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I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

theeggandtherock.substack.com

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Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#211

Post by hnbad »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #194
spuz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of the legal status is that the author is entitled to accept the €20k as payment for his time but that amount doesn't constitute payment for the copyright of the work. Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. Julian believed the copyright was worth more and so rejected the offer. All that is to say that if my interpretation is co…

At minimum, they are buying a non-exclusive license to copy the work. Beyond that is speculation. (Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on nothing related, and love Minecraft the game.)

I'm German and used to do freelance work. This interpretation is what I've been told by a lawyer in a similar case: the money is for the license, not the copyright, and unless specified, the license is the minimum of what could reasonably be expected, i.e. a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, limited license for the scope of the product.

IANAL but I think Microsoft is in the clear here because they bought out Mojang but they couldn't for example use the ending (or derivative works of it) in a spin-off game because Mojang couldn't have done that either and they have no standing to go after anyone reproducing the poem as a whole or in part.

In fact, the poem now being CC0 grants Microsoft more rights than they had, except it's still non-exclusive, meaning the same rights are granted to everyone else too.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#213

Post by cmeacham98 »

nigamanth wrote: post #206
cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally…

Sure, Minecraft would have still sold as much if the ending screen said "You won" or much simply "The end". But, he did still put in the effort in creating the poem. Every part of the game matters, and I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game. I understand the author being hurt as he's one of the 5 people that contributed to the game, he just needed the credit or any…

> I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game.

He did get paid, $20000. How was Mojang supposed to know he wanted more when he accepted that payment?

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#214

Post by account-5 »

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out.

Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would.

But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to whether you think the original payment was really good. The copyright sits with the artist, not those that commission it, unless the artist signs it away. That didn't happen. That's Mojang's fault not the artist. And the fact they were trying to pressure the artist into doing that shows that that is the real issue.

This post is not about the money or the jealously. It is about the emotional journey the author went on, with their human emotions, and what they thought of as friends. And the different stages of said journey.

If I was more cynical about this piece I would suggest that releasing the poem under CC was easily the worse thing the author could have done from MS/Mojangs point of view. Clearly a decision was made by them that should a lawsuit come about they weren't worried. Releasing it as it has been side steps this completely, leaving the power with the author.

Ultimately though I enjoyed the story.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#215

Post by LudwigNagasena »

mgrthrow wrote: post #45
nl wrote: post #4

This is a great (long!) piece. I think one important thing for people on HN here is this: > I think Carl, with his background as a Corporate Finance guy, seeing the world through that filter, must have believed that I was trying to blackmail them; trying to maximise my revenue, like the “rational agents” that populate economics textbooks; that I was refusing to sign it to hold up the deal, because I wanted to get pai…

The number of times I've been told I don't believe my beliefs because they don't make rational economic sense is innumerable. I'm happy when my tax rate goes up. This apparently really bothers people. (Me being happy about it.)

I don’t think it’s weird that people don’t behave “rationally” in the crude sense of that word[1]. But it seems really weird to be happy about your tax rate going up. Consider the alternative: for example, you could give the money to charity that works in developing countries. So there seems to be two explanations:

(1) Either you consider yourself prodigal and want an authority to take care of your spending for you.

(2) Or you have weirdly framed your views for extra shock value; and you simply dislike inequality and suffering; and you think that the state can help alleviate some of it by reallocating social resources in a socially beneficial manner. And you think it would be just if they also would take some money from you, even if it’s done by force. There is really nothing surprising about this view; I would rather say it is very popular. (And, unfortunately, for most people that feeling for equality doesn’t spread beyond their own country.)

[1] In principle, rationality in economics doesn’t necessarily imply egoism. It just means that the choices made by a person have nice properties like completeness or transitivity. Whether your choices maximize your consumption, consumption of other people, the scientific progress or the amount of plastic in the world ultimately doesn’t matter.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#216

Post by hnbad »

warbler73 wrote: post #190
kergonath wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a strong feeling MS will put out a statement that they own the end poem and it is not public domain. I don’t think they would do that. That would be unbelievably stupid from a legal department. The funny thing with this sort of IP in most of Europe (though this could be different in Sweden but I really doubt it) is that nobody except the author can own it. All they can have is an exclusive license. If they a…

In the US for copyright to transfer he'd need to be an employee and writing part of his work duties, in which case it is work for hire, or if he is a contractor they'd need a signed contract saying the contractor was performing this as work for hire, or a contract explicitly transferring ownership. They did pay him for it so Mojang had an implied license to use it but he retains ownership. When Mojang sold Minecraft…

Wait, I thought Minecraft bought out Mojang, not bought Minecraft from Mojang? If they really did just buy the game and not the entire company, I think you're right and Microsoft may be in violation. If they bought the company, they would have inherited the license as I understand it.

EDIT: IANAL but as long as Minecraft continues being sold by Mojang, not Microsoft, it shouldn't matter whether Microsoft owns the company or not as long as the implied contract was with Mojang, not e.g. Notch.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#217

Post by djmips »

FamosoRandom wrote: post #195
operator-name wrote: post #170

This has also been posted to the Minecraft subreddit, where is has received a lot of positive attention from the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/zf8ye0/i_wrote_t...

This is really interesting to compare both general opinion on HN and on this subreddit. On HN, a place probably filled with technical guys, people are generaly putting themselves in dev shoes. They are accusing the author of feeling entitled to more money because he felt like he was part of the team and that he think his work is equaly important as the work of everyone else. Devs being devs generaly know that coding…

Yes, like I said elsewhere - there's a lot of temporarily embarrassed billionaires here.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#218

Post by hohohmm »

javawizard wrote: post #123
hohohmm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you make the same mistake of the op.

Which is?

Which is mistaking the most sales for the most popularity. There is a universe of games that have huge number of users, but doesn't sell copies.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#219

Post by [deleted] »

ninth_ant wrote: post #106
eps wrote: post #79

This needs another side of the story.

Notch wanted a freelance writer to write a funky written piece for after the player defeats the ender dragon. He finds one and they agree on a price via email. Notch likes the result, integrated the writing into the game and pays the writer the agreed-upon amount. During due diligence of the MS purchase, the lawyers want the contract formalized. The freelancer erratically responds, writing self-contradictory emails t…

[deleted]

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#220

Post by lelanthran »

cobertos wrote: post #208
lelanthran wrote: post #163

Quoted post unavailable.

He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_? Notch, C418 (music), Jeb (only coder at launch), Kristoffer Zetterstrand (ingame paintings), and him (ending). He said only 25 people were staff at the time as well. I am truly curious who they were and what their roles were.

> He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_?

How would he know? From his own account, he was nothing more than a contract supplier who supplied one single thing.

He claims that they were friends, but his own account of the whole mess shows that that isn't true.

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