certainly not a form letter, it wasn't at all vague with any pasted in references. it was very directed at me, in my circumstances, about my games and my blog.
I agree with you on all those stupid abuses of fair sue which the record companies should stfu about. But I wont cry about this case. the defendant knew damn well she was guilty as hell and caught red handed. she decided to try and 'stick it to the man' by pretending she was innocent, which to be honest just wasted everyone's time. The record companies saw an opportunity to make an example out of her and they took it. I'm amazed anyone with such a weak defence with no excuses would be silly enough not to settle. If the record companies had been real bastards they wouldn't even have offered to settle, as it was, they did.
I know this to my cost. take this game: http://www.rocklegendgame.com/ originally it was called Kudos : Rock Star. This is because it was a game about rock stars. Hence the name. It was always going to be a small budget indie turn-based family friendly strategy game. hardly anything that people might confuse with a game made by RockStar games. That wasn't good enough for Take 2, who basically threatened to sue me into oblivion, after apparently reading a blog post of mine when I mentioned that I had bought rockstargame.com in preparation for my new game.
**Take 2's lawyers have time to read the blogs of indie game devs to look for potential targets.**
Amazingly they thought I could cause 'serious financial harm' to their billion dollar company, yet had not spent the $25 to buy the domain name themselves. Even more amazingly, they didn't realise that take 2 actually had an existing biz deal with me for one of my previous games. Rather than phone me, or get the relevant dev relations guy to email me and ask me if I would change the name, their lawyers sent me a threatening letter. I sold them the domain at cost. As a small company, I had no choice. I renamed the game, as I had no choice. Good old take 2!
what truth? that she replaced her hard drive the moment the warning letter came from the RIAA? you actually think this woman is innocent and did not share the songs? seriously? what *truth* did the jury miss exactly? enlighten us, from your position of not actually being in the courtroom.
or they can sell music they make to people who like that music and purchase it, listen to it, and enjoy it. Sounds crazy to slashdot readers, but millions of people are quite happy to do this. I bought a music CD last month, happy with the price, the CD, everything. No problem. its the 1% of people who think "all music should be made for me for free!!!!!" who are causing all this argument. Most of them break the law, some get caught. big deal. Nothing to see here. The vast majority of us don't care about this case because the vast majority of us just buy our music. If you want free music, there is lots of it about, have fun, even make your own. wahey! it's when you insist that other peoples music should be free, and they don't agree, that you end up in court. You didn't create that music, its not your decision how other people decide to structure their business.
"And while we are at it lets take down the movie industry since we know everyone prefers Indie films and we are all getting sick of these multi billion dollar productions like LOTR."
speak for yourself. I enjoyed LOTR and Star Wars, and paid my money very happily to see both movie series. If people like you don't like them, then fuck off and watch your arthouse movies, but don't become so arrogant and conceited you want to deliberately fuck up an entire industry which the vast majority of people enjoy. Who died and made you king of culture?
you are not an asshole, you are being a good citizen. the HOV lane is there to ensure that as many people can get where they are going as efficiently as possible for the benefit of everyone. If people abuse that system, they are basically leeching off the law-abidance of everyone else to get a free (fast) ride. Fuck em. I'm glad you report them. I would too.
I used to work in AAA game dev, now work for myself. I'm not sure paying overtime is the solution. If I'm paid by the hour and I have a bad ass bug, yet I have a brainwave and fix it in 20 mins, I'm going to avoid checking it in, chat on msn, play peggle for 3 hours and pocket the 3 hours extra wages. Who is going to know? I'd be very surprised if this doesn't lead to longer dev times, rather than shorter, its all about incentives. If there is more cash available, the solution is good, regular bonuses, and higher salaries. The problem is the management obsession wit bums on seats and hours clocked in. Coders and designers especially are knowledge workers. It's to do with clear thinking, experience, efficiency and inspiration. you can't chain someone to a desk and expect them to produce a linear amount of results per hour. Coding and designing is not bricklaying. Management panic that they can't tell if a game coder is working hard or not, or whether he good at his job or not, so they settle for the one metric they understand -> hours worked. It's a deeply flawed method, and paying them for the extra hours just penalizes those who are more efficient and get stuff done faster. Pay people by results.
in a perfect capitalist market, it pretty much *is* a law of nature. In a fixed size market, if company A wants to make profits and be ethical, and company B just wants to make profits, then company B will be more competitive and take away company A's customers. Everything you do that isn't profit maximising will make you less competitive. Now thats not to say you cant have companies who define their marketplace by certain ethical standards. I myself bank with smile.co.uk, the 'ethical' bank. But this bank exists because its customers are prepared to pay a premium for their ethical product, its an entirely rational profit-driven strategy. If you want companies to act ethically, your only options are to spend your cash with the few who operate as you like, or to lobby govt to regulate the ethical standards into the market. Idly wishing that some of the companies changed their business practices regardless of profit motives is just futile, that's not how capitalism works.
" it'd be better if companies like this opened their products because they truly believed in openness, rather than to beat the competition over the head"
The purpose of a company is generally to make money, not to crusade for some political stance. The investors want a good return on their investment, not a philosophy. You are living in a dream world if you think the number 1 aim of most companies isn't to maximise their profits. Any kind of 'belief' about open or closed source etc is very much a secondary concern, and always will be. If it wasn't they would quickly find themselves losing market share and customers to the the competition.
And if you don't think you can have any effect whatsoever on the lifestyles of other people, then you are just confirming most peoples views of US climate sceptics as being entirely selfish and self-centred. nice work!
And what bugs me is you sticking your head deep in the sand and saying everything is fine. Right now YOUR country may not be suffering big time because of sea level rises, well whoopy-do. where YOU live may not be the worlds major toxic waste dump, and where YOU are, may not have extreme weather conditions thanks to climate change.
Lucky You.
There is such a thing as looking out for your fellow man, and making a sacrifice in your own lifestyle, however small, to help out someone else, who would otherwise suffer from your actions, even if they are in another country. Its tragic that most people wont even consider changing a flipping lightbulb to help reduce energy sue and c02 emissions that may be wipiing out god knows how many people accross the world.
Newsflash -> there is something called climate change happening and its a pretty BAD thing. You may want to stay in the Bush / Fox News / Michael Crichton camp and pretend "its all teh conspiracy!!!111", but I'll side with the consensus of the global scientific community and the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cleverer people than you or I are saying heavy shit is on the horizon unless we do something to stop it. Sorry if that depresses you, but sticking your head in the sand will not make it go away.
I guess you don't know anyone who lost their home in New Orleans, or the Tsunami. Lucky you.
"we're definitely smart enough to cope with anything nature is going to throw our way."
go visit new orleans buddy. The arrogance of that statement is breathtaking, and only possible for someone in a very rich country who has never experienced the real effects of nature at her worst. How would the US have coped with the asian tsunami? new orleans suggests many communities would have descended into armed looters within hours. Nature is bigger, stronger and more destructive than us. Every now and then we get reminded of this.
Oh yeah sure, I'm the only one who is pro economic growth and green. seriously, what planet are you typing that from? Try turning off fox news now and then,
Oh dear. you have shown a staggering lack of understanding about environmental politics in that post. I'm a geek, a computer programmer and lover of sci-fi, modern technology, gadgets and future tech. I'm also an environmentalist. The idea that being green == wanting to go back in time is just plain nutso, and is the kind of twaddle that gets peddled on fox news.
I'm all for modern tech, I don't mind all kinds of stuff in theory, but I'm aware of the precautionary principle, in terms of not releasing anything into the atmosphere and eco system that we don't 100% know how to control (which is why I'm not so keen on GM food), and why I'm concerned about the worst case scenarios involved with nuclear power. Nuclear fusion sounds good, but show me a commercial scale nuclear fusion reactor? And the history of Nuclear fission in my home (UK) is that it is prone to constant leaks and accidents, accountancy fraud, huge overspend, exaggerated claims of profitability, security breaches etc etc. My main argument against nuclear power is financial, the costs of waste disposal, security and decommissioning are not fully known, and every study into the UKs current nuclear cleanup bill pushes that cost higher. I'm also not 100% convinced by the safety issue, given the huge possible down side of a Chernobyl style accident occurring. (agreed that this is unlikely, but exactly how unlikely? we should always guard against the worst case.)
You can be pro modern society, pro-tech, and green. there is absolutely zero conflict there. In fact, if you are always forward looking and interested in maximising efficiency (as many tech-obsessed geeks are), then its harder to understand how you would *not* be green.
a website like this one that mods someone as flamebait for daring to suggest that an argument about business models does not hold up under scrutiny is clearly one-sided and wrong, yes. Slashdot posters routinely stick their fingers in their ears and pretend not to listen, as do digg and boingboing users, if there is ever a reasonable argument mentioned in favour of copyright. Anything that stops you taking other peoples work for free is 'teh evil' and 'teh mafiaaaaa'.
wow, if boingboing says it it must be true, they are about as rapidly anti-copyright as slashdot. As a content creator, I can assure you that it is massively clear, but you keep clinging to some belief that copyright theft is somehow a good thing for the person you took the product from if it helps you sleep at nights.
oh god, its the old "business model propped up by government" complaint again.
lets say you run a shop that sells food. all the food is on shelves, ready for people to pick it up and take home. the windows are made of glass. If people don't want to pay, they can ram-raid the shop at midnight, load up all the food, and drive off. Why don't we all do this? Because its against the law. The police will investigate, they may well catch us, they will prosecute us, they will press for us to get a custodial sentence, and we will end up in prison. if we resist arrest they will use force, ultimately, if we are armed, they may use deadly force to push the issue. Surely that is a business model ultimately propped up by government?
You live in western society. Modern capitalist societies have rules, rules that we all agree to abide by in the common interest. One of those rules is not to take stuff from other people without compensating them. This is true of food, lodgings, cars, clothes, music, movies, software, live performances by entertainers... anything that someone is doing for a living and requesting payment for. The distinction between the government protecting retail, and it protecting movies exists only in the minds of those who want to take the movies for free, yet still be protected from the anarchy that ensues if the government stops protecting bricks an mortar businesses.
BTW any lame attempt by anyone to argue that its ok to make digital copies because the original remains does not understand the concepts of market size and fixed costs. If your actions (taking something rather than buying it) cannot be scaled up to the whole market without putting the producer out of business, then you are just leeching of the law-abiding.
It's easily worth double that. just buy it, you really will not regret it. Thief 2 is awesome 2, but to be honest I can't imagine missing out on either, they are both awesome games.
They may be the most hyped and talked about, but they are unlikely to be the most profitable. On the PC, the most popular game by far is 'the sims' which is the total antithesis of this entire list. I'm a game designer/coder by trade, and reading that article just depresses me. Nobody is actually worried about the fact that the end game may be just as predictable and tedious as the game before it. The biggest challenges in game development are gameplay concepts and play balancing. I've coded pretty much every aspect of games over the years. Most of the graphics stuff is actually quite easy in some ways, because 1) you know exactly what you are aiming to achieve and 2) you have a visible reference of what it should look like (thanks to hollywood). Neither of these apply at all to trying to create truly innovative gameplay mechanics. That is by far the hardest thing, yet it doesn't make for good articles or screenshots. It mainly involves a lot of dead ends, a lot of typing, and a lot of head scratching and coffee. when you finish and have a great game mechanic, everyone tells you how its obvious and they could have thought of it, although noticeably, they didn't:D
if you don't like the terms of the product, do not buy it. I don't like all manner of companies, so I do not purchase their products. it's a simple philosophy, but it makes me happy.
"it's become too easy to abuse copyright law using tools like the DMCA"
But my whole point is that this is *NOT* easy. In fact, as I mentioned, to issue a DMCA request, you have to blatantly open yourself up to a direct count of perjury if you are misusing it (which is fine with me). Every DMCA request needs you to state, "under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the information you have provided is accurate". Its a huge red warning flag, right there to people who consider abusing the act, which makes it easy for those abusing it to be prosecuted.
Without the DMCA, I could send a vague legal sounding threatening letter to an ISP, and they would not be able to prosecute me if it turns out I made it up. with the DMCA, they just reply and say "please fill out a DMCA request", and there is no way I can avoid the perjury count in that case. This is a good thing for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
certainly not a form letter, it wasn't at all vague with any pasted in references. it was very directed at me, in my circumstances, about my games and my blog.
I agree with you on all those stupid abuses of fair sue which the record companies should stfu about. But I wont cry about this case. the defendant knew damn well she was guilty as hell and caught red handed. she decided to try and 'stick it to the man' by pretending she was innocent, which to be honest just wasted everyone's time. The record companies saw an opportunity to make an example out of her and they took it. I'm amazed anyone with such a weak defence with no excuses would be silly enough not to settle. If the record companies had been real bastards they wouldn't even have offered to settle, as it was, they did.
I know this to my cost. take this game:
http://www.rocklegendgame.com/
originally it was called Kudos : Rock Star. This is because it was a game about rock stars. Hence the name. It was always going to be a small budget indie turn-based family friendly strategy game. hardly anything that people might confuse with a game made by RockStar games.
That wasn't good enough for Take 2, who basically threatened to sue me into oblivion, after apparently reading a blog post of mine when I mentioned that I had bought rockstargame.com in preparation for my new game.
**Take 2's lawyers have time to read the blogs of indie game devs to look for potential targets.**
Amazingly they thought I could cause 'serious financial harm' to their billion dollar company, yet had not spent the $25 to buy the domain name themselves.
Even more amazingly, they didn't realise that take 2 actually had an existing biz deal with me for one of my previous games. Rather than phone me, or get the relevant dev relations guy to email me and ask me if I would change the name, their lawyers sent me a threatening letter.
I sold them the domain at cost. As a small company, I had no choice. I renamed the game, as I had no choice.
Good old take 2!
what truth? that she replaced her hard drive the moment the warning letter came from the RIAA? you actually think this woman is innocent and did not share the songs?
seriously?
what *truth* did the jury miss exactly? enlighten us, from your position of not actually being in the courtroom.
or they can sell music they make to people who like that music and purchase it, listen to it, and enjoy it. Sounds crazy to slashdot readers, but millions of people are quite happy to do this. I bought a music CD last month, happy with the price, the CD, everything. No problem. its the 1% of people who think "all music should be made for me for free!!!!!" who are causing all this argument. Most of them break the law, some get caught. big deal. Nothing to see here. The vast majority of us don't care about this case because the vast majority of us just buy our music.
If you want free music, there is lots of it about, have fun, even make your own. wahey! it's when you insist that other peoples music should be free, and they don't agree, that you end up in court. You didn't create that music, its not your decision how other people decide to structure their business.
"And while we are at it lets take down the movie industry since we know everyone prefers Indie films and we are all getting sick of these multi billion dollar productions like LOTR."
speak for yourself. I enjoyed LOTR and Star Wars, and paid my money very happily to see both movie series. If people like you don't like them, then fuck off and watch your arthouse movies, but don't become so arrogant and conceited you want to deliberately fuck up an entire industry which the vast majority of people enjoy. Who died and made you king of culture?
you are not an asshole, you are being a good citizen. the HOV lane is there to ensure that as many people can get where they are going as efficiently as possible for the benefit of everyone. If people abuse that system, they are basically leeching off the law-abidance of everyone else to get a free (fast) ride.
Fuck em.
I'm glad you report them. I would too.
I used to work in AAA game dev, now work for myself. I'm not sure paying overtime is the solution. If I'm paid by the hour and I have a bad ass bug, yet I have a brainwave and fix it in 20 mins, I'm going to avoid checking it in, chat on msn, play peggle for 3 hours and pocket the 3 hours extra wages. Who is going to know? I'd be very surprised if this doesn't lead to longer dev times, rather than shorter, its all about incentives.
If there is more cash available, the solution is good, regular bonuses, and higher salaries. The problem is the management obsession wit bums on seats and hours clocked in. Coders and designers especially are knowledge workers. It's to do with clear thinking, experience, efficiency and inspiration. you can't chain someone to a desk and expect them to produce a linear amount of results per hour. Coding and designing is not bricklaying. Management panic that they can't tell if a game coder is working hard or not, or whether he good at his job or not, so they settle for the one metric they understand -> hours worked.
It's a deeply flawed method, and paying them for the extra hours just penalizes those who are more efficient and get stuff done faster. Pay people by results.
in a perfect capitalist market, it pretty much *is* a law of nature. In a fixed size market, if company A wants to make profits and be ethical, and company B just wants to make profits, then company B will be more competitive and take away company A's customers. Everything you do that isn't profit maximising will make you less competitive.
Now thats not to say you cant have companies who define their marketplace by certain ethical standards. I myself bank with smile.co.uk, the 'ethical' bank. But this bank exists because its customers are prepared to pay a premium for their ethical product, its an entirely rational profit-driven strategy. If you want companies to act ethically, your only options are to spend your cash with the few who operate as you like, or to lobby govt to regulate the ethical standards into the market. Idly wishing that some of the companies changed their business practices regardless of profit motives is just futile, that's not how capitalism works.
" it'd be better if companies like this opened their products because they truly believed in openness, rather than to beat the competition over the head"
The purpose of a company is generally to make money, not to crusade for some political stance. The investors want a good return on their investment, not a philosophy. You are living in a dream world if you think the number 1 aim of most companies isn't to maximise their profits. Any kind of 'belief' about open or closed source etc is very much a secondary concern, and always will be. If it wasn't they would quickly find themselves losing market share and customers to the the competition.
agreed, yet some bastard still tagged it as haha. seriously, what the hell is wrong with some jerks?
Here's the evidence:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Happy reading.
And if you don't think you can have any effect whatsoever on the lifestyles of other people, then you are just confirming most peoples views of US climate sceptics as being entirely selfish and self-centred. nice work!
And what bugs me is you sticking your head deep in the sand and saying everything is fine. Right now YOUR country may not be suffering big time because of sea level rises, well whoopy-do. where YOU live may not be the worlds major toxic waste dump, and where YOU are, may not have extreme weather conditions thanks to climate change.
Lucky You.
There is such a thing as looking out for your fellow man, and making a sacrifice in your own lifestyle, however small, to help out someone else, who would otherwise suffer from your actions, even if they are in another country. Its tragic that most people wont even consider changing a flipping lightbulb to help reduce energy sue and c02 emissions that may be wipiing out god knows how many people accross the world.
Newsflash -> there is something called climate change happening and its a pretty BAD thing. You may want to stay in the Bush / Fox News / Michael Crichton camp and pretend "its all teh conspiracy!!!111", but I'll side with the consensus of the global scientific community and the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
Cleverer people than you or I are saying heavy shit is on the horizon unless we do something to stop it. Sorry if that depresses you, but sticking your head in the sand will not make it go away.
I guess you don't know anyone who lost their home in New Orleans, or the Tsunami. Lucky you.
"we're definitely smart enough to cope with anything nature is going to throw our way."
go visit new orleans buddy. The arrogance of that statement is breathtaking, and only possible for someone in a very rich country who has never experienced the real effects of nature at her worst. How would the US have coped with the asian tsunami? new orleans suggests many communities would have descended into armed looters within hours. Nature is bigger, stronger and more destructive than us. Every now and then we get reminded of this.
Oh yeah sure, I'm the only one who is pro economic growth and green. seriously, what planet are you typing that from?
Try turning off fox news now and then,
Oh dear. you have shown a staggering lack of understanding about environmental politics in that post.
I'm a geek, a computer programmer and lover of sci-fi, modern technology, gadgets and future tech. I'm also an environmentalist. The idea that being green == wanting to go back in time is just plain nutso, and is the kind of twaddle that gets peddled on fox news.
I'm all for modern tech, I don't mind all kinds of stuff in theory, but I'm aware of the precautionary principle, in terms of not releasing anything into the atmosphere and eco system that we don't 100% know how to control (which is why I'm not so keen on GM food), and why I'm concerned about the worst case scenarios involved with nuclear power.
Nuclear fusion sounds good, but show me a commercial scale nuclear fusion reactor? And the history of Nuclear fission in my home (UK) is that it is prone to constant leaks and accidents, accountancy fraud, huge overspend, exaggerated claims of profitability, security breaches etc etc.
My main argument against nuclear power is financial, the costs of waste disposal, security and decommissioning are not fully known, and every study into the UKs current nuclear cleanup bill pushes that cost higher. I'm also not 100% convinced by the safety issue, given the huge possible down side of a Chernobyl style accident occurring. (agreed that this is unlikely, but exactly how unlikely? we should always guard against the worst case.)
You can be pro modern society, pro-tech, and green. there is absolutely zero conflict there. In fact, if you are always forward looking and interested in maximising efficiency (as many tech-obsessed geeks are), then its harder to understand how you would *not* be green.
a website like this one that mods someone as flamebait for daring to suggest that an argument about business models does not hold up under scrutiny is clearly one-sided and wrong, yes.
Slashdot posters routinely stick their fingers in their ears and pretend not to listen, as do digg and boingboing users, if there is ever a reasonable argument mentioned in favour of copyright. Anything that stops you taking other peoples work for free is 'teh evil' and 'teh mafiaaaaa'.
sorry but the idea that you pay someone for products has been around longer than 3 weeks.
wow, if boingboing says it it must be true, they are about as rapidly anti-copyright as slashdot.
As a content creator, I can assure you that it is massively clear, but you keep clinging to some belief that copyright theft is somehow a good thing for the person you took the product from if it helps you sleep at nights.
oh god, its the old "business model propped up by government" complaint again.
lets say you run a shop that sells food. all the food is on shelves, ready for people to pick it up and take home. the windows are made of glass. If people don't want to pay, they can ram-raid the shop at midnight, load up all the food, and drive off. Why don't we all do this?
Because its against the law. The police will investigate, they may well catch us, they will prosecute us, they will press for us to get a custodial sentence, and we will end up in prison. if we resist arrest they will use force, ultimately, if we are armed, they may use deadly force to push the issue.
Surely that is a business model ultimately propped up by government?
You live in western society. Modern capitalist societies have rules, rules that we all agree to abide by in the common interest. One of those rules is not to take stuff from other people without compensating them. This is true of food, lodgings, cars, clothes, music, movies, software, live performances by entertainers... anything that someone is doing for a living and requesting payment for.
The distinction between the government protecting retail, and it protecting movies exists only in the minds of those who want to take the movies for free, yet still be protected from the anarchy that ensues if the government stops protecting bricks an mortar businesses.
BTW any lame attempt by anyone to argue that its ok to make digital copies because the original remains does not understand the concepts of market size and fixed costs. If your actions (taking something rather than buying it) cannot be scaled up to the whole market without putting the producer out of business, then you are just leeching of the law-abiding.
It's easily worth double that. just buy it, you really will not regret it. Thief 2 is awesome 2, but to be honest I can't imagine missing out on either, they are both awesome games.
They may be the most hyped and talked about, but they are unlikely to be the most profitable. On the PC, the most popular game by far is 'the sims' which is the total antithesis of this entire list. :D
I'm a game designer/coder by trade, and reading that article just depresses me. Nobody is actually worried about the fact that the end game may be just as predictable and tedious as the game before it.
The biggest challenges in game development are gameplay concepts and play balancing.
I've coded pretty much every aspect of games over the years. Most of the graphics stuff is actually quite easy in some ways, because
1) you know exactly what you are aiming to achieve and
2) you have a visible reference of what it should look like (thanks to hollywood).
Neither of these apply at all to trying to create truly innovative gameplay mechanics. That is by far the hardest thing, yet it doesn't make for good articles or screenshots. It mainly involves a lot of dead ends, a lot of typing, and a lot of head scratching and coffee. when you finish and have a great game mechanic, everyone tells you how its obvious and they could have thought of it, although noticeably, they didn't
if you don't like the terms of the product, do not buy it. I don't like all manner of companies, so I do not purchase their products. it's a simple philosophy, but it makes me happy.
"it's become too easy to abuse copyright law using tools like the DMCA"
But my whole point is that this is *NOT* easy. In fact, as I mentioned, to issue a DMCA request, you have to blatantly open yourself up to a direct count of perjury if you are misusing it (which is fine with me). Every DMCA request needs you to state, "under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the information you have provided is accurate". Its a huge red warning flag, right there to people who consider abusing the act, which makes it easy for those abusing it to be prosecuted.
Without the DMCA, I could send a vague legal sounding threatening letter to an ISP, and they would not be able to prosecute me if it turns out I made it up. with the DMCA, they just reply and say "please fill out a DMCA request", and there is no way I can avoid the perjury count in that case.
This is a good thing for everyone.
Cheers, Democracy is on the mac, click the buy link to see links for both PC and Mac.