5 ms·
The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was
by ryandrake 5mo ago
The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn down a server.
As a developer or manufacturer, if your software or device absolutely requires a server that costs money to maintain, then your business plan should take that into account: You should be charging customers monthly to keep that service running. You shouldn't promise a one-time payment, take the customer's money and then yank the service away on a whim.
Nobody is asking for free labor to keep services running. I'm asking that you 1. only tether your product to a server if you absolutely need to, and 2. charge for that kind of product monthly so that you can leave it running while you still have customers. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.
- cogman10 5mo agoYeah, it's frankly ridiculous that "smart" devices need internet access. Why shouldn't my smart oven behave exactly like my Brother printer? There's no reason my oven needs access to the internet, it can do everything it needs to do on my local network. My phone should be able to connect directly to it via a scan of the local network subnet or using any number of service announcement technologies that already exist. And it makes these devices worse. I should be able to control my oven using a simple REST api and home assistant. The fact that in order to interact with my oven with a home assistant I first have to reach out to my manufacture servers is just insane. It's an oven. It only has so many sensors and nobs to twist. About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever. But that too should be solved with the same regulation that says "Ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, thermostats, and doorbells must not connect to the internet". We can teach the world about VPNs if they want remotely access their devices.
- zahlman 5mo ago> About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever. If the app doesn't use the Internet then the natural way to provision it is to have it pre-loaded on the device anyway. Why should the goal of "avoid needing to hit the manufacturer's servers" involve hitting Google's servers?
- cwillu 5mo agoWorth noting that Brother for a decade or more now often ships their printers with the USB port hidden behind a sticker, and _lots_ of other papers and stickers telling you “you need to connect to wifi!”.
- encrypted_bird 5mo agoAnd of course removing the sticker often voids the warranty to boot!
- mysterydip 5mo ago“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere
- cogman10 5mo ago"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufacturer requires the same thing for this device class. So you can either have a washing machine or hand wash your cloths in your bathtub". These sorts of EULA should be flat out illegal.
- mystraline 5mo agoMy opinion is that is a fraudulent rental masquerading as a sale. And any and all EULAs or similar documents presented after a sale should be completely null and void. But any corporation attempting to that should be fined a signficant portion of their revenue. Past that, dissolution of company. But no, we live in a shit society that someone who signs up for a demo of Disney+ and then has his wife die due to bad food, and they tried to slap indefinite arbitration on him. https://lawreview.missouri.edu/infinite-arbitration-how-one-click-can-take-you-out-of-court-forever/ https://lawreview.missouri.edu/infinite-arbitration-how-one-... This whole country feels like one big fucking company store scam.
- cogman10 5mo agoYeah, contract law is simply busted here. If it were sane, these contracts would be deemed null and void. In fact, common contract law does require that both sides be compensated. It doesn't require fair or reasonable compensation and that's the big problem. But I think there is an argument to be made that the EULA has no compensation. Since payment has already been made for the product, it's completely one sided.
- KolibriFly 5mo ago[dead]
- aurareturn 5mo agoIt should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever. Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total left. Are you saying that this developer must maintain the exact same quality of online play for 100 people?
- zahlman 5mo agoThe comment you are replying to doesn't argue any such thing, and is pretty clear in its explanation of how your position is perfectly compatible with what is requested.
- aurareturn 5mo agoThe author is arguing for it. This is what the post was saying: 1. No nerfing to the game/service whatsoever. This means you can't just kill online play. Ever. 2. Charge a monthly price or significantly increase the purchasing price. Clearly neither of these are viable for most games and the game industry.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mrob 5mo agoNobody has a problem with rentals. Just be up front with the terms and don't try to pretend it's a sale.
- rolph 5mo agowhat is truly silly, is the practice of online requirements, to operate software.
- 0x59 5mo ago
- orev 5mo agoMaybe it’s better to start in a smaller, more focused and less controversial topic to set some precedents before trying to boil the ocean.
- xingped 5mo agoThis. If we try to tackle everything at once it won't work, but make inroads where you can while the winds are at your back for a particular issue.
- knollimar 5mo agoIt's hardly a whim if a game runs 15 years, they announce "our active playerbase is 60 people" and the game shuts down. I think we need to stop treating it as a dichotomy. There's an understanding it won't last forever, when you buy a multiplayer game, ans making devs make offline versions in the cases where its trivial is going to bite indie game studios. Gamers have repeatedly shown they dont like subs. Its hard to model "we want to charge you 40 cents per month, escalating with inflation" but thats what youre asking for
- 3eb7988a1663 5mo agoGaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.
- knollimar 5mo agoNot every game has a server architecture like that. There's been a Renaissance of indie multuplayer due to good libraries and third party dependencies. Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games. I'd be 100% for "if your game has an easily releasable server you have to release it on EoS" but this bill isn't it.
- the8472 5mo agoIf you have add a "easily releasable" clause then the game companies could just do something that makes it not-so, e.g. a shell company that owns the code and they only "licence" it without permission to release it or whatever would fly under that law.
- knollimar 5mo agoYeah I understand it's unworkable; I don't think it's a serious suggestion. It is the cwtegory I want to target. I personally would just put like a $200k sales carveout and that would make me happy.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- teeray 5mo agoCompanies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say “we need to shut this down because we’re losing money on it.” On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: “but that’s our IP and it’s valuable to us.” You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to society.
- ToucanLoucan 5mo agoOur society was designed from the foundations to benefit the owning class, and this is a prime, easily observed example of that. You're completely correct and it doesn't matter, because the point of IP law is to allow people who know nothing to sit on assets they own and make money for doing no work. If someone wants to argue this position, I would challenge them to explain why anything around IP law exists as it does now if that was not the explicit goal.
- shigawire 5mo agoThe good faith interpretation is that innovation is spurred by having some guarantees that your innovation isn't immediately ripped off. It allows for investing more into R&D. I'm not saying the current system achieves that, but it is part of the justification.
- ToucanLoucan 5mo agoA good faith interpretation at this point is voluntarily sticking your head in the sand to feign centrism. The purpose of a system is what it does, and ours, too predictably to be mere coincidence, permits capital to endlessly extract value from those actually creating it, to the detriment of those value creators, the people they create value for, and even if they're too dead inside to perceive it, the capital holders themselves.
- mystraline 5mo agoInitially, copyright and patents were a counter-response to the European guild system. Early on, you also had to prove your patrnt with a physical thing. Couldnt write the patent to deceive. And for making plain language, you got protection for 17 years. Now, theres shit like 'business process patents', genetic patents, and other horrible. And patents are now writtten to confuse and hide, unlike plain language. Copyrights were basically bought by Disney. Theyve been grossly perverted due to money interests. Im mostly OK with trademarks. It comes from Heraldry and family coat of arms. Trademarked colors are quite bullshit however.
- matheusmoreira 5mo agoAll this could be instantly fixed by repealing the DMCA's anti-reverse engineering provisions. Simply allow people to solve the problem, and the problem will literally take care of itself. Adversarial interoperability should be enshrined into law. If they won't support the thing, then we will. They just have to stop getting in our way. It's also necessary to heavily punish any company that tries to leverage the legal system's expenses to financially ruin adversaries, especially individuals, by burdening them with the legal costs of defending themselves for the crime of exercising their rights.