Microsoft Allows Use of Game Content In Machinima

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Microsoft is allowing machinima creators license to use Microsoft content within games. I suppose I got spoiled in Second Life with that sort of thing - for better and worse, Linden Lab does permit licensing through Terms of Service and Community Standards.

Still, for Microsoft to do this implies that they may be catching on. May.

From the article:

The big news in the machinima world this week has been Microsoft's new "Game Content Usage Rules," which is a license that explicitly authorizes the creation of machinima (and other derivative works) using Microsoft game content. As far as I know, this is the first time a major commercial game vendor has created a "machinima license" to facilitate this exciting new genre. (Check out This Spartan Life's interview of Malcolm McLaren for an example of the amazing things machinima creators are doing using Halo.)

Microsoft deserves praise for the new license (even if it's partly motivated by the imminent launch of Halo 3, which includes a "Saved Film" feature that is sure to unleash many new machinima creations). But at a time when the likes of Blizzard (World of Warcraft) and Valve (Counter-Strike) have left machinima creators in legal limbo, it's noteworthy that Microsoft is trying to do the right thing here.

Some machinima creators have been critical of the new license. I'll leave the detailed discussion of the pros and cons of the license to Hugh Hancock, noted machinima creator and author, but while the license is not perfect, I think it actually does a great deal of good, without doing any harm. [UPDATE: Hugh has now posted some additional thoughts, as well.]

Worth looking into for those of you in Microsoft pwned worlds...