Wired has up a piece looking at two recent licenses released by Microsoft and Blizzard clarifying their policies towards player use of their games to create Machinima. It´s an interesting discussion, because while Blizzard´s license grants rights for the first time since World of Warcraft was released (essentially deliberately opening holes in their EULA), Microsoft´s new policy takes rights away from enthusiastic Halo players at a time when everyone has just been given the capability to create their own in-game videos. Despite some trepidations, both licenses seem to be well received:

"Even digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation signed off on the rules ... Fred von Lohmann, an EFF senior staff attorney who examined both sets of rules, said the main difference between them lies in a user´s base set of rights ... ´It´s great news that both of these companies are taking machinima seriously enough that they have been willing to come out and authorize some kinds of machinima ... That´s a huge improvement over where we were before, which was (that) no one wanted to give machinima guys any kind of guidance at all.´"

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