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

theeggandtherock.substack.com

651–660 of 778 posts

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

#651

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

Quoted post unavailable.

This is an incredibly cynical reading of the article. It's also rather funny to make a claim about the entire article immediately after you say you stopped reading about 10% of the way through.

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

#652

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

You went on a rant impugning the characters of the other people involved and making yourself the victim. All that really happened is you got a good deal for a bit of writing, $20k. You wish you had asked for more. Everyone here called your bullshit. Now you wish people just saw your attack on the other people as art or an emotional journey or whatever other nonsense. If you want to make art, then make art. But if you write an attack on other people’s actions, then expect people to be critical.

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

#653

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

Hi Julian,

Thank you for your reply and for taking the time to read our comments. We appreciate your perspective and the insight you have provided on the situation.

However, I must say that your message feels very confrontational and pointy, and dismissive of the legal aspects of the situation. While we understand that the emotional and artistic aspects are important, the legalities of the situation must also be considered and discussed.

I hope that you can understand our perspective and engage with us on the legal aspects of the situation as well.

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

#654

Although I don't really like the ending text for Minecraft at all (and think the author is really too pretentious and self-centered), I like how this blog post reveals himself as an artist with human flaws. He kinda (but not fully) admits that he had a parasocial relationship with Notch and really though he cared about him (although for Notch the author was probably just a random contactor who would fill the writing…

The text isn't even _good_. "and the universe said i love you because you are love". That's expert level cliche.

Art is subjective. It fits well in the poem in my view.

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

#656

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

I love your story and it resonates with situations I've been in, thank you.

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

#657
post #628
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am stunned this is on HN. He got _20k EUR_ for a (not fantastic) poem he quite likely didn't use more than 160 hours of work on. He played the game with his daughter for a while and then wrote this according to the article itself! How could you possibly demand more than 20k? How could he even believe he has _any_ legal case when he took the money, gave Mojang/Notch a license verbally (especially given he took the m…

I am stunned (pardon my sarcasm) that you're implying he demands something. The whole point of his long story was to say that he did not want to demand anything (even though he clearly had his opportunities). You're reading it wrong if you see "greedy" there. And regarding "stunned this is on HN" - clearly this content is quite interesting/relevant to the HN audience as you can see by the number of comments.

Who spends 12k words to say "I'm not asking for anything"?

This is clearly passive aggressive gaslighting behaviour: "I'm really not mad or upset that I only got 20k. Really you guys. I see Notch in his nice house, how he doled out piles of cash to everyone and skipped me and it's fine because I'm happy for them. Really! I thought we were friends and clearly we are not but thats fine because I took some shrooms and now I'm at peace literally made of love. I gave them a priceless gift and it makes my heart happy to know that I contributed to this $2.5B project, even though I only got 20k out of it."

I attempt an abbreviated post, that might have been better received by everyone:

"I wrote the ending poem for Minecraft. I believe it was not part of Microsoft's acquisition due to some contractual fun and games. I'm really proud of my work, and I want to share it those that did not get to experience the end of the game. Here you go, and please enjoy."

FTFY

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

#658

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

Your piece addresses what you claim to be a basic "unfairness": You (if it's really you) say someone "didn't treat me as a friend".

Most of the comments are reflecting on whether it really was or wasn't unfair.

So I'd say it's also an interesting worldview that you make a claim about fairness and then dismissed any conversation about fairness (the topic _you brought up_) with a glib statement asserting that anyone who ponders this as being "blind to any emotional" concerns.

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

#659
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't answered the question. That Mojang paid some money isn't disputed. What they paid for is the unknown. > It is a reasonable amount of money for the kind of work that was completed. Paying to use something isn't the same as paying to own it and from what we know use vs own wasn't clarified at the time. > Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were…

Well, they payed for this text to be included in the game (for further distribution, obviously). That's a bad legal definition. It needs a clarification which usually comes in a form of a contract. Mojang clearly acted un-professionally: there's money on the table without a clear job definition. What happens with the copyright? Authorship? Should the author be mentioned in the game? etc. Same goes to the writer, obvi…

> Well, they payed for this text to be included in the game (for further distribution, obviously).

They paid for the deal they agreed on as described in that first email. We don’t know the contents of that email, so it’s impossible for us to know if it they agreed on just including the poem in the game, transfer of copyright or anything else.

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

#660

Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic…

You went on a rant impugning the characters of the other people involved and making yourself the victim. All that really happened is you got a good deal for a bit of writing, $20k. You wish you had asked for more. Everyone here called your bullshit. Now you wish people just saw your attack on the other people as art or an emotional journey or whatever other nonsense. If you want to make art, then make art. But if you…

I'd hardly call that an attack. It's emotional and raw, and definitely not vindictive. I really enjoyed the honest writing. All too often people hide their feelings so they don't get misunderstood or misrepresented.
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