Seattleite

DRM predates organized piracy. Even Nintendo cartridges that are impossible to pirate had DRM. So much so, Earthbound is LEGENDARY for its horrific DRM. What you just said was a blatant falsehood. I guess to you, specific well-known examples don't count as evidence. Either that, or you can't read so well and skipped that entire post. Fixed that for you. Again, you have ACTUALLY provided no evidence. I have, three times so far in this thread. I provided three strong examples, and you flat-out ignored them. I don't consider all of the site idiot shills. I consider you an idiot shill. Stop assuming other people agree with you. Where I come from, we like to call that a "stretch". Or maybe "projection". I'm neither defensive nor insecure. I'm right, and unwilling to make false concessions to placate you. You can't tell the difference. Definitely "projection", considering you're the one who started with the insults. See, I don't do this to make myself feel better. This whole stupid thing just makes me feel tired and disappointed. I do this because you believe something that is simply not true. 100%? No. I'm sure some DRM was actually designed to prevent piracy. It doesn't work, at all, but some was. That's not the destructive kind, the kind I'm talking about. Things like limited disk uses (like EA had for a while), and always-online single player games (like EA does all the time). Those have nothing to do with piracy. That's just EA's planned obsolescence, masquerading as true DRM. Fun part? The least pirated games of all time are most indie games. They don't HAVE any DRM. Oh, and let's not forget Stardock's old games, which were pretty popular for a while. I have some pretty fond memories of Galciv. Once again, no DRM. Didn't get pirated much. If the industry hasn't figured out that DRM doesn't work, then they're really dumb. I don't think they're really dumb. Who said I don't give your opinions thought? I do. Or rather, I have. Before you ever said it, because I've heard all this nonsense before, thought it through, did my research on the matter and came to the conclusion that your stance on piracy was complete nonsense. Of course, at the time, it was music piracy and it was Metallica's stance. And then I re-evaluated it again for other forms of piracy and found the same things almost universally true. Piracy never occurs at a high enough rate to hurt anybody. If everybody pirated everything, yeah, there'd be a breakdown of all digital markets. But most people don't pirate at all, and those who do still buy *most* of the things they want, only pirating on occasion. We also often legally purchase games we originally pirated. Myself, for instance. The last game I pirated was Pillars of Eternity, which I ended up buying legally, with all DLC, a week later. Before that was Bioshock Infinite, which I ended buying... Eventually. Even Dark Souls, which I now legally own the entire series of, I originally pirated. Pirates are not what you think they are. And we aren't common enough and we don't pirate enough things to cause any damage. As I said, if as many of us as are ever going to just pirate any EA games we want, their sales will barely dip. 2% was not an understatement, it's a reasonable estimate of what'll happen if *everybody* who cares about this just stops paying for EA games. Whether that's though boycotts or piracy is irrelevant, because EA literally cannot tell the difference. In my case? Probably boycotts, but that's pretty meaningless because I can't think of an EA series I actually play. I've got a cracked (but legally purchased) copy of Spore and The Sims 3, I think I'm good. But if you really must have the latest Battlefield game or whatever, I say just pirate it, because EA doesn't deserve your money. It ultimately won't affect them, but it's the thought that counts. And the thought is "Fuck you." Now do you understand my position a bit better? No, because you didn't read a word of the last three paragraphs? Yeah, I knew it'd be a waste of time. I actually really like this idea. How about an obituary, too?

Didn't say it was, though EA is especially bad about it, where most game companies only do it to a few specific categories of employees, most notably QA where the "burn out and fire" practice is just about 100% universal. The fact that other companies do it too doesn't make it better, it makes it worse. Especially since EA is still especially bad about it.

Nowhere in your rambling, incoherent response did you come close to anything that could be considered a rational response. You're an idiot shill, blaming piracy for every malady in the industry. The truth is that these issues actually exist because corporations suck. Corporations will always find a scapegoat to point to whenever they do something they know will be unpopular. It's always pirates. They're always lying. Take the PC release of Gears of War. It was a buggy shitstorm of a port that was nearly completely unplayable and proved Epic couldn't port for shit. But what did Epic say their reason for now releasing a PC version of Gears of War 2 was? "Because pirates!" NOBODY FUCKING PIRATED THAT GAME. IT WAS NOT WORTH THE TIME IT TOOK TO DOWNLOAD. That was a bold-faced fucking lie, and everybody who played the PC Gears of War knew that Epic actually cancelled the PC version of #2 because the first one was horrible. But idiot sheep like you believed every word and shook your fist at all six pirates who downloaded it. EA's excuse for the always-online DRM? Piracy. Of course, EA games are actually pirated more the more intense their DRM becomes, because piracy is DRM-free and their DRM is a complete pain in the ass, so they're just giving away a little of their sales, so assuming people running an enormous corporation that masterfully manipulates the markets is not impossibly stupid, there has to be another reason. It should be obvious. The real reason for always-online was to allow them to kill games at will. EA loves to kill games, they always have and always will. The reason for this is simple. A game that is alive is a game that is still being played. A game that's still being played is a reason not to buy its newest sequel, Carbon Copy IX. It's also a reason not to buy a similar game. These companies do this on purpose. That's the reason the newest game consoles had no backwards compatibility, because people would just keep playing the old games and that would reduce sales of the new ones. That's the reason why they shut down the servers for multiplayer games after time, even if there's still a LOT of people player it. They need to force people into newer ones, so they will spend more money. Do you seriously not understand that fucking the consumers is their entire business model? The entire AAA industry is corrupt, especially the giants in it, EA, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. They don't deserve a chance. They had their chance, and they chose to emphasize shovel-ware because it makes more money, and go to increasingly disgusting lengths to force us all to buy the newest ones. But no, you'll just blame piracy for everything bad in the industry. I mean, it's not like corporations are legally obligated to maximise profits at all costs or anything, and all of these things they're doing will raise profits massively whether pirates exist or not, and they can just blame the pirates even for dick moves they pull with games just about nobody pirated since idiots like you are so eager to buy into that bullshit. And that's not even getting into the fact that piracy and boycotting have exactly the same effect on the company and the market, and companies are incapable of telling the difference. We are not responsible for the actions of profit-driven, greedy corporations. They are. And you're an idiot for buying their excuses. But this thread has been derailed too long. I've said all I need to.

Every Call of Duty or Battlefield clone made after Call of Duty 4. They're slow, they're unfun, they're predictable, they're shallow, they're banal, they're carbon copies of the previous games, their palette is all brown and grey, they have shit plots with shittier endings, they have shit characterization, they glorify warfare and even war crimes, they turn war into a sick power fantasy and they're racist as fuck. Well, except Spec Ops: The Line. Which isn't quite a clone of either of those games, but it's a deconstruction of them and the entire point of its existence is to highlight everything fucking horrible about those franchises.

If you think piracy stands any chance of harming a juggernaut like EA, you're wrong. This is just an easy way to get around how much gamers suck at boycotts. No amount of piracy has ever hurt a company, ever, and EA is never going to shut down no matter what we do. You know what's actually bad for the employees of EA? WORKING FOR EA. It's one of the most abusive companies in America, it's not "Walmart" bad, but it's pretty damned close. It barely pays anything, it's got shit job security, it hires and fires like nobody's business, and has no respect for its creators, even at the highest levels, being totally willing to throw all the high-level devs out the door and replace them with entirely new ones on a whim, and they've done that to several franchises. Anybody working at EA is there short-term, even the executives, because EA is fucking evil. It grabs people, squeezes everything it can out of them, and throws them away. There's no art and no integrity in making an EA game, either. You get dropped into place, told what shovelware to make, and then when it's over they fire you. The shit job will not be in any way different if sales dropped 2% because a bunch of pissed off people stopped buying their games, and as far as they or anybody at EA is concerned, piracy is no different than if we boycotted them instead. They won't get paid any less, they won't be there for less time, nothing will happen other than EA will have slightly less up-trend than usual. Meanwhile, on our end, we don't give any money to EA. And not giving money to EA, no matter how you go about it, is a noble effort. And maybe they'll even notice that their fancy DRM is counter-productive because the more they do it, the more their games get pirated (which is the actual trend, for the record), and they'll stop with pointless DRM that doesn't work and annoys the shit out of their customers. Probably not, though. This is not a bad idea. There also isn't anything morally wrong with it because EA is not going to be hurt by it, and even if it did they CAN'T treat their employees any shittier than they already do and EA itself is not a person. I have always been for using piracy as a form of punishment. There's very few times I've found it appropriate, and the only game company that has ever warranted it is EA.

Ross, I am 1,000,000% on board with this. I also suggest people adopt my "Fuck EA" policy of just pirating any EA game that they want, because fuck EA, and fuck giving EA our money. It's not a real boycott, but it'll hit them just as hard, and we don't even have to give up playing their games.

The stupid thing is that I thought I WAS wording it very delibrately, and I wasn't even on Tumblr. I was on an IRC, I said they rolled in from Tumblr as an insult. Caitlyn Jenner is Bruce Jenner from The Kardashians. And no, they're not worth knowing about. And they're a horrible person, but Tumblr decided they were the messiah because they're a celebrity that went trans-gender publicly, and they think that was brave. Truth is, it's extra publicity for Caitlyn (not saying it was a publicity stunt) and she's so far removed from negative consequences as a safe spacer that she risked fuck all by coming out. And even if it was brave, that doesn't make her a good person. It doesn't make up for how horrible she is, and especially doesn't make up for how badly she treats other trans women, telling them they need to look more feminine, because they're "making people uncomfortable". She doesn't get that not everybody HAS HER FUCKING MONEY, so not everybody can afford all her surgeries, beauty products and fancy clothes, and she's admonishing other trans women for not looking feminine enough when they can't afford it. That's the context this conversation arose in. People were talking about how fucked up it was that she was acting so horribly to other trans women who consider her a role model, my comment should have been clear. It not only not an attack on trans women, but it was in response to an ACTUAL attack on trans women from the individual in question. But the moment I said it, every Tumblr "feminist" lurking in the background jumped down my throat. Did I mention I was the only CIS male in the chat? Yeah, no fucking coincidence I'm the only one they decided doesn't have the right to an opinion. Because these third-wave "feminists" aren't real feminists, they're misandrists in disguise. A paper-thin disguise that they half the time forget to even wear.

Sorry, mom. I've said my piece on-topic. I think it's a terrible system, and it reveals that Google's priority is minimum effort rather than protecting their users. That makes business sense, but I disagree with it from an ethical perspective, and I definitely prioritize ethics, so that bothers me. The system could be easily fixed, but YouTube never will because the system works just fine for their purpose, which amounts to "Don't get sued and don't put any effort into not getting sued.", and they don't care how harmful it is to their users. That's all I have to add that the OP didn't. The video is pretty complete and detailed in the information it provides.

I'm not the bad guy here, I never was, and you aren't nearly active enough to have a clue what you're talking about.

Vapid, adj. 1. Bereft of strength, sharpness, flavour, etc; flat. 2. Boring or dull, lifeless. 3. Synonym to insipid. Not an overly clever example of an insulting nickname, but I don't intend on using it again, and they can't all be winners. Ignoring him doesn't make him go away, and it's never worked before. He sticks around and continues replying to people's posts anyway, and eventually somebody will take the bait and derail the thread with him. (Also, a lot of people actually get more determined to get your attention if you ignore them. So that analogy doesn't work.) I was trying something new. And no, it didn't work either. This thread is strictly about YouTube's horrible automatic copyright enforcement system. He thinks it's about the DMCA itself, and he continues to interpret everything through that lens after being corrected. As a result, none of my arguments make sense to him, and he continues to be off-topic and carry the thread with him through sheer wilful ignorance. The thread is derailed completely. And all because he wasn't willing to find out what the original topic actually was, and I didn't realize it right away.

See what I mean?

If Vapid would actually read (or in this case, watch) before he posted, I'm pretty sure this would happen less. It sure would make it easier to have a civil conversation with him if he bothered to know what the subject was first, like a reasonable person. But he's not a reasonable person, he's not interested in knowing what the topic actually is, he's a complete jerk to people who actually bothered to find out what we were talking about, and that makes it really hard not to slap him, at least verbally. I know I'm not fixing anything insulting him. And I'm sorry it negatively affected your day, that wasn't my intent. My intent was to get him to LEAVE, and let people willing to at least WATCH the video in the OP and find out what the TOPIC IS take over, so we can have an actual discussion on the topic the OP started, rather than whatever Vapid assumed the topic was when he skimmed the title and cut straight to giving his irrelevant opinion, which WOULD actually be reasonable, even if I still don't agree with it 100%, if we were actually TALKING ABOUT THE DMCA.

Quick vent. It is fucking okay to not like Caitlyn Jenner. She's a dense, irritating shit who's the centre of her own idiotic little world. She's so detached from reality that she once took a phone call WHILE GIVING A SPEECH, at an awards ceremony. She's stupid, she's incredibly shallow, she's completely removed from the rest of the transgender community, and her being trans does NOT MAKE HER A GOOD PERSON. It is a STRICTLY LATERAL MOVE. I don't understand why people treat her like some kind of messiah just because she used to be a man. She's a bad role model, a terrible person, and hating her with a flaming passion DOES NOT REFLECT ON MY OPINION OF THE FUCKING TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY. It's just my opinion of ONE, SINGULAR person, who is stupid, oblivious, self-centred, ignorant, judgemental, vacuous, histrionic, adds nothing to anything, takes away from everything she's involved in, and just happens to also be transgender, which as far as I'm aware is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to all of her negative attributes. This is fucking stupid. It really pisses me off when people interpret any negative feelings towards an individual that happens to be a member of a minority as prejudice against that minority, no matter how blatantly unrelated it is. It is patent nonsense to claim that I hate transgendered people because I hate one transgender person for reasons unrelated to gender, especially when I can clearly articulate the ACTUAL REASONS I hate her, which are all about her BEHAVIOUR, not her gender. And it's because of this shit I just had to leave an IRC that I ACTUALLY LIKED because a bunch of SJW's rolled in from Tumbler to attack me, all because I said, and I quote, "Can't we just ignore Caitlyn? She's a pretty shitty person, I'm sure you can find a better trans role model." Seriously. That's it. That's all I fucking said. Cue fifteen minutes of completely unreasonable SJWs flipping their fucking shit when they don't even know what they're talking about, as they are prone to do, ignoring every word I said when I clarified on the matter that was already crystal clear when we started, as they are also prone to do, and a permanent ban to silence an opinion they intentionally misunderstand, as they are prone to do. Every one of those things is a personal pet peeve of mine. And so concludes this diatribe. I need some fucking Tylenol.

Bullshit in every sentence. But then, that's normal for you, Vapid. Ignoring the obvious run-on here, this is juicy. You assume I don't understand the issue, (which you prove is projection right below here), you say some unspecific thing I said was stupid, but neither point to the thing in question nor give reasons because if you were more specific I could actually respond to it and you KNOW your bullshit won't hold up to scrutiny... Then you do it again. And yeah, you are to blame. For being so confident that you're right on the subject that you fail to even find out what the subject FUCKING IS. The issue isn't the DMCA law, you vapid, vacuous, insufferable waste of air, and you'd know that if you WATCHED THE VIDEO. It's the automated enforcement and appeals system, which is NOT A PART OF THE LAW. It's a bullshit system Google drafted to enforce said law without taking any liability, and it's a poorly designed mess. It's entirely automated, claims are enforced immediately, zealously and without question, there's no penalty for false claims and no accounting for fair use, which IS A PART OF THE LAW. Parody, reviews, criticism and anything that in any way transforms the work is covered under fair use. That means a machinima made in Half-Life, for example, is EXEMPT from copyright claims by Valve, as it is very definitely covered under fair use. But if Valve came along and made an ILLEGAL copyright claim, Google's system would knock Ross off YouTube immediately, on the spot, without a human being ever being a part of the process. Similarly, a review is also exempt to claims, no matter HOW much footage they use from the original media. Even if footage is rolling in the background of the ENTIRE video. But a lot of people get reviews, even positive ones, knocked off of YouTube because of this shitty policy. That's what this video is actually about, as all the people in question were reviewers. But this isn't the only issue. Youtube has an appeals process. Allegedly. It only kinda works. It's actually not automated, which is fine, but it can often take weeks for it to be processed, sometimes much longer if it ever happens at all, because Google's using its trademark teams of highly trained monkeys to do all the legal work involved in looking at it, going "Oh, it's a review/parody/whatever, and therefore covered under fair use." and removing the claim. More bafflingly, it has a limited number of appeals, and in some cases you don't get any at all because of a false claim you can't dispute. And in the mean time, if you were monetizing it, all the money you were making is outright stolen by the claimant, giving them incentive to file as many false claims as possible. And the money is NOT returned when the claim is proved false. There's not even a grace period, and once again NO penalty for false claims. Several companies only exist to file copyright claims for IP owners, and get a cut of each claim, and they abuse the system to its fullest. It's not even a hard system to fix. Removing the limit on appeals, adding a grace period before action is taken and installing a penalty for false claims would be the simplest way to fix it, but YouTube won't do it because it legitimately does not care about its users one bit, in a very Electronic Artsy kind of way. It's more expensive and less convenient to actually enforce the law, so it's just making this token effort to do so and ignoring all the issues in a system that takes them zero effort to use, no matter how much it screws over their users. THAT is the problem. And you would have KNOWN THAT if you had taken TWENTY MINUTES to WATCH THE VIDEO before REPLYING. In other words, if you weren't an insufferably vapid shill. Remember how I didn't *actually* tell you to fuck off before? That was then. This is now.

LOL Playing sea-lawyer again? If you're so sure - go and sue them... Or, better - go read their T&C... Regards This is why you are insufferable. An ad hominem attack, two blatant fallacies and then acting like never making a point for the opponent to debunk somehow makes you the winner instead of the complete non-contributor it actually makes you. The moment you become involved the entire conversation becomes a complete waste of time.

If you can't see how shutting something down entirely is different from continuing to air and monetize it and just not paying the creator, you should vacate the conversation immediately. And every other conversation while you're at it. This is a breach of contract. End of story.

By that logic, it's a TV network's monetization if they fhoose not to pay show creators for bringing viewers to their advertisements.

The goal is to make themselves not liable for damages to the computer, so the warranty never needs to be enforced, at all, ever. My point still stands - unless for some miracle (or a conspiracy) every manufacturer in the world agrees to do that, a competitor will use this as an advantage: "hey don't buy their product because they do not provide any service for it, but we do." Trying to do something like this is just putting yourself at the disadvantage over other manufacturers/sellers. You're assuming three patent lunacies. 1. That they would need to make such a thing overt, instead of burying it under so much fine print that they already have your money by the time you find out. 2. That companies won't band together when they all stand to profit at our expense. (See group lobbying, price fixing and planned obsolescence for great examples.) 3. That the overwhelming power of advertisement and lack of better options don't allow them to do whatever the fuck they want and still have an expectation that we'll buy their product anyway. See above examples of things we all know they do.

The goal is to make themselves not liable for damages to the computer, so the warranty never needs to be enforced, at all, ever.

My mouse is a $30 Logitech I'm pretty happy with. I'm pretty rough with my mice, and it holds up really well.

Ding dong, the witch is dead!

Farming blood vials and quicksilver bullets kinda boring. So I'm also watching a hacked live feed of a lapel camera. Trying to figure out where, but it's kinda boring otherwise. This cop sure isn't doing his job, though. Unless his job heavily involves Facebook. Edit: Pretty sure texting while driving is illegal, but why would that stop him? Not like upholding the law is supposed to be his job or anything. Better edit: Dude faceplanted on his way out of his car, which was hilarious. Then he got the rest of the day off, which was infuriating. (Who gets a whole day off for a bloody nose? Fucking nobody, you coddled little pussy. Get back to "work".) And now it's over.

...Joining a game dev team. Which is awesome, but... I was writing a short story and suddenly don't have time for it.

That suck does not make this suck suck less.

Really, I just need to be able to import, make and export MIDI files, and it needs to be able to use soundfonts. (At least the soundfonts are easy to find. I already picked up Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI and Earthbound soundfonts.) And if I can't find an equivalent at a less batshit price, I'll get the super extra mega deluxe version from a rather different provider and not have to pay for it. Thry don't need to charge that much when they already made bank on the eleven previous versions and the dev cost for the new one was approximately seventeen cents and a pop-tart. And if the price was reasonable, I wouldn't be sailing into the piratebay while contemplating the best means of discreetly faxing them ASCII art of a middle finger.