EA and Belgium

                                                             EA and Belgium

Gambling is a highly addictive habit from what we have seen, recently though its been making a move in the gaming world in the form of “Loot boxes”. Loot boxes are items that can be opened like a pack of Pokémon cards and has random items for the game it is in. Some people might not have an issue with this but Belgium seems to be having a bit of an issue with it.  According to an article named “Belgium Investigates EA for Loot Box Saga” the country seems to be taking the problem of them to a higher level by launching a criminal investigation on the developer for its use of Loot Boxes in its FIFA game series. What made the government of Belgium decide to launch an entire investigation on this developer is my main question.  The developer EA has been known to love money and their sources of revenue as seen in Battlefront 2 (2017) and in their push for yearly games like FIFA, and most importantly they are very protective of their microtransations to the point where they denied to remove the lootboxes in FIFA when requested to by the Belgium Government: “However while all other developers have agreed to remove the loot boxes from the Belgian versions of their games, EA has refused to meet this request.” The biggest question here is why they are denying to remove something that other developers have removed in their games.  EA seems to be very protective of these lootboxes as well to the point where their own CEO stated that they were not gambling and has been very protective of this claim. After some time the company was then put under a criminal investigation which still has not concluded, but the developer has made these loot boxes “include odds for the very first time, as well as giving players a breakdown of what they stand to gain from each loot box they purchase.” This seems to have made many people but does it really fix the problem? I feel its like telling someone at a gambling table that their odds of winning are 1 in 100. The investigation is sure to be an interesting one though and I will be waiting for the results.

Article 13

                                                                Article 13

                                                              By: Samuel Miranda

The hot news at the moment seems to be filled by the European Parliaments choice to accept copyright law changes that included the controversial articles 11, and 13. According to some musicians and creators the laws are necessary in order to fairly compensate artists, but what they mean by “fairly compensated” they never elaborate on. The laws aren’t entirely in place yet due to the leaders of the EU’s member states needing to sign off on it and after that the individual countries needing to put the laws in place. In the BBC’s article on the copyright changes they state that the laws would require all internet platforms to filter content put online by users which is being called an excessive restriction of freedom of speech. How strict this filter is going to be is very lightly talked about later in the article which states that Parodies would not violate the laws. A point that caught my confusion was where they stated that “Article 11 is also controversial because it forces online platforms to pay news organisations for the use of their content.” My confusion starts where they state online platforms would be forced to pay for news which makes no sense seeing as it is news and not something you can copyright. Imagine if CNN breaks a news story and asks for payment when any other news station reports on the story, it doesn’t make sense. Although the final version clarifies that platforms wouldn’t be forced to pay for hyperlinks which was what people thought would be the case but they still don’t say what they mean by paying for use of their content.  In the article that the BBC made there is a quote from EU commissioners Andrus Ansip and Mariya Gabriel in which they state that the change is “an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union.” This is an interesting statement due to it implying that the copyright rules are far out of date when they really aren’t the only issues you can see about copyright happen when large companies strike down content that is made by users on sites like YouTube and claiming all revenue for a piece of the companies’ content being used in a 30 second parody from a 20 minute long video. (Source: Jameskii)  This is where the law stating that parodies would be fine is a good part. The article then goes on to quote Phil Sherrell who is the head of media, entertainment and sports at a company called Bird & Bird with “Rights holders will be delighted as the directive provides them with additional rights and should strengthen their ability to negotiate royalty payments from online platforms for use of their work.” The big question I have here is why do they need additional rights when the copyright system already works for them to the point of being able to ignore fair use in a parody. The laws seem to be over doing it, a lot of parliament say that it would be doing the internet a great favour, but the entire thing is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Gannon Hall

                

You have a lot of people that you go to class with, but how many do you know? Do you talk to people outside of your small friend group? You may have heard bits and pieces about other people but never actually know them in full. Maybe you’ve talked to them a bit, but do you know all their interesting quirks and hobbies? Let me ask you if you know Gannon and all his hobbies?

           

            Weekends are the time you usually use to relax from the stress of the week, but Gannon sometimes enjoys golfing on these weekends. You don’t see many people who golf these days. All the golfers you hear about today are people who go pro with it and are in their early 30’s to mid 40’s, Gannon is however just in his high school years. He says that the reason he likes playing golf is because his family just loved playing it and played it around him a lot when he was younger. To this day he is an avid golfer and is on the golf team. Golf isn’t his only interesting hobby he has, Gannon also enjoys selling shoes. You would usually see people just getting a job to earn some money, but Gannon decided against that and he chose to start reselling shoes.

            

             Gannon seems to be a rather interesting person, filling his weekends with selling shoes and golf when the rest of us usually are relaxing or playing a more common sport.  You may not have known these things but now thanks to my brief interview with him and my choice to share the fact he enjoys golf and selling shoes. 

Samuel Miranda.