LittleBigPlanet Creations Raising Copyright Questions

Joystiq's Law of the Game column uses the recently released LittleBigPlanet to address the question of intellectual property rights for user-created content within and for games. At this point, Sony's ToS claims a great deal of control over users' work, unlike Second Life's, which is much more permissive. GiantBomb has a related story pointing out creations within LittleBigPlanet that are copies of other games, and how they could lead to legal troubles for Sony if they aren't quick about taking them down.

Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is one of the worst offenders with draconian EULA's. I am not surprised by this. They don't want to have people creating their own content to own their own content. They want to own our content.

I learned a long time ago to just say no to Sony.

Re:DMCA

[phyrz]

Although I think they would have to change their tune, and allow people copyright over their own designs. IANAL of course.

Re:Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as i remember, the same issues arrised with the first neverwinternight and its editor and atari's policy.
There even was a slashdot article.

Inconsistent / illogical ToS

[Anonymous Coward]

So in effect it says "It belongs to you, but you can do nothing with it and you are not allowed to profit from it, but we are."

Anyone see a problem of logic there? A judge is going to tear that ToS apart.

Re:Sony

[Frigga's Ring]

Admittedly, I don't know everything about LBP's distro system, but I'd like to point out that both Sims 2 and Spore had built-in distribution systems where content you created was uploaded to a Maxis server and made available to other users.

Re:Sony

[Chaos Incarnate]

I haven't played either of those, so I wasn't aware of that. On the other hand, reading Spore's EULA, EA is granted "an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services". That's even more restrictive than the Sony terms (as Sony doesn't get exclusive rights to user material).

Re:Sony

[xhrit]

second neverwinter nights. the first was a mmo run by aol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(AOL_game) [wikipedia.org]