Course:Legal Constraints on Digital Creativity/Course Notes/08. Consumers
CONSUMER LAW CONSTRAINTS (advertising regulation; apprehension of physical or psychological harm)
ADDICTION & HEALTH
- Special to CNN – Report on Videogames, Pornography and the Destruction of American Males | GamePolitics | Implication is that all are addictive – too much sex & violence.
MINORS
Though not exclusively about children, in app purchase issue mostly is:
- ContractsProf Blog: “iTunes in-app purchases: Parents’ Relational Contract or Kids’ Separate, Voidable Contracts?”
- “How long until free to play and in-app purchases are regulated?”
- “How To Control Free-to-Play Spending?” – Rob Fahey – 27 April 2012
- “Mom, Please Feed My Apps! – Mobile-game critters need money from their young keepers, and parents are paying. Are the marketers of expensive e-trinkets too eager to take advantage of child consumers?” – Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2012
See also:
- Facebook faces lawsuit over sale of Credits to minors (Update) | paidContent
- Prof. Sara Grimes paper in International Journal of Communications Law & Policy – “ Kids’ Ad Play: Regulating Children’s Advergames in the Converging Media Content.”
This is going to be a relatively short post, because two other writers have already a lot of my work for me. : Step 1: read Rob Fahey’s editorial on Gamesindustry.biz: “How to control free-to-play spending?“ : Step 2: read this Wall Street Journal feature: “Mom, please feed my apps!”
DIGITAL GOODS & CONSUMER RELATIONSHIPS
- The role of carriers is a consumer protection problem primarily (though it can in extreme cases turn into a freedom of expression-speech/freedom to receive expression-speech problem):
- @GamePolitics: Public Knowledge Calls on Government to Regulate Data Capping http://t.co/F5wNJM0D #eca
- The “Gacha Got’Ya”:
- @gamerlaw: Fascinating and worrying, via @rodolfor and @bonder:Japanese Government To Regulate Social Game Mechanism http://t.co/EmvfYs1r
- “Complete Gacha”: Japanese Government To Regulate Social Game Mechanism Soon”: “In this mechanism, players who want to get a special/rare item must get a set of other items through gacha first. For instance, the user must first get item A through gacha, then item B (also through gacha), then C and D – and only if they can get items A-D (complete gacha), they get the rare item…..The main bullet point here is that some of these rare items can’t be obtained in any other way (through “grinding” in the game or otherwise) but might be necessary to complete a deck of cards, for example…..This might sound like a relatively mild regulation, but heavy spenders (whales) in particular are the target group for complete gacha (the Yomiuri speaks of cases where players spend “tens of thousands of yen” just to complete sets- anecdotally, this doesn’t surprise me at all).”
- Related to the above: @TheNextWeb: “Japan’s mobile gaming firms to work with authorities to phase out controversial game feature” http://t.co/k9nnHj5T by @jonrussell
- Which led to…..”News – Report: Japanese government restricts controversial virtual goods practice” http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/170610/Report_Japanese_government_restricts_controversial_virtual_goods_practice.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29
- And the final word relating the issue to gaming regulations everywhere: @gamerlaw: New post: some thoughts about gacha by Jas Purewal – http://t.co/sThpcFGt
- http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2012/05/some-thoughts-about-gacha.html
- @gamerlaw: “I hear Diablo3 suffering high account hacking, players having items stolen for auction sale. Clear virtual goods legal issue for Blizzard.” Original Message: http://twitter.com/gamerlaw/status/205576109608271873
- But @Kotaku: Blizzard: “Number of Players Claiming Hacked Diablo III Accounts ‘Extremely Small’” http://t.co/OGN6Qnzy