Though politically aware gamers around the world have always held an important sway on regulatory issues, this last U.S. election proved Fairfield right.

However American gamers might have identified themselves politically in this last election, some of the strongest critics to the industry won reelection to the House and Senate handily. Issues like abortion, the war in Iraq and gay marriage still trump the gaming hobby. Go figure.

In the United States, most of the lobbying and legislation has favored the American Intellectual Property industry.

"The IP war is just as big as the drug war," says Fairfield. "Right now we have cabinet-level positions for fighting IP piracy... There's nothing strange about that. Entertainment industries get to lobby congress, but we shouldn't be surprised when they get what they want."

"The IP issue is definitely going to be a huge battleground, ultimately more significant than the content legislation," says Dennis McCauley. "While I think consumers and video game industry are on the same side on the content -- they're probably not on the same side on all aspects of IP protection."

There are some obvious examples, as with gamer reaction to the SecuRom DRM embedded in Electronic Arts products, including the Spore Creature Creator and The Sims 2. After the thousands-strong public outcry over EA's inclusion of the SecuRom DRM, other publishers using SecuRom and similar services have all but tiptoed around the issue.  

"PC games seem to cause a lot of anxiety on the part of publishers for what they see as piracy," says McCauley. "It's concerning for those of us that enjoy PC games. You almost get the impression publishers are either trying to drive everyone to consoles -- where they have control -- or some subscription model. I certainly don't condone piracy. I don't think that responsible people do."

But he wonders at the lines the industry will ultimately draw as a whole.

"I was really concerned with how the industry was handling piracy in the summer of 2007, when the industry, the ESA, conducted an operation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)... and raided 32 people in 16 states looking for mod chips. Yes, mod chips have applications for piracy, but possibly also for homebrew gaming. It seems heavy handed to me to have federal agents kicking down doors over mod chips."

He continues, emphasizing that though the ESA gave these busts a lot of publicity at the time, none of the defendants are giving any details.

"What's fascinating is that we're more than a year beyond that and all of those cases are still sealed in federal court... This is America, what's going on here? You kick down 32 doors over mod chips more than a year ago and it's still a big secret?"

There are other places where standard protections offered American citizens are taking turns that are legally both troubling and troublesome.

At present, MMO game and virtual world publishers can be subpoenaed for all types of information through the Stored Communications Act and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Getting those subpoenas sometimes doesn't even require law enforcement to meet standards for probable cause under the fourth amendment.

Joshua Fairfield says, "If you think about what the government has to do in order to set up a wire tap on your phone, they have to jump through some fairly restrictive hoops. Now they don't have to do that. They can just let the game god do that, then [under the Stored Communications Act] send them a subpoena... They send a letter to Blizzard, 'Everything this person has said, just hand it over.' I think that's pretty darned disturbing."

Fairfield also points out combinations of laws, which, when put together make for strange outcomes. The biggest of these, for video games, is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

In short, gaining unauthorized access to someone's computer and doing $500 in damages opens you up for criminal charges. It's good for prosecuting hackers, but it makes for a strange fit with social networking websites and user-generated content.

That fit was especially strange when prosecutors weren't quite sure how to approach the widely publicized case of Meghan Meier. The 13-year-old Meier committed suicide after being deceived and bullied by another girl and her mother, Lori Drew.

Unable to find a good way to approach the issue, prosecutors charged Drew under MySpace's End User License Agreement, effectively giving MySpace the power to dictate criminal law.

"There are a number of other combos that mean we're beginning to see in-game EULAs being given the force of government regulation and criminal law," says Fairfield. "That kind of claim: that there can be criminal sanctions for violating the EULA I think is something completely new and really, really scary."