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Just like the MPAA didn't learn from the RIAA, the games industry is next

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40hz:
What you are saying is true but the defeatism won't improve anything either. By saying and thinking what you posted they have really won, our apathy (or similar sentiment) is and has become their greatest weapon. And also, we can not keep on living thinking that all of us can be bought and there is no chance of "true democracy".
-rgdot (February 07, 2012, 08:22 PM)
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There's a big difference between not kidding yourself you won and being a defeatist.

And the single biggest tactical mistake you can make in a battle like this one is to lull yourself into a false sense of victory before you've conclusively attained it. And that is going to take a lot more work than has been done so far.

What we've recently had is a minor skirmish with both sides feeling each other out and gauging the degree and nature of the support both sides can expect to get on this issue. It's little more than queen's pawn to queen's pawn 3 so far. An opening move. The real battle hasn't even begun yet. And the gloves won't come off until some time after that.

So beware of irrational exuberance when it comes to largely symbolic gains in the early rounds of conflict. I've seen more than a few worthy movements defeated by that.

Assumptions are deadly. Which is why it's so necessary to maintain vigilance.

As it stands right now, those arguing for a free net are down a point. We gained a temporary stay of execution by getting PIPA and SOPA put on hold. But that's all we got.

Or did we?

The media lobby got ACTA signed into law while we were sitting around congratulating ourselves on how well "we showed 'em."

Now SOPA and PIPA are looking more and more like a diversionary tactic. The classic red herring. The disposable infantry units that got sent out to draw fire and distract attention away from what the real game was - getting ACTA signed as quickly, and in as many countries, as possible.

My point in my earlier post wasn't to concede defeat. It was to acknowledge the very real chance that we just might have been had. And big time too!

And if that upsets some people, or rains on their parade badly enough that their confidence is shattered - and now they're worried they might lose faith in the cause ,well... maybe we should let them. Because those of us who are in it for the long haul don't need them. And considering what's to come, we'd probably be better off without them. Because it's going to get a lot harder before we even see the slightest glimmer of real hope this nonsense is going to be put to rest.

And we can up our chances for success by not letting ourselves feel good until we actually have something to feel good about.



There's a great moment in the Terry Pratchett story Hogfather where a governess is speaking to two young children who are crying because they are afraid of the monster they know is hiding in the basement of their house just waiting for them to fall asleep. The governess asks the children to repeat back to her what she told them they should do whenever they felt afraid. The children dutifully respond "Don't get afraid - get angry!"

Not a bad piece of advice.  :)

Why it's good to feel bad about some things! If you study NLP, there's a technique used to forment change. In NLP's scheme of things, change itself isn't hard. Change occurs in the psychological equivalent of a quantum shift. It takes place in an instant. A new circuit is forged and switched on. Bang! Done!

What takes time, and is very hard, is getting up the resolve to make that change.

And one way to get up that resolve is to begin by not trying to smooth over pain and adapt to it. On the contrary, you're taught to wallow in it until you can't stand it. And then use that like rocket fuel to attain escape velocity.

Here's a proven 3-step technique for bringing about change ala NLP:

Step-1:  Feel your pain. Deeply. Horribly. Let it become unbearable. Do not attempt to rationalize it away.

Step-2: Allow yourself get to the point of where you want to scream: This is intolerable! I cannot live even one more second like this!!! This has absolutely got to change!!!!!

Step-3: Now remind yourself the only way anything is ever going to change is if you yourself change it.


--- End quote ---

Anybody who has ever gone through this "dark night of the soul" process will tell you it's astonishingly effective. Maybe not very enjoyable. But effective nevertheless.
 8) 8)

rgdot:
I have never thought that these temporary gains are good in any way, with the current system we are doomed. However, I still believe the power to make the radical changes is there, they are just not exercised. So as long as there are the type of people delivering, just as an example, tonight's US primary results this planet has no chance.

Reason for emphasis is that people, not just some faceless corporations, are paving the way for this mess (again citing tonight's votes as an example). You can't even say money rules, tonight's winner has the least amount of money in the bank.

Renegade:
The fallacy of ideas as property is the core problem. As long as people cling to that, there will be conflict.
-Renegade (February 07, 2012, 07:14 PM)
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I think that this is a case of no one going to the middle.  You have one side that thinks that ideas cannot and should not have ownership, and others that think that they have to hold onto it with both hands.  IMO, neither is correct.  When we say that you cannot own an idea, then the characters that we have grown up with become meaningless.  That's when despite the wishes of Bill Watterson, when he decides not to make any more Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, someone else makes cheap rip-offs for the money... or even worse, they do it while he's publishing his.

I understand the concept of what you're saying (probably) isn't advocating this, but isn't this the same thing that a lot of our protests against PIPA and SOPA are about?  The abilities that these laws give rather than in many case the truths of what would come about even if passed?
-wraith808 (February 07, 2012, 09:58 PM)
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Well, it's tough ground.

Half the problem is that very few people are actually equipped with the right concepts to even talk about the topic. So, at the end of the day, you have people spouting opinions that are about as intelligent as anything I have to say on what it feels like to menstruate.

If we take the basic empirical approach, then there is no debate whatsoever -- ideas cannot be property. Period. You can only have exclusive access to an idea if you never share/reveal it. But even then, someone else might think of the same idea... History is full of these kinds of things, e.g. Calculus with Liebniz and Descartes, even though it was known elsewhere centuries before.

Fundamentally, even to consider that an idea can be property requires an entirely different metaphysics. (To be honest, I think that it's going to be a very difficult thing to allow for ideas to be property under any set of metaphysics. My get tells me that they are all going to be inherently contradictory in untenable ways and will require violence and conflict to be primary values.)

That is, without a common set of metaphysics to form the base for the conversation, virtually all debate is destined to result in nothing but red herrings.


So... given that there can be no agreement on the topic, we are basically left to "faking" it. That is, we can "pretend" that ideas can be owned. The advantage there is that whether or not it's true, we can act as though it is.


But even then, depending on what side of the sphere you're on (because there are oh so, so, so many sides...), there may be no advantage at all to pretending, so why bother? If there is no upside, why play the game?


I find that more and more I'm being drawn towards complete abolishment of ownership for ideas. However, most of my motivations there are entirely unrelated to copyright/patent/IP, and more geared towards "control". i.e. Copyright/patent/IP are simply tools of control, but I'm more interested in the root of power/control.


Still... I can't get past "if there's no upside, why should I play?"

That is, the so-called "rights owners" are asking us all to blindly cooperate with them and hand over our money/wealth.


Does anyone see just how utterly insane it is?


Let me put this as a couple kids talking on the playground about the rules for a game...

A: Ok, we're going to play a game.
B: YAY!
A: Here's how it goes... I get to increase my score whenever I want. Then I win. And you have to give me your dessert from lunch.
B: Huh?
A: 100 points! I win! Isn't this fun? Now where's my dessert?


Why would anyone ever agree to those rules? There are lots of other kids out there, and lots of other games to play.


Well, I for one am voting with my wallet. I simply won't buy anything anymore if I don't have to. Sure, there will be times when I need to, but they're going to be a lot fewer now than in the past.

No more games. (Never was much into them anyways.)

No more books. I can get lots for free.

No more movies. Why? I can get tonnes of great stuff for free on YouTube or Vimeo. (I'm going to have to cave on this from time to time for the wife.)

No more software if I can avoid it. I'm agreeing with Richard Stallman more and more all the time. These threads are really only driving me more and more into the FSF/GPL/"whatever you want to call it" camp. (Again, I'll have to cave in here sometimes.)

Flat out -- they just don't have anything that I need. Nothing.


The more the control freaks scream and fuss, the further away I'll run. I'm just getting tired of it. i.e. I think my attitude now is pretty well summed up like this:

NSFWFine. Take your fucking ball and just go the fuck home already. I'm sick of your goddamn fucking whining you little fucking bitch.


SFWFine. Take your ball and just go home already. I'm sick of your whining you little (please see above).

;D


But, I change my mind all the time. If I find a better way or better logic, then I'll run down that path. So, tomorrow may be different... Though somehow I doubt it...




The media lobby got ACTA signed into law while we were sitting around congratulating ourselves on how well "we showed 'em."

Now SOPA and PIPA are looking more and more like a diversionary tactic. The classic red herring. The disposable infantry units that got sent out to draw fire and distract attention away from what the real game was - getting ACTA signed as quickly, and in as many countries, as possible.

-40hz (February 07, 2012, 10:15 PM)
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+1

Glad you brought that up.

My guess is that this was all quite deliberate and planned. I do not believe that this was a coincidence.

Ehtyar:
Reads like satire. If everyone in this thread so far hadn't taken it seriously, I'd be inclined to think it was a joke.

Ehtyar.

mahesh2k:
Amazon did this with kindle and they found out that this is not working as they expected. You can't stop people from book loaning or sharing as this is part of society. So they started new twisted version of loaning the book. They have a premium membership where users can get books for set period for free and the book author gets fund based on the loaned numbers*book value+/- few other variables.

If what this developer says turns out into reality will surely create problem to limited period. Life will go on once again because most of the time consumers whine and they get back to the entertainment again. This is the reason using windows desktop is turning out to be more of problem compared to linux and apple. People who subscribe to -"life is too shot" are going to be playing games even in this walled garden condition. Steam is one more area where they may control the loaning or resell or transfer of the games, which is surely going to affect their business, because industry is watching how amazon and apple are winning by restricting consumers into the walled garden. I am not surprised to see game devs interested in doing this. Sometimes I feel 40hz's comments related to these market control are indeed coming out as a reality. I find it hard to see game sellers making changes in the box or dvd's in a such way that taking that dvd to friends house during weekend is going to be a crime or going to make copy useless in any other machine after single installation. That sucks, it's worst than piracy. It's like using some chinese gadget for a month and later using it as paperweight.

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