[Air-L] Video Game Research - Fair Use?

Fri May 6 07:53:04 PDT 2016

Thank you very much for your help Dan and Patricia – yes, I suppose what I am intending to do is exhibition rather than distribution, which may give me more leniency. There is some talk in UK copyright about it being more acceptable to exhibit materials on ‘dedicated terminals’, which would apply to my study. 

Surprised to hear that video games aren’t included in the UK as audiovisual works. Presumably they are protected as software then?

For any other UK researchers, there is some info published by the government which may be useful: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright. 

Thanks again!

Ben

From: Patricia Aufderheide [mailto:paufder at american.edu] 
Sent: Friday, May 6, 2016 2:14 PM
To: Dan L. Burk <dburk at uci.edu>
Cc: Benjamin Turpin <b.turpin at outlook.com>; air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Video Game Research - Fair Use?

Well, said, Dan, thank you for the nuances and the help to Ben! And I do hope that US researchers can gain greater awareness of their resources through this exchange, and that Ben gets to do his research with the hope that Dan holds out! 

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:10 PM, Dan L. Burk <dburk at uci.edu <mailto:dburk at uci.edu> > wrote:

Benjamin's question is rather more complicated than that.

I was on a panel in London a few weeks ago, and was surprised to learn that UK courts do not treat video games as audiovisual works, as they would be in the U.S.  The concept is not available to them, which has produced some fairly "dodgy" (as my UK colleagues would say) jurisprudence regarding computer games.

My instinct is that what Benjamin wants to do, display and/or performance of a lawfully owned copy of a game, is probably outside the exclusive rights of the copyright holder, and you would never need to reach the fair dealing issue.  But I am poignantly aware of my own limitations on the subject, which is why I recommended talking to some actual experts.

One of the benefits of an international organization (and an international listserv) is that one learns to become somewhat more modest about the reach of one's localized knowledge.  Which is a valuable thing.

DLB

On 2016-05-05 15:50, Patricia Aufderheide wrote:

So true that copyright law is nationally based! Thank you for that reminder, Dan! So use the copyright law where you are based. In some nations, fair dealing can either be ample (Canada's fair dealing in some cases allows for more amplitude than US fair use!), specifically exempt research, or have unsuspected crevices. Some nations have a "right of quotation" clause that can be filled with practice--among them South Africa, and all the Scandinavian nations. So definitely explore your options! 

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 6:46 PM, Dan L. Burk <dburk at uci.edu <mailto:dburk at uci.edu> > wrote:

Please see my previous message regarding fair dealing in the UK.

I am a big fan of the fair use best practices project for the U.S., and possibly for jurisdictions like Israel that have emulated the U.S., but the doctrine is not universal.  YMMV.

Regards, DLB

On 2016-05-05 15:05, Patricia Aufderheide wrote:

Delighted to share with you clear guidance from communication researchers,
where you can see the practices that will put you squarely within fair use
for your research:
http://archive.cmsimpact.org/fair-use/related-materials/codes/code-best-practices-fair-use-scholarly-research-communication
(look at the third category)
Created by ICA scholars and endorsed as well by NCA. On their websites,
it's only a PDF but if you want to be assured that a national association
of scholars has vetted this, here are the two websites:
http://www.icahdq.org/pubs/reports/fairuse.pdf
https://www.natcom.org/uploadedFiles/More_Scholarly_Resources/Publishing_Primer/PDF-publishingprimer-fair_use.pdf

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 6:02 PM, Benjamin Turpin <b.turpin at outlook.com <mailto:b.turpin at outlook.com> >
wrote:

Hello all, I'm in the process of planning a research project that will involve recording how players emotionally and cognitively respond to particular types of video games. I'm hoping to allow participants to play a commercially available game for 60-90 minutes in lab conditions. There will be three different games with ten participants for each game. I had intended to use my personal copies of these games (purchased on Steam) for the experiment, but am unsure if this would make me legally vulnerable without seeking permission of the developers. Does anyone have any knowledge of whether this type of distribution would be considered 'fair use' of copyrighted materials? Any advice much appreciated! Ben Turpin PhD Student, Sociology University of Essex _______________________________________________ The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org>  mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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Sample *Reclaiming Fair Use! * <http://cmsimpact.org/reclaiming>

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