bloodykitty.com

Just been blogged this at boymeetsgame: No Japanese Games for Europe. A HK website has been banned from selling Japanese Playstation/PSP stuff to the whole of EU. Don’t know too much about their bans on parallel importing but the judge saw no difference between the site operating from HK or operating from the EU. I don’t know if they have exceptions for products that aren’t available in the UK, I’m assuming not. Our rules on parallel imports are a lot more liberal but I think we still ban parallel imports of computer software (which should include games). It’s all a little dodgy how the law supports such anti-competitive policies. If you want to find out more on parallel imports, this site has some a lot links to articles. Also check out the press release on the HK company’s website, they had a little rant about Sony:

“Fighting multiple lawsuits in different countries at the same time and paying high premiums to expensive lawyers is an overwhelming situation for a small company like Lik Sang. Launching separate court actions with separate claims and different judges is completely unnecessary, except for the fact that it helps reaching one single target: outspend Lik-Sang to death. Pay beyond”, said Pascal Clarysse, Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com, clearly annoyed by the unfair situation. “And contrary to their claim, I don’t believe they are suffering ‘losses and damages’ through Lik-Sang’s activity”.

It does make me think what rights should we have to information, to hear or see original sources be they games, movies, mashups, youTube videos or books. If a game/movie/book only is released in one country, what rights do people in other countries have to access it?

[Edit, since this post Lik-Sang have posted notice that they are CLOSING DOWN which really really sucks. Here’s a copy of their press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - OUT OF BUSINESS NOTICE

Hong Kong, October 24th of 2006 - Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang’s sales of PSP consoles unlawful.

As of today, Lik-Sang.com will not be in the position to accept any new orders and will cancel and refund all existing orders that have already been placed. Furthermore, Lik-Sang is working closely with banks and PayPal to refund any store credits held by the company, and the customer support department is taking care of any open transactions such as pending RMAs or repairs and shipping related matters. The staff of Lik-Sang will make sure that nobody will get hurt in the crossfire of this ordeal.

A Sony spokesperson declined to comment directly on the lawsuit against Lik-Sang, but recently went on to tell Gamesindustry.biz that “ultimately, we’re trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera; is not - in PS3’s case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software; will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs; and will not be covered by warranty”.

Lik Sang strongly disagrees with Sony’s opinion that their customers need this kind of protection and pointed out that PSP consoles shipped from Lik-Sang contained genuine Sony 100V-240V AC Adapters that carry CE and other safety marks and are compatible world wide. All PSP consoles were in conformity with all EU and UK consumer safety regulations.

Furthermore, Sony have failed to disclose to the London High Court that not only the world wide gaming community in more than 100 countries relied on Lik-Sang for their gaming needs, but also Sony Europe’s very own top directors repeatedly got their Sony PSP hard or software imports in nicely packed Lik-Sang parcels with free Lik-Sang Mugs or Lik-Sang Badge Holders, starting just two days after Japan’s official release, as early as 14th of December 2004 (more than nine months earlier than the legal action). The list of PSP related Sony Europe orders reads like the who’s who of the videogames industry, and includes Ray Maguire (Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Alan Duncan (UK Marketing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Chris Sorrell (Creative Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Rob Parkin (Development Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited), just to name a few.

“Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it”, stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.

“Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.”

Well it’s saved me heaps of money, was seriously considering getting a PSP just to play Loco Roco. Was also thinking of getting another PS2 (the first one broke not long after the end of warranty). There’s no way that’s going to happen anytime soon. Stupid Sony. Who will sell me my navy blue DS Lite now? ]

The technology now exists for you to have your own face on characters that you play in games. I blogged about it briefly on Andrew’s blog. It’s a new frontier in technology, but also a new frontier in the effect on gamers’ psyches. It’s all a bit scary, but too cool. I hate that with technology, things you could only dream about are starting to become real possibilities and actualities which rocks but they also come with lots of new ethical dilemmas which really sucks. Ah the tradeoffs, I feel for those beetles.

This is a great video from Dove on our perceptions of beauty. At a time when even young children have growing rates of eating disorders, we should be looking at the responsibility that advertising and the media should take for the growing dissatisfaction in our physical self-perception much in the way advertising of obesity causing foods is now being criticised. It’s great to see an ad like this that highlights how the images that we are supposed to aspire to are often figments of illusion. Actresses get in body models, lenses are vaselined, cellulite is airbrushed out, legs are stretched, pimples disappear… but the end result perfect images are all presented as the norm and any deviations are faults. At the very least, there should be a disclaimer that a particular image has been Photoshop-ed*.

Though you have to remember, Dove is not a standalone company, it is housed by Unilever which includes brands like Lynx that feature impossibly good looking women who probably do get Photoshop-ed (but I do find their ads hilarious, even if it’s just the thought that a naff deoderant can suddenly make some guy irresistable). And Unilever, like most big companies, is far from squeaky clean. So it does make you think how much of it really is just their brand differentiation as opposed to any real desire for ethical good. Like with the amazing success of pink branding to help breast cancer fundraising, social conscience can be a very profitable brand. I did find it a little ironic that substances that research has suggested possible carcinogenic links like artificial pink strawberry fillings (Tim Tams) and PET packaging (bottled water) were included in the list of fundraising products. Back to Dove though, despite questions to their motives, it is great to see people of different weights, ages and looks being represented because there is so little variety in advertising and ads. Hopefully, this will make commercial sense and other companies will be tempted to try out “real” people as models.

*both photoshoped and photoshopped look really weird to me. Maybe it should be “Photoshop’ed”? Argghhhhhh!!!

I have to say I am a little uncomfortable with this ad.

Maybe it’s the idea that as the congressmen weren’t “scientists or doctors” they didn’t have a right to what is essentially an ethical opinion. That you have to have a considerable background in medical science before you can say what you feel is wrong or right, is a really disturbing argument that seems to have some currency in the pro side of the debate. That’s not to say that you don’t take in views and evidence from scientists and doctors, but just that once you understand the process, it becomes a very difficult ethical dilemma even for those who aren’t evangelical christians. I did a course on bioethics and I still don’t know which side I’m on with certain types of stem cells, I’m just hoping that something will come out of this research into adult stem cells, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more work done in that area.

Maybe I’m just uncomfortable with this style of political lobbying and how dirty the whole system is in general - even when your causes have good intentions. Maybe it would have felt cleaner if they focussed on opinion polls, from what I gather most Americans support the research, though I don’t know about those constituencies in particular.

Anyway, sometimes I wonder how much any of this matters, to quote Keynes, “in the very long run we are all dead”. Nature has her own ways of combating population imbalances and the more we combat one disease, the more we’re likely to end up with another more horrible one. Who knows maybe we’ll all be dead of bird flu in twenty years.

One of Cory Doctorow’s students just started up a blog documenting the incredible small print that we’re subjected to daily. It’s called the Small Print Project and people are invited to post their experiences of dodgy clauses that they’ve noticed. It’s quite bizarre what companies try and impose, this one example from Cory:

Just last week, I had to cancel a speaking engagement at Disney Studios, whose speaker agreement includes a clause in which you promise never to use the word Disney again in an article or story without their written permission (!). This is apparently non-negotiable. [BoingBoing]

I’ve even seen End User Agreements on books even, which is pretty weird and most likely, unenforceable.

Google’s billions have come from selling keyword searches. So I can pay $X to come up in their list of advertisers whenever someone searches for “blogging”, “cats”, “Sydney” etc, no one really has a problem with that. However, what Google also does is use trademarks as keywords. So if you were Sony you can pay to have your ad come up everytime someone searches for “Panasonic”. This has annoyed some people in recent years and resulted Google being sued for a variety of various trademark/consumer law infringements.

I’ve always thought it incredible that anyone could possibly find the use of keywords in a search engine “trademark use” or in any reasonable way, deceptive, but the world’s a funny place. Google has already lost a couple of cases in France: One against Louis Vuitton for “trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising” and one against a chain of hotels. Trademark counterfeiting! How incredible is that? Anyway, at least a judge in the US has seen fit to dismiss a trademark/keyword case against Google last month.

Apparently there’s “very little chance” of reaching an agreement on a unified format but NEC is creating a multiformat DVD player that will play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Not that I’m convinced that we really are so desperate for HD, especially when a whole chunk of the extra capacity goes to housing DRM (even Bill Gates labels the extra lengths taken by Blu-Ray as “anti-consumer”… apparently why he’s supporting HDTV not Microsoft’s desire to screw Sony in their “battle for the living room”). But while this is good for consumers in the short term in that they don’t have to choose between formats, it just means prolonging the war and is unlikely to encourage people to switch their movie collections wholesale because one or none may win out rendering that investment as useless as your video collection is now. If there’s no incentive for a wholesale upgrade then it is unlikely that the sweet spot of demand will be reached to bring the prices down which is necessary to make the market viable. And while we’re all waiting round for a decision to be made and prices to come down, someone will come up with a better technology. Here’s hoping anyway, it would serve them all right.

The European Office of Trade Marks and Designs has knocked back the application from Hormel, the maker of the ham in a can Spam, to trademark “spam” with regards to “services to avoid or suppress unsolicited emails”, and the “creation and maintenance of computer software; technical consultancy, particularly in combination with network services; [and] providing of expertise, engineering services and technical consulting services [related to junk email]”.

The company has been embroiled in a string of trademark disputes over the matter in the United States and elsewhere, fighting product names such as SpamBop, Spam Arrest, and Spam Cube. “We do not object to use of this slang term to describe (unsolicited commercial email),” the company said on its website, “although we do object to the use of the word “spam” as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term.” [Spam-maker loses bid to trademark ’spam’ - smh.com.au]

While I’m happy about the outcome as “spam” has been generified for unsolicited correspondence, can’t really them blame trying though, as Hormel point out:

“Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, ‘Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk email?’” [SMH link again]

Shall be interesting to see how they fare in other jurisdictions and what implications that has for Apple’s recent clampdown on “pod” (like five years too late!)

[Edit Spambop claims to be the first EU trademark using spam for this use].

Star Wars: Collecting | Lucasfilm Wins Lawsuit Against Stormtrooper Pirate

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has awarded Lucasfilm Ltd. $20 million in damages in a copyright infringement and unfair competition case against the British firm Shepperton Design Studios and its owner, Andrew Ainsworth. The court found that Shepperton Design Studios had been marketing unlicensed copies of stormtrooper helmets and costumes, and TIE fighter pilot helmets from the Star Wars films, as well as making misleading claims about the authenticity and origins of these items.

It was a relief though to see that Lucasfilms weren’t going to stop fans from making their own replicas.

“Lucasfilm vigorously protects its intellectual property rights in Star Wars,” said Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing. Roffman noted that many Star Wars fans around the world produce replicas of Star Wars costumes for their own personal use and enjoyment, an activity to which Lucasfilm Ltd. has no objection.

In an OpEd piece in the NY Times, Eugene Hickok thinks it is a good idea that the US government to standardise/regulate/control the US tertiary system. Apparently this is a flow on from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 which aimed to increase the performance of primary and secondary education in the US through standards based/outcome-based education reform. The current Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings, is looking to make reforms in tertiary sector.

Yes, there are a lot of left-wing identifying supporters at universities but is that a reason for the petty hatred of those who want to bring down the system (funnily, they get called “conservatives”)? It really is a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Americans should have more information about higher education curriculum and teaching. Higher education in this country differs substantially from elementary and high school education, most obviously in what is offered and how it is offered. The academy responds to the demands of disciplines and faculty. It is a culture that cherishes independence and freedom. And it is a culture seriously out of touch with much of America.

I find the last two sentences quite incredible. A culture that “cherishes independence and freedom” is “seriously out of touch with much of America”. Perhaps that is true under the Bush Administration. The fear of that academic independence is disturbing:

Faculty members decide what they want to teach and when they want to teach, if, indeed, they teach at all. This is particularly true regarding undergraduate instruction, which is something of an afterthought on many campuses. Faculty members typically spend fewer than 200 hours a year in the classroom. That amounts to just five 40-hour weeks.

Because a good academic is judged by his/her face to face teaching hours. What about research so that you actually have something up to date and relevant to teach? What about writing up that research so that you share your knowledge and progress your field? What about administration and applying for funding so that your department can grow and new opportunities for students? What about preparing  your classes? What about marking? What about the time it takes to create the mountain loads of bureaucracy any sort of “accountable” system creates? Talk of “accountability” really just comes down to a desire to control:

Take a look at what passes for subjects of scholarly and instructional focus on campuses. Should taxpayer dollars really go to underwrite courses in such things as the history of comic book art? Policy makers and tuition payers need to be made aware of what sorts of courses institutions consider appropriate to fulfill core academic requirements, if anything resembling an academic core even exists. And there needs to be a greater emphasis on teaching students what they need to know, rather than what faculty want to talk about.

Who decides at a tertiary level what students “need to know”? I see some basis for general standards at primary and secondary levels because that is when you learn your core skills and have little or no choice as a child, your will being controlled by others (though there has been criticism of standards based teaching as resulting in “teaching to the test”). However, as an adult, you have free will and the responsibility to decide what you want or need from life. What does anyone “need to know” at a university level? If there is enough interest in the history of comic book art, why shouldn’t it be offered? Who is to say that it may not prove more useful in terms of jobs and return of skills to the community (thus justify taxpayer investment) than a course in Descartes or the French Revolution? In any case, comic books are an important part of our culture and history. If we didn’t have anyone studying it, an understanding of an important facet of our society would be lost. So the danger of imposing a centralised values system on to the myriad of academic interests becomes clear. We don’t know what future generations may find important to study and preserve. One only needs to take a look at the disdain towards Impressionists at the beginning of last century and the now astronomical values of their paintings to show how wrong people can get it. With diversity, more gets studied, more gets preserved.

What are “core academic requirements” anyway? There are many ways of teaching a subject. If course is professional then there are professional boards to assess
whether a university’s course fulfils their profession’s core
competencies. There are plenty of universities in the US, if “what the Faculty wants to talk about” doesn’t correspond with student needs and expectations, then it will be valued poorly by the market and it won’t attract the necessary students to run the course.

In any case, they should study the Australian system more before they start thinking “accountability” will make for better universities. It really just seems more about bureaucratic control. The amount of paperwork created by the Australian federal tertiary education reforms is immense and largely incomprehensible and the rules and policies have insinuated themselves into much of the fabric of academic life. It very much is the government driving the curriculum agendas of the major universities and that worries me deeply. I guess maybe principles of independence and freedom are out of touch with much of Australia too.