Ah, another post where I get to rant about Piratesoftware. Fuck that self righteous, egotistical, fear mongering, ignorant, big headed, grifting, skript kiddy, cornball. Dude couldn’t be assed even to read the Q&A, then makes up stuff about the initiative out of thin air. Dude is such a little weezel, I can’t BELIEVE he still has a following after his hate campaign against the initiative. The fact that anyone outside of his immediate family cares about what he has to say boggles my mind.
Louis Rossman is, at best, a “free speech absolutionist” libertarian, but he is probably the youtuber with the most experience actually working to get consumer (well, small business) rights legislature passed. And he specifically talked about this www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4zH8bJDI8
In a nutshell: It doesn’t matter if thor is a dipshit (he is and always has been). Attack the arguments, not the person. Because others will have similar complaints and all “He is a fucking prick and he didn’t read the FAQ” does is hurt your argument and make things seem culty.
Because if it really WAS actually addressed (and understand that a response is not necessarily a refutation), point that out. Rather than require people to go dig through a bunch of youtube videos and blog posts.
The relevant actors in this discussion already tried to address the arguments. Ross made a response video because Thor refused to talk to him like a petulant child.
Thor simply doesn’t care, his first comment to the initiative was literally “eat my whole ass”[sic]. The whole conversation is way past rational discourse. Thor decided to actively oppose the initiative under the main argument of “this is fucking stupid”(direct quote). There simply isn’t any rational argument to address. It’s all a personal attack and misinformation from a narcissist with an audience. He knows that this initiative kills his grift business. That’s all there is to know about the content of his rationality.
They certainly didn’t conduct themselves in a polite or persuasive manner during their argument(s). As others have said in this thread: he has attacked everything but the topic and when they did they (purposefully) seemed very confused about the overall goal and desire of the campaign.
Is this a case of being wrong about your initial conclusions and doubling down? Or is this a bad actor spreading purposeful misinformation? Going by the video alone it’s hard to see an alternative.
He’s a dev himself. He won’t be able to abandon his next game after it flops if this goes through. That’s why he’s spreading disinformation. I can only hope MoistCritikal’s video on it helps.
Also, SKG should seek legal action for defamation.
See, this again. They can abandon their game, it’s just that they have to patch out call home to function functionality. Patch out account verification and other bullshit. The game won’t work like before? That’s OK, it’s about reasonable playability. MMO with no players? That’s OK. No match making? That’s OK. However it was playing before abandonment, just let that run on the computer.
Maybe the final law will ask for a local server client, but the petition is only asking for reasonable playability. Reasonable.
He is referring to the fact that the only game pirate software has made was abandoned 7 years ago in early access and the dude just keeps patching it without significant content to avoid steam flagging and keep charging money for an unfinished demo. It’s an unimaginative ripoff to boot.
Even sadder is that there are no popular EU streamers throwing their weight behind the initiative. What are they waiting for? Does PewDiePie still stream games?
PewDiePie moved to Japan and while I have no idea what he’s uploaded (or not uploaded) I get the sense he’s basically retired. He’s doing surfing, rock climbing, art, I don’t know that he cares enough anymore to support it.
I have a steam controller that is brand new in the box. Valve liquidated them like 10 years ago. I bought a bunch of themfor only five dollars apiece. I have absolutely no use for them and they are taking up space. If anybody is interested, they can contactme and I will send it to them. I would rather see somebody enjoy it.
You should give it a try, it is some of the weirdest and coolest tech in controllers. It’s the only one I use for gaming, dropped every other for it. The gyro aiming thing is such a weird yet natural concept it’s just funny nobody thought of it before them. Lots of settings to go through before it works well for a specific game. I set it up for CSGO and was able to play at like 80% of my usual skill (LEM at the time), with spray control being amazing on it compared to mouse. Honestly, if I had it when I was learning to play FPS when I was young, I’d probably be better on it than kb+m
Still, being able to argue they’re not for profit is what typically has protected emulators from being sued to oblivion (and with Nintendo, even that’s risky)…
Has being non-profit been a legal defense used somewhere before? At least in the US the case law is based on commercial, profit-driven emulators being explicitly ruled as legal when Sony tried suing them. I see this said constantly and I think it’s genuinely just the result of propaganda from Nintendo or something.
Nintendo was able to sue palworld using a patent that didn’t exist before palworlds release. It’s not right, but they can do whatever they want regardless of what the law says.
People say this, but I believe it is mostly technically untrue. It’d be a relatively easy argument to say that a downloaded ROM that isn’t exactly the digital copy YOU purchased with a license would be seen as not legal.
However some people talk about literally ripping the game off the physical device themselves, hence copying their own copy of it. Now you are in grey territory of making copies of copyrighted materials, and in the case of more modern games like the last decade, they almost assuredly have language that specifies you don’t actually own the code and all that.
All I’m saying is be careful and probably refrain from repeating the fallacy that owning a game makes emulation of it legal, because that implies having the ROM is legal and that’s doubtful.
Copying your own game and materials for backup purposes is no grey area, and neither is development or use of emulators, and panicky, uninformed spewing of gut feelings are how public knowledge of your actual rights gets muddled into people with zero knowledge waxing poetic about how they THINK it works because they like games and think that makes their ramblings valuable.
/edit: I was WRONG. This is my memory failing me. I explain it further below, and apologize for wasting any time.
After the DMCA passed there was a case of a judge finding it legal to bypass DRM to make backup copies, but illegal to distribute the software used to do so. I have no idea if there was ever further clarification or new law about this. That was like 20 years ago. It was part of a case going after the company who was making the software, but the name slips my mind. I’ll try to look it up if anyone cares enough and wants to look for something more than hearsay on a forum.
I get you! I was bigger into copyright some 20-30 years ago myself when we would’ve all been on Slashdot.
To that end, I was WRONG in my post, I think I was conflating two things, and for that, I’m sorry. I was certainly thinking in part about Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley (2001). That was the case that decided that the software DeCSS was illegal, and you could distribute the software. I was thinking that while the court did agree with Universal over the software, that it did not find that breaking DRM on a product you owned was inherently illegal. (I legit think this was a “take” at the time. Probably wouldn’t hold up in court these days, sadly.) And I did find that years later the Library of Congress offered exemptions for breaking DRM on some hardware (vehicles, medical devices,) but I believe even those were temporary and have since lapsed.
Sorry I spoke so surely about something I was wrong about.
Not to be a stickler, but this does not say making copies is illegal - it makes circumvention of drm methods illegal. You can make drm’d copies as you like as long as you don’t circumvent the drm method. If your game isn’t encrypted, and the emulator doesn’t implement the drm, you haven’t circumvented drm - you are playing your legal copy on a device that does not implement the drm. It’s distinct from removing the drm from a device that implements it.
I do get that most consoles encrypt their software these days, but let’s be clear - it’s not as simple as “DRM means you have no rights.”
I don’t agree with any of that noise around the DMCA for the record. I feel like we effectively lost our right to archival copies.
On a PC, what you said about copying the DRM along with the data is largely true. It is possible sometimes to copy the DRM and reproduce the image with the DRM intact. It also might not be depending upon the copy protection mechanism. Commercial video DVDs used to employ tricks with the storage sector that made it almost impossible to properly copy by a standard computer disc drive. You could get around this with additional program like AnyDVD, but that was only available for sale outside the USA because of the fact that it allowed you to bypass DRM.
And like you said, the content can be encrypted. Decrypting it is, IIRC, considered bypassing DRM - at least in the USA.
Again, I don’t agree that this is how things should be, but the legality of emulation is complicated depending upon what we’re talking about emulating.
I also don’t like how things are legally speaking with DMCA, but the main takeaway is - the creation and distribution of an emulator, without DRM protections, is unequivocally protected and legal. ROM backup is certainly in most cases not, but if you are making your own copies for your own use, even while illegally breaking encryption, it would be difficult to prove and prosecute on an individual basis.
The right we must continually remind people is NOT even REMOTELY in question is the right to create and distribute emulators. This is by far the more important one, because people cannot reasonably develop their own emulators - it requires an open, collaborative community to ensure future preservation, and it’s a constant battle to keep people from actively trying to cede this right because they have nebulous loyalties to soulless companies that return no such feelings.
The emulation itself is legal, assuming you’re not using any copyrighted code, BIOS, etc. to make work.
The backup copy of your game that you need can be made legally as well, but in the USA, if the source contains a form of DRM, then you cannot legally make a copy.
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