A few days ago, the Supreme Court struck down a controversial California law requiring restriction of violent video games to minors. Without going too deeply into analysis, the court found dubious the claims that violent games were somehow more harmful to minors than other violent media—and since California wasn’t trying to regulate those other media, it was unfair for it to try to regulate video games too. As Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera puts it: While the California law would have added an exception to the first amendment to exclude certain content from protection, in essence...

I ran across a story the other day that made me think about the way that parts of our online activities can affect other parts, and the risk that you take doing anything that could draw negative attention to you if you’ve also got a book on Amazon. Published writer T. Michael Murdock also reviews video games on Joystiq. Recently, he gave a one-star review to a game called Conduit 2 (which he called “more like Con-don’t-do-it 2”). After he wrote that review, one-star reviews started appearing on his Amazon book listing—and it turned out that Conduit 2 developer...

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera has a piece looking at why the Supreme Court hearing on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anti-video game law is important. According to Entertainment Software Association President and CEO Mike Gallagher, the decision concerns nothing less than “the future of media in the 21st century.” Over 182 briefs have been filed in opposition to the law by a cross-section of media groups and organizations, including the American Booksellers Foundation. Kuchera writes: California's law, which makes the sale of certain violent games to children illegal, is based on the assumption that the gaming industry...

Video and computer games share a bit of an odd similarity to books and e-books. Like books, they can be an example of intellectual property encapsulated in an object, which can be bought and sold new or used—but like e-books, they can also be delivered purely digitally, and equipped with restrictive DRM. And as with both, there’s some controversy surrounding the idea of used sales. While many print book publishers look at the sale of used books and gnash their teeth, they are largely powerless to do anything about them. The First Sale Doctrine states that...

In some of my previous posts, I have looked at the computer game industry (especially Valve, with its “Steam” digital distribution service and focus on customer service that can even turn pirates into paying customers) with an eye to the examples it sets for the e-book and publishing trades. It turns out I’m not the only one who thinks like that. Paul Rhodes has posted on the Bookseller’s “FuturEBook” blog about the uses of new tablet and smartphone technology that he saw at the European “GamesCom” video game industry trade and consumer show. Rhodes notes that, perhaps surprisingly,...

Reaching into the world of video games again for another point that could apply equally to e-books. (At least it’s not about Valve this time.) Jeff Vogel is the developer behind a number of independent games (perhaps the equivalent of self-published e-books in the video game world) including the Avernum series and Nethergate: Resurrection. And, though he’s nervous about speaking up about it (because he relies on his games to feed his family, after all), he has blogged about three relatively rare cases where he’s more or less all right with people pirating his games. Though the...

In his commencement address at Hampton University, a historically black college founded in 1861 to teach escaped slaves, President Obama had some harsh words about the iPad, as well as iPods and video game consoles: "You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter," he told the students. "And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work --...

Where the iPhone conquered your pocket, the iPad will conquer your backpack. So says Tim Carmody on the Snarkmarket blog, where he puts down his thoughts about why e-books on the iPad will be more successful than some people think. Carmody starts with five common reasons skeptics give that e-books won’t take off on the iPad, and notes that most of them aren’t all that new. (Though he does not address the oft-heard complaint that people will not want to read from LCD screens.) He points out that those who buy the least expensive, 16-gig...

New information has come to light about the next generation of Nintendo hand-held game console, to be unveiled at E3 in June. Most interestingly for e-book readers, the screens are going to have much higher resolution than the current generation and will be essentially contiguous, with no space in-between, so that they can be used as a single display when the device is fully open. The device will also feature an accelerometer. The new resolution is not stated, though prior rumors have suggested a change from its current 256x192 to 1024x768, which would make for a...