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That's like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
That’s like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
No actually, it's like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library licensing a sample correctly.
Not that they like money from Steam despite the games having a licence for the music. If I read the article right.
These idiotic lawsuits. First of all, this isn't even Valves responsibility. Second, Steam/Valve are small frys compared to Amazon/Apple/Google/Microsoft. In gaming they may be smaller than Sony and Nintendo and those two have full on closed software platforms. Steam is one software store among many on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. All these groups want to enshittify PC gaming. They want to enshittify personal computing in general. Turn pre-iPhone smartphone operating systems into iOS
What even is this lawsuit? Can somebody help me understand the accusation(s)?
Because it kind of reads like "you sell games that have our music, and don't pay us" which obviously makes no sense. Most of the article is absolute fluff.
P1: prs is suing valve.
P2: valve doesn't have a license to.... Do what? Is this extortion?
P3: prs music is on steam.
P4: valve ignores us. We want to sue them for infringing "the UK's s20 copyright, designs, patents act 1988"
P5: musicians work hard. Prs protec.
P6: music important. Musicians important.
Sounds a lot like a license troll. Probably the specific court and potential violation of a law were picked with care. Perhaps they looked through valve's terms in advance to find a loophole, design their own terms to exploit that etc.
If they sued games like Beat Hazard for letting players use their own music in the game, that'd be like suing a media player for letting people play music with it.
So imagine how much dumber this is.
Sounds like they want to get paid twice.
But the game publishers already had licence, and if they didn't have a licence then their beef is with the publishers not the storefront.
Anyway I've bought GTA V from physical brick and mortar stores in the past, so are they going to start suing the brick and mortar stores as well?
Hopefully they lose this case because copyright law is an absolute joke. It hasn't been fit for purpose for about 20 years.
Do these lawsuits backfire if the ones suing lose? Cuz this is very clearly not on valve to sort but the games. I'm guessing they are hoping to strike gold with 1 lawsuit as opposed to having to go after the game developers individually, who may just stop using their work in the future which valve can't do.. because they don't use their work already.
But is it just a case you made lawsuit you lost, oh well some lawyer fees and it's over? Or do they have to pay valve for wasting their time and their legal expenses too?
My hate of the copyright-ownership side of Hollywood / Nashville / Atlanta, etc. has been burning white hot since the days that the RIAA was suing people using P2P networks. But, I had to admit that at least they could probably make a valid claim for copyright infringement. But this?!
It's interesting how it's the "Performing Right Society" (which I've never heard of). The "performing" part of that suggests that maybe they have an issue with people sharing clips containing music, or live streaming games where they share music. But, again, why Valve? Sure, people can share clips with friends. And, occasionally you see developers streaming their games. But, nobody is really "performing" live streams on Steam. I suspect they just think Valve is rich and so they can strong-arm them and Valve will settle to make them go away. I hope they bit off more than they can chew. Valve is indeed rich, and they have a tendency to be stubborn. I think they might well fight, and fight hard.
I wish a possible outcome was that the PRS ceased to exist. But, I suspect they're like a flea or something, and even if you knock them off from this attempt to suck someone's blood, you can't kill them, and they'll just find another victim.
Unless valve is ignoring court judgments that the content is infringing they can GTFO.
I feel like they should get a committee of people together who understand how technology works before they start making laws about it
Oi do you have your music loicense?
I think ever since Valve fought through their first lawsuit with Sierra and lucked out with them finding evidence showing destruction of evidence, they probably developed zero appetite to fold for frivolous lawsuits lol.
Can't they just leave the one company that's been consistently good to its customers alone?
Once again reminding people that you can sue anyone for anything. Doesn't mean it'll go anywhere
What's the VPN uptake in the UK these days, considering the state of government restrictions and surveillance lately? If Valve just said fuck it and pulled out of the market, would they even take a financial hit? Or would most of that revenue magically shift to other countries/currencies?
For the benefit of those here suggesting this is a spurious or vexatious lawsuit: in the UK, it's standard for a plaintiff to be forced to pay all the respondent's legal fees if they lose.
So... this is still a ridiculous case, but they're wealthy enough they aren't too worried even if they lose it? All right.
