choice of forum (as of late 2007) (stolen with impunity from Benjamin Duranske’s excellent blog Virtually Blind- I did write the article that he excellently edited)

Online World Choice of Law Choice of Forum

IMVU State of California San Francisco County

Second Life State of California San Francisco County for all matters over $10k. Binding Non-Appearance Arbitration (Phone, Teleconference, Avatar) for Matters Under $10k.

There.com State of California California

The Sims Online England (for EU residents), State of California (for everyone else). England (for European Union residents), Northern California (for everyone else).

Active Worlds State of Massachusetts Arbitration required – either “on-line before the Active Worlds Tribunal” or before a panel of the American Arbitration Association Boston, Massachusetts.

Entropia Universe Sweden Sweden

World of Warcraft State of Delaware Arbitration required except for IP cases, computer crime, and claims for injunctive relieve. Arbitration to be initiated in Los Angeles, California (for international players), or at “any location convenient to you” (for U.S. players). All non-arbitration claims to be filed in Los Angeles, California.

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I’d request that my readers send in the Terms of Service links for any major games or virtual worlds that I have left out. Help me please keep this post strictly informational and not editorialize, I plan to write a short piece about EULAs in the near future where I will invite your excellent opinions…

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.