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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

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Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#931

Post by bsder »

ergothus wrote: post #680
joelx wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.

After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money. I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and t…

> I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable.

Boycott the Hearthstone streamers. Without the pros to tell the punters what the meta is and what cards to buy, the game dies out.

While Blizzard won't notice a couple people leaving, streamers will notice even a couple of people telling them they are leaving their channel.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#932

Post by leshow »

hannasanarion wrote: post #716
leshow wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others Not OP, but I believe they are talking about objecting to censorship ostensibly because of freedom of speech, and then not objecting to other censorship. If you don't believe in freedom of speech then there is no issue, if you do, you can object to the content of someone's speech, but not their right to express it. That is, i…

You can believe that censorship in general is appropriate at times, and that there are inappropriate ways to use it. Censoring racists and serial harassers isn't the same as censoring pro-democracy activists.

If you believe in some kind of censorship, that's great, we probably agree on a lot. You just can't take that position and believe in freedom of speech. If you believe in freedom of speech you object to the content of speech you find objectionable, not the right to say it.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#933

Post by ummonk »

jcranberry wrote: post #898
ummonk wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't make some off-hand comment about Hong Kong. He made a deliberate political statement complete with props and all. That very obviously falls under the rule.

That would also imply essentially any kind of public figure who makes a strong political statement would not be allowed to play this game. It looks to me that it was written with stuff more in line with white supremacy advocation and stuff like that in mind.

He did this during a post-match interview on the Hearthstone stream. This wasn’t some personal political statement outside of his participation in the game.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#935

Post by neltnerb »

MereInterest wrote: post #364
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it a few times, but it's worth repeating IMO: copyright is a deal, where a creator gets a time-limited monopoly in exchange for works entering the public domain. If a company have arranged things so their work can't enter the public domain (eg DRM) then they should not get copyright protection, fundamentally it's wrong to get the benefit of copyright without giving up your work to the public domain. This ca…

I'm glad to hear that others have the same opinion regarding software copyrights. I'd even go one step further and say that the source code must be included in that unhindered copy. Otherwise, the public's right to make derivative works from things in the public domain cannot be upheld.

Is source code covered by copyright at all if it's never published? I thought that was the bare minimum.

If they never release the source code at all, I think we're just screwed, legally anyway. The DRM was attached to your binary or stream (or book), not the original source material. We may not like it, but I don't think it's copyright you have to worry about when it comes to closed source code.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#936

Post by ummonk »

luckydata wrote: post #677
ummonk wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay that explains it. I thought banning for 12 months was a little harsh for someone making a political statement once, but he knew what he was doing and doubled down on it.

It sounds like you agree with the measure. Is that the case?

I do. I don’t want sporting events, conventions, etc. to become platforms for advocacy about controversial politics.

I support non-disruptive actions like kneeling at an anthem, but advocacy about a political issue during a post-match interview streamed by the event organizer certainly crosses the line.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#937

Post by castis »

Thebroser wrote: post #873
saltking112 wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s hilarious is that deletion of account might require government issued photo ID. The last step for me to stop doing business with a bad actor is by giving up my privacy.

I tried deleting my account just now and was prompted with a screen asking for it. "Might" might well be an understatement.

I successfully deleted mine earlier today and did not have to present any sort of ID. "Might" stands.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#939

Post by rocdirty »

Blizzard doesn't want to take ownership of their problem. If you're serving a country that doesn't have free speech, you need to limit what information is transmitted to that country. Just like any other tech company that has done major business in China...

Rather than just censoring information that's transmitted to China's citizens, they are moving the censorship worldwide. I personally cannot support a company who's goes this route rather than the former.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#940

Post by colechristensen »

Dove wrote: post #904

This is a very specific instance of a much more general problem. A lot of private companies control exclusive access to something with a value that dwarfs what you pay for it. I pay nothing for access to Twitter; if I build a business or a social life on the platform, it becomes something I would pay thousands of dollars to prevent losing. I pay nothing for access to Facebook; the memories they store at this point in…

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

The first amendment was written when it was much more difficult to abridge speech. You would have to trust hearsay and either remove someone from your property or have them face some consequence based on the word of somebody who heard you. Governments could punish you with crimes, but that was it.

Unless you were publishing work through somebody who owned a printing press, you were in complete control of the medium and delivery of your words and few people could restrict you and your words were soon forgotten.

Now most things that most people say go through a filter of several others infrastructure and they all can record what you say and limit what goes through.

We need active speech protections for platforms which act like the public square. The newspaper doesn't need to publish my whacky opinions, but Facebook needs to let me post as myself freely or change how it fundamentally operates from a space to talk to a publisher of selected material.

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