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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   22829 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Let's talk about software revocation: when a seller limits or disables their software after release, like an online game shuts down, particularly when customers aren't refunded.

Examples

Egregious example: Microsoft plans to remotely disable Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac. To be clear, this software was a one-time purchase and works completely offline, Microsoft even explicitly stated at one point it would continue to function. I can't even play devil's advocate.

Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration (e.g. GTA4). Because, why include songs with these licensing requirements, when there are plenty of great songs without them? (And I don't think the removed songs from the GTA4 list are especially popular, I don't recognize any of them and only a couple artists.) Many games are simply delisted when the licenses expire; alternatively the licensed songs could be gated only for new users. At least these gamers weren't explicitly told the music would last forever (I assume), they just assumed.

Less egregious cases: when online-only games shut down. It's expensive to keep servers running; if the seller is an individual or small company they may obviously not have the funds. Providing users self-hostable servers can also be expensive: the server code should be changed for consumer hardware and documented, and the client code should be changed with UX and functionality for custom servers, or gamers will have trouble running it. Sometimes, the seller legally can't release server binaries, for IP reasons I don't really understand (the client code has third-party libraries, why is the server code different?). The most justified cases (albeit rare): the game is free-to-play with only temporary (e.g. seasonal) micro transactions, so there's nothing to refund.

The archtypal example: The Crew. A paid game released (by Ubisoft) in 2014 and permanently shut down in 2024 (without refunds). Online was a big part of the core gameplay, but the game had an offline mode which included a single-player campaign. Regardless, when Ubisoft shut down the game, they disabled the online mode and stopped players from re-downloading it. This shutdown spawned Stop Killing Games and lots of discussion about software revocation. Fortunately, the community has created a mod that re-enables the game and emulates its server (The Crew Unlimited).

Reactions

Stop Killing games campaign/NGO (mentioned above). Most known for collecting 1 million EU signatures so the EU Commission must eventually discuss their initiative, they also collected enough UK signatures for a UK parliament debate, and lobby in the US. Their voice has reached mainstream audiences (more or less: the world is so complicated there's not really one mainstream, but besides millions of signatures, they also got endorsed by celebrities including PewDiePie and Notch), but they haven't (physically) accomplished much, yet...

California's Protect our Games act. Passed the state assembly (not yet law). It requires publishers to post a notice 60 days before shutting down their game, and provide some offline functionality or refunds, although it doesn't apply to subscription games (and may have other exceptions). Backed by Stop Killing Games.

French consumer group sues Ubisoft over shutdown of online game 'The Crew': "UFC-Que ⁠Choisir alleges that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights". An earlier lawsuit in the US was dismissed. Backed by Stop Killing Games.

Cory Doctorow has (of course) written about this. I still support his crusade against enshittification, centralization, and unreasonable DRM (regardless of underlying goals), but I admit my general opinion of him has lowered, as this recent article has subtle xenophobia.

A road paved with good intentions

Of course consumers shouldn't lose access to things they've bought. You wouldn't remotely shutdown a car, or remotely disable its heating, or make previously-free heating a paid upgrade...(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.) Back on topic, surely at least egregious cases like Microsoft's are unjustified, so why shouldn't we prevent them via regulation?

It's not so simple:

  • Generally speaking: regulation doesn't intrinsically prevent anything, it's just a strongly-worded suggestion to the government and population. Moreover, all regulations have drawbacks: they cost money to enforce, discourage businesses, and hurt good-intentioned violators. Selective enforcement leads to the worse of both, where good-intentioned individuals and small businesses are targeted (sometimes frivolously but it still hurts them) while big businesses are ignored; an example I think is copyright, with false DMCA claims hurting individuals while big AI companies train on everything.

  • Consider the regulation "a software seller cannot disable any offline feature in their client without refunding buyers". Sounds reasonable, right? But what if an indie game developer pushes a balance chance that nerfs an OP character by removing their special ability? What if they remove a poorly-implemented game mode almost nobody was playing? Both of these also sound reasonable, but both can be considered disabling offline features. Even if no indie is successfully sued for such a frivolous reason, a failed lawsuit (motivated by the law) would harm them; even if there's no real lawsuit, the potential may discourage them.

My proposal

For now, media pushback and patches seem to be working for the most egregious cases. The Crew is playable via mod, more games are explicitly stating they won't remove licensed songs, I predict Microsoft will walk back revoking Office and am confident otherwise there will be a widely-available patch.

For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers. At least after software becomes "end-of-life" (but preferably in general), there should be no restrictions on hacking the local version, only trying to hack the server. This won't stop determined sellers who put the entire game on the server and don't stream important gameplay logic (effectively recreating Stadia for only their game); but it's an improvement, and that streaming would make their game accessible to gamers with low-end PCs.

Yeah it's an interesting problem. Modern copyright law seems pretty obviously problematic for software and needs an update, but IP is always tricky and the system we have works well enough, I guess.

In general I think it would be great for game companies to have to release the code open source if they're going to stop supporting something, even an old version of a game. WoW Classic is a great example, how there was obviously a huge amount of players that still wanted to play it but weren't able to due to Blizzard's decisions. And now it's mostly dying with the Turtle WoW lawsuit. Tragic.

Copyrights should expire much sooner, a few years at most. I can't imagine any serious drawback.

Copyrights should be limited to life of author plus like 10-15 years at most, patents normally require significantly more inventiveness and cost and legal procedure to even turn into an enforcable legal right (you can write any old BS on a piece of paper and if you intented to be creative in any way whatsoever it's automatically covered by copyright) and they don't last more than a few decades.

Why extend to life of the author?

As I understand, the main benefit of copyright is to get authors paid for works that are physically free to copy. They should be paid, or many people won’t be incentivized or able to afford creating such works.

But why should they continue to be paid after a few years, when they haven’t done anything else productive (if they did, for example created another work, they’ll be paid from that).

Without copyright you have things like people bastardizing Tolkien's creations while he is still alive and writing more about his world he created. It would seriously have pissed him off, and justifiably. At least now the bastardising happens when he's dead and doesn't care any more.

We still have that, it's called fanfiction. About the only difference is you can't earn money on it (usually).

Pretty important difference: it prevents Disney from putting $100 million into marketing their own version of Tolkien while he was still writing his.

This is already a known phenomenon with existing IP constraints.

"Someone writes new novels set in your world" vs "someone writes new novels set in your world that take over your brand by sheer volume of marketing" is an important difference, yes.

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If they have $100 million, they can create their own brand with slightly different details, so it steals ideas from the existing brand without violating its copyright, and succeed off marketing even if their brand is worse.

In both cases, the original creator probably ends up with more sales and attention than they would've otherwise, by being credited with inspiring the heavily-marketed release.

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Pretty important difference: it prevents Disney from putting $100 million into marketing their own version of Tolkien while he was still writing his.

I think that this is a very weak argument. With a 10-15 year head start, the author has plenty of time to establish their brand, and it would be horrible PR for big movie studio to make a movie against the wishes of the author of a book. Cutting the copyright short is more beneficial to small content creators than big businesses that cannot afford to be seen as exploiters and to face a boycott.

In the case of Harry Potter, the movies were made well within even a 10-year copyright period, and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were made long after, when Tolkien was already dead.

Also, your entire premise seems to be that Hollywood would be able to write a quality work that is not actually using the story from the books and the crucial element of success would be the ability to slap 'Lord of the Rings' on the poster. Yet we currently see that Hollywood fails utterly once they diverge from the books (not just Lord of the Rings, but also Game of Thrones).

I think that a much better argument would be that people can get tired of a fantasy world when too much slop is released based on it.

Some things do take a long time to be monetized. Movies that become cult classics etc. Game of Thrones isn’t a cult classic but the first book was published 15+ years before the show which made the story available to a wider audience. He actually needed to write more source material before you could make a show. For him to monetize his story it took decades.

The show seems to have been dependent on his continued input to maintain quality, given, for instance, that it took a nosedive once it outpaced his published novels, so he could quite plausibly have continued to monetize his story and creative abilities just through his unique ability to continue putting out quality installments.

Life+N for low numbers of N creates a perverse incentive to assassinate good authors in order to get their works into the public domain faster. I've got several authors who I'd love for to die soon, but the current Life+70 rule cross-referenced against actuarial odds disincentives direct action.

That seems like a rather ridiculous belief since those fans would typically like the author, and would also want the author to create more works.

Yeah I agree with Count, I think 10 years would be a completely fair time for IP to last. It's pretty wild that they can get extended to the 100 year mark, and you have companies like Disney still milking IP a century old.

It used to be the case in early American history that you had only process patents; not the end product. But if you want to keep to IP law, they were highly protectionist tools designed to protect monopolies rather than foster innovation. The World Trade Organization is the 21st century poster boy for this, by trying to guarantee monopoly pricing power for big corporations. That prevents development and competition, it doesn’t encourage it.

Yep.

I think the regular threat of release to the 'public domain' or open-sourcing, as you say, would be a positive incentive for companies to maintain games and eventually 'allow' the community to gain some ownership of them if the community wishes to maintain their game past its intended lifespan.

They should be able to figure out a price point which balances out all these concerns if there's some hard limits in the law.

Personally, I think that if you are going to withhold access to a given product entirely, making it unavailable for purchase or even rental to the 'general public,' that's akin to waiving the protections against others copying and distributing said IP. But I might even go a step further and say some information is 'inherently' of value to the public and thus should be kept accessible on general principle, so I generally support the Sci-hub mission.

In general I think our IP laws dramatically stifle competition in the creative realms, which as a consumer absolutely sucks! We could have so many awesome spinoffs of LOTR or Star Wars by now if our laws were sane.

'Fan fiction' could just become the norm a decade after a story gets told. Which would be a great change.

I dream of an era where the "canon" for a given series isn't dictated by the primary IP holder, but instead can be forked off by people where-ever they want, and fans can just form organic consensuses as to what particular canon is 'best,' and pick and choose precisely which parts of it they want to incorporate into their particular experience.

I would absolutely prefer the version of Star Wars where the Darth Jar-Jar theory was true and he turned out to be the evil behind Snoke in the new trilogy. Let me have my canon, and you can have... whatever The Rise of Skywalker was.

Force these massive companies to compete on something resembling quality, rather than Neener neener I own the IP, you have to go through me if you want more content.

I dream of an era where the "canon" for a given series isn't dictated by the primary IP holder

I never understood how people bought into this willingly.

I assume natural crowd-following instincts (you want to be part of what everyone else is doing, not go off on some random tangent where nobody else cares), backed by the aforementioned IP regime that makes it very sketchy to put too much effort into a product you can't distribute.

But yeah, its like the one Tyler the Creator tweet about cyberbullying. "How the hell is corporate canon real? Just read the fanfiction, don't watch the theatrical releases, and believe whatever you want."

That does sound good, except as the other user noted, the IP laws also protect the small quality authors from the massive slop companies to an extent. Right now, if you have Legends of Gemlands and a generic mass-marketed Slop Wars, you can google the former and it will come up. Gonna be a lot tougher if the massive company can fork Legends of Gemlands and have their version come up in the first 10 pages of search.

That's trademark (identity), not copyright (content). Nobody is suggesting that trademark be abolished.

Wouldn't forked content necessarily have identity similar enough that it is easily confused?

The trademark is the name of the work, not the plot and the characters. Just call your fork Legends of Crystalia, and mention on the same page that it's a fork of Legends of Gemlands not endorsed by the original creator, in order to avoid any confusion. (Though if the characters are trademarked separately—e. g., using a specific gemstone character that figures prominently in the plot as the logo for Legends of Gemlands—then you will have problems.)

For a real-world example, see the recent controversy between Notepad++ (trademarked) and a fork that dared to call itself Notepad++ for Mac without authorization.

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There's something nice about having one canon, like how it can be more fun to play Minecraft in Survival Mode than Creative Mode.

But not everyone feels this way (like how some people only play Creative Mode), mainstream canons (especially today) are generally mediocre at best (even according to the mainstream audience), and IP has so many other downsides. People who want this can resort to subscribing to some curation group who picks one canon for every popular media.

There's something nice about having one canon,

Agreed, but then we end up having to watch said canon crash and burn when someone without any love for the IP grabs hold of it and inserts their own vision, and then mocks the people who are suddenly alienated because har har I peed all over your stuff now I own it. A fandom should, in such cases, be able to organize and just pay some other person to continue from where things left off and go on their merry way. This could happen in the current era, but in practice, coordination problems mean you can't outbid Corporations for the rights.

I think books in particular are amenable to a 'flexible' canon. Most long-running series have entries that fans would rather forget/ignore. Oh, and many where the endings rather suck. So if another author wants to come in and rewrite, say book 6 of a series, or just change a single character arc or 'fix' an ending, well, let them publish it, stick it on the shelf next to the originals, and let people choose.

I ALSO support the idea of authors going back over their own works and adjusting things based on their increased experience and feedback... so long as they're very transparent about doing so and keep the previous versions available.

This doesn't always play out well (Kirkman is making some changes from the Invincible comic to the TV show that I find baffling) but I think it is healthy.

This also opens them up to being bullied into making changes that are genuinely horrible, but hey.

Yes there's absolutely an 'artistic integrity' argument to be made.

I think the apotheosis of this would be a wikipedia-like site that tracks all versions of a given canon and charts the different paths readers/viewers can take and lets people provide feedback on individual tracks so future readers/viewers can pick the one they expect to like.

Agreed, but then we end up having to watch said canon crash and burn when someone without any love for the IP grabs hold of it and inserts their own vision, and then mocks the people who are suddenly alienated because har har I peed all over your stuff now I own it. A fandom should, in such cases, be able to organize and just pay some other person to continue from where things left off and go on their merry way. This could happen in the current era, but in practice, coordination problems mean you can't outbid Corporations for the rights.

Hey, at least fans can fight over whether Sony's version of the canon is better than Microsoft's. We lost something when the console wars died down.

I agree one canon is better. I’ve got no idea if JarJar should be reworked but I do think it would be nice if Disney realized some of the stuff they created was stupid with Star Wars and just remake some of the episodes. Episodes 7,8,9 need to be completely redone. The IP for Star Wars has lost a lot of value because they were so bad. They should just remake those films maybe borrowing from fanfiction. Perhaps even admit you messed up and run some crazy promotion like the new episode 7 is free in theatres. How much would it really costs to remake them like 1.5-2.5 b which is significantly less than the initially paid for the IP.

GOT probably needs a reboot either just the last seasons or the final 2. Paramount paid $110 B for GOT. A reboot is tops 3% to do it again but correctly and GOT is likely still WBD highest value IP. Probably more like 1% of purchase price. Some of the issues with GOT was just being a rushed finish, but the WhiteWalkers and John as the Prince who was promised was just poor storytelling. It was the dumb hivemind trope that Independence Day used to beat a super powerful enemy. The real WhiteWalker story has never been told. Not even sure of Martin figured out that story.

The thing with great IP and the stories people really love is it’s not about fantastic graphics and special effects. It’s the storytelling where you need very real talent figuring it out.

How much would it really costs to remake them like 1.5-2.5 b which is significantly less than the initially paid for the IP.

I think the real cost, the real problem, is the reputational hit from admitting they fucked up, alongside the shame, blame, and perhaps even legal responsability, it puts on the creators (producers, directors and writers, mostly) of the publically disgraced movies and the chilling effect it would have on future works.

Imagine how it would go! It's hardly a new phenomenon, bad movies get made all the time at all budget levels, but admitting it means throwing people under the bus. It means telling, quite directly, to the dozens of fans of episodes 7-9 as they are that they have objectively bad taste, talk about spitting on someone's soul. For any producer, director or writer who is about to work on a Disney movie, they'll have seen how Disney failed to stand behind their works. Are they going to imply the movie I worked years on is shit if it doesn't make them enough money? For the public, they'll have seen how Disney swore, for years, to the tune of billions of dollars that episode 7, 8 and 9 were the sequels we always wanted to the Star Wars saga.

No, I don't think we're gonna get a redo. If that bad all women Ghostbusters movie was never officially disgraced by Sony, Disney's not going to do it with Star Wars. At least that Ghostbusters movie could be pushed into a corner never to be talked about again, while SW killed off or bastardized beloved characters. It's best for them to maintain the fiction that they were perfectly good movies that simply for whatever reason, didn't resonate enough with audiences. The best they could do to correct it is a split timeline, JJ Abrams' Star Trek-style, that they then splice over the bad one, and I have a hard time imagining them pulling it off in a way that doesn't feel like a massive ass pull; at least Star Trek had a history of time travel and diverging timelines.

I think the Star Wars brand might actually be toast. I do get your point but 7-9 did very real damage that a full cancellation of those might work.

GOT would be harder because the end wasn’t terrible it was just bad relative to the earlier work.

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That’s not how movie financing works. If you’ve ever read about the politics and mechanics of the industry, it goes something like this (I’m oversimplifying a bit and some details may be a little inaccurate from what I remember):

A lot of rich people (and even ordinary people without their knowledge) finance movies.

In IB, there exists a specialty financing department called something like “TMT-DCM” which stands for “Telecom, Media & Technology,” Debt Capital Markets (DCM). A common goal of IB is to raise money for companies projects (this is a fairly standard function called “capital sourcing”).

Some movies are absolutely financed by rich people. The story of the dude that defrauded Malaysia and then used the money to party and fund 'The Wolf of Wall St' is pretty well known. But the reality is that this isn't that common. Rich people don’t have cash just sitting around. They’re rich because they own companies that are worth a lot of money.

Anyway, IB’s are commonly tasked with raising money for movies. I don't know who’s active today (and TBF it’s been about 15 years since I read about this), but Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan were very active back in the middle of the 2000’s. The thing is IB’s don't really have money themselves, so they reach out to rich people and institutions (e.g. pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, also sometimes hedge funds, etc.) to invest. More normal people unknowingly have exposure to this than you might think.

This is where people go wrong in their thinking. Individual movies are very risky. So then why would people invest in a single movie? Well they actually don't, and this is where the magic happens. What happens is you go in and create a portfolio (which is substantially less risky than an individual film). The way these deals are setup is that, say, 10 future movies were coming out for a studio in the next 18 months, and their total budget was estimated to be $600 million, with a mix consisting of few $100 million movies and several $30 million movies. The producers and the studio will then reach out to an IB. The bank will then say, "If the studio sources $100 million, we can get the other $500 million.” Alright. Deal.

The IB then creates an ABS (which is essentially a financial package that will contain all the money that these movies make over the course of their entire lives. That includes everything, box office, DVD’s, cable broadcasts, TV broadcasts, foreign broadcasts, airplane broadcast, you name it, they do it, or 'other' licensing like when a clip of a movie is featured in a commercial for a toothpaste advertisement. The ABS will have a lifespan of, say 10 years for instance, and will have a minimum return of 8% a year and a maximum of, 15% a year, which is all based on several inside and outside estimates of how the movies should perform. The IB then turns around and markets this security to rich people and institution's to invest. They give $X (up to $500 million) and get a percentage of the total return pool.

So then your movies start coming out. The ABS starts getting a chunk of the profits, and the terms for 'revenue' and 'profit' are very strictly defined. The debt agreements for these ABS’s can run like 300 pages long, with everything laid out in excruciating detail. The split will be something like 20% of the profit which goes to the studio / producer and 80% going back to the ABS. When the ABS hits its maximum return for a given year, the excess profit then goes back to the studio which is to incentivize them to keep distributing the films.

So the idea is that out of 10 movies, maybe 3 bomb, 5 do ‘alright’' (e.g. are profitable but not exactly raking in dough), and 2 are huge blockbusters. But the point here is that the 7 that do 'alright' or great more than pay for the ones that bombed with money left over.

Then after a while, say 5 years or so, all the movies come out and now we have a better picture of how all 10 did, and we can figure out how the investment did. But, there’s still 5 years left on the ABS. Usually there are call or put clauses in the contracts that allow either the investors to be made whole by forcing the studio to buy back the ABS at a predetermined return (that’s the “put” and it’s used if the movies failed to perform) or the studio may have a “call” (which allows the studio to buy back the ABS at a predetermined price if the movies way overperform). But it’s also common that people just ride the ABS and collect the checks up to maturity and at the point of maturity, normally the residuals are auctioned and everyone gets a cut of the final distribution.

Incidentally, this scenario is how Netflix funds all of its content. The debt that Netflix issues is “backed” by the streaming rights and liquidation value of all its IP (movies / TV/ etc.). The only real difference is that instead of having a bunch of little boxes containing let’s just say 10 movies each, Netflix itself is just one giant box that holds everything. But the structure is more or less the same.

I don’t know how much any of this has changed in the years up to today, but this is how it used to work in the early 2000’s.

'Fan fiction' could just become the norm a decade after a story gets told. Which would be a great change.

I want to point out, this is a flaw and reason why IP actually does encourage creativity: it's already bad that people keep reusing tropes because they're reliable, encouraging experimentation (even by coercion) leads to better works in the long run.

But IP has so many other downsides, sometimes it even discourages and blocks original works (for example, LLMs being broadly censored against anything resembling IP, because otherwise it's too easy to trick them into generating it). And it turns out, fan-fiction writers are often more creative than original fiction writers, by applying creativity to less common aspects (besides the core characters/settings/etc. which they reused).

I agree. Up until the modern era this was how stories worked. The characters and plots belonged to the people in the culture. Robin Hood or King Arthur, fairy tales, and so on were stories with lots of different versions and regional variations depending on where the stories were being retold.

And I wish this was how things worked now. I’d absolutely love to see what Mickey would be like if you had stories written by contemporary artists.

But on the other hand Harry Potter fanfiction is godawful: nothing but Master of Death power fantasies and Hot (Gay) Slytherins as far as the eye can see. The crowd is not always better.

But it is copyright that causes this. Good adaptations will be sued to death. So it only makes sense for bad fan fiction to exist, because their awfulness keeps them from succeeding and thus from being targeted.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a good example of how an author that turned out to be good enough for success, rewrote her copyright-violating fan-fiction into an original work.

threat of release to the 'public domain' or open-sourcing

Off the top of my head: make the released version of code so complicated and obscured that people can't effectively use it.

"Security through complexity" was definitely an option.

Seems untenable now that AI coding is a thing.

The system we have works terrible. Even if we assume that removing/restricting the power of copyright will reduce the content created - we are producing too much anyway.

I agree. 10 years of IP would be perfectly fine imo.

Dean Baker was the guy to read on this some years back. He had some good proposals.

In general I think it would be great for game companies to have to release the code open source if they're going to stop supporting something, even an old version of a game.

In the long run, this might just be technologically obviated. If we live in a world where we can just tell Claude Opus 420.69 to reverse-engineer the server software and also the client software to be identical to the actual client software except with whatever encryption and security checks stripped out, and it actually generates that software successfully and cheaply, then all we really need is to prevent government interference. Of course, this could create a DRM cat-and-mouse game where the game devs program their games such that the security checks are so fundamentally built into the game that it's impossible to make a version of the client software that's meaningfully the same but with the security checks stripped out.

Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration

This is a peeve of mine. I fully understand the legal and practical idea that a 'license', in terms of IP, is revocable pursuant to its own terms, and thus enforcing that revocation is... fine.

But in the era of physical media, if you bought a CD, there was no mechanism for deleting the songs off of it once you had it. In theory they could send a cop to your house to confiscate it, but that was never worth it. They just priced everything into the purchase.

Same with Vidya. I can boot up any of my old gamecube games and the licensed music will still play, since the GC isn't natively online.

Silly, silly me, I figured that the addition of always-on internet connectivity would mean you could have infinite musical variety on in-game radios thanks to seamless integration of streaming services.

But once again we manage to land in this weird place where the licensed music built into the game goes away after a while, and its all but impossible to import your own music or just hook a streaming account in and have an unlimited supply of music directly in the game. Unless you're capable enough with mods, that is.

Not that anyone can currently stop you from playing music yourself while gaming, but what really is the point of using the medium of Vidya if you're gimping the advantages it has over more static forms of entertainment. And of course, I'm also old fashioned enough to think that I should be able to boot up the game and have a functionally identical experience to the one I had the first time around, and I'll get cranky if things were changed arbitrarily.

I'm admittedly an Intellectual property skeptic, in that I think the current legal setup is far enough from optimal because of stuff like this, where it always gets leveraged to a clearly anti-consumer end and doesn't generate any noticeable benefit, other than upholding the current IP regime. I'm sure 99% of the time nobody really notices because a game that is 10+ years old has to be TRUE classic for people to keep playing it that long.

The last factor here is that it also prevents much cross-collaboration of game assets. The issue with music can apply to literally ANY OTHER artistic element of the game. In game models, textures, hell even textual elements could be licensed in such a way that they have to get pulled out down the line, leaving you with an entirely nonfunctional game.

So the larger regime probably makes it less feasible for certain games to get made due to the need to produce all the assets in-house if they want to maintain IP control over the longer term. Vidya are one of the only media this would apply to because of its integration of so many different types of assets into a singular product.

This is a peeve of mine. I fully understand the legal and practical idea that a 'license', in terms of IP, is revocable pursuant to its own terms, and thus enforcing that revocation is... fine.

“I had a dream once the RIAA kicked my door down and arrested me for singing too loudly in the shower.”

Does anyone else here remember EA’s “Spore” DRM controversy at launch, that only authorized a licensed user something like 3 installations per purchase? It was an attempt they made trying to kill the secondary market for video games and went about as well as one would expect. I don’t think they’ve tried to make that move sense.

It’s also why I’ve always preferred physical media. I don’t use Audible, I don’t have Spotify and TBF I don’t even like Steam all that much, but it’s the closest I’ll come to walking over to that side of the aisle. I wonder what kind of territory we’re going to wade into when synthetic biology and widespread nanotech really take off and you’ve got corporations scrambling to patent peoples genes. Plenty of room for dystopian futures to take root.

Its why I continue to maintain a physical, offline music collection even though it feels increasingly pointless. I've still got a bunch of my old CDs in a box in my closet as a last resort.

I pay 8 bucks and I can stream 95% of the music I want anywhere I am, which is a fair deal. The problem is they've trained me to expect betrayal and removal of songs I enjoy for reasons beyond their control, so archives/backups feel like a necessary step. Music files are small, storage is cheap.

I AM certainly willing to pay to see live performances, the value add there is clear, but digitization of everything has made me very unwilling to hand over money for an ephemeral digital file that I'm technically not allowed to copy.

There was a similar controversy years ago, around the time when cloud storage first took off. People were very skeptical of putting all their files onto someone else’s servers, hoping that it would still be there, hoping it would still be secure. A handful of people thought it was idiotic and said you’d never get them onboard with it and that you should stick to local storage. The counter-response was, “What if there’s a fire in your house? What if you get robbed?” These are all risk factors, and I’m not against cloud storage at all, but I prefer the vectors I have direct access and control over rather than the ones I don’t. It’s also why I don’t use ebook readers for general purpose consumption. If I’m at work and I have some downtime, sure. But generally I don’t like the thought of losing my place because my alarm clock drained the battery which caused my book to die.

Amazingly, Dropbox has never betrayed me over the course of 15 years. But the only reason I tolerated it in the first place is because it syncs with a local folder on my own computer so it was added convenience with no additional risk.

Then Microsoft tries to force that same crap on me and I get mad because they're trying to dictate what I keep on my computer.

I used to have Dropbox but dropped them after the change in their privacy policy. I’ve used MEGA for over a decade now and never looked back. I still prefer things locally and disk duplicators have never made the task easier than they have today, but the cost of physical storage is actually more expensive than cloud subscriptions, ironically. The increase in content quality has matched the rate of storage expansion such that it’s less economical than it used to be. I don’t like the trend in that direction but realistically what can you do? Either bite the bullet and accept the out of pocket cost or take it to the cloud. I’ve tried the synchronization thing too, MEGA also has the same thing but I can never optimize it for how I want things to synchronize and just forego it entirely.

Either bite the bullet and accept the out of pocket cost or take it to the cloud.

Its me, the bullet muncher.

Amazingly, Dropbox has never betrayed me over the course of 15 years.

Depends on what you consider a betrayal, I guess. A year or two ago, they added a new setting that (if memory serves) allowed them to train models on your data, and turned it on by default. I considered that a massive betrayal and moved to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance after that. I might move to Proton Drive once they have a Linux client.

I do recall that but... I'm not TOO mad about letting my data get hoovered up to help summon the Silicon demon.

I actually WANT the machine God to have a piece of my personal data in there. I tailor my behavior online to make it easy for the thing to figure out my preferences.

For me, it was the underhanded way they did it. If they introduced a setting and it's off by default, fine whatever. If they turned it on by default but gave copious notice, that's not great but I might have been ok with it. It was the fact that the setting was both on by default and they snuck it in (I found out from a hacker news comment thread) which I found so unacceptable.

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For now, media pushback and patches seem to be working for the most egregious cases.

Not really, one of the most egregious cases gets surprisingly little attention: Overwatch 1. I never played it myself because I prefer to get headshotted by the sweats in CounterStrike, but Overwatch 1 had a massive playerbase that was forced onto (the in many ways inferior) Overwatch 2. And that's a game from a massive company that absolutely has the resources to keep Overwatch 1 playable (or to release some sort of offline patch or a private server binary).

Yeah Blizzard is notorious for this sort of anti-consumer stuff. It's frustrating that the crappy gaming companies that pull stuff like this continue to rake in billions.

It really only took off after they were acquired by Activision. It was all downhill after that.

Valve is the single guardrail keeping the entire industry from tumbling head over heels down the slippery slope.

Their ability to sort of 'impose' pro-consumer rules for those who want to use their marketplace is like the one and only place where the incentives are finally aligned towards gamer's preferences.

They’re the only ones who can even remotely make the appeal to both sides in a way that’s somewhat satisfying, but I still hesitate going all in on them. You let me download a fully open executable with no licensing requirements, I’ll save developers all the overhead costs of physically distributing their media. Only way I’d do it.

Of course that won’t prevent piracy, but it keeps honest people honest and stops legitimate buyers from defecting. “The suits” don’t understand that actual buyers have a direct incentive to reward developers and because if you like their work you want to continue to consume their content and keep turning it out. In all the times I’ve pirated games or movies I almost never did it was a way to give the parent studio a finger, I did it because it was easier to use and less punitive.

I'm just saying. If Gabe ever sells, we're seeing $100-$120 games being standard, DRM out the wazoo, and a complete lockdown on the user review system. Just to start.

Hence why I would like Steam to add a little button at checkout to let you donate to Gaben's immortality fund.

Except there are like five other companies champing at the bit to run what is basically a free money printer that Gabe has set up. Valve basically does nothing as a company and gets paid for it because of steam. The only reason it has no real competition is because they know they have to keep their customers happy. This isn't something "Valve is a particularly moral upstanding company" thing, it's a plain market incentives thing. If anything, it might be better if they had some real competition.

All of those are publicly traded and subject to different incentives/pressures.

Namely, the incentive to gobble up 100% of any consumer surplus that might exist in a product.

Gabe could maybe double his own net worth if he was willing to be less consumer-friendly. There's certainly ways he could exploit the access the Steam platform gives him to various valuable demographics.

At a bare minimum, they could serve targeted ads (for things other than Vidya) on the platform.

But he has no legal obligation to do so since 'shareholder value' is not his primary concern.

Just take a quick assessment of ANY other comparable industry and see if there's any exceptions to the general rule that publicly-traded companies enshittify their product once they've achieved market dominance.

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GOG? Itch .io?

Both good companies most of the time, but neither has enough marketshare to have any real pull with game publishers.

I never played it myself because I prefer to get headshotted by the sweats in CounterStrike...

Didn't they shut down CSGO when they launched CS2 (which was actually CS5)?

Valve shut down their official servers and matchmaking after CS2’s release, but CSGO was and is still playable via community servers.

Nice! I didn't realize that. I haven't played CounterStrike since the original Half Life mod, so I only knew what I'd read.

Sort of, they actually brought CS:GO back for some reason (though it's not listed normally on Steam).

Use OnlyOffice people. It's open source and not vulnerable to any of this BS!

I still use TOPS legal pads and pin that shit to my cork board, 😤. But seriously. I haven’t tried OnlyOffice but I have used LibreOffice and found it wanting.

Another variant of the "paved with good intentions" problem is what happens when the underlying technology just changes. Minecraft's server infrastructure has been undergoing a pretty wide variety of modifications, sometimes for good reasons (proper user IDs), sometimes for more mixed ones (chat reporting as an anti-grooming... and anti-privacy matter), and sometimes for bad reasons (pushing toward the Bedrock model). Do the old versions count as meaningful different products? There's enough of a 1.7 following (and even a Zontargs beta 1.2 following) that it's happening, but that's unique to Minecraft's scale, and I'm not sure it's meaningful as a legal scope to care about. In turn, though, it's not hard to imagine bigger differences that would undebatably matter.

Sometimes, the seller legally can't release server binaries, for IP reasons I don't really understand (the client code has third-party libraries, why is the server code different?).

Server infrastructure licensing tends to be a nightmare. I've had specific database implementations that were licensed per-core, per-developer, and prohibited redistribution of executable code. I even had one case where the license didn't transfer with a disk drive replacement, though I think that company's gone under or been bought out since. It's become less common, thankfully, but it's a far cry from the typical library file where you're typically only charged per-developer or a single fixed cost.

That's not insurmountable, and City of Heroes was very infamously leaked multiple times, and ended up getting a weird level of permission to operate, but it's a big hurdle. Even if the source code for Tabula Rasa fell out of the sky -- and NCSoft has very strong reasons to not want that to happen -- I wouldn't expect it to have enough of a following to become active again.

I have no love for the United States' copyright and IP regime but, as a developer of enterprise software myself, I have a lot of sympathy for the developers I suppose. Unless you have planned from the beginning for the idea that your game should be runnable without access to a server or that your server must be runnable on random consumer hardware I can see why it would be pretty difficult to backport that capability. Thinking in terms of my own product, you would need to replicate an extremely specific network and storage topology to get my software running and releasing a version of our software where you didn't have to do this might as well be asking us to rewrite the software from scratch. I don't know what the internals of various gaming company servers look like, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar. Especially in our modern era of cloud computing.

Egregious example: Microsoft plans to remotely disable Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac. To be clear, this software was a one-time purchase and works completely offline, Microsoft even explicitly stated at one point it would continue to function. I can't even play devil's advocate.

I am not sure this framing is quite correct. It sounds like Office 2019 for Mac shipped with a local certificate that does the verification of license keys. Microsoft has renewed that certificate but distributing the renewed certificate still requires an update to the software containing the certificate. Microsoft isn't releasing an update for Office 2019 since it has been out of support for 3 years. If they no longer have the source code this may be very difficult to do. They should not have made representations that it would work in perpetuity knowing this limitation.

California's Protect our Games act. Passed the state assembly (not yet law). It requires publishers to post a notice 60 days before shutting down their game, and provide some offline functionality or refunds, although it doesn't apply to subscription games (and may have other exceptions). Backed by Stop Killing Games.

I find it funny that this law seems like it could easily be more punitive to companies I think are much more pro-consumer than those that are anti-consumer, due to the subscription carve-out. Expect to see a bunch of companies add a $1/year subscription to their games to exempt themselves from California's law!

Unless you have planned from the beginning for the idea that your game should be runnable without access to a server or that your server must be runnable on random consumer hardware I can see why it would be pretty difficult to backport that capability

Hence I don't think they should be obligated to backport it, just that users shouldn't be prevented from reverse-engineering the software and backporting it themselves.

It sounds like Office 2019 for Mac shipped with a local certificate that does the verification of license keys. Microsoft has renewed that certificate but distributing the renewed certificate still requires an update to the software containing the certificate. Microsoft isn't releasing an update for Office 2019 since it has been out of support for 3 years. If they no longer have the source code this may be very difficult to do. They should not have made representations that it would work in perpetuity knowing this limitation.

Similarly, someone will definitely figure out how to patch the certificate if they haven't already done so.

But here, Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company and explicitly promised the software would continue to function, so I think they should be obligated.

I find it funny that this law seems like it could easily be more punitive to companies I think are much more pro-consumer than those that are anti-consumer, due to the subscription carve-out.

Another reason why I prefer removing regulations over adding them.

But here, Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company and explicitly promised the software would continue to function

No, I think that's greatly overstating the promise they made. It was a perpetual license, i.e., not a subscription. There were never any guarantees about the software continuing to function past its published support lifecycle. I'd agree with you if they had pushed an update to disable it, but bitrot is an utterly foreseeable consequence of using unsupported software.

“Continue to function” was the exact phrase on their website. And “perpetual license” maybe not technically, but literally implies it works perpetually.

Moreover, it’s not an online service that would cost Microsoft to continue hosting it. All that’s needed to keep it running is to push a small update that disables the DRM. I’m confident that’s more than doable for Microsoft: even if they lost the original code, they have ChatGPT and Claude to reverse-engineer the software, or when (inevitably) a crack releases, instead of DMCAing they can adopt it themselves.

I'm sure it's doable, and they may end up doing it as a courtesy, but I don't think they're under any ethical obligation to do so. They announced the lifespan of the product when they sold it, everyone was clear there would be no promise of updates after that. It's not like they broke the certificate, the expiration was set long ago.

Apple could push a security patch that caused some undocumented functionality used by Office 2019 to crash. Apple says the code used by Office 2019 was insecure and they won't be modifying their security update to accommodate it. Is Microsoft still under any obligation to push out a patch to make sure it continues to function, in your view?

I totally get customer frustration with bitrot and the (seemingly unnecessarily) short lifecycle of software. One of Microsoft's great strengths for a long time was that they put a lot of effort into making sure your old unsupported software would run on new and improved Windows platforms. But this also became a major liability to them, and I also understand the need to draw a line at spending precious engineering effort fighting bitrot for products that have been superseded several times over. I would guess they will not legally pursue someone who makes, e.g., an unofficial certificate patch.

everyone was clear there would be no promise of updates after that. It's not like they broke the certificate, the expiration was set long ago.

They promised the software would “continue to function”, yet they’re the ones who set the certificate to expire and now refuse to update it.

It’s not their responsibility to update the software further, including not their responsibility to fix if Apple breaks the software via OS update (although they should let someone else fix it).

It’s selling someone a product with a built-in unadvertised kill switch (planned obsolescence without plausible deniability). The seller isn’t responsible for reasonable defects outside the warranty, nor if the buyer breaks the product. But if they put in an unreasonable kill switch (from malice or incompetence) they’re responsible, even outside the warranty. DRM that expires and bricks the software (which no other DRM I’m aware of does) is an unreasonable kill switch.

but I admit my general opinion of him has lowered, as this recent article has subtle xenophobia.

I will admit that I did not read all of it, but I failed to detect anything I would call xenophobia in the parts which I did read. If there is a sentence about low-IQ foreign barbarians ruining the UK, I must have missed it.

Presumably, your claim is that Cory Doctorow (born in Canada and naturalized as a UK citizen) is xenophobic towards the US.

If so, this seems a bit disingenuous to me. I mean, he is closely aligned to the EFF, which is a US-based organization critical of surveillance states. The EFF does not seem especially anti-American to me. Sure, they spend more time fighting against US surveillance efforts than Chinese surveillance efforts, but I don't think that this is because they love China or hate the US, but rather because their members are based in the US and the political system allows them trying to influence laws in the US but not in the PRC.

A central example of a xenophobe would be someone who dislikes another culture he knows very little about. "I don't understand their language, their food smells strange, their customs are weird, they are probably up to no good and I want them gone."

By contrast, Cory Doctorow could very much pass as a US citizen without too much effort on his part. I am sure that he has more knowledge of the US political system than the median citizen, and a big chunk of the culture he engages with is likely US-origin.

People are very much allowed to have opinions on countries they are not citizens of. There is no part during the naturalization process where the officials tell you "you may now have an opinion about our government". I am a German, and yet I have opinions about governments and policies of pretty much any country I know anything about, from the US to North Korea.

A central example of a xenophobe would be someone who dislikes another culture he knows very little about. "I don't understand their language, their food smells strange, their customs are weird, they are probably up to no good and I want them gone."

I don't know that I'd consider an Israeli or Turkish imperialist who hated and feared his neighbors but wasn't ignorant about them a fringe example of a xenophobe.

For Turkish people their sense of superiority is more culturally and historically chauvinistic, probably similar to the way Parisians view themselves in contrast with the rest of France. In the Israeli case it’s rooted in theology (and outright racial ideology for some).

It's the wording.

The proposals are fine. "The Internet is dominated by the US government and Big Tech" and "Europe can't rely on a service largely controlled by a foreign country" would be fine. I'd even accept a fig leaf, if he mentioned "not all Americans" somewhere (keeping the "American internet" and other borderline phrases).

The problem is he says things like "the American internet" and "We’ve known the Americans couldn’t be trusted to run our internet for decades", not distinguishing between the US government-technology complex and lowly American citizens. It's subtle; while he never explicitly criticizes lowly citizens, "Americans" implicitly includes them, and he doesn't address this inclusion (e.g. with a fig leaf). And many of these citizens aren't to blame for any action he criticizes: they're actively opposing the US government and Big Tech. Doctorow is throwing these allies under the bus, to appease a rising Canadian xenophobia towards Americans, which is a poor response to manufactured American xenophobia towards Canadians.

To be honest, I don't think he's wrong on this. Lowly American citizens are as apt to demand their government Do Things about the objects of their consternation as citizens are anywhere else. In the spirit of goodwill between nations, I'll concede maybe they're a bit less likely than some, but it's such a high bar it makes no odds.

Even here, where many are supposedly libertarians, @Amadan and other mods complain that lots of users hammer the Report button in response to posts they disagree with. I also note that many American citizens seem to quite like their government getting its way by muscular means, so long as it works and they aren't inconvenienced.

I don't write this to dunk on Americans specifically, only to say that having the citizens of a foreign power in charge of the internet is very likely to cause issues no matter which power that is, because people are people. It's certainly true that much of what the American government does is pretty unpopular with American citizens, much more so when it affects those citizens, but even if the American government suddenly turned into a direct democracy I still wouldn't particularly want to be beholden to the American public.

many American citizens seem to quite like their government getting its way by muscular means, so long as it works and they aren't inconvenienced

Many, but not all.

Moreover, his main issues (enshittification, mass surveillance, and control) are affecting Americans to the extent many are starting to notice, so Doctorow could probably get a majority on his side.

only to say that having the citizens of a foreign power in charge of the internet is very likely to cause issues no matter which power that is, because people are people

Yes, but Doctorow doesn’t make the general argument that Canada and Europe can’t rely on a foreign internet, only an American internet.

Even Cory for all his brilliance vastly underestimates just how deeply entrenched the problem is. I’m a huge fan of the work he does and I love the guy but I can’t share his broader optimism on things.

To take one of your points as an example, not many people know there’s a company out there called Axon Fleet Systems that sells tons of equipment to law enforcement, military and government agencies all across the country. Well, they developed a new ‘kind’ of emerging technology called C-V2X which stands for “cellular to vehicle to everything” that massively leverages the cellular network infrastructure to conduct surveillance. What that means is new commercial cars will be equipped with the same tech, which means police responses, manhunts and dragnets can fully exploit the telemetry of cars to have pretty close to real-time intelligence of people “suspected” of criminal activity (as the signals bounce around from car to car before being relayed to the cell tower and then gets interpreted by a response center; meaning new cars are a relay for surveillance).

Add to the mix the fact that search warrants are largely rubber stamped and happen in secret with limited recourse to challenge things, it extends the scope and lowers the bar on probable cause for them to collect further evidence against you. It’s a very worrying trend. I used to be such a techie but I’ve been increasingly letting out a sigh and just want to go back to simpler times.

Even here, where many are supposedly libertarians, @Amadan and other mods complain that lots of users hammer the Report button in response to posts they disagree with. I also note that many American citizens seem to quite like their government getting its way by muscular means, so long as it works and they aren't inconvenienced.

I figured that was the reason I got downvoted so much on certain comments here. I suppose I should be proud to be one of TM’s most controversial posters.

I think that his phrasing is still okay. We use phrases like "Russian aggression" without bothering to add a fig leaf about some Russians not supporting the war in Ukraine, and perhaps even being in prison for protesting it.

If someone says "The Iranians can not be trusted to stick to the terms of the nuclear deal", it is obviously a shorthand for the Iranian leadership, because the average Iranian citizen will not be in the position to enrich uranium in her basement, so there is no claim about her trustworthiness being made.

Likewise, the average US citizen does not run the internet. And I think it is very true to say "In the current political system, the median US voter can not be trusted to elect a wise government which is (among other things) a good steward of the internet." Note that this leaves a lot of possibilities open, from "the US is run by the deep state, which cancels any anti-snooping candidate" to "most US citizens are genetically inclined towards the military-technological complex, so of course they vote for spying and bombing" and all the more likely explanations in between.

If Cory had written about the US 'stealing' (i.e. annexing) Alberta in the Obama era, the median response would have been to recommend that he finds a more reputable crack dealer. The framing back then was very much activists vs surveillance state. Today, the US is openly neo-colonialist (like Trump bragging about securing Venezuelan oil), and the EFF seems completely sidelined in the culture war, the MAGA idea of privacy is Palantir, and the opposition will want to spy on you in case you do a racism. Realistically, the chances of the US electing a government which cuts down on spying seem as good as that of the Mensheviks overthrowing Stalin in 1950.

As people “used” to say about Canada before the cost of housing crisis and infinity immigrants policy, “Canada is America-lite. All of the awesomeness, none of the bullshit.” Or as some US citizens call it, “Diet America.” (There’s also USA expansion pack or Murica DLC.)

If a software license wants to say "you cannot hack the client, ever" then who is the law to prevent that? In general, we allow all sorts of things in software licenses.

To my knowledge, courts only enforce IP law against "hacking the client" projects whenever the companies can prove they're being financially harmed. Most of the time it means they have some version of the service up already. I suppose there might be cases where a very edgy fan fiction tarnishes the brand's IP, but presumably the company does believe there is financial damage in this case.

Well there is one other case, which maybe is the real discussion: if the fan-made project is making money, companies will go after it to get a piece of the pie. I think that's fair. If a company wants to stop service for their online game, I don't think it means the IP should become public domain. For example, the service might be unprofitable after merely 1 year. The company should still be able to expect royalties, for example. Or, be able to veto a fan-made service, even if it is profitable in the market.

I say this as someone who has played MMOs, as someone who is sad many have changed or shut down, and as someone who follows various emulator projects (And am sympathetic to the community).

You’re right about breaking the client. I don’t know why people have a hard time with this. You realize “the cloud,” is someone else’s computer, right? Whether that’s social media or online banking or an MMORPG, it doesn’t make any difference to the point. Client side apps often run in containers like Docker or Kubernetes, which adds a layer of abstraction between the user and the actual application, so you’re not directly in control of the binary to examine. If you’re messing with it you’re often doing things like looking for and intercepting API calls to look for keys, OAuth tokens, looking for misconfigured servers, fuzzing endpoints to look for IDOR and SSRF.

Whether you're messing around to cheat on their systems, playing a joke or have criminal ambitions from their standpoint, they don’t know what your intent is, not to mention your activity is actively damaging the integrity of their infrastructure and impacting them financially. If I was in their shoes, I’d be ‘somewhat’ sympathetic to that viewpoint too. It’s not like dissecting assembly on a Super Mario cartridge. If the product is EOL and being retired that’s a bit of a different issue.

I didn't have in mind any kind of service exploits when I said "hacking the client." Of course companies can ban you from their services, for essentially any reason.

I only had in mind white-hat "preserving a retired product," but I think its kind of silly to think the community or the market is entitled to that. Of course, the relevant punishment here is getting sued, not getting banned.

I know, but it was sort of implied when you referenced MMO’s at the bottom of the comment. The problem with a lot of video games today is that they often depend heavily on a backend infrastructure or continued service updates to the product in a way that video games pre-millennium didn’t have to. EOL’s on the other hand are more of a case where a large company is “hoarding” a dead IP but still wants to prevent interested parties from keeping it alive or taking it in a different direction. If it wanted to collect fees and license it to private “player communities” or indie developers, I don’t think it would be as hotly debated, but the company shouldn’t be obligated to provide the tools or infrastructure to keep it active.

I think a lot of the problem comes down to whether the consumer can trust the seller to provide what they purchased. If I play league of legends, it is very clear that the company can do whatever they want. And so, even if my favorite champion is nerfed into the ground, I know it is unreasonable to want my money back.

On the other hand, if I purchase a perpetual license from Microsoft, I expect to be able to use that product perpetually. This is false marketing on their behalf. When I purchase a game, I expect to be able to play it whenever I want. This assumption goes back to when games were physical things that lasted as long as their disk did. If I buy a game only for the servers to close a few months later, I am justifiably going to feel scammed.

This goes further than end of service too. Can I trust that the subscription I purchased will stay cheap? Can I trust Anthropic not to enshittify once they have a dominant position in the market? Can I trust Unity to not suddenly change their ToS right as I am getting ready to publish? The rational answer is no. Currently, there seems to be very little protection against the terms of whatever I purchased changing at a moment's notice, and companies are taking advantage of this. Naturally, this state of affairs leads to growing dissatisfaction and distrust from consumers. The longer this stays unresolved, the more radical the suggestions to fix it are going to become too. The future iteration of stop killing games might be much less reasonable.

(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.)

Well this is an important point because there isn't really as big of an issue as people make it seem and what problems do exist are often because of government.

If something is widely unpopular enough in a competitive industry then a company will generally walk it back. As the comment pointed out before me about league of legends, Riot could nerf any of my favorite champions into the ground and there's nothing I could do about it. But they wouldn't, there's no financial sense in it. Popular characters like Yasuo or Lux will never be unplayable for an extended period of time. Even the less popular ones like Reksai or old asol/morde/aatrox before reworks weren't compete gutter trash, in fact Asol at least was crazy overpowered if anything for most of his pre rework existence. And the only reason they got changed is because they just weren't liked by the community. It sucks for the niche fans like me, who used to main old Mordekaiser, but I was probably like one of ten people who did or something.

Markets have internal feedback systems to prevent them from upsetting you too much, you can just walk away and go somewhere else. Heck even the worst offenders like someone brought up overwatch 2 self correct pretty hard if it's hurting them, because Overwatch 2 has pretty much just reverted back already! They even have a 6v6 mode again.

When games shut down, it's typically because there's just not enough demand left anymore to justify the ongoing costs. Passionate fanbases who are willing to eat the cost themselves will often make their own privately hosted servers to play on and many companies don't really care that much about it. It's very rare for companies to step in unless you're directly threatening their current profits (like why Yuzu got shut down after they fucked about with Tears of the Kingdom piracy) or trying to make money off it like the original YouTube Vanced project only got shut down once they tried profiting. If no one is willing to eat the cost then clearly not enough people really want it so what's the problem?

What issues do exist is generally in the legal aspect of hosting. Or rephrased, because of the government making rules on what you can and can't do. The government creates problems that only more and more government can solve!

Markets have internal feedback systems to prevent them from upsetting you too much, you can just walk away and go somewhere else.

Exactly where are you going to go instead of Office 2019?

What issues do exist is generally in the legal aspect of hosting. Or rephrased, because of the government making rules on what you can and can't do.

Are you suggesting that people opposing this should demand that the government repeal DMCA and copyright laws, and that you won't accept a solution where the government does something other than repealing laws?

You should know very well that getting the government to repeal copyright and DMCA is infeasible. If you can't accept less optimal solutions, you are telling people that because the solution doesn't involve maximal restrictions on government, they shouldn't have a solution at all.

Furthermore, even libertarians are supposed to permit the government to enforce laws against fraud. Microsoft claiming it's perpetual and then walking that back should be considered fraud, and even with your anti-government stance, you have no grounds to oppose forcing Microsoft to actually provide what they said they would.

Exactly where are you going to go instead of Office 2019?

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread! So they aren't hard to find. Seems like there's open office, WSOffice, onlyoffice, libre office, and of course Google docs that will fulfills most things you'd need.

Are you suggesting that people opposing this should demand that the government repeal DMCA and copyright laws, and that you won't accept a solution where the government does something other than repealing laws?

Copyright laws can have some value but "I can't legally host this server" is inherently an issue from government because the problem is about what is legal.

You should know very well that getting the government to repeal copyright and DMCA is infeasible.

Because there's not enough political demand for reform. Lots of unpopular ideas that will never happen are objectively the right ones while unpopular ideas of rent seeking regulations consistently win. See basically everything in the housing market space for proof of that.

Furthermore, even libertarians are supposed to permit the government to enforce laws against fraud. Microsoft claiming it's perpetual and then walking that back should be considered fraud, and even with your anti-government stance, you have no grounds to oppose forcing Microsoft to actually provide what they said they would.

If they claimed it would be available forever and they're actively making it not available and it's not one of those lifetime guarantee type things where the specific details clarified it to something more reasonable then yeah that does seem like an issue that should be solved.

But can it not be solved through already existing fraud statutes?

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread! So they aren't hard to find. Seems like there's open office, WSOffice, onlyoffice, libre office, and of course Google docs that will fulfills most things you'd need.

And which of those Just Work, aren't horribly slow and don't have garbage UI (the reason I absolutely refuse to use Google Docs)?

If you're really all-in on UI (and don't hate post-2007-Microsoft), OnlyOffice. It's pretty explicitly trying to emulate Microsoft Office and to minimize on-boarding issues. Performance is comparable to MSOffice, one of the better PowerPoint equivalents.

LibreOffice is the most powerful and performant, but the UI looks like it came straight from 2003. That can be a plus, and is for me, but most won't like it. It does have the strongest Excel competitor if you're doing a lot of spreadsheet work.

I will generally discourage OpenOffice (effectively dead since Sun abandoned it, minimal updates) and Google Docs (usable for basic collaboration, but Google will bite you and it struggles badly as use cases get complicated). WPS Office had some trouble (Chinese ownership, censorship scandal), but I haven't used it so I can't comment deeper.

Suppose I have legacy VBA macros in Excel. Are there any that let me just directly use them? Last I had looked at LibreOffice, I think, and I was going to have to do some significant rewriting.

LibreOffice has the best direct VBA support, but it is still limited and partial and unlikely to get drastically better. OnlyOffice has an LLM-assisted translation, but I wouldn't recommend it for production services.

Another option, albeit commercial, is SoftMaker Office, and they do make a free beer version of an older version of their office suite. I myself use the free beer version of the 2006 release of the office suite for document writing; it’s lighting fast in a modern computer and works really nicely.

If I need a newer feature, e.g. ODF (or DOCX) support, Color fonts, etc. I reach to Libre Office. But SoftMaker’s 2006 free suite works really well for my needs 99% of the time I need to edit a document.

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread!

If they were useful alternatives, people would be using them instead already.

Because there's not enough political demand for reform.

I repeat: If the only solution you will accept is the government getting rid of (or even reducing) copyright and DMCA, you are saying "I will accept no solution that's practical, and if you do come up with a practical solution, tough."

But can it not be solved through already existing fraud statutes?

Microsoft has a binding arbitration clause. I'm not going to win in Microsoft-approved arbitration.

I suppose you are going to say "well, you shouldn't have agreed to the arbitration clause when you bought and used the product".

If they were useful alternatives, people would be using them instead already.

Cool, so people are using the best option available to them already. Be mad at the worst options if you have a complaint.

I repeat: If the only solution you will accept is the government getting rid of (or even reducing) copyright and DMCA, you are saying "I will accept no solution that's practical, and if you do come up with a practical solution, tough."

I understand it's more practical to layer on more and more government, that doesn't make it right. That is the bullshit that causes our insane bureaucracy to turn even more insane.

Microsoft has a binding arbitration clause. I'm not going to win in Microsoft-approved arbitration. I suppose you are going to say "well, you shouldn't have agreed to the arbitration clause when you bought and used the product".

Well yeah duh, you picked the best available product to you and agreed to the terms. Even then binding arbitration laws don't necessarily hold up and you can in fact win them.

Cool, so people are using the best option available to them already.

I'm talking about the best option that we could practically have.

The government requiring companies to not disable products isn't available, but it is one that we could practically have. The government getting rid of copyright to the extent necessary to solve this problem isn't available, and also is not one that we could practically have.

Well yeah duh, you picked the best available product to you and agreed to the terms.

All large companies use binding arbitration in their products. There is no product that is equally useful and doesn't have such clauses.

I can understand the idea when it comes to disabling content in a game that the player owns outright and has the ability to either be played completely offline or to be played on player owned servers. In both cases, you’re taking something away even though it would still function perfectly fine even without outside support. I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to force people to keep their servers running in perpetuity. That forces a cost on a company that might make them think twice before starting an online service simply because they can’t get rid of it later.

The idea is the company would release the code so the community could run the servers.

Or at a minimum compiled binaries for the servers.

I do really fear for this on some games I love and still play. Diablo 2, Starcraft Brood War. Eventually I dont think servers will exist for them. WOW seems to have some sort of equilibrium (although I haven't played that in years, but I do sometimes get tempted to pay the $15 or whatever to reactivate).

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance had the community take over and continue development/multiplayer servers after the company collapsed. Starcraft and Diablo are presumably more popular than Forged Alliance ever was. I think the biggest threat is Blizzard legal department.

Diablo 2 supports private servers.

That's a good point.

Putting aside Stop Killing Games (which I support), there is a bigger question about how dependent we are on these tech companies and how it gives them basically unlimited leverage over... well, everything.

In the West, virtually every government agency, every small and big business, every school, college and university, half-assed book club, is dependent on infomation services provided by one of Google/Alphabet, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft (or in some cases, all three. My understanding is Apple is a distant fourth).

Any one of these companies could basically crash the global economy single-handedly just by revoking their services to even a small segment of the population or economy.

I can't imagine how a government plans to regulate these tech companies while they're using the very services provided by those companies to plan said regulation. It seems like there's always a loaded gun on the table, even if these companies superduper pinkie swear never to abuse their power, even putting aside the natural price gouging that occurs.

It might have always been the case that other companies, such as major banks (looking at you GFC) have at similar, if not the same leverage in the past, but I think the difference is that even the banks are now dependent on these tech companies!

is dependent on information services

This is a consequence of the government procurement process. Essentially the government would rather buy software services at a billable hourly rate with forward engineer support than do their own development. This is in large part because a billable rate is a line item in the budget that they can pass to congress. Actually doing their own software development, so as to not be beholden to third party vendors would require not existing in a "use it or lose it" budgetary culture. Obviously the vendors also like this approach and lobby the politicians for it, who consequently control the purse.

I'm not sure their is a solution other than nationalizing the companies at this point (which is bad) because the system works for the people at the levers of power. The fact that it is corrupt and inefficient is a feature not a bug to some. A competent government also has the problem of being competent at wielding its power tyrannically leading to other people to oppose competent software development practices.

Consider the regulation "a software seller cannot disable any offline feature in their client without refunding buyers". Sounds reasonable, right? But what if an indie game developer pushes a balance chance that nerfs an OP character by removing their special ability? What if they remove a poorly-implemented game mode almost nobody was playing? Both of these also sound reasonable, but both can be considered disabling offline features.

Surely that can (and imho should) be easily solved by just keeping the old version available for download? If you enjoy playing the OP character or the unpopular game mode, you can still play it in single player that way. Only if you try to connect to the servers, it tells you "please update your game to the latest version [Update] [Continue offline]".

Even permanently requiring the game to be downloadable may be too much for an individual or small company that has gone bankrupt.

But I support, if it works (or should work) offline, not having legal avenues to stop people keeping and playing the old version (including bypassing DRM for their offline copy).

Even permanently requiring the game to be downloadable may be too much for an individual or small company that has gone bankrupt.

That's not what I was talking about. I was proposing making older versions available alongside the newest, which adresses the specific issue of an update removing content.

If you go bankrupt, your customers get to keep (the offline part of) what they bought, but need to manage it themselves, including getting copies of games they lost when their hard drive broke or older versions they didn't save back then from third parties.

For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers.

I like this in theory. In practice I think the massive disparity in legal resources will make this no different from the current situation.

If the game company with lawyers on call says their game doesn't count as end-of-life because of some transparent bullshit and threatens to sue a buyer sharing how to circumvent their restrictions then the likely result is that the buyer gives in or goes bankrupt fighting an expensive legal case (and then gives in).

The government might be inconsistent and heavy-handed but they do actually have the resources to threaten a company like Activision if enough people demand it.

I think that generally, it’s harder for game companies to successfully even threaten a frivolous lawsuit, than to defend a legitimate one.

The game company’s lawyers can defend the government’s lawsuit, or the hobbyist sued for bypassing EOL-not-EOL software can get enough people and attention on their side to recover any financial damage and Streisand the game company.

The problem with adding regulations is that they may be applied to smaller devs. Removing regulations, so that some smaller devs’ software may be deemed EOL too early, is less of an issue; because smaller devs already have weaker DRM and lawyers, and thus rely on good faith to defend against piracy (which seems to work well enough).

the hobbyist sued for bypassing EOL-not-EOL software can get enough people and attention on their side to recover any financial damage and Streisand the game company.

We have examples now that show this isn't how it will work in practice. I think the recent case around Bambu Labs' software is illustrative.

I won't go into all the details but what I find notable about that case is that, when served with a legal threat, the developer who made a workaround to now-removed functionality immediately took it down without any attempt to fight a legal case. This happened despite a significant number of people interested in his success and despite the developer appearing to believe the threat was legally unsupported.

It shows very clearly that legality is not sufficient to protect game preservation efforts. Under the current legal system threats of legal action often work even if the target believes the case is meritless.

The problem with adding regulations is that they may be applied to smaller devs.

I'm not convinced the requirements from Stop Killing Games will be much of a concern for small developers. They're far less likely to use DRM and turning off Steam's DRM would put basically all of them in the clear of even your more stringent requirements. They're also far more likely to stop supporting a game because their company has gone bankrupt, at which point fines for non-compliance are irrelevant.

I'm far more concerned that SKG and similar laws will be added to the pile of laws that are effectively unenforced than I am about seeing them enforced strictly on small publishers.

the developer who made a workaround to now-removed functionality immediately took it down without any attempt to fight a legal case

Of course he did, because others already forked it. And if Bambu still tries to sue him, Louis Rossman has pledged to pay his legal fees.

The FULU repository went up May 12. The developer took his repository down on April 23rd.

Apparently he received the threats from Bambu in late April. Unless some very fast-paced discussions happened behind the scenes, he could have had no idea a replacement would go up when he took his repository down.

Furthermore, is FULU maintaining the code or just re-hosting the original? Now the developer is out of the way all Bambu needs to do is make a small change to obsolete the backed-up version.

And if Bambu still tries to sue him, Louis Rossman has pledged to pay his legal fees.

He pledged $10,000. This is good of him but probably insufficient for even a simple legal case, and doesn't cover the personal cost of dealing with this either. Fundraising might cover the rest if the developer actually gets sued. I wouldn't want to take that bet. Would you?

The FULU repository went up May 12. The developer took his repository down on April 23rd.

Others went up earlier: https://github.com/dafik/OrcaSlicer-bambulab

Unless some very fast-paced discussions happened behind the scenes, he could have had no idea a replacement would go up when he took his repository down.

Nowadays, when a popular repository goes down, one can be confident someone will upload a backup, even with a weak legal threat

Furthermore, is FULU maintaining the code or just re-hosting the original? Now the developer is out of the way all Bambu needs to do is make a small change to obsolete the backed-up version.

(Although it's not the only possibility and maybe they're wrong) that Bambu didn't make this small change is evidence they expect someone would fix the repository.

I wouldn't want to take that bet. Would you?

Not personally, but the multiple people re-uploading the repository are.

Apologies for the late response.

https://github.com/dafik/OrcaSlicer-bambulab

That one does seem to have been created before the original went down, fair enough.

(Although it's not the only possibility and maybe they're wrong) that Bambu didn't make this small change is evidence they expect someone would fix the repository.

I think it's more likely that two things are true

  1. Companies only move quickly if really forced to
  2. They're waiting out the worst of the negative publicity

If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.

Not personally, but the multiple people re-uploading the repository are.

But are they, actually? FULU isn't a person so while the organization could be sued it seems much less likely for any of the people behind it to be vulnerable. It's hard to tell in a foreign language but that "dafik" fellow seems to be fairly anonymous, with a common name, few projects, and little information.

I'm also not sure if just hosting the repository is legally problematic. Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.

If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.

In practice, I’ve noticed pirates tend to do this: a big software or repository will be taken down (drawing attention), they’ll wait a bit (well past mainstream attention span), then a fork will start accumulating software updates or re-uploaded media.

But are they, actually?

I’m sure they don’t want to be arrested. Usually they’re in a country like Russia or Brazil where they’re safer from legal action. But the result is the same, the data is re-uploaded.

Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.

Maybe. It might also be the case that some new 3D printer is announced that is open and has enough features/price, so developers and consumers focus less on Bambu.

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Copyrights on software should be about 6 or 7 years, and obtaining one should require sending the source to the USPTO who will publish it after the period ends.

The answer to that will be an even fuller embrace of cloud computing by every software manufacturer. It will be the end of running commercial software locally where you could possibly decompile, crack or copy it. Every software publisher will only allow you to interact with their software through cloud computing, that way they can avoid needing to copyright their software. This includes games (the infrastructure is slowing coming into place to allow this).

We can step back too, if you sell software or sell a service made available to Americans it's got to have it's source with the USPTO and be released after X years.

And someone there had better be able to compile and run your software with exact functionality of your commerical product. No free base layer with all the secret sauce on top.

It's never going to happen but software wants to be free.

This is an image of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner's profile pic on the messaging app Kik. Notice anything?

I know the real story is supposed to be the fact that he was sending sexually explicit texts to women while married, but I can't stop laughing at the picture. It's obviously no coincidence that his hand perfectly covers the giant totenkopf on his chest. This is art.

It is certainly enjoyable to see a Democratic candidate get run through the wringer the way a Republican would, but I must confess that I find his scandals to be endearingly relatable in a way. Prediction market odds for Platner in the general are collapsing, but I think this is less of a reaction to this specific leak and more of a realization that he is the kind of candidate who will have a scandal every other month all the way up to election day, and then a scandal every other year for his entire term if he wins.

EDIT: Additional unverified reports that I cannot vouch for but would be hilarious if true.

Always Bet on Susan Collins.

With that out of the way, democrats nominating normal guys seems to be a weakness right now- they've got Graham Platner being Graham Platner, the Islamic anti-israel single issue guy in Michigan, and James Talarico trying to convince people he's heterosexual and not a vegetarian.

"I'm not a vegetarian. It's just that my girlfriend is a vegetarian."

Oldest trick in the book. Texans will see right through him.

More to the point, she is a 'committed vegan activist'. I have no doubt that there are plenty of vegetarian women dating men who eat meat- the demographics of vegetarianism suggests this probably isn't even that uncommon. But it doesn't pass the smell test that a 'vegan activist' would.

Barbeque-loving voters need to know where he stands on the Black's vs Terry Black's Lockhart feud in order to make an informed decision

The best BBQ is Miss Tootsie's. Let's pander to (actually)rural voters, black voters, and BBQ-sauce-hating voters all at the same time.

Without knowing anything else about it other than what you wrote, it passes the smell test for me. You can be a committed vegan activist without making your entire life about vegan activism.

Tranquilize that unicorn and put a mark on her ear.

You can be a committed vegan activist without making your entire life about vegan activism.

Oooh, baby. I once had to scrap an entire vegetarian Christmas meal* at the last possible moment because the vegetarian announced they were vegan when they walked in the door. Vegetarian no good anymore, might contain things like milk or eggs! Even honey not acceptable!

Yeah, tell me about those reasonable vegan activists who don't make a big fuss and kick up a stink, why don't you?

*The rest of us were bloodmouth carnists, so we just ate normally. But the vegetarian products I had purchased so they wouldn't be just eating bare vegetables ** at the meal? Sorry, no good no more!

**Talk about Orthodox Jewish kitchens having two separate sets of utensils and even ovens so meat and dairy won't possibly meet at all or come into contact. I've had to use two sets of cooking pots and dishes to make sure the separate vegetables don't get contaminated by being cooked with the bloodmouth carnist vegetables which might have things like butter in them or be cooked in the meat water or roasted in the meat drippings or even just exist in the same space as animal corpses.

Last minute dietary surprises are hugely impolite but it's hardly unreasonable for vegetarians not to want to eat vegetables roasted in meat droppings (or boiled in "meat water", whatever that is).

No, I don't object to that, once I know in good time. But the bother of two separate sets of cooking vessels etc. is inconvenient, unless our vegans persuade us all to become vegans like them.

The meat water? Did you never hear of boiling vegetables (e.g. cabbage) in the same water you cooked the bacon in? Cuts down on cooking vessels (important if you don't have many or don't have much room) and imparts flavour to the vegetables.

But the bother of two separate sets of cooking vessels etc. is inconvenient, unless our vegans persuade us all to become vegans like them.

Do they object to the same vessel being used for meat and then for veg or do they object to meat products used in preparation of the veg?

The meat water? Did you never hear of boiling vegetables (e.g. cabbage) in the same water you cooked the bacon in?

I've never heard of cooking bacon in water in my life. Growing up my Slavic parents would cook hot dogs in water but that's basically the only meat I've ever seen cooked by boiling as far as I can remember (I'm not counting stock here).

Why don't you fry or roast the bacon? Surely you are losing flavor by boiling it? @FttG do you people really boil your meat?

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An American would call ‘meat water’ broth(not that boiled meat is generally in high esteem on this side of the pond), ‘meat water’ sounds like something vaguely gross.

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My anecdotal evidence versus your anecdotal evidence.

Have you met a vegan?

Yes, though I have never known one closely.

I've been a vegetarian myself and have known a few others, and neither I nor them were ever absolutist about it to others.

The idea that a committed vegan activist wouldn't have a meat-eating boyfriend is kind of preposterous. Sexual and romantic attraction are very powerful forces.

In fairness, I had a boss once who ate vegetarian at home together with his wife, and then ate plenty of meat when we would go out to lunch.

He probably did it at home out of appeasement if I had to guess. I’ve met people who do similar sorts of things.

This actually ends up being a really healthy eating practice. One filling, protein-rich meal in the middle of the day, followed by a lighter vegetarian meal in the evening, maybe supplemented by a small breakfast, sounds like a pretty ideal diet for anyone who's not actively trying to build muscle. Let's be honest; most men would probably benefit from adding a little more veggies to our diets. I know I would secretly love having a (tolerant) vegetarian wife, if only as a form of weight control.

"moralizing girlfriend with boyfriend who doesn't live up to her full standards" seems like a pretty common relationship type.

Twist would be "She's a vegetarian, I'm a vegan" 😁

James Talarico trying to convince people he's heterosexual and not a vegetarian.

What I find funnier about Talarico is them trying to sell him as "Look, he's a Christian! We got Christians in our party, too! Why, he's even a seminarian, how more devoutly orthodox could you get?" and leaving aside the fact that I didn't know Presbyterians called them seminarians, when you look at his positions he's reliably liberal down the line.

...Mr. Talarico’s politics, as he has defined them in his Senate campaign, start with the biblical command to love God and love your neighbor. Those principles, as he sees it, have implications for public policy on abortion, immigration, the separation of church and state, and “economic justice” that elevates the interests of the poor and the oppressed over those of the wealthy and powerful. His campaign slogan, “It’s time to start flipping tables,” is a reference to a passage in the Bible where Jesus displays righteous anger.”

So this isn't going to work for the people who do have a certain position on issues like abortion, and it isn't going to work for people who break out in hives at the very mention of the word "Christian". They'll think he's a Bible-bashing bigot, and the more the local party tries to reassure them that no, he's not that kind of Christian, the more they will lose any cross-party appeal to the believing types.

Plus, it looks like there might be a minor, Obama-style, "oops my pastor could be problematic" issue there:

By his own account, Mr. Rigby has been a major influence and inspiration. And now, Mr. Talarico’s opponents are also turning a critical eye to the pastor. They are finding a spiritual leader whose views on political issues like immigration and abortion, but also questions like the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus, are out of step with the teachings of many other churches.

Mr. Rigby’s theology and his rhetoric reflect what would be heard at many Mainline and progressive Christian churches across the country. But in Texas, where conservative evangelicalism looms large, they are rarely visible on platforms like the ones Mr. Talarico now occupies.

Mr. Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service. He does not use the word “Lord,” because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, he said. For that matter, he added, he does not much care for the word “God.” He uses it on occasion, he said, but he tries to use synonyms, because “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.

...Mr. Rigby baptized a baby, and welcomed a family of four as new members, handing them a new copy of the Inclusive Bible, an unusual feminist translation St. Andrew’s has used since the 1990s. In Genesis, instead of writing that God created a man, Adam, the translation refers first to an “earth creature.” It often uses the term “kindom” of God in place of “kingdom,” which it deems classist.

I love this. Unironically, I love this. "In the beginning, Undefined Vague Spiritual Entity According To Your Own Understanding created an earth creature. Let us all enter into the kindom of Undefined Entity. Amen (and awomen and anonbinary)".

Wait, I thought Baptists didn't baptise babies! Either the NYT is getting religion wrong (shocker, I know) or they are misunderstanding a different 'no this is not baptism like the bad old Catholics, this is child dedication which is totally different' practice, or Rigby is baptising babies because hey, rules are for fools.

Oh man, this could be his very own Kamala moment! 'Trans abortions for everybody!' 🤣

But Mr. Wilder, who has written critically of Mr. Talarico, said the attraction may fade after they hear Mr. Talarico’s past progressive comments, such as asserting that “our trans community needs abortion care, too,” as he did in a 2022 sermon at St. Andrew’s.

“That dog’s not going to hunt in Texas,” Mr. Wilder said.

Talarico is not a baptist. Presbyterians are lectionary Protestants who baptize babies, use the term ‘saint’, do not do rock concert services, etc.

Now, differences in beliefs and practice are not necessarily off-putting to evangelicals- there are many elected officials who are Methodist, Catholic, Anglican, etc with broad appeal to the baptist masses. Baptist theology holds that baptism is a commandment and not a sacrament(this is why they do not baptize babies), and that gives them plenty of room to count those baptized as infants as real Christians. In practice their non-negotiables are still things Talarico doesn’t have- genuine belief in the historicity of the biblical account(famously genesis but theologically they would put more importance on the virgin birth and resurrection as literal, factual occurrences) and a certain level of conservatism on moral issues. This isn’t Ireland where Protestant theology has real, defined meanings- they don’t have a creed.

That was my mistake, I have no idea how I got the notion that the church in question was Baptist. I think I got confused because Talarico's grandfather was a Baptist minister, so the church-hopping threw me off.

I was surprised by the NYT seeming to do real journalism (and not just "vote for the Democrat or else the sky will fall in"), and I do think Talarico is less on the fringe than Pastor Bob there, or rather "Dr. Jim" as Talarico is quoted calling him. But Talarico went wading out past his depth on some matters. When you try spinning the Annunciation as meaning "abortion is kewl", yeah, I'm sinking my head into my hands here.

About 20 minutes into his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Texas Rep. James Talarico started making his case that the Bible sanctions abortion.

In the Book of Luke, the Austin Democrat noted, Mary has a vision from God that she’s going to give birth to a baby who will bring down the powerful from their thrones. But, critically, before she becomes pregnant, Talarico said, an angel “asks Mary if this is something she wants to do, and she says, ‘if it is God’s will, let it be done.’”

“To me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create,” Talarico, an aspiring Presbyterian minister and U.S. senator, told Rogan, arguing “the idea that there is a set Christian orthodoxy on the issue of abortion is just not rooted in Scripture.”

He went on to accuse the religious right of prioritizing abortion bans and “control” of pregnant mothers, rather than reducing miscarriages and protecting children through expanded health care access.

“I think that’s what we see across this Christian nationalist movement,” Talarico said. “This is religion at its worst: trying to control people and what they do.”

While pivoting to abortion is clearly reaching, I agree with him that it's interesting and noteworthy that the Annunciation is not a rape, or even a seduction, as one sees in the vast majority of e.g. Greek tales.

Well, as a Catholic, imagine my expression 🤨when a Presbyterian starts talking about the Blessed Virgin. Hey, didn't you guys have an entire hissy-fit over Mariolatry during the Reformation? That we honoured her too highly? (Never mind the hardcore Calvinists and their "nobody cares about the human incubator once the baby popped out" line, because Mary didn't have a choice; free will is over-rated and she was only there to have the baby).

And now you're going to talk about Free Will and Consent and Mary's "yes" being important? Wanna talk about the Co-Redemptrix, Jimmy boy, instead of "Mary would totes have had an abortion nowadays" (again, a line I've seen some liberals taking).

Well, as a Catholic, imagine my expression 🤨when a Presbyterian starts talking about the Blessed Virgin. Hey, didn't you guys have an entire hissy-fit over Mariolatry during the Reformation?

Has anyone ever responded with 'No, that was centuries before my time, and by a totally different people?'

I like me a good sectarian shittalk as much as anyone, but I've hard enough blaming people for the sins of their own fathers, let alone the sins of someone else's fathers.

Come on, if they junked all that stuff because it was bad no-no wrong, they can't sneak it through the back door now that everyone likes playing dress-up in cherry-picked traditions.

Granted, with the kind of theology on show in that article, the church is just using 'Presbyterian' as a label and they might as well go the whole hog and be Unitarian Universalists because there's very little of the original confessional foundation left, but then there's no reason to call themselves anything in particular.

Basically, if we're "Sure, the Presbies can have bishops and the Baptists can have special ceremonies for babies and you can pretend to be Orthodox of six different flavours because you like the icons and we're scrapping all the deep dogmatic divisions because just say 'Jesus wants us to be nice to each other' and that's enough" that's because "now it doesn't matter, it's all make-believe, fighting over the sky fairy is dumb, the only real truth is Science! and Progress!".

I suggest that if Mr. Rigby's denomination had not tossed out Mary with the bathwater back in the day, then he would not feel the need to rewrite Scripture on the grounds that "Mr. Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service."

Imagine that: dumping the idea of veneration of female figures because that takes away from the worship due only to God leads, down the line, to replacing God with Fake Female Deity since you have no means of approaching "how do we integrate women in the church?"

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As an ex-Catholic, the concern has always been 1) false doctrines about Mary that are considered obligatory dogmas and 2) adoration of Mary that rises to the level of worship, which is due to God alone. Nobody has ever said the problem was 'honouring Mary too highly'. I don't understand why Catholics are so universally arrogant and wrong whenever I encounter them online.

It's not about honouring Mary too highly, which is why I now need to junk the Gospels on God as Father since that makes girls less like God than their brothers. Wonderfully consistent theology you got there.

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Christians historically would have said this is a direct parallel to Eve choosing to eat the forbidden fruit. The Genesis narrative describes her being lied to by the serpent, but notably it also describes her making her own appraisal of the situation and making a decision: "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it."

The original sin is a free choice, and likewise the decision that leads to salvation has to be a free choice.

when you look at his positions he's reliably liberal down the line.

He quoted the Prophet Muhammed in an Easter sermon.

Maybe I'm too used to Southern Baptists and other conservative Protestant sects but I can't imagine any quoting Muhammed, calling him The Prophet, especially at Easter.

For all that certain twitter posters are sure he affirmed the Nicene Creed, I am quite sure he's a moralistic therapeutic deism "multiple paths" sort. His beliefs have no teeth.

I'm sure there is some humans in this world that use Kik for something other than distributing, soliciting, and illegal pornography. Maybe Platner is in that 1% of Kik users, but that is a tough bet to make.

I'm sure there is some humans in this world that use Kik for something other than distributing, soliciting, and illegal pornography.

You're leaving out the users that use it to solicit sex with minors (said minors who are law enforcement 99% of the time).

My apologies. I should not have left out that prestigious element.

I had vaguely heard of it but wasn't aware of what it was. So it's a hookup app, like so many others? Call me when Tinder, Grindr, OnlyFans and the myriad other "gimme sex/me sell sex" apps get banned and made illegal, then I'll believe all the outrage.

No not a hookup app, its a filesharing app. In a wholesome world you'd go to Kik and say, "hey I was at the yankees game yesterday does anyone have pictures? I'd like to see if you got a picture of Derek Jeter running into me." In real life a guy takes a dick pic posts it and says, "who wants the meat" and 15 other guys use code words to swap gigabytes of child porn.

Ah, the wonders of the modern world, where would we be without them!

Shocker, the dudebro veteran who was liked for basically no reason except the vibes and lack of competition without any meaningful history or vetting turns out to be a piece of shit.

Platner only really works in the sense of normal everyday man vs polished establishment dinosaur, which ironically is empowered a bit by being as shitty as the everyday dudebro stereotype. The Dems aren't at the maga level yet where the bigotry of low expectations is basically default now and low brow behavior like name calling and insults doesn't even get noticed anymore but it's getting increasingly more true. Proof that cancel culture has lost a hold on the country though, things like cheating scandals that would have been major just a few decades ago are minor blips now that only matter in so much as they might signal other worse behavior.

The standards on polite society have fallen and I'm not sure they can ever be brought back.

the bigotry of low expectations is basically default now and low brow behavior like name calling and insults doesn't even get noticed anymore but it's getting increasingly more true.

Jay Jones has directed Virginia State Police to violate a standing court order. Do you have an update? Can you give an example of a high-profile Democratic speaker that cares?

Jay Jones has directed Virginia State Police to violate a standing court order. Do you have an update?

The large majority of accusations like "they're violating a court order!" when it comes to public officials are bullshit and misunderstandings of the court order or what the response is.

There's various ways this happens.

One way is that the court order never actually said something to begin with. For example it's a mainstream belief that Andrew Jackson had defied the courts, but it couldn't possibly be true because there was nothing for him to defy

This began to create a small scale controversy now for Jackson--because Jackson recognized there were problems afoot if individual States simply ignored Federal law. However, the court's ruling contained no direct order for the executive branch to act, so in this case, Jackson was off the hook.

..

Getting back to your question, "did Andrew Jackson ignore a Supreme Court ruling", you see that he really didn't--there was no ruling that laid an enforcement action on the executive branch. It was actually the State of Georgia that defied a Supreme Court decision, in the person of two Georgia Governors--George Gilmer, and his successor William Lumpkin.

And even that issue was resolved before the court had reconvened, having went into recess before hearing about Georgia's desire to refuse the order.

Another way is that they simply try to achieve the same or similar goal using a different method that is not ruled against. Two major examples in recent history being the Biden admin "defying" the courts on student loan forgiveness or Trump "defying" the courts on tariffs. They might have wanted to make themselves seem tough, but the reality is that they obeyed the ruling and just chose another statute or law to argue their actions for. It might be a little scummy, but it's not disobeying the courts. Oftentimes they'll change their policy and behavior a little to match as well, the Biden admin student loan forgiveness that did get through legally was a lot less broad and Trump's tariffs have been weaponized a lot less for petty grievances.

A third way is that the case is in appeal and there's a stay (or not a stay or whatever depending on the context) and things haven't actually been hashed out to the point that defying the courts is an actual thing yet. For example, see how long the Trump admin was able to stall bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from CECOT. The Trump admin never technically defied the courts, they just stalled things out.

Most likely you just don't understand the situation well and there is nothing to update on like basically every accusation that happens in this manner. If/when the courts actually start to bring up charges for disobeying an order and it's not just random Internet pundits making claims, then I'll bother with any updates.

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One way is that the court order never actually said something to begin with.

The order is here, the motion and relevant exhibit here.

Another way is that they simply try to achieve the same or similar goal using a different method that is not ruled against.

HB1525 specifically spelled out : "That the Department of State Police shall administer, enforce, and otherwise implement § 18.2-308.2:5 of the Code of Virginia from the effective date of this bill." The final judgement from the court specifically said : "The Virginia Department of State Police, and all law enforcement divisions, agencies, and officers within the Commonwealth, to include their successors or replacements in office, are hereby permanently enjoined and prohibited from administering, enforcing, or otherwise imposing upon any person the requirements of, the Act (Va. Code 18.2-308.2:5)." The state is administering the act, and informing businesses using VACheck that they must comply with the law.

A third way is that the case is in appeal and there's a stay...

There is no appeal; the case reached final judgement, despite Jay Jones' best efforts to illegally intervene before his term began.

Most likely you just don't understand the situation well and there is nothing to update on like basically every accusation that happens in this manner.

How convenient that you never have to even examine claims that might possibly challenge your priors.

If/when the courts actually start to bring up charges for disobeying an order ...

What an absolutely fascinating and specific phrase to use, when you specify charges. Is the principle here that the judge would have to use criminal contempt -- the thing he wouldn't be able to enforce against state police administration if Jones is backing them -- rather than civil contempt, before you think it's defiance of a court order? Or that a finding by the court that the state was violating the injunction doesn't count?

If he's actually violating a court order and doesn't fall into one of the various reasons for why such accusations are often bullshit then we can wait and see the contempt of court charges that eventually get brought.

Spoiler, it probably won't happen. Not because of unfair courts, but because state officials actually defying the court is extremely rare and almost every accusation whether against the right or the left is bullshit for some reason or another. There are tons of weird technicalities and abilities to delay and burdens of proof and etc etc etc whatever shit that go into it and generally it's "you don't actually understand the law" or "you don't actually understand what's going on in the case" or "you don't actually understand what is happening on the ground level to begin with and there has been no contempt" and other such explanations.

How convenient that you never have to even examine claims that might possibly challenge your priors.

Yeah it's pretty nice, and convenient, for me that I live in a society where public officials don't typically disobey the court and basically every single accusation that they have is a misunderstanding of something by idiots.

What an absolutely fascinating and specific phrase to use, when you specify charges. Is the principle here that the judge would have to use criminal contempt -- the thing he wouldn't be able to enforce against state police administration if Jones is backing them -- rather than civil contempt, before you think it's defiance of a court order? Or that a finding by the court that the state was violating the injunction doesn't count?

Has he been found in contempt of court either civil or criminal in any way yet? If that has happened, I would presume you would actually say so.

Not "he has been accused of it by political opponents". Or "the judge has weighed in on the possibility" or anything like that. Has he been found in contempt of court?

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Does his being found in contempt of court factually change whether he violated a court's ruling?

If not, what purpose does the question serve other than as a deflection to addressing the claims of fact presented and disputed by gattsuru? You are certainly appealing to vague possibilities ('very rare', 'weird technicalities' 'basically every single accusation... is a misunderstanding of something by idiots'), but you're not actually disputing the claims presented by gattsuru. You're not even claiming that your language of frequency even applies to this case- even if corruption of this sort is very rare, that has no bearing on a case that can be drawing attention for being rare. It would be akin to disputing accusations of medical malpractice because most doctors don't commit medical malpractice. The appeal to statistical rarity is irrelevant if the challenge is based on a dependent rather than independent factor.

Gattsuru is making a direct position on a matter of laws and facts here. You seem to disagree. On what grounds that apply to this case? What is gattsuru's misunderstanding in this matter? What is the weird technicality that applies to this case law?

Does his being found in contempt of court factually change whether he violated a court's ruling?

No but being found in contempt of court is a pretty solid piece of evidence he did it, whereas not being found in contempt of court is a pretty solid piece (although not as solid in this direction) that it hasn't happened. The court system is generally reliable.

Now the court system is also slow and it could be that we are just in the period between contempt happening and contempt being found by the courts, which in that case I can update when it happens instead of speculating on a situation where most accusations are bullshit.

but you're not actually disputing the claims presented by gattsuru. You're not even claiming that your language of frequency even applies to this case- even if corruption of this sort is very rare, that has no bearing on a case that can be drawing attention for being rare.

Two things are rare.

  1. Officials defying the court is rare

  2. Layman accusations that an official denied the court being true is also rare.

The rarity of the 2nd does apply here, because he's making an accusation that a public official defied the court. But normally such accusations are not true! I covered numerous examples of how this happens in my comment beforehand.

The appeal to statistical rarity is irrelevant if the challenge is based on a dependent rather than independent factor.

The challenges themselves being true is statistically rare!

It's like an accused drunk arguing the breathalyzer was faulty. That does happen sometimes (it's probably way more common than officials in contempt of court) and it's probably more likely in cases where the accused drunk contests the charges. But it is still also true that the large large majority of the time the accused drunk contests the charges, the breathalyzer was properly working.

So 1. "The breathalyzer actually being faulty in general is rare" and 2. "The breathalyzer actually being faulty when contested is rare" are both true statements! And a person saying "no but my case is special and it was faulty" can be generally dismissed until/unless they can show otherwise.

In court showing otherwise is pretty simple. Has he been found in contempt?

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((I first want to apologize for not getting to your other question yet. It's kind of a complicated answer and I thought I had answered it already but I've been too busy lately to give a proper response. But I haven't forgotten about it.))

I'm not going to comment on the merits of the underlying arguments, but I'm addressing @magicalkittycat's assertion that this isn't just an AG blatantly ignoring a court order. I've looked at the docket and there's more going on here than the VCDG is claiming in their press releases. When the state filed their motion to vacate on May 4, they took the position that the order was already mooted by intervening legislation and that they were only filing the motion out of an abundance of caution. I can't read the individual filings, but the court granted an order on May 5, which I'm presuming was an administrative order reopening the case. In Virginia you have 10 days to respond to a motion. VCGA did not respond to this motion. They did not request an extension. There is nothing but radio silence on the docket. On May 27, after more than 20 days have passed, the AG directs the state police to begin enforcing the law. A day later VCGA is ready to roll with a motion to show cause. That same day, the state filed an objection to the plaintiff's motion and a hearing was scheduled for today at 1:30 pm. Yesterday, VCGA filed a response to the state's May 4 motion to vacate.

From where I sit, it looks like the VCGA deliberately failed to respond to the motion because their own motion which is heavy on bombast and light on substance asking for sanctions looks better in a press release than a boring reply brief that addresses the scintillating topic of mootness. Especially if they don't have any good arguments and know the case is dead in the water. They certainly didn't issue a press release when they filed the response yesterday. My guess is that after they moved to show cause the state objected that they weren't in a position to do so because they hadn't responded to the motion to vacate. Normally if a party opponent doesn't respond to a motion I'd get them on the horn and ask if they'd made a mistake or need more time, and if I went straight to a judge the judge might cut them some slack. I don't know what attempts the state made here, but if their position was that a vacation wasn't necessary then it could undermine their argument if they go too far out of their way to seek a court order, like scheduling a hearing, for example.

So things are pretty clear when it's crickets for three weeks and as soon as enforcement begins the plaintiff is ready to go with a show cause motion the next day. I don't know if the hearing scheduled for today was on the show cause motion or just on the objection. Since the plaintiffs filed their response to the May 4 motion after the hearing was scheduled, the hearing may have just been on the objection, and the parties may have worked out among themselves that they could cancel it if the plaintiffs filed a response.

I want to refrain from looking at the merits of this case, but based on VCGA's behavior, they probably aren't great for them. At least, this isn't the way one acts in front of a court when they have a winnable case. If they had responded to the original motion and the court held a hearing and determined that the order was still in effect, I'd support your position that the AG is acting in bad faith and deliberately disobeying it. It's quite a different thing if the AG takes a position that a motion isn't necessary but gives you the opportunity to have your day in court anyway, and your response is to ignore him and then try to get sanctions later. This is the kind of behavior that pisses off judges.

I definitely agree that stalling things out and slow walking your actions can be scummy behavior, but whether or not that fits contempt of court can be highly contextual and dependent on the ground level specifics.

This falls into the third type of example I gave in the original comment! The Trump admin slow walked the return of Abrego Garcia for months. Maybe we can argue that it's contempt from the spirit of the law and were behaving in a scummy manner, but they never once committed any actually legal contempt. You are allowed to draw out a case even if you think you will probably lose, because you might win and you can exercise a full fight.

If they had responded to the original motion and the court held a hearing and determined that the order was still in effect, I'd support your position that the AG is acting in bad faith and deliberately disobeying it. It's quite a different thing if the AG takes a position that a motion isn't necessary but gives you the opportunity to have your day in court anyway, and your response is to ignore him and then try to get sanctions later. This is the kind of behavior that pisses off judges.

Same thing, they're allowed to slow walk or whatever if they want (within some amount of behavior obviously), but we can also agree it's scummy to try to lie and claim the AG is in contempr when you just ignored them.

To be clear, my argument that it isn't contempt isn't that the plaintiffs did something scummy, but that intervening legislation mooted the order. Suppose A sues B because B built a structure that doesn't conform to setback requirements in the zoning ordinance, and the court issues and order that B demolish the structure within 90 days. If within that 90 days the municipality changes the zoning ordinance so that the structure now conforms to the setback requirements, the issue is mooted. You can ask that the court vacate the order, but as a strategic matter it's probably better to ignore it since there's no reason to incur additional legal fees if you don't have to. Wait for A to sue you for contempt and lose; no judge is going to impose sanctions in a case like that.

The one thing I will say about the plaintiff's failure to respond is that, theoretically at least, their non-response turned the state's motion into an unopposed motion, and while there's no mechanism akin to a default, they could have just submitted it to the court for a judge's signature, and he could have granted it regardless of the merits of the case. Realistically the judge will probably schedule a hearing, and only automatically grant the motion if the plaintiff fails to respond after being noticed, but it is something that can happen. Most of the unopposed motions I file, including motions for summary judgment that get us out of a case entirely, simply go to the judge without a hearing. But those are motions where the opponent has already told us they don't plan on opposing it, because most lawyers actually respond to our motions, and even if they don't, we deal with the same lawyers all the time and prefer to maintain cordial relations with them. But I'd have no problem being aggressive if it's some out of state firm that's being dickish and I don't care how much I piss them off.

I will try to respond to this more in depth later, but :

In Virginia you have 10 days to respond to a motion.

Where are you getting this rule? The only place I can find 10 days specific isthe Virginia Supreme Court; this case is operating at the Lynchburg Circuit court level, and Virginia circuit courts look to range from having long periods or depending on hearing days or both for normal rulings (eg 14 days before the next hearing Friday for Fairfax) , and then high-complication ruling schedules are entirely up to the judge since they can set a response schedule of their own.

When the state filed their motion to vacate on May 4, they took the position that the order was already mooted by intervening legislation and that they were only filing the motion out of an abundance of caution

This seems wildly incompatible with Walker v. Birmingham. Doubly so when a) the new law hasn’t gone into effect yet, and b) it literally said to enforce the enjoined statute, but even presuming it did genuinely moot the case, that still doesn’t automatically invalidate an injunction.

Injunction still active after today's hearing. The judge and threatened contempt for any further violations, but no contempt finding. VCheck has supposedly removed the requirement.

The standards on polite society have fallen and I'm not sure they can ever be brought back.

“A nation is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.”

If only. There's precious little "dum vivimus vivamus" today.

Polite society ceased to believe it needed to offer a benefit to observing its standards. Most have noticed.

"Standards on polite society" impose noblesse oblige over the sum of societal actors who control what politeness is. Cancel culture was their effort to keep things in line.

What benefit did accepting cancellation or playing by those standards offer anyone else? Financial ruin, felony charges, and death.

So we can't have standards in this age. Much like the ozone layer, the societal machinery that enabled them has been damaged and will take some time to regenerate.

The kayfabe of standards is that it signalss politicians play on a level field, when the standards just end up being movable goalposts picked up and used as clubs to hit each other over the head. Similarly the MAGA and now Chapotraphouse-esque dirtbag left where calling people names and having an unkempt Real Man Image is meant to signal ability to act unbounded by protocol as if protoco was what constrained delivery instead of rank incompetence.

Neither having standards nor abandoning them is delivering on the promise of Being Real and Getting Shit Done. Being Real is a signal of original intent which is why Kamala and Newsom and Cuoma being lizardpeople with bad skinsuits stinks of disingenuity because people can't trust that these reptiles wouldn't find some sophistry to explain why actually letting in a million migrants is Good For Your Culture. But at least Being Real let the root cause for failure to Get Shit Done be assigned to the "correct" causal origin. I do wonder if everyone just keeps underestimate rank stupidity as a constraining variable. Perhaps only the actually brain damaged seek out politics which is why lawyers seem so overrepresented.

'noblesse oblige' only worked in societies which adhered to the concept of 'noblesse'. Modern society, on the other hand, does not believe that the ruling class assumed its status through hereditary privilege, consequently it does not believe either that the ruling class is obligated to anything by its status.

This is a post-import the third world belief. I definitely believed that I had obligations for my gifts and elites had obligation to society up until like 2018. Younger people just don’t understand how things use to be.

Morally I completely changed somewhere between 2018-2022.

I don't think so. If I had to pick a point in time at which the American elite had ceased to have a culture of noblesse oblige, I would go for the Vietnam War and the vast majority of GI and Silent generation elites helping their Boomer sons dodge the draft.

Are you convinced that the US used to have such a culture in the past indeed? In a nation that rejects the idea of nobility?

North of the Mason-Dixon line, see for example this Tanner Greer post about the culture of the Gilded Age WASP elite, or John Brooks' 1970 tour de force Once in Golconda about the culture of 1920's Wall Street and how it changed as a result of the Great Depression.

I always thought that the planter class in the South saw themselves as untitled nobility - they spent a lot of time banging on about how they preserved the traditional martial and chivalric virtues that the North had lost due to excessive commercialism. Although in another thread someone told me that elite draft dodging was widespread in the Confederacy, which would imply that the planter elite never actually felt the sense of noblesse oblige they claimed to.

Someone still thinks it is worth publishing the Social Register, which is what a nobiliary directory looks like in a country with no titled nobility.

The problem the South had was one of manpower. 4.5 million(not counting slaves) versus 22 million can cause odd problems, so it was less a draft dodge and more not having enough men to go around.

If anything, the South had too much nobelisse oblige. A number of military historians agree that the South had the better pick of generals, and a good chunk of them died fighting.

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John Brooks' 1970 tour de force Once in Golconda about the culture of 1920's Wall Street and how it changed as a result of the Great Depression.

Wow, how have I not heard of this one? Definitely on my list now.

Modern society, on the other hand, does not believe that the ruling class assumed its status through hereditary privilege

The ruling class in modern society assumed its status exclusively through age (and to a point, gender, but it's the vaguest possible one as it's a whole 50% of the population).

This is orthogonal to actual merit (which is generally what hereditary privilege implies), which is why the standards this class imposed as they came to power were destructive.

merit (which is generally what hereditary privilege implies)

What merit does it take to be born to the right parents? One of the major and common failure states of hereditary privilege is that the failson of someone with merit inherits all the power and fucks everything and everyone up (generally combined with fuck-all recourse).

The ruling class in modern society has no Noblese Oblige because they are extremely mercenary. Noblese Oblige requires a recognition of the common man as part of your tribe/society/culture. A rootless cosmopolitan mercenary who feels no ties to any one society or tribe is of course not going to feel any oblige to the downtrodden.

The ruling class in modern society has no Noblese Oblige because they are extremely mercenary.

I’d argue the real reason they lack it is their belief that they climbed up to their current status due to their own abilities and not class privilege, as opposed to the aristocracy of bygone monarchical systems whose status was ‘unearned’. Stemming from this belief is their notion that any average citizen can become one of the ruling class through ambition, hard work, merit etc. They don’t believe they have obligations to common folk because they don’t believe they are fundamentally different from them.

As much as the symbolic American story holds in our hearts and minds. the current US upper class did not climb there due to their own abilities. Very few of the Ivy League admits are there because they are some small town genius who worked their way up through merit and hard work. Most are just the sons and daughters of already powerful people. They definitely like to pretend the former is the case, but that's because being "self-made" still holds a certain cultural gravitas, and thus requires them to reframe their stories through that light. Just like how they need to reframe their origins through being the underdog, another very American conceit. I'd further postulate that a core esoteric symbol of American/Western culture is that of the Merchant. We are a society of merchants, not warriors, priests or nobles. Frontiersman/Explorers(aka Yeomen) and Merchants. And Merchant values are fundamentally mercenary.

Eh, I'm enjoying the outrage because it was only conservative religious bigots like me who thought tattoos were trashy and anything outside of marriage was fornication and who are not going to be celebrating Pride Month who could possibly criticise people's personal choices about their bodies and their sexuality, and now all the scandal is good, old-fashioned "adultery wrong!" messaging.

How the turn tables, indeed.

Im old enough to remember when a vote for George W Bush was supposed to represent a return to normalcy and civility after the endlessly trashy and corrupt behavior of the Clinton administration.

In my opinion @TracingWoodgrains has a lot chutzpah complaining about a lack of civility/norms given the active roll that he and his friends at Blocked and Reported played in dismantling those norms. TWG spent a decade knocking down trees to get at the devil and now that the wind is blowing he finds himself with nowhere to hide. BarnabyCajones, LibsOfTikTok, DataRepublican, and all the other right-coded online commentators he tried to shame, dox, or sic a Twitter-mob on over the years send their regards.

People who are upset by this appear to want the old sociopolitical system, wherein there was a strict division of labor between the people who cranked out images of shit being dumped on the hated outgroup by laughing cartoons of tribal champions, and the actual tribal champions who directly benefited from those images while standing solemnly before a podium in a very expensive suit extruding the blandest possible word-product into an array of very official microphones. If one is going to argue for this previous system, one should argue for it as it actually was, not as it might be imagined to be, particularly in the imagination of the side employing a large majority of the old shit-pouring cartoon experts.

Also, Hideous Hermaphroditical Character, same as it ever was.

I remember Trace running his prank on Libs, what'd he do with DataRepublican or Barnaby?

Barnanby and TWG were kind of the Hector and Achilles of the Atheism wars for while, and a lot of the trans, poly, and EA stuff later. Im not sure if i would characterize it as animosity, but I do recal a few times where i felt that TWG was allowing this to leak into moderation, ie letting his allies off the hook while cracking down on Barnaby and his. The LibsOfTikTok incident you know. the DataRepublican thing was was a "wont someone rid me me of this turbulent priest" type post that got memory holed after it came out that the prime suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk was a gay ex-Mormon who was active on furAfinnity.

Edited to Add: The way I see it "People who are upset by this" as you put it, want plausible deniability, but through both word and deed they have ensured that thier denials will appear implausible regardless of wether they are true.

In my opinion @TracingWoodgrains has a lot chutzpah complaining about a lack of civility/norms given the active roll that he and his friends at Blocked and Reported played in dismantling those norms. TWG spent a decade knocking down trees to get at the devil and now that the wind is blowing he finds himself with nowhere to hide. BarnabyCajones, LibsOfTikTok, DataRepublican, and all the other right-coded online commentators he tried to shame, dox, or sic a Twitter-mob on over the years send their regards.

What are you talking about dude? That's like the exact opposite of the block and reported/trace/rdrama ethos. Trace hoaxed LibsOfTikTok to show that she was a credulous hack, not to dox or chase her off the internet. You're perfectly happy to see this happen when it's going after lefty institutions and frankly those are farm or often the targets, but you have this absurd and burning hatred the one time it's mildly done against your own hack pundit.

An ethos is not what you say you are, an ethos is how you behave in the breach.

You can't be "anti-cancel culture" while also "unmasking" your enemies and urging your followers to to go after them.

You can't be "anti-cancel culture" while also "unmasking" your enemies and urging your followers to to go after them.

He didn't do that, it didn't happen. Taylor Lorenz is the one who doxed LibOfTikTok. If you were just some guy on the internet then this misunderstanding is reasonable but you've been holding this absurd grudge since it happened and surely you should know this.

it didn't happen.

This is the sequence of events as I recall them...

Is the implication here that hoaxing someone in close temporal proximity in time to when they are doxxed makes you also a doxxer?

No, the implication here is that "Trace" the assistant producer described as having helped expose LibsfTikTok, and TracingWoodgrains the motte poster are the same person.

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show that she was a credulous hack

Exactly, he proved she's a real journalist, not just some tiktoker.

you have this absurd and burning hatred the one time it's mildly done against your own hack pundit.

Wrong direction, I would suspect. Burning hatred is less about LoTT and more that Trace was "one of our guys" that took a... certain kind of turn, made a bad decision, and got treated quite poorly for it. Bad blood on both sides.

I don't think he's doxxed anyone. Shamed, certainly.

Wrong direction

Indeed. When a scoundrel acts like a scoundrel that's just the way of things. When someone who says they're all about honesty and integrity and then treats honesty and integrity as a chump's game, that is a betrayal of principal.

...and a betrayal is always going to be worse than honest enmity

Notice anything?

mf couldn't even put the toilet seat down jfc

So he's poly? That should be the perfect Democrat candidate! 🤣

Yeah, he's had a ton of dumb scandals (I honestly think the tattoo thing was not "Please give me, a devout Nazi, that famous Nazi tattoo" but more "I'm drunk, I'm dumb, gimme that bad-ass skull and crossbones, hell yeah!") but the interesting thing is how much the party insiders seem to hate him. Why? He's had impeccably prog credentials in everything he's posted online. Is it because he comes across too successfully as blue-collar populist, such that he seems demi-Republican? Simply that he seems to be out-polling the established lady governor, who is the 'right sort' of Democrat? That he might beat Susan Collins? That he might split the vote and let Collins squeak out another win? That they'd prefer Collins because she's reliably squishy (see the Silver Bulletin article on Platner where she voted against Coney Barrett)?

Sexting is a very Democratic scandal (coughcoughAnthonyWeinercoughcough) and the missus standing by her man is also very Democratic (see Hillary and Bill during the Lewinsky scandal). I think Platner is a bit of an idiot but he seems no worse than Fetterman, for example.

EDIT: I wonder if part of the dislike is that he has the wrong sort of tattoos; too much 'white trash' and not enough 'progressive rainbow hair septum piercing sleeve art' style. The party of supporters who regularly opine on social media about how opposition to tattoos is rooted in white supremacy colonialism (no, really) don't like a guy with bangin' tats?

I wonder if part of the dislike is that he has the wrong sort of tattoos; too much 'white trash' and not enough 'progressive rainbow hair septum piercing sleeve art' style.

You're not telling me that there's anyone out there sincerely accusing a soldier of this, are you?

I'm wondering! The kinds of people who vociferously defend tattoos as "not trashy, you're just prejudiced and old-fashioned and dumb" are the kinds now wringing their hands over Nazi tattoos, and I am wondering if it's "we don't like Platner so suddenly we're going to put the worst possible interpretation on a tattoo".

Before tattoos have become completely commercialized and gentrified (so to speak), i.e. not a staple of white trash status anymore, there was a time when tattoos were only worn by prostitutes, soldiers, sailors and criminals (the latter group obviously also having included some former soldiers and sailors). Platner's tattoos are pretty much just a throwback to those days.

he is the kind of candidate who will have a scandal every other month all the way up to election day, and then a scandal every other year for his entire term

Sounds familiar. If that wasn't a problem for Republicans, why should it be for Democrats?

Those Republican candidates, other than Trump personally, were typically in safe seats. I think we know by now that Trump is a weird exception in a lot of ways, but he’s also done unusually poorly in New England; very plausibly, this kind of behavior still matters in Maine in ways it doesn’t elsewhere in the country, and Me-1 is too partisanbrained to realize it.

Trump is a weird exception in a lot of ways, but he’s also done unusually poorly in New England

In which election?

Looking at state (and House district for Maine) results compared with the national average for the last 5 elections, Trump falls way short in Massachusetts (which arguably is the majority of New England's population. He also was below average in Connecticut except in 2016 and ME1 but outperformed in ME2 and Rhode Island..

I'm not sure it's a regional trend more than a Bostonian trend, but it's very strong in Boston.

I recall reading that the 2016 election was rather close in New Hampshire and Vermont(?).

New Hampshire has been close for all the Republicans, but I think that was Trump's best year.

Didn’t the shady business deals mostly start posts-2024?

All the Dems antics posts 2016 really told a lot of GOP to just not care and get it while the getting is good. They completely took away any shame or ability to punish the GOP because even Jesus Christ without sin would be punished. So just play for your team.

Plus there is widespread belief in the right (I think factual) that corruption on the left is massive. If the country is being looted by everyone else then MAGA should get their share too.

I guess people are upset that it is more blatant than the obvious stock running that has been going on forever, but it seems straightforwardly of the same kind to me.

It hits differently when it’s your oil futures that get rugpulled by Axios.

I think most observers would put the deathknell of Republican respectability politics closer to 2012, and the Democratic Party's campaign against Mitt Romney.

I think Trump's scandals are different from other politicians' scandals. This is why it never works when people say, "Trump was never phased by his scandals so scandals don't matter anymore." Scandals in fact routinely destroy politicians or derail sure-thing elections all the time: Roger Moore, Mark Robinson, George Santos, Anthony Weiner, Katie Hill, Katie Porter, John Conyers, Eric Adams, Bob Menendez, etc.

Half of Trump's scandals are him saying something he's not supposed to say. Voters mostly liked it. "I like heroes who didn't get caught" is supposed to be this scandal because how could you possibly criticize a war hero? But people wanted to see McCain dragged through the mud. "Blood out of her whatever," but people were tired of these feminist HR speech codes wielded by journalists like Megyn Kelly. "Until we know what the hell is going on" -- but lots of people wanted a Muslim Ban. And etc. etc. etc.

The next half of Trump's scandals are political attack weapons and treated as such. Most of them have aged poorly. We spent years embroiled in the controversy of whether Trump colluded with Russia, which would have been a real scandal if it were true. There aren't many people willing to treat it as true anymore. Same for something like E. Jean Carroll, where she could never remember even the year in which it was supposed to happen and New York changed the law so the case could go forward. I guess that's a big scandal for a lot of people, but how the story gets interpreted is clearly very divided. Likewise Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, "Very Fine People," etc. etc. etc. We can create however many controversies we want and as long as one side is willing to fight them they are by definition controversial and therefore even scandals. But nobody would say after i.e. Brett Kavanaugh that rape scandals aren't problems anymore. Well no it's just that lots of people didn't believe in that scandal. Rape accusations are still a great way to destroy a political career.

Then there's the third half of Trump's scandals -- well, we could debate J6 and 2020 and Covid and Impeachment and Jeffrey Epstein and Iran and those things all day. Objectively these are all very complicated with lots to interpret and dispute.

These are different in kind from, e.g., Mark Robinson calling himself a Nazi or Bob Menendez having gold bars from all the bribes he's been accepting. I suppose, actually, that to a lot of liberals these are on the same level as Trump granting pardons or owning hotels that diplomats stay at and so the "complication" as I call it is that Trump supporters are actually in a cult. But I want to defend this distinction. Scandals don't just fall out of the sky as objective controversies even if it is objective that there are controversies. Scandals are first and foremost accusations. And all accusations pass through several layers of voters or other players asking, "is this bullshit?"

The first layer is, "Is it real?" The second layer is, "How bad is it really?" Objectively, a lot of Trump's scandals are filtered out as "not real" or "not important". Perhaps, after that, there's a third layer of, "So what?" Which is where we get to the meat and potatoes of whether a scandal matters.

Brett Kavanaugh was accused of raping a drunk girl at a party 40 years ago in college. This accusation caused a lot of drama and a lot of people believed it. But, realistically, quite a lot of people thought it was bullshit. The girl could not remember key details about how it happened, Kavanaugh had solid alibis and records, and she could not establish herself as having credible moral authority that could substitute for proof. A lot of people decided it was bullshit. This doesn't mean that voters and the public don't actually care about rape anymore. "Is it real?"

George Santos lied about his professional background. He didn't tell complicated lies, they were very simple lies that were simply false. Everybody knew they were false. A comparable Trump scandal is his past as a businessman. Was he really just a conman or did his bankruptcies undermine his claim to have been a successful businessman? Those are very complicated questions to discuss (well, in one sense -- I personally think they're bullshit, and I know a lot of other people do too.) "Is it real?"

Katie Porter abused her staff and threw steaming mashed potatoes at her husband. She's probably an abusive person, and she comes off very annoying and shrill in interviews. Maybe, to your taste, the things Donald Trump says are just as bad or worse. But objectively people are more willing to tolerate Trump's flaws than Katie Porter's flaws, so the revival of her scandals has effectively ended her bid for California Governor. "How bad is it really?"

Eric Adams accepted bribes from the Turkish Government. Basically everybody admits it happened. It was also relatively small potatoes stuff. And in the scheme of New York City politics, there aren't actually that many egregious favors that can be granted to the Turks. They got some expedited building permits and exceptions and special deals. The real scandal and point of contention, in fact, was Adams relationship to other politicians. There's speculation that his attacks of the Biden administration over immigration are what lead them to investigate him in the first place. There's no doubt that his willingness to then work with Trump over ICE rose his prestige with MAGA and sank it with the left. So he lost re-election. But the scandal itself, which objectively happened, was just a pretext for other political battles it represented. "So what?"

So, Graham Platner.

He's got a Nazi tattoo. Everyone knows it would be bad if he were a Nazi. But maybe it's not real. Is it a common Nazi symbol? Could he have known it was a Nazi tattoo beyond a reasonable doubt? "Is this real?"

He's cheating on his wife. Maybe he's a sexual predator or a creep. "How bad is it really?" "Does it matter?"

The actual "scandal" here that could destroy Graham Platner's political career is his image. Liberals believe that Graham Platner is a candidate who can win Maine, so they're willing to overlook faults and flaws. If he's perceived as someone who will lose because his scandals are crippling, then there won't really be much point in defending them. If it came out for instance that he killed a kid, enough supporters would break rank that the discourse wouldn't really produce a second interpretation. But if he's "just" slimy or gross, well, maybe that's gigachad. Maybe he cheats on his wife because he's a winner. That's basically how discourse works.

My read is that Platner's scandals have taken some support away and I lean toward the interpretation that Susan Collins will outperform the polls again and Platner will lose. But none of the scandals have really been a direct hit and so far don't look poised to destroy his campaign.

Same for something like E. Jean Carroll, where she could never remember even the year in which it was supposed to happen and New York changed the law so the case could go forward.

Yeah, that one still gets trotted out as "Trump is a convicted rapist!" even if technically the conviction was not for rape. The judge put both hands and his upper body onto the scale, never mind his thumb, about that one. And Carroll's vague story that had no corroboration would have been laughed off for anyone else (remember when 'believe all women' seamlessly segued into 'but not Tara Reade' because Biden?).

The thing that sealed it for me was that Caroll never really provided any concrete information until Kavanagh provided it first. The date — down to the year, the location of the house, the people at the party, etc. she knew nothing until she was fed the information. And there was never to my recollection any contemporary evidence that the two had met. No mention of this party to other people, no journals, no police reports, no anything until he’s up for the Supreme Court. She never said anything at any other point of his career.

Mix-up there, the accuser in the Kavanaugh hearing was Christine Blasey-Ford (forget the later bandwagon-jumpers). Her story was plausible, but not supported, and plainly it had been worked on over the years and garnished especially when the Democrats got interested in learning more about possible means of blocking a conservative Supreme Court Justice. "Dumb drunk high school kids and younger kid who sneaked out to party she was too young to attend, stupid shit happens" was not impossible and could be credible. But the gilding the lily that took place on the story and the history around it, and the screaming harpies movement, just made it ridiculous.

E. Jean Carroll claimed she had been sexually assaulted/raped by Donald Trump in Bloomingdales, and this only came about when her career was fading and any publicity was good enough to sell her story. That it was also extremely convenient for his political rivals was just the cherry on top.

The crux of the matter is incentive and who stands to gain from any given scandal, be it by fanning the flames or dousing them. The actual substance of Trump's many scandals (Epstein, Iran, tariffs, etc.) is ancillary. The real engine is tribal, he makes the libs cry, and his base derives visceral satisfaction from watching the spectacle. And by clearing him of objective moral failures, they can keep a functional weapon so he can keep triggering the libs, who won't be triggered any less if those scandals did not exist (quite the contrary, perhaps).

Also, remember Johnny Depp? What kicked off as a messy celebrity divorce became a proxy war against MeToo. Depp is a lib himself, yet celebrity support for him was noticeably tepid because backing him meant siding, even indirectly, against the feminist narrative. Meanwhile, Amber Heard still has a vocal defense squad in online feminist spaces precisely because the case became symbolic ammo for the other side. The actual veracity of the verdict is not very important, it’s just a flag to be defended at all costs.

Now coming to Epstein and Graham Platner. There is zero upside in defending Epstein or even questioning the popular narrative. And Platner isn’t some irreplaceable leftist icon. Nobody scores tribal points by batting for either of them. When there’s no political or status reward for skepticism, the default is to let the mob run rampant.

I feel like there's a certain tone that attacks on candidates take, you saw it with Trump and with Mamdani, that goes something like "You aren't allowed to like this guy." We'll see if the pattern holds with Platner.

Another wrinkle in the Platner story: his working-class man of the people presentation is a complete shtick:

Platner, for example, said he relied on assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs to purchase his home in Sullivan in 2017, but mortgage records show he borrowed $200,000 from his father, a prominent local attorney, to buy the house, the Free Beacon reported. Platner has also said he's "never been close to money and power," though he attended an elite Connecticut boarding school that costs upwards of $75,000 a year and is the grandson of a world-famous architect known for designing $20,000 chairs. And while Platner presents himself in campaign materials as a hardscrabble "oyster farmer," his business partner also attended an ultra-elite New England boarding school, graduated from Dartmouth, boasts of drinking "foraged spring water with Redmond sea salt," and is an owner of the secluded Maine island where Platner's oyster farm is based. The primary purchaser of Platner's oysters, meanwhile, is a "casual fine dining restaurant" owned by Platner's mother, financial disclosures show.

His military background, while legitimate, was with the private military contractor Blackwater, rather than the US armed forces. He sometimes criticises his opponent Susan Collins by claiming he fought wars she sent him to fight in, but as she pointed out, this is a bit of a reach considering he was never drafted.

Wealthy nepo baby who went to an expensive private school signs up to fight for a PMC. After tendering his resignation, his father buys him a house, and he starts a business whose primary client is his mother. Despite later presenting himself as a socialist, he gets a tattoo heavily associated with a far-right political ideology (the significance of which he's obviously aware of, given his efforts to hide it from cameras), and only reluctantly agrees to cover it up on sufferance. He gets married, but either cheats on his wife or tries to, while attempting to conceive via IVF.

If this guy was a Republican candidate, the Dems would be calling him a wealthy scion of intergenerational privilege who harbours crypto-fascist leanings and doesn't respect women. The other week I linked to an article by Jeff Maurer, who predicted that Platner might change his tune and become much more openly conservative, perhaps even running as a GOP candidate. Nothing I've learned about him since makes that eventuality seem less likely.

Don't forget he also draws VA disability payments at a 100% rating, which gets him $4800/month. I know some legitimately disabled veterans who don't get the 100%.

My predator fatigue is through the roof. It's obviously a moral theatre. That word has been stretched so far beyond recognition that any hint of sexual sleaziness or bad judgment now gets tortured into full blown predator status. Kik has ~300 million registered users, with roughly 40% reportedly teenagers. Are we supposed to believe then that the remaining 180 million adults are all predators? Labeling the app a "predator paradise" while simply noting that someone used it is a very skeevy rhetorical trick. The insinuation is that he may have personally solicited minors or traded child pornography. If they had anything concrete, they would have led with it. They didn’t. It's particularly ironic watching right-wingers enthusiastically adopt leftist MeToo language and tactics as a political weapon repurposed for their own gotchas. Over the years, I’ve grown increasingly uncharitable towards people rushing to bat for alleged victims online. I don't think most of them are genuinely motivated by protecting victims, any more than those pred catcher YouTubers earnestly wish to protect children. Predators (or anyone successfully labeled as such) are just perfect socially acceptable punching bags, a shared enemy you can attack with total impunity to boost your own status, knowing virtually no one will dare defend them.

Agreed. The fact that he repeatedly cheated on his wife is scummy enough, without needing to imply he also did something illegal.

Over the years, I’ve grown increasingly uncharitable towards people rushing to bat for alleged victims online.

Strongly agree. In the past several years, I've twice been close to a situation where wannabe White Knights went nuclear on innocent situations, to the detriment of the people accused specifically as well as the community in general. One was a belligerent and protracted comprehension fail, while the other at least had the excuse of having his own trauma distorting his thinking, but in both cases, the alleged threat to Teh Children™ was, IMO precisely nil, and I felt bad for the mods that had to clean up that mess, which is, of course, easy to say since I was one of them.

Don't people use the term "predator" more generically for men who go after adult women who are younger than them too though, not just those who go after minors?

People use the term "predator" indistinguishably from "men" (and "straight" and "white", to a lesser degree). Again, no evolved memetic defense system against this; it was reality that kept this from getting out of control. Kind of like how in US politics you get extreme rhetoric but the Constitution prevents it from getting too out of hand.

Now that reality no longer gives men that advantage, you get both barrels, it's that simple. Of course there are a few societies that can avoid this, so you find things that seem strange to Western ears where women defend certain extremes of male sexuality (re: female politicians defending loli), but they also aren't Western, and they still can't reproduce above replacement.


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