Intellectual Property Law

The Blind Trashing The Blind

By Marty Schwimmer

NY Times: Author Faults a Game, and Gamers Flame Back:

What happens when the audience can talk back.

An Expert On Such Things opined on Fox News about the video game Mass Effect. She criticized the sexual content of the game and said:

?Here?s how they?re seeing women: They?re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these, you know, hot bodies. They don?t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it?s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.?

The Expert later acknowledged that she had not actually played the game.

Fans of the game objected to this and several factual errors about the game. They went to Amazon and wrote user comments about the Expert's book. Many comment authors acknowledged that they had not read the book.

Amazon has announced that it will take down user comments by those who had not read the book.

The Expert has now seen the game played and has retracted her comments.

EA, publisher of Mass Effect, has requested an apology from Fox News.

The Babes of Fox News website.

Full post as published by Trademark Blog on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).