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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

#681

Post by mkeedlinger »

bobsmooth wrote: post #647
JulianPGough wrote: post #646

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…

HN is not the place to expect emotional intelligence. Reading your story was sad, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that happened. I hope releasing your poem gives you the peace you need.

Maybe you didn't intend to imply this, but I don't think it's primarily a lack of emotional intelligence on HN, but more so that logic perspectives is what people expect/want from this particular community.

Seems reasonable to me that there would be times/places where the balance between emotional and logic leans one way or the other. I've certainly seen places where things leaned greatly towards emotional to large positive effect, I think HN is a logical counter-part to that.

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

#682

Post by pie_flavor »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #536
account-5 wrote: post #214

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…

>But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers we…

You own the copyright to any works you create unless you have signed a document that specifically says you don't. It's not his responsibility to bring up the basic fundamentals of copyright law during a transaction, and there's nothing different and secret about them. If the messages constituted an implied contract, the only thing implied would be a license to use it in Minecraft, not a total transfer of all ownership. You may want to become familiar with said basics of copyright; Creative Commons has a good explainer https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2...

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

#683

Post by TheCapn »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #555
pgsandstrom wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im honestly chocked that people react so negatively to this piece. Yes, the author expresses many negative and self centered emotions. He is very clear about that. It is part of the story. It is a story about being a flawed person. I sympathize with him. I loved this piece. I hope he truly did let go of all the hangups he described. And it does seem that he actually did sell the the rights of use to microsoft, making…

Agreed. This whole comment thread is making me feel more negative about HN than I have before.

I'm actually kind of shocked at the majority reaction here. I can relate in many ways to the author and can feel his struggle through the story. I empathize even though I can see where the mistakes were made.

I figure we just have a lot of Carls in here. There's always been a very business-oriented culture here: people are looking for success in their careers and monetary success is a big part of it. Contracts and IP are big parts of the business brain and I think people just struggle to see things from a different perspective.

All I can say is I'm very appreciative for the author to share the perspective. He says it clearly, there aren't any bad guys there and I think so many people in this forum want there to be one.

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

#684

Post by [deleted] »

bobsmooth wrote: post #647
JulianPGough wrote: post #646

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…

HN is not the place to expect emotional intelligence. Reading your story was sad, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that happened. I hope releasing your poem gives you the peace you need.

[deleted]

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

#685

Post by spritefs »

JulianPGough wrote: post #646

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 particularly enjoyed the comments where blokes (so many blokes!) got angry at me for even HAVING emotions about this situation, when the law seemed, to them, to make such emotions invalid.

You write a several thousand word screed (mostly about money), talk about payouts to Mojang staff and Notch's house, post a donation link under the heading "THIS IS WHERE YOU GET TO SAVE MY LIFE", and then come here with pointed comments about people disregarding your "emotions" in this situation because there isn't unanimous agreement on your own "rightness" in this situation

I don't really need to comment on any of this, because anyone with eyes can see it for what it is

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

#686

Post by sudosysgen »

xnorswap wrote: post #141
naet wrote: post #85

I kinda feel like this guy is overstating his contribution to Minecraft. It's nice to have an end screen message, but that isn't what drove the value of the game and could have easily been replaced by something else. Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into…

Indeed, the odd twist in this story was that he was paid for his work. I was expecting a story about how he was still chasing his money to this day. I'm fairly sure that no credible lawyer would give him the time of the day if he did try to get more now. He did work, he accepted money for that work and only later he thinks he's entitled to more and wants to re-negotiate. I don't know about his jurisdiction, but here…

The question is whether Microsoft owns the copyright or merely has permission to use it as the ending for their game. Everyone agrees Microsoft is allowed to use it as the ending to Minecraft, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft owns the copyright to it or the right to use it somewhere else.

Also, Mojang is in breach of the informal contract because they did not give him the promotion they promised.

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

#688

Post by dragonwriter »

spritefs wrote: post #685
JulianPGough wrote: post #646

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 particularly enjoyed the comments where blokes (so many blokes!) got angry at me for even HAVING emotions about this situation, when the law seemed, to them, to make such emotions invalid. You write a several thousand word screed (mostly about money), talk about payouts to Mojang staff and Notch's house, post a donation link under the heading "THIS IS WHERE YOU GET TO SAVE MY LIFE", and then come here with pointe…

> I don't really need to comment on any of this

And, yet, here we are...

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

#689

Post by birken »

microsoftdoes wrote: post #652
JulianPGough wrote: post #646

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 think it's very interesting so many people in this comment thread are so quick to point out that 20k is a fair, or even good, price for writing the end poem, but don't engage with the fact that $1800000k might be an excessive amount for one person to earn for making a video game.

The multiples and orders of magnitude of difference in the payouts are what make the decisions that the various people make interesting and complicated. The author did what he needed to do to make you feel those orders of magnitude in difference.

Also it is very funny to think that somebody who has 1.8 billion dollars is not greedy. I don't think that is impugning their character to point out something obvious.

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

#690

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #560
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…

It kind of reminds me of the story of Clare Torry, who did the vocals on Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky [1], and received the standard £30 flat fee for session work. Of course the song ended up being a critical piece of an album that went on to be one of the best selling albums in the history of music. Sometimes, we make a big contribution to something and don't end up with a big payoff. It's sad that business…

Well, and you're not reading about the countless people who contributed to something that never made any money. Or for that matter the countless people who work on Hollywood blockbusters for guild scale and a small credit at the end.
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