Re consolidation:
Some sites (MobyGames or 'Hall of Light' for Amiga games come to my mind) are already water-marking their pictures (box-scans and screen shots) because they suspect that others rip off their work.
It's always funny that the sites that give a shit on copyright try to prevent others from stealing their own stuff...
Amen, brother. If I were a copyright owner, I'd go after them with diligence just because of that. As far as I'm concerned stuff like screenshots or photos of box art, etc., ought to be in the public domain. I'm sorry, but it doesn't require any creativity to hit "PRINT SCREEN" during a game to take a screenshot and upload it to a website. The creativity was done the animators and graphic artists, not the idiot with the keyboard.
I suppose it is a bit of thin ice though. If we said that the game developer ought to have copyright control over screenshots, then they could easily forbid critical reviews from using any such images. That could have a drastic effect on the reliability of reviews, since only the ones that sucked up could have access to the images.
Obviously, if the photographer has to put a lot of work into arranging the materials, lighting, and so on, that's creative effort and ought to be protected. Simply putting a box into a scanner doesn't seem like the same thing to me.
Re consolidation:
Some sites (MobyGames or 'Hall of Light' for Amiga games come to my mind) are already water-marking their pictures (box-scans and screen shots) because they suspect that others rip off their work.
It's always funny that the sites that give a shit on copyright try to prevent others from stealing their own stuff...
Amen, brother. If I were a copyright owner, I'd go after them with diligence just because of that. As far as I'm concerned stuff like screenshots or photos of box art, etc., ought to be in the public domain. I'm sorry, but it doesn't require any creativity to hit "PRINT SCREEN" during a game to take a screenshot and upload it to a website. The creativity was done the animators and graphic artists, not the idiot with the keyboard.
I suppose it is a bit of thin ice though. If we said that the game developer ought to have copyright control over screenshots, then they could easily forbid critical reviews from using any such images. That could have a drastic effect on the reliability of reviews, since only the ones that sucked up could have access to the images.
Obviously, if the photographer has to put a lot of work into arranging the materials, lighting, and so on, that's creative effort and ought to be protected. Simply putting a box into a scanner doesn't seem like the same thing to me.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com