The ESA is an industry association dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish computer and video games.

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Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia changes name and focus to meet games industry trends.

Read the full story by Laura Parker at GameSpot.

Interactive Games & Entertainment Association to Cater to Evolving Industry

Sydney, August 26, 2009 – The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) has today announced that it has changed its name and constitution to better represent the evolving interactive entertainment industry. The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) will be more targeted in its focus to build a stronger relationship with its members, the business community and government.

Video games are now played in 88 per cent of Australian homes and the industry has recorded momentous growth in recent years reaching sales bordering on $2 billion.

According to Ron Curry, CEO of the iGEA, the size of the interactive entertainment industry has grown and the offerings of its members had also changed; both factors mean the industry must now cater for a much broader audience than before.

“The industry has evolved dramatically and video games are a form of entertainment now enjoyed by an extremely broad range of Australians. The new focus of the iGEA will further take into account the fact that interactive entertainment is now accessed by consumers through a much wider range of entertainment devices and that the devices themselves offer greater entertainment options. Our focus is to ensure that our organisation remains relevant as we continue to see further convergence and divergence across all forms of entertainment.”

“As an industry body, we need to keep abreast of how interactive entertainment impacts social, statutory and regulatory changes and more importantly, how we respond to these changes. We also have a responsibility to our members to constantly review our performance and make the necessary adjustments to ensure maximum value and relevance. We believe that the iGEA will now better reflect the industry as it continues to develop.”

The iGEA will also launch a new website built on powerful social software tools which provide easy access to a wide range of materials on the site and forums for community discussion. The new site which can be found at www.igea.net aims to become a central hub of tools and resources for players, parents and students, as well as industry and government organisations.

Largely invisible to the mainstream, sightless gamers help each other tackle titles like Rock Band and Left 4 Dead, while others focus on games made for–and by–the blind.

Read the full article by Matthew Peters at GameSpot AU

From David Wildgoose at Kotaku Australa

In a shocking turn of events, Fairfax columnist and conservative ‘maverick’ Miranda Devine penned an opinion piece over the weekend calling for the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

Read David’s full story at Kotaku Australia

Australian judge jails music and movie pirate

Courts take copyright piracy seriously

SYDNEY – On the 21 August, Sydney’s District Court recorded criminal convictions and handed a three month jail term to the owner and operator of an Australian commercial piracy operation.

On the 21 August, Sydney’s District Court recorded criminal convictions and handed a three month jail term to the owner and operator of an Australian commercial piracy operation.

On 21 May 2009 a jury found Yong Hong LIN guilty of 15 indictable copyright offences following a three week trial and more than 12 hours of deliberation. The criminal charges were the first to proceed on indictment in the District Court since amendments to the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) in 2007.

54 year old LIN owned and operated an Eastwood music and movie store raided by New South Wales Police on 27 February 2007. The raid followed an extensive investigation by investigators from the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI).

The police raid netted more than 16,000 pirated movie and music discs being openly offered for sale to the public. The haul included discs imported into Australia from illegal manufacturing plants in China as well as illegally burnt discs produced locally. The illegal discs from China were purchased wholesale by LIN for 50 cents and sold for $7.

Before handing down the sentence Judge Knox commented: “I do not think that a fine or a community service order is appropriate in terms of being a deterrent sentence… the proper penalty… is one of a period of imprisonment.”

The jail term given by Judge Knox is the second such custodial sentence handed out to pirates in the last ten days. On Friday 14th August, a South Australian court sentenced Brian Rutherford to a seven month (suspended) jail term following an Australian Federal Police raid in March this year.

The indictable charges brought against Mr LIN by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions led to a dramatic three week trial, which saw music and movie industry experts give evidence about counterfeit discs manufactured in China and illegally imported into Australia to the detriment of the local movie and music industry.

“The movie and TV industries make a significant contribution to Australian jobs and our economy and need the protection of strong laws, effective enforcement and deterrent sentencing,” said Neil Gane, Executive Director of AFACT, commenting on the conviction. “We are at a tipping point and jail terms are without doubt the only way the courts can provide the strong deterrence needed to stop such profitable and damaging crimes.”

“The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and the courts have sent a strong message: that criminals who steal music for commercial gain will find themselves facing serious charges and may ultimately end up in jail,” said Dean Mitchell, Investigations Manager, MIPI.

LIN was charged with 31 offences relating to copyright theft; the jury convicted on 15 offences and acquitted on the remainder.

Criminal penalties for copyright infringement are up to $60,500 and 5 years imprisonment per offence for individuals, and up to $302,500 for corporations.

Movie piracy should be reported to the AFACT hotline: 1800 25 19 96

Music piracy should be reported to the MIPI hotline: 1800 06 16 16

About AFACT

AFACT works closely with industry, government, police and educational institutions to address copyright theft and protect the interests of the film and television industry as well as the interests of Australian movie fans.

Australia’s copyright industries are the 3rd largest contributors as a percentage of GDP in the world, second only to the US and UK.

In 2006/07 they contributed 10.3% GDP to Australia’s economy [up 66% since 1996], represented 8% of our employment and generated 4.1% of total exports.

The film and TV industry in Australia alone contributed $4.4 billion to GDP and supports 50,000 jobs, including small businesses under threat from copyright theft, and independent cinemas, video rental stores and film and television producers across the country.

In 2007, the film and TV sector contributed an estimated $1.8 billion in tax to the Australian Government.

In 2008, state and federal police conducted 51 raids involving movie piracy and seized 544,697 pirated DVDs. They also seized 488 burners capable of producing 12 million pirated DVDs a year with a potential street value of over $61million.

Contact:

For interviews with Neil Gane, AFACT, contact:

Stephen Jenner: (02) 9997 8011
After hours: 0409 776 196

info@afact.com.au
www.afact.com.au

About MIPI

Music Industry Piracy Investigations Pty Ltd (www.mipi.com.au) is the anti-piracy organisation for the Australian music industry. MIPI represents close to 125 music labels through their association, ARIA and over 2,000 music publishers and songwriters through their association, AMCOS.

MIPI operates a toll-free piracy hotline on 1800 06 16 16 and a report piracy form that can be accessed at http://www.mipi.com.au/Report-Piracy.html.

Contact:

For interviews with Dean Mitchell, MIPI, contact:

Samantha Hales: (02) 8569 1177
After hours: 0466 362 374

mipi@mipi.com.au
www.mipi.com.au

David Giles is the Director of Development at gaming company Tantalus Media. David talks about the impacts of piracy to PC gaming development and the wider gaming community.

1. How many employees does your organisation employ locally?
We have between 50 and 60 staff at the moment. We also outsource on a regular basis to other local development studios and if you count them into the mix we move up to about 70 to 80.

2. Can you provide us examples of games that have been wholly or partly developed by your organisation in Australia?
Top Gear: Downforce, MX vs ATV Untamed, Pony Friends, Cars Mater National, The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon.

3. Can you give us a profile of a typical gaming developer in your organisation?
Well, I guess you could split the developers into four groups the first being the game designers. These are people that come up with the game ideas and focus in on exactly how the game will work before any art or code has been produced. The designers look beyond the cool factor in games and focus on what makes the game cool.

Next we have programmers and artists. The programmers usually have programming degrees from University and have decided that games are their passion rather than databases. The artists all work in 3D but many have strong illustration backgrounds before they moved into 3D. Artists as programmers may specialise in different areas with the game development cycle.

The last general group are the producers they are responsible for managing the game project from start to finish. Their general mandate is quality on time.

4. How does gaming piracy directly impact you?
The Australian industry is not a huge one and every time a game is downloaded and copied it can have a significant impact on our local game developers. So much so that PC game development is very rarely carried out by Australian game developers these days because publishers are more cautious about its chance of succeeding financially partly due to the rampant pirating of titles.

Once upon a time a small Australian development team could work on a PC title and make enough to live off, that avenue is fairly well closed now.

5. What would you want gaming pirates to know?
If we want the Australian game industry to survive and grow then it needs to be financially profitable. Every time a game is pirated it puts all of the industry at risk even more so for the fledgling Australian game development community.

Steve Fawkner is the founder of Infinite-Interactive, a video game development company based in Melbourne. Steve has taken time out of his busy schedule to chat about gaming piracy and how it is preventing developers from creating cutting edge, innovative games.

1. How many employees does your organisation employ locally?
We have almost 50 people here full time, and a number of contractors. This could be anywhere from 5-20 people depending on the stage of production that we are in with our projects.

2. Can you provide us examples of games that have been wholly or partly developed by your organisation in Australia?
Our most recent releases have been Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Neopets: Puzzle Adventure on DS, Wii, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Our most notable release of recent years was probably Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. This game has won a whole raft of Game of the Year awards.

Our releases stretch right back to 1989 when we released the original Warlords strategy game, the first of a series with over 10 sequels.

3. Can you give us a profile of a typical games developer in your organisation?
Our developers tend to fall into three categories. There are the software engineers who generally have the same qualifications as any member of a programming team in the IT industry. There are the artists who work either as illustrators or 3D modellers/texturers/animators. Their backgrounds tend to vary widely, not all of them have any formal qualifications, although most do nowadays. Finally, there is the design and production staff, who quite often come from a technical background. Their responsibilities mostly revolve around making sure everything gets done and that the games are fun to play.

I’ve painted some pretty broad strokes there – within each discipline are many niches and sub-disciplines that are quite distinct from each other.

4. How does gaming piracy directly impact you?
Gaming piracy has made the PC a totally unviable platform for us. Piracy can be performed in such a casual manner today that it is often easier to pirate a game than to buy it. We have moved into the casual game space on consoles and handheld systems to get away from all the piracy.

Piracy began to impact us in 1995 when the first CD-ROM burners became commonplace. We toughed it out for another nine years but it got progressively worse until we had to relegate PC games to second place in 2004.

5. What would you want gaming pirates to know?
It’s really simple. You’re harming innovation. Developers don’t make much money even if they are successful. Most of us are here because we love creating games. The harder life is for us developers, the more we have to play it safe, and the less innovative games you see each year.

I don’t believe that piracy will ever actually kill PC gaming, I’m not that naive and would never try to tell anybody as much, but it WILL reduce the number of titles available down to a few AAA releases every year along with all the shovelware that gets bundled together cheaply. That whole spectrum of really interesting experimental games that you once saw on PC have mostly vanished already. It would be really sad to see them gone altogether.

To those pirates who say “if you wrote good games, you wouldn’t care about piracy”, I say “then why do you still pirate good games?”

We contacted two prominent Australian game design houses to discuss their thoughts on Video Game piracy and its impact on their business.

• Infinite-Interactive
• Tantalus

FACTS about Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)

Recently there were a number of major amendments to the Copyright Act 1968. Key changes relevant to the interactive entertainment industry relate to Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) and the enforcement provisions. The following FAQ will explain:

What is a Technical Protection Measure (TPM)?

• TPMs are used by copyright owners to protect their copyright material including, games from being copied or improperly accessed. Passwords, encryption, access codes and copyright controls are all considered a TPM and which copyright owners use in their games consoles and online products and services.

What changes in the Copyright Act impact the use of a TPM?

• TPMs whether access controls or copy controls are protected when there is a connection with copyright. Further, the new laws introduced a number of new enforcement provisions to protect copyright.

What can happen for circumventing TPMs?

• It is both a civil and criminal offence where a person circumvents a TPM for the purpose of copyright infringement. Additional remedies and penalties have been introduced, including stronger criminal penalties of five years imprisonment and/or fines of up to $60,500.

Are there any exceptions to the offences for circumventing TPMs?

• There are two very specific and limited exceptions, which apply to a TPM designed solely for geographic market segmentation and a TPM designed to restrict the use of goods or services.

Does this mean it is now legal to circumvent for region coding?

• The region coding exception is very limited – there is no blanket right to circumvent region coding TPMs. It will only apply when the region coding TPM exclusively is circumvented. The IEAA and its members take seriously the protection of copyright and welcome the new enforcement provision which provides a tougher stance on piracy.

I thought there was a recent case which meant that modchipping is legal?

• Modchipping per se has never been legal. Recent High Court rulings were based on a very technical interpretation of the TPMs used in older generation consoles. Since this time there has been important changes made to the Copyright Act which provide greater protection to copyright owners. It is also important to remember that the new laws don’t give blanket permission for circumventing (through modchipping or otherwise).