CNet's Declan McCullough reports that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has an anti-consumer track record when it comes to technology.

In the past the Democratic VP nominee-apparent has stood with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on copyright issues.

From the Cnet report:

[Biden] has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders... ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide, [his] anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP [encryption]...

 

Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs...

 

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits...

 

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)

McCullough reports that Biden has "steadfastly refused" to answer Cnet's questions on his tech voting record.

GP: It's ironic that Biden has chosen to portray himself as an intellectual property rights champion. He has twice been outed for plagiarizing.

While running your character on a long trek through your favorite MMO, have you ever imagined how great it would be to get so much exercise in real life?

The marketing site for Mana Energy Potion has posted a fascinating account of how two WoW players connected treadmills to their PCs and used their own 6mph locomotion to power their avatars:

We decided on a run from the gates of Shadowglen, through Dolanaar, to the sentries of Darnassus. We took level 1-2 elves so there would be a real danger that we'd get attacked along the way...

 

I'd first like to point out that Eli is in quite good shape. I, however, am not... We thought it would be a good representation of the gamut of gamers if we both ran the race. We donned the cheapest heart monitors we could find for kicks...

 

Eli and I stayed pretty even throughout the whole run. But about 3 minutes in, my heart rate reached over 205 BPM, and my max is around 195 BPM. I had to slow down to a walk because I thought I was going to pass out. Running in WoW is no joke... 

Nintendo once again finds itself the target of a patent infringement case.

As Cnet reports, Maryland-based Hillcrest Labs alleges that the Wii Remote infringes on Hillcrest's patents for a motion-sensitive remote control device known as The Loop. A Hillcrest press release says in part:

While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property rights.

GamesLaw has court documents available.

As recently as 2006, Louisiana's state government embarrassed itself by hopping into bed with Jack Thompson for an unconstitutional piece of video game legislation that quickly crashed and burned in federal court.

But the worm has seemingly turned with today's announcement that Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal (left) and Electronic Arts have partnered to create a new global quality assurance (QA) center in Baton Rouge. EA will work with Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Department of Economic Development to bring the project to fruition.

Along with Gov. Jindal and other Louisiana officials, EA exec Sharon Knight was on hand for the announcement. Said the Guv:

EA putting the first-of-its-kind video game testing center in the U.S. right here in Baton Rouge is a terrific win for the city and the future of our state. We know our economic development initiatives have to be aggressive, but they must also be innovative, and EA has both of these important attributes.

 

This testing center will create 20 full time jobs, and more than 200 part-time jobs for LSU students who will get paid to play video games. I know this will be a dream job for some kids, but it is also a key part of strengthening our state's economic development so we become the best place in the world to do business and all of our children can stay right here at home to pursue their dreams. This job win is a critical step in creating a digital media economy that will generate even more high-paying high tech jobs and help us compete for even more jobs within EA in the future.

A Lousiana media rep points out that the state's financial incentives for digital media helped seal the deal. EA will be eligible for a tax credit of up to 20%

A controversial new book fingers video games, television, and digital communications as culprits in the author's indictment of modern youth culture.

The book is The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein. Canada.com has a lengthy interview with the author:

Something insidious is happening inside their heads. Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture.

What then, Canada.com asks, does Bauerlein make of the widespread involvement of young people in the Barack Obama campaign?

...if it turns out that we have 75 per cent of young people voting in this election, then I will be happy to say that my comments about civic apathy were wrong. But if inspiration proves to be their only motive and their participation falls in later elections when an Obama is absent, then my initial suspicion will be correct. We need a diligent citizenry, and not merely a momentarily inspired one.

The book's description on Amazon says, in part:

The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children... we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map...
 

You hear it a lot: PC gaming is dead. Or, at least, terminally ill.

However, the PC Gaming Alliance, a trade group formed to boost the PC end of the game business, maintains that the future is bright for those who prefer to game on computers.

Speaking at GCDC in Leipzig, PCGA president Randy Stude (left) cited key findings from the group's first Horizons Report. Among the more noteworthy points:

• PC gaming was a $10.7 billion industry during the year of 2007
• Retail sales accounted for just 30 percent of total revenues
• Growth was largely driven by online revenues from Asia, the world’s largest market, which is approaching half of total worldwide sales.
• Online PC gaming revenue led the way in 2007 with $4.8 billion, nearly double the worldwide retail sales numbers for PC games.
• Digital distribution sales approached $2 billion
• Advertising revenues from websites, portals, and in-game ads accounted for $800 million.

Commenting on the findings, Stude said:

Our analysis clearly shows incredible growth in online PC gaming, proof that this industry is far stronger than anyone has reported. Today’s consumers shop where they live - online.

David Cole, DFC Intelligence analyst, added:

The real key has been the rapid growth in penetration of broadband-connected PCs in all markets around the world. Broadband-connected PCs are the key driver of growth for PC gaming. DFC Intelligence estimated that by the end of 2007 less than one-third of households in the top 20 markets for games had a high-speed Internet connection. That clearly indicates that there is still plenty of growth to come.

At one time, Second Life was viewed as having great potential for promoting political campaigns.

However, the Houston Chronicle points out that in the current presidential election, Barack Obama and John McCain have largely ignored the SL metaverse:

Campaigns haven't figured out how to reconcile the all-important image and fundraising with a world in which a Gothic nymph can sit in on a congressional hearing - or a Teddy bear might try to donate to a political campaign.

 

So for now, the Second Life campaign headquarters of Barack Obama and John McCain are pristine, glistening and completely vacant most of the time...

 

Fundraising is still not an option in Second Life, as there is no way to monitor where the donations are coming from, and the majority of players are from outside the U.S.

Julie Germany of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet told the Chronicle:

It's been written about in fiction and cyberpunk, this idea that these online worlds could actually be used for political purposes, whether it is to recruit supporters, or train people to take action or to fund raise. It just hasn't exploded the way other online tools have exploded.

Former congressional aide Nancy Scola, who was involved in former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's much-discussed 2006 visit to SL (screenshot at left), added that options like Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are dominating the online side of politics:

All the air's been sucked out of the room... If you're working inside a campaign, your single goal is to get your guy in the White House.  It doesn't leave a lot of room and motivation to play with new technology. Why mess with what's working?
 

How can we preserve the history of events which occur in virtual worlds? And why would we want to?

The BBC reports that researchers at the University of Texas, Austin are studying ways in which MMO history could be recorded. Said Prof. Megan Winget (left):

It's a huge challenge for archivists to deal with digital information. One of the most interesting problems for digital preservation is interactivity and how difficult that is to preserve. Video games offer all of the same problems as digital art. They are interactive, very complex and a lot of people get involved in making them happen...

 

We want to raise the consciousness in the industry about how important these records are. I do not think they save anything or it's saved in such a way that they would not be able to recognise the significance of what they are holding.

 

Key events mentioned as perhaps worthy of documenting include an outbreak of  virtual plague in World of Warcraft, the assassination of Lord British in Ultima Online and the death of Morpheus in The Matrix Online. Said Winget:

A lot of people have mentioned [Lord British's death] to me as a pivotal moment in their lives. I would like to talk to people who experienced that, saw it happen or where they were when they heard about it. Maybe we can talk to the people who did it and whether they knew Lord British was [Ultima series creator] Richard Garriott.

A report issued by the ESET Malware Intelligence maintains that July's most prevalent forms of malware targeted online gamers.

From Global Threat Trends - July 2008:

During the month of July 2008, close to 12.72% of all threat detections were flagged as Win32/PSW.OnLineGames. This is a family of Trojans with keylogging and rootkit capabilities which gather information relating to online games and credentials for participating. Characteristically, the information is sent to a remote intruder’s PC...

 

It’s important for participants in MMORPGs...  like Lineage and World of Warcraft, as well as “metaverses” like Second Life, to be aware of the range of threats ranged against them: not just harassment nuisances like griefing and pointless quasi-viral attacks like grey goo, but phishing and other scams that can result in financial loss in the real world. Their objective in such cases is to steal account information or game items and then resell them on the black market (or at any rate on eBay). 

ESET issues monthly threat reports. For the past three months, online gaming has been at the top of their malware threat list.

As an old school arcade devotee, GP can't resist a nostalgic story about a coin-op joint. Naturally we found the Seminole Voice's coverage of a local arcade compelling.

The place is Rocky's Replay in Casselberry, Florida. Owner Dave Mosher, who seems to get that he's swimming against the twin tides of history and commerce, calls Rocky's the "politically uncorrect gaming center." Hoping to pull an older crowd, he serves micro-brewed beers, and keeps the under-17's out on Friday and Saturday nights.

From the Voice:

Some of their games are nostalgic, such as Ms. Pac Man and an air hockey table, while others feature the latest in gaming technology, such as the LCD-screen NASCAR driving game... Mosher said that the gaming industry has changed a lot over the years, evinced by several big players, such as Nintendo, dropping out of the arcade sector...

 

After the Columbine school massacre, Mosher said officials pointed the blame at video game arcades. "Today it's a very different industry. This is not where the violence is," he said, comparing arcade games to home games, which are not subject to the same liabilities and tend to be more violent.

 

Arcade games are one-tenth of one percent of the world video game market, he said.

There have been a number of instances in which U.S. government officials have attempted to link video game technology with terrorism, occasionally with comic results.

GamePolitics has just located a terrorism speech delivered in May, 2007 by Rep. Sue Myrick (left). We don't believe this has been previously reported in either the gaming or mainstream press.

In the speech, the North Carolina Republican, a member of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, offers no explanation or amplification while linking terrorist training with "Japanese video game websites":

Terrorists frustrate our intelligence agencies because they use Internet techniques that can't be easily traced...  They are sending training and recruitment videos over Japanese video game Web sites because the traffic and file sizes are so large, intelligence officers cannot easily differentiate jihadist files from regular video game files. They post pornographic sites as the front to their Web sites because they know government workers are forbidden to access pornographic Web sites and therefore cannot go further to access their actual Web site...

 

 We must not allow the Internet to be a safe haven for terrorists.
 

GP: Also missing from Rep. Myrick's speech is any explanation as to why Japanese video game websites would be targeted to the exclusion of games sites located in other countries. And the bit about government workers not accessing porn sites? We think she needs to double check that one...

Yesterday, GamePolitics reported on a small Florida manufacturer's claim that Wiimote, the common, yet unofficial nickname for Nintendo's motion-sensitive Wii controller, was negatively impacting sales of its Weemote, a small TV remote control designed to fit children's hands.

Fobis Technologies president John Stephen told Time:

These days, the little guy like us is wondering, What's the point of trademark protection?

We asked Nintendo for comment and received this from NOA spokesman Charlie Scibetta:

Because Nintendo does not use and does not plan to use the Weemote trademark, we declined Fobis' offer to purchase it.  We wish them success with their Weemote.
 

Stephen told GamePolitics that lawyers for his firm had contacted 100 retailers, large and small, requesting that they cease using the term Wiimote in their marketing. Indeed, GP correspondent Andrew Eisen, a major fan of the Wii, pointed out a post by importer NCSX:

Last week, we received a letter from a law firm representing a company which holds the "Weemote™" trademark. The letter stated that we were to stop using the term, "Wiimote" in our product descriptions and NCS Game Notes™ because our actions could possibly cause confusion in the marketplace. NCS respects trademarks and ©opyrights since we also own trademarks and copyrighted material so we're obliging even though we think it's a bit of a stretch... but whatever.

From this day forth, the word "Wiimote" has been banished from N©S' shopping sites and replaced with the word "Wii Remote™." We wasted spent about an hour on Friday making sure the term "Wiimote" was waxed from the NCS shopping experience.

Everyone who follows the video game scene knows that the Wiimote is the unofficial nickname for Nintendo's motion-sensitive Wii controller.

But have you ever heard of the Weemote?

As reported by Time, the Weemote (left) is a small TV remote control, specially designed for children by Fobis Technologies of Miami. The Weemote was trademarked in 2000, roughly six years before the launch of the Wii.

From the Time article:

Nintendo doesn't actually use the term Wiimote in its marketing, but then, it doesn't have to. The Internet takes care of that. Online retailers, from Amazon.com to used-video-game vendors operating out of their houses, advertise the "Wiimote" on their sites, openly or via more obscure means like customer product tags and posted comments.

 

As a result, says Fobis president John Stephen, since the Wii was released in 2006, the Weemote trademark has been so "diluted" that the Weemote's sales, which are mostly online and total fewer than half a million to date, have fallen considerably. In fact, many Wiimote fans believe it's the Weemote that's guilty of the trademark infringement. "These days," says Stephen, "the little guy like us is wondering, What's the point of trademark protection?"

What has been Nintendo's response? GamePolitics put the question to John Stephen, whose firm manufactures the Weemote:

GP: Is there any legal action pending against Nintendo, or planned?

Stephen: First of all, we are not currently engaged in a  legal action with Nintendo or any of their resellers.  Our lawyers have mailed approximately 100 letters to sellers of the Wii remote and related accessories who use the wiimote name to market or describe their products.  This list includes all the major big box retailers as well as most of the specialty retailers.  These requests for cease and desist are required of us by law.  If we do not police and enforce our trademark, it could actually be taken from us legally so this is our obligation.  This obligation is very costly financially as well as in our time.

GP: Have you had any talks with Nintendo about the issue?

Stephen: Our approach has always been to contact Nintendo on this through our attorneys to see about reaching a business settlement, i.e. they purchase our trademark and we set out to rebrand our company. Our argument is that the damage has been done here (whether intentional or not) and that Nintendo has more to gain now controlling this mark then we do. They asked us to give them an offer which we spent a few months pulling together and after submitting that initial offer, they promptly decided they were not interested anymore and basically closed the door.  Though the name weemote is very precious to Fobis Technologies, can you imagine CocaCola with out Coke, or VW without the Beetle or Federal Express with FedEX?

Unfortunately, the reality is we have no leverage and they are already getting a free ride. So I guess their position is why pay for something that is already free!

GP: How has this issue affected you and your business?

We have spent over a year trying to do this in a moral and ethical fashion by talking to them purely from a business standpoint, .i.e.  with no threats of any kind.  This process eats deeply into our profits and productivity. As a small business owner who has spent the last ten years of my life trying to do the right thing and being passionate about our products, this really unsettles me and makes me seriously question why any innovator in their right mind would want to go down this same road? 

When we started our company, we fully believed that our intellectual property would be protected given we did all the proper registrations and due diligence.  My wife and I are both entrepreneurs as were our parents.  How do we encourage the next generation if this is our legacy?

In my mind, Nintendo may not have done any of this intentionally but it seems one would expect them take some kind of moral high ground in the matter. The fact they have registered for the mark in the European Community, have a re-direct on the www.wiimote.ca domain name in Canada to Nintendo.ca,  in combination with freely using metatags on their own site would indicate to me a true slap in the face.

GP: We have a request in to Nintendo for comment.

U.S. and British military forces are increasingly utilizing video game technology, according to Wired's Danger Room blog.

By way of example, arms manufacturer Raytheon displayed its Universal Control System for drone aircraft at an air show last week. Company exec Mark Bigham commented on the system, which employs video game-like controls:

Gaming companies have spent millions to develop user-friendly graphic interfaces, so why not put them to work on UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]? The video-game industry always will outspend the military on improving human-computer interaction.

In another application, the Wiimote is being used in place of traditional joypads to control the robots used to disarm roadside bombs in Iraq. Paul Marks writes in New Scientist:

The problem with the joypad is that it takes a lot of concentration and can monopolize the attention of the soldier using it… The Wiimote is far more intuitive because movements of the hand directly translate into movements of the robot.

Meanwhile, UK blogger Paul Mander noticed that a modified Xbox controller is being used to fly a drone in the British Army recruiting video at left.

Via: Hard OCP