Ars Technica: When nude images of Jodie Holmes, actress Ellen Page's character from Beyond: Two Souls, began appearing on the Internet a few weeks ago (courtesy of a repositioned shower-scene camera running on debug hardware) we thought the story was a little too tabloidy to cover. This kind of embarrassing, tawdry celebrity gossip is pretty common in the entertainment industry, even if it's relatively rare in video games particularly. Scandals revolving around supposedly inaccessible adult content in games aren't completely unheard of, though; remember GTA: San Andreas' Hot Coffee?
9 comments:
First off, as is always the case with the internet, very interesting legal issues appear…and they are really interesting, worrying, and relevant. How we handle legal issues that happen via the internet has a major impact on the future of the internet and our interactions with it. It's a bit frightening and daunting at the same time. Secondly, it seems sort of ridiculous that things like this happen. Shouldn't Sony have just been more careful in the first place? If it's something this sensitive, it just seems logical that it should all be handled a bit more carefully and sensitively and it seems a bit disrespectful to have let these images out 'accidentally.' It is a 3D model, rather than actual footage of the actress, which adds yet another layer of confusion and grayness to the issue. How do we handle the creation of 3D models that represent people? Are they the character or are they the actor/actress? Who gets legal rights over these creations and where is the line drawn -- when does the 3D model stop being connected to the actor?
I agree with Sophie, I think that Sony should absolutely have been extremely more cautious with the sensitive material and are completely liable to Ellen Page. I think about how in theatre when we are doing any kind of sensitive material we limit the amount of people who can be in the room, and take the necessary measures to make sure that the people involved are comfortable and protected. I would imagine that the same should be said about sensitive content being handle electronically. Who has access should be the first thing that's limited, and I wonder how in something like video game programming this can be achieved. I also just think that company's need to get smarter. The whole world in deeply rooted in the digital era. If some random hacker was able to obtain access to this, you need to step up your security. This can't be the first time somebody did something like this and I'm sure it won't be the last.
This is definitely something that never would have occurred to me as being an issue that could arise. It seems like a very strange situation to try to deal with now. Sony didn't intentionally make the content of nude Ellen Page from that angle available, but they must have been aware that someone could access it if someone was able to hack into viewing it, right? Even if it wasn't intentional, doesn't Sony know what could be seen with the right hacking or technological capabilities? The article alludes to another instance where this occurred with a different game, but this still seems to be a relatively new area of video game protocol and who to hold responsible is iffy. But there should be clearer policies for how this is handled.
I suppose this article is along the same lines as the costume design article for video game design from last week.
Backstage quickchange photos get released from time to time, intentionally as well as unintentionally. That’s understandable a violation of ones “reasonable expectation of privacy.” But was anybody’s privacy actually violated in this particular instance?
Page intentionally chose to model her motion for this video game. She knew that the game’s protagonist was being made in her general likeness. Did she have the reasonable expectation that her character would not be portrayed nude? I suppose that depends on the contract. I suppose the question we will have to address (more and more moving forward) is: When does a video game likeness become (in a legal context) the same as a video recording of someone?
Obviously, a video recording shows something as it occurs from the perspective of the camera. It’s not an actual likeness of someone.
If an actress uses 3d motion modeling to create a likeness of her and her movement, does that become (legally) the same as a video recording?
Through the entire article all I asked myself is why is there a nude model made in the first place. Really needed to extent the story line? But call me a prude it is ok.
Other then that very interesting and I just really do not know what to say. I personally would be interested to hear how the actress is taking this. Is she bothered that a nude model was made for her head (that just sounds weird but is true) and then placed in the game. Does she want to take action? Just a lesson in being prepared because anything can be turned into anything these days. There was some movie a while back where a movie star was a created computer program and the creator got in trouble because she "died" or something.
Personally this kind of scares me, just the power of 3d animation.
As mentioned in above comments, evolving technologies and media brings up some very interesting questions and legal concerns, and the article here presents yet another hang-up. Yet again, as previously mentioned, the main question is to whom is the responsibility and/or liability of content. As the creators, Sony has the final responsibility to ensure the product being released matches that which they are paying the actors or actresses, as well as other collaborators for. I think parallels could be drawn to creating original work in theatre. Revealing a new show to an audience introduces a host of new frames of reference, and derived meanings. If a certain section of the audience derived a racial prejudice, it falls upon the art director, director, and playwright to be held accountable for those decisions. The issue of nudity presents even a more concrete example. While there may be some controversy over whether it was her animated body, or actual body, that point is rather moot. Simply speaking that which is presented in the game is in her like-ness, suggesting her nudity, which is not what she originally signed onto. There are parallels between this, and if there were to be a photo shoot, and later in photo shop illegal activities were added. As an actor’s image is negotiated, they agree to specific terms, and when those terms are expounded upon the contract must be renegotiated. In short, Sony has some work to do.
I really don't know how to rule on this one. Yes, Sony created the nude model and should have taken more precautions so that someone couldn't have hacked the system, but at the same time, is the model in the video game really Ellen Page? Yes it is based of her but I doubt that it is entirely realistic. Also, I feel like the hacker is more at fault than Sony is. The game wasn't distributed with access to that content. I'm not saying that this issues isn't a big one. I just think there are too many variables. I guess if the blame had to be placed on someone is would be whoever liked the videos in the first place. Though even then, I'm not really sure what legal action one could take against them. The article mentions a break in the end user agreements, but I'm not entirely sure what that would mean for the initial leaker.
I think that one of the most interesting topics that these events bring up is how a game studio/publisher should deal with leaked content of any sort. Sony has a pretty bad reputation for acting badly when they feel that they are in any way getting the short end of the stick. Sony also has a bad reputation for less then legitimate advertising stunts. With that in mind perhaps Sony has been taking the wrong sorts of actions in this case. We can already see that their choice to try to get these images removed has backfired and cause more people to talk about and look for the images. This article and all our comments for a start. So if Sony didn't want to mess with their game or Page's reputation then maybe their best move would have been to stay quite and let the whole thing blow over.
Probably ten years ago Valve (a game developer and publisher) had some very serious issues with their content getting leaked. A hacker had managed to hack in to one of their office computers and steal all their code for one of their biggest up coming games. The hacker released all the code online and many people were able to play the partly finished game. Instead of trying to fight the hacker directly, Valve took this as an opportunity to build their community up and make it stronger. They asked their fans not to play the hacked version and to help them find out how the hacker was stealing code. With the community help Valve was able to stop the hackers and to keep people interested in the game for the right reasons.
What I'm getting at here is that Sony should look at how they could approach this event from a different angle and maybe make something instead of destroying something.
Gaming articles concerning issues that we don't usually associate with video games have been showing up on the blog a lot lately, and I love that. I don't really play video games but I find the medium fascinating, and this article is definitely one that shows that the gaming industry resides in such a grey, blurry area. I'm less interested in who is at fault than whether or not the screenshot can actually be considered a nude image of the actress. On one hand, there's the argument that since the character is modeled entirely based on Ellen Page, it essentially is a rendering of a nude photo. On the other hand, one can argue that because it was created digitally, it IS not Page and can therefore not be considered as a nude image.
I think that this is the most interesting part of the case because it deals with representation of identity and the blurred lines between "real" and "fake" digital representations of a person.
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