We live in a capitalist dystopia

Pocket

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
How many papers are part of this particular one? I feel like this would be unconscionable even if it were literally just the Washington Post that's doing this.
 
Dekafox

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
Just another brick in the wall(of rent everything, own nothing):

mastodon.social

Wojciech Mosiejczuk (@[email protected])

Attached: 2 images Got an email from Dark Horse Comics (publisher of Hellboy, Witcher, Cyberpunk and Avatar comics) announcing that they are killing the digital comic book libraries their readers accumulated over the years. Their FAQ makes it painfully clear you DO NOT own the DRM-ridden...
mastodon.social mastodon.social
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Pocket

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Remember, folks: Only suckers "buy" things from DRM-locked services in the first place.
 
Ungnome

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
IP is different than car ownership. By keeping the car, you deprive the actual owner of it's use. By downloading a file you don't deprive the original owner of said property, you simply have a copy of it. I draw the line at distributing copywritten material without a license as long as said material is still available for sale with the exception being this DRM related crap where you lose content you 'purchased'(aka a perpetual license to either stream or download a drm'd file) if the storefront goes under. At that point, no mater what the license agreement says, have at it. The real solution is strong pro-consumer protections for digital IP purchases but we couldn't get that with a Democratic majority, we definitely ain't getting it with the Cheeto in charge.(I also wouldn't be opposed to shortening the duration of a copyright to something more reasonable, 95 years is RIDICULOUS)

This is from someone who at some point would like to list a game project on Steam.
 
Pocket

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Just so you know, Steam does have the option of disabling its DRM when publishing a game. It's not publicly visible which ones did and which ones didn't, and I doubt anyone even cares which ones are which (including the Steam fanboys who love to drop in and well-actually anyone who complains about Steam being DRM), but it does exist.

And of course, there's nothing (aside from fees and extra paperwork) stopping you from releasing on multiple storefronts, including those that are DRM-free across the board.
 
CoffeeHorse

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
Ungnome said:
The real solution is strong pro-consumer protections for digital IP purchases but we couldn't get that with a Democratic majority, we definitely ain't getting it with the Cheeto in charge.(I also wouldn't be opposed to shortening the duration of a copyright to something more reasonable, 95 years is RIDICULOUS)
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Considering how much this administration and their allies hate Hollywood in general and especially Disney, I feel like pushing for this is still worth a shot. Just sell it as anti-Disney instead of pro-consumer.
 
Ungnome

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
Yea, Steam's not perfect, but they are a lot more pro-consumer than most OTHER digital storefronts. Itch.io is absolutely awesome, just doesn't have the customer base. I've got a game jam project and a couple of little protytpes up there. Nothing worth me charging anyone for, though, lol.
 
Pale Rider

Pale Rider

...and Hell followed with him.
Citizen
FB friend:
To understand how each class votes, you have to understand what each class views as the principal barrier to their prosperity.

For the poor, the principal barrier to greater prosperity is the cost of living. They have dead-end jobs and the thing they worry about most on a daily basis is the cost of rent, food, utilities, etc. The path to greater prosperity in their minds starts with reducing their cost of living.

For the middle-class, the principle barrier to greater prosperity is inadequate income. They have jobs with theoretical upward mobility, but they're either not moving upward or they're not moving upward quickly enough. Unlike the poor, they are not struggling to pay for basic necessities, but they are struggling to invest money and build a nest egg for their futures. Therefore, the path to greater prosperity in their minds starts with job opportunities.

For the wealthy, the principle barrier to their prosperity is taxation. They don't need jobs, and many of them don't have jobs. Some of them play at pretending to work, but they derive the bulk of their income from capital-gains, shareholder dividends, and interest. They are in the highest tax bracket, so the path to greater prosperity in their minds starts and ends with tax cuts. More importantly, every rich person who inherited money had to pay a huge tax bill on that inheritance, so they carry around an endless grudge against taxes because they'll never forget that one big chunk of money they had to give away.

This is how you win elections: you tell the poor people that you'll cut their cost of living. You tell the middle-class people that you'll "create job opportunities" by getting rid of the competition (ie- immigrants, and/or women and minorities if you're an anti-DEI white guy) and cutting corporate taxes so employers can afford to hire more people (which is not how corporate taxes work at all, but I digress). And most importantly of all, you tell rich people that you'll cut their taxes.

Trump may be an idiot, but he understood enough to make exactly those three promises in his 2024 election campaign.
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Ungnome

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
KidTDragon said:
Capitalism may be coming for Discord:

kotaku.com

Prepare For Discord To Get Way Worse

The video game chat platform is reportedly exploring a Wall Street IPO
kotaku.com kotaku.com
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It was inevitable, unfortunately(heck, it was already moving in that direction before they announced they were preparing for an IPO). We need open standards and to tear down all these walled gardens. I'm gonna go back to my grumpy corner and complain that IRC stagnated to the point that Discord was able to take over.
 
Pocket

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
The real issue is that people are drawn to all these free services because no one has any money to actually pay for things anymore. You can make all the open standards you want, but if you tell people they have to fork over real money to get a server, they're gonna go "nah" and go back to being the product.
 
Ungnome

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
True enough. IRC servers are cheap to run, though. I've run one on dialup back in the late 90s just to test things out. Granted it only had like 5 users and was only up for a few hours, lol. Discord does voice and video, though, which do have much heavier bandwidth requirements.
 
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