Show Notes:

The ‘Hood:

What’s Good?:

Obama doesn’t get an honorary degree-That’s right, does NOT.  But he’s cool about it.

Blacks and Jews team up against poverty-The BLEWS are like the Justice League.  Kinda.

What’s Not Good?:

Getting tazered, pepper sprayed, and shot-Talk about a bad day.

Stuff Not To Miss:

Brew at the Zoo-Get a buzz and pet a monkey…if you don’t need your face.

The Studio:

Movies:

S. Darko-Best movie ever.  Steamy pile.

Death Race-Not as bad as it should be.

Thriller in Manila-The darker side of Muhammed Ali.

Music:

The Beatnuts-Watch out now!

Incubus-Lots of oldies, a few newies.

Technology:

Skype-Free phone calls over your interweb.

Microsoft Future-Now you can reboot your coffee table.

Topic of the Week:

Sam Keller sues EA and NCAA-C’mon dude…seriously?  You’re messing up my game.

Categories: Podcast

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2 Responses

1. 

   Amaizenblue09:

   Macas, you’re about to lose a listener. I just can’t listen to negative talk about Mr. Mike Hart. I’m all about free speech, but you must be censored. You’re bad. Nash, evertything that you said about Mr. Hart and Michigan is correct. You are good and Jesus loves you. Go BLUE!!!

   Sam Keller and his silly suit will be history very soon, I hope. Even if he won at some point 5 years from now, there would be simple fixes to some of the problems that EA has. I don’t think we have to worry about Keller really messing anything up.

   First, EA isn’t responsible for what gamers do after they buy their copy of NCAA. EA has no way to control users’ actions. Gamers create and modify names and rosters on their own. EA can’t do anything about users sharing files that contain information that gamers have created themselves. Although EA provides the option to download the rosters, eliminating that option takes care of things on their end. It’s unrealistic to think that any court would make an attempt to restrain modifications by users. Any injunctive relief would only control EA, not gamers. We all know that some random person will take the time to adjust every attribute on version of NCAA that comes out.

   College players have ZERO rights to their jersey numbers, school mascots, or anything else that the university owns. EA could just adjust the attributes of a player so that they can’t catch as well or run a 4.31. If Tebow wears no. 15 and is actually 6’5, 250lbs, but the game lists him as no. 15, 6’5 240lbs, is that still Tim Tebow? Then, what do the attributes in NCAA even mean? What is Brk Tckl = 85, Thrw = 89 and Run = 91 equate to in real life? Does that mean he runs a 4.4 or 4.6? Who knows?

   Second, what are Keller’s damages? What are any individual player’s damages? Like you mentioned, the cover athlete gets paid. If the suit was successful all of the previous athletes included in the game might get a total of like $.50, IF they could prove that the attributes for their faceless character on the game was substantially similar enough to them to be their likeness. We know that EA does not spend the time modifying the backup left tackle from Oklahoma State that they do on the GREAT starting RB at MICHIGAN. So, only a small portion of the players in the game would have a legitimate gripe.

   I’m as sympathetic to college athletes as anyone, but Keller and his attorneys need to rethink this battle. I’m just not sure that any court would think that a big white guy, wearing a number owned by the university, with random attributes on a video game should be paid nominal damages for his likeness. Sorry I took up space, but I like the topic. Good show.

   18.05.2009 10:34

2. 

   Nash:

   We didn’t get back to this topic this week, but we will. You know we will!

   22.05.2009 12:09