Play Machinima Law - Day 1

First of all, imagine a remarkable variety of Machinima panelists (myself included!) in a room full of seasoned video game attorneys from the likes of EA, Microsoft, Blizzard, and some brilliant specialists in commercial litigation, copyright, intellectual property, and fair use from powerful law firms and legal organizations. Now add in professors, law students, and other Machinima Experts with a pile of writers, bloggers, and news organizations chattering away on their keyboards.

Trust me, not a single one of you could have possibly made it through the first day of this conference without questioning that this was actually happening. An entire day of panels and discussion entirely devoted to the future of Machinima Law!

So I'd like to tell you about everything, but I don't have much time before I'm riding back over to the law center so here's a quick rundown.

My presentation went very well, I discussed why Machinima is a great tool for film makers, how difficult it is to abide by the rules, advertisers that are anxious to get their hands on Machinima but have no idea how to do it, content restrictions, third party software and what you could call the "grey area". Joseph DeLappe, J. Joshua Diltz, and Douglas Gayeton also gave excellent presentations during the morning panel moderated by Henry Lowood.

"The Rules of Play" moderated by Julie Ahrens helped to digest the EULA (end user license agreement, you know, that thing you click accept on each time WoW has a new patch), issues with Machinima Creation and Distribution, and even had attorneys debating on Copyright and Fair Use (these are the laws that protect many of us). I was surprised at the number of times the panelists brought up specific topics from my presentation and several times I questioned the panel to clarify positions I felt strongly about, like how their proposed legislation for non-commercial Machinima would quickly be capitalized on by everyone but the creator.

At the end of the first day, I felt good about the information that was shared. I really feel like the attendees pressed some very controversial questions to the panels and it was perfectly clear that the current path is flawed. Though it may never be perfect, there is certainly a better way we can move forward.

Today I have another panel to attend, then afterwards will be attending an invitation only discussion focusing on a draft guide for makers of game-based videos and how the law applies to our work (this will be very interesting!).

Last thoughts: Thanks to Brandon Dennis (Oxhorn) for coming out, we always have a good time! Also, thanks to everybody who attended the after hours fun at Gordon Biersch, especially Joseph for getting me back to my hotel! And big props to Henry Lowood, Lauren Gelman, and Julie Ahrens, and all the others who helped to organize the Play Machinima Law conference at Stanford Law School.