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City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

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Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#121

Post by raxxorraxor »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #82
thomastjeffery wrote: post #74

My perspective: the fan is not "going rogue". This story is copyright itself brought to its objective conclusion. Everything here, the petty IP ownership claim, the expectation to have that ownership literally applied, the reactionary griefing, etc. is all baked in to what copyright is at its very foundations. This person is simply playing out the function of copyright as an ideology in their interactions with the ga…

No, it isn’t. The fact that you can make a false claim in copyright law and cause damage is not an indictment of the system of copyright.

Of course it is an indictment, because such a system needs to be enforcable without doing damage. Although some of that may extend to our system of justice and its huge monetary barriers as well.

Aside from this, false DMCA claims are even used as a vehicle for harassment. Of course that is broken as well...

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#122

Post by d1sxeyes »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #106
defrost wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They" implies multiple No. It doesn't. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) not only accepts singular they, they also use the form in their definitions. And the New Oxford American Dictionary (Third Edition, 2010), calls singular they ‘generally accepted’ with indefinites, and ‘…

Well, one can cherry-pick one's authority on grammar, but any online translator will translate "They walk" to "Ils marchent". One also wouldn't write "they is", so, yes, it's a plural. At least, a sentence should be consistent and not intersperse "they" with "him".

I suspect OP is trying to fight a subconscious bias that the person in question is male, which is why there is inconsistency.

Many of us may also have made a similar assumption–I know I did, and I have certainly made edits to comments in the past where I have unconsciously assumed the gender of someone with no evidence and later noticed. However, we have no idea what gender the user is. English does not have a clear, unambiguous way of saying a third person of an unknown gender, but 'they' is definitely part of common vernacular.

I agree that in general, it's probably better to be consistent internally within a sentence, but the rest of your argument is pretty badly flawed.

With regards to resorting to French to try to argue, 'any online translator' will likely translate 'they walk' to 'ils marchent'. But it's equally possible that it could be 'elles marchent', 'on marche', or with enough context 'il/elle marche' regardless of the gender of the actual person (e.g. 'La personne s'approche dans la nuit. Elle marche avec des pas longs.').

There are also plenty of cases where we refer to singular nouns with plural verbs (e.g. 'the police are on their way').

Prescriptivism in English is an overall unrewarding topic, unlikely to make you any friends, and rarely helps to forward whatever point it is you're trying to make.

I'm not sure that I understand exactly what your point is anyway, how do you propose we refer to someone of unknown gender?

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#123

Post by raxxorraxor »

filoleg wrote: post #87
stonogo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that the claim is false?

Why would a tiny Slovakian studio loudly proclaim that they are planning to continue fighting this lawsuit, if they believed that they were in the wrong? Especially given that the studio knows they are being directly sued by a lawyer who feels wronged and has a personal vendetta against them. Not even mentioning, above all, that DMCA strikes have been weaponized and abused by powerful players before. More importantly…

DMCA could be scrapped without too much hassle and it might damage content creators far less than with the system in place.

Without DMCA the wrong people might benefit from the creativity of others, sure. That isn't just the case here and a solution would be nice. But as it stands DMCA affected content very negatively.

The overall parasitic behavior of lawyers is very likely larger than that of those that steal content. It is very rarely being done out of malice and mostly fans anyway.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#124

Post by d1sxeyes »

the_third_wave wrote: post #112
defrost wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They" implies multiple No. It doesn't. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) not only accepts singular they, they also use the form in their definitions. And the New Oxford American Dictionary (Third Edition, 2010), calls singular they ‘generally accepted’ with indefinites, and ‘…

Indeed, please learn English . Finding vague references to the use of plurals for individuals does not make this part of the vernacular just like 'pluralis majestatis' [1] does not do so. Language evolves so paper dictionaries from the beginning of the 21st century will not be entirely accurate but given the way some publishers of online dictionaries have taken to using their products to push language revolution inst…

Using archaic latin terms doesn't really strengthen your argument for linguistic evolution.

However, for certain using plurals for individuals of unknown gender is hardly rare, there are hundreds of examples in literature a quick Google away.

It has become (somewhat) popular in the context particularly of discussions on trans rights and 'misgendering' to take the position that the singular they is somehow ungrammatical because people don't want to use it to refer to people whose gender they believe is not unknown.

But it seems to me as though that argument is actually not related to the current discussion.

Here we are simply discussing whether 'they' can be used to refer to a person whose gender is unknown to the speaker at the time, for which there is ample historical, literary evidence that this is commonplace in English, as well as the anecdotal evidence from sibling comments.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#125

Post by catiopatio »

dangrossman wrote: post #98
catiopatio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DMCA was passed in 1998. You do realize we had a fully functioning internet filled with user-generated content before 1998, right?

You don't know your history. The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet, as BBS systems and ISPs were being held liable for vicarious copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement, making the business of operating an ISP legally and financially untenable. There was a realistic danger that no business would continue operating a public ISP under the e…

> The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet

Given this blatantly incorrect reframing of the DMCA as anything other than being intended to serve the copyright lobby’s interests, it’s hard to believe you’re arguing in good faith.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#126

Post by [deleted] »

catiopatio wrote: post #125
dangrossman wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know your history. The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet, as BBS systems and ISPs were being held liable for vicarious copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement, making the business of operating an ISP legally and financially untenable. There was a realistic danger that no business would continue operating a public ISP under the e…

> The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet Given this blatantly incorrect reframing of the DMCA as anything other than being intended to serve the copyright lobby’s interests, it’s hard to believe you’re arguing in good faith.

[deleted]

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#127

Post by foverzar »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #73
foverzar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's how companies generally operate under the legislation, then yes, it's the legislation that is shitty. Them's the rules. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

In this case, "The players" have a direct influence on what becomes a part of the game, through lobbying, campaign finances and whatever other more shady shit corporations get up to in order to stack the deck in their favor. At some point you have to realize the players are dictating the game, and then yeah, hate them.

You also have a direct influence through voting, etc. Besides, the "players" here (content hosting platforms) don't lobby anything, you beef is with large IP holders. But that's not the point.

The legislation is bad, because it neither accounts for normal actors that generally would always follow the passive path of least resistance, nor for bad actors that would actively try to abuse the system.

This is basically being upset over the effects of a natural law. You don't blame rocket for exploding, you blame the idiots who designed it that way. And you definitely don't blame the launchpad operators for poor rocket design - that's not even their job.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#128

Post by Eisenstein »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #118
Eisenstein wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person is claiming rights to a version of the game not yet released because they wrote a game guide about how to do it and the game creators agreed to credit him in the new IP. This has led to him filing the DMCA requests and initiating a claim against the new product. The DMCA requests appear to be retaliatory. That's my understanding from the minimal information provided in the article. Note however we are gett…

Regarding the DOOM Eternal Soundtrack, no reasonable person should have every believed the original story as claimed by Stratton in the first place. Unfortunately, taken as a whole gamers are a toxically childish and entitled community and it was all too easy to weaponize them against Gordon.

Regardless of what people should have done, or did do, it serves as a stark lesson for everyone to never take a one-sided story (without accompanied compelling evidence) at face value.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#129

Post by Adraghast »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #56
Adraghast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the open internet existed before DMCA did, I suspect “essential” is an exaggeration.

Internet wasn't that fast, consumers weren't informed, legislators weren't informed.

The criteria was existence. It existed.

Could the internet exist in a way that makes the RIAA/MPAA/etc happy without DMCA? Maybe not. But there’s no reason to assume their happiness is a requirement, or even desirable.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#130

Post by thomastjeffery »

filoleg wrote: post #87
stonogo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that the claim is false?

Why would a tiny Slovakian studio loudly proclaim that they are planning to continue fighting this lawsuit, if they believed that they were in the wrong? Especially given that the studio knows they are being directly sued by a lawyer who feels wronged and has a personal vendetta against them. Not even mentioning, above all, that DMCA strikes have been weaponized and abused by powerful players before. More importantly…

It's not about whether they are, as defined by the law, right or wrong. That's the moral definition part.

The implementation part is where the problem lies. If this company is right, then they are being actively harmed by the utility provided in the very law that has defined them to be in the right!

Even if the DMCA takedown feature makes logical sense in the abstract, its thoroughly demonstrated utility for abuse shows us that the law itself fails to implement its own application.

The correct way to resolve this problem is to change the law, such that it is no longer abusable.

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