Category: Politics/Government

Categories
Games Politics/Government

How to Apologize Correctly

When I was a senior in high school, I was editor of the school paper. I wanted to publish more than fluff pieces. I couldn’t count how many times the formulaic headline “[insert school event here] a Success” showed up in that paper.

Some of the articles ended up quite controversial, and I got us in trouble quite a few times. I was the reason why future issues of the paper had to be approved by the principal.

And while I can be proud that, after years of people complaining, my paper resulted in actual changes to the cafeteria food quality and pricing, I did have one article that poked fun at past administrators that got me pulled into the principal’s office. I was told that I needed to write an apology for the next issue.

I remember writing the words, “We regret any offense we may have caused.” It sounded good and official, as if it was something in a real newspaper.

And I remember being told that my statement wasn’t good enough. It’s not an apology to “regret” that someone was offended. It’s basically saying that we’d do it again and that any offense is the responsibility of the offended.

So I had to rewrite it: “We apologize for the offense we caused.” It’s a lot more direct and lot less weaselly.

An apology isn’t something you say to make bad feelings go away. “I’m sorry” isn’t a magic phrase to get people who are upset with you to disappear. And you don’t apologize with a non-apology such as “I’m sorry if you were offended” because you’re basically saying that you’re not sorry you did someone something wrong because you don’t think you actually did.

According to Ars Technica, slave-Tetris mode was removed from Playing History 2: Slade Trade by Serious Games Interactive after a public outcry when the game became more well known due to a Steam sale.

Ugh. I did just type those words, didn’t I? Slave Tetris? Really? Someone thought it was a good idea?

I have no problem with a game being used to educate players about history. And no one else who understands how games aren’t just for kids has a problem with the concept either.

But Slave Tetris isn’t the most respectful way to teach how horrible the conditions of the slave ships were. This isn’t navigating the Dalles in The Oregon Trail. You can’t reduce the real experiences of millions of people to a mini-game and not expect people to feel that those lives themselves have been minimized.

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen of Serious Games Interactive had this non-apology:

The phrase “as it was perceived to be extremely insensitive by some people” is very similar to “we regret any offense we may have caused.”

This phrase makes it sound like the Slave Tetris minigame is actually quite sensitive and perfectly fine, but because some people took offense, SGI decided to take it out to make the bad publicity and bad feelings magically go away.

I think Egenfeldt-Nielsen honestly believes that this is a good educational game that brings the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to life much better than any history book could do. And he may be right about the game as a whole, although having someone in the game talk like Mr. T seems to contradict his claims that “We are definitely not making it into a joke.”

Playing History 2: Slave Trade - Pity the Fool?

Furthermore, I have a feeling that many of the negative reactions in here are knee-jerk reactions and she eps following what other says. Please take time to look at the game before forming your opinion.

The problem with Egenfeldt-Nielsen’s commentary is that he says, “we are listening” but then in the same breath says, “I really don’t think that all the comments here are warranted.”

Oh.

People are offended, and it isn’t the Race Card or Political Correctness or people who are just looking to get offended professionally.

He made a mini-game about earning points by stacking human slaves efficiently in a slave ship. It’s offensive.

If there was a mini-game about slamming planes into the Twin Towers and scoring points for the number of people you force to jump to their deaths, people would be offended because it is offensive to take such a serious situation and try to pretend there’s a fun game out of it. There would be real lives being represented in a terrible way. The seriousness of that day would be missed, no matter how accurate or true it technically might be.

I agree with Egenfeldt-Nielsen that games have a lot of potential beyond being fun. In fact, there are plenty of serious games out there on a wide variety of topics that the casual game player might get surprised about. There are games about dealing with cancer, depression, and many other health issues. There are games about current events, war, and logistics for aid organizations, all of which treat the topic seriously and can bring awareness without making light of the situation.

But as I’m sure he has discovered, it’s not easy to work with serious subjects. You can’t separate the game from the people and events it is portraying. A game about slavery can’t just be game mechanics with a slavery backstory. To think otherwise is to betray the mindset that this serious issue is serious in the abstract but not serious enough to consider other people’s reactions to it as important.

Slavery is horrific. A game about slavery need not be, but Playing History: Slave Trade‘s Slave Tetris isn’t driving home the point that slave ships were actually like a Tetris board. In a subtle way, it’s minimizing the horror.

But I worry the lesson he learned isn’t to treat serious subjects with more respect and awareness. I worry the lesson he learned was that he needs to walk on eggshells to avoid having seemingly unreasonable people offended. His regret is that others were offended, not that he participated in the offending.

Categories
Game Design Politics/Government

Take Seriously the Responsibility of Game Creation #LDJam

After a marathon game development weekend in which I finished my Ludum Dare compo entry on time, I found myself looking forward to playing everyone else’s games. I pulled up the random list of games it provides for me to rate, and the very first game on the list?

A game about being a rapist.

Seriously? Ugh.

I know. I know the theme for Ludum Dare #33 was “You Are the Monster.” I know the very first thought most people will have with the word “monster” is some kind of creature, whether evil or good, and the second thought is, “Ah, but people can be metaphorical monsters, too!”

And there have been some amazing games taken in both directions. In just a handful of games, I played the role of a politician in two of them. One was humorous, and one was chillingly dark. Both were done well.

But I can’t comprehend how someone could think playing as a rapist would make for a good game concept, no matter how much it might fit the theme.

I’m having trouble articulating what bothers me so much about a game about being a rapist. We have lots of games that put you in terribly violent roles, and I would be one of the last people to argue that they shouldn’t be made.

But this game has you treat women as objects to overpower as a core game play mechanic. That’s horrific.

When I brought this up in the Ludum Dare IRC channel, I was told something to the effect of “If you don’t like it, then just don’t play it.”

I think that attitude works fine for matters of taste. If I am not a sports fan, I could just not play the next incarnation of Madden instead of whining about the existence of another game I don’t care for.

But this is a game about subjugating and raping women, of treating them as Less Than. I would not think it’s a matter of taste. I would like to think that it’s not a matter of some people being offended and some people not. I think it is perfectly valid to call out a bad creation. I mean, there are bad games, and then there are bad games.

It’s not “just a game”. I hate that phrase because it makes it sound like games are not important.

Games matter. And I know this is a 48 hour game made by an amateur and not a professionally produced controversial product. But games matter.

We live in a world where the tools of creation have been democratized, and as I wrote last month, anyone can create, and they do:

You could simulate complex interpersonal relationships, or you could go the easy route of hypersexualization, stereotypes, and power fantasy.

…

It’s a choice.

And with the increased availability of tools and publishing platforms, anyone can make these kinds of choices.

And many do. Sometimes without realizing that they are making important choices.

And some of these choices get front-page status, which means a lot of people get the subtle message that these choices are normal.

Being careless about this topic bothers me a lot. Rape is serious. It is dehumanizing to its victims. It is horrific. It should not be treated casually, because then you risk making rape sound as almost normal, maybe even funny. When rape is treated in an unserious way, it’s telling the world that it is no big deal.

I’m not saying that certain topics are taboo and should not be the subject of games. Other media have tackled it, and some have done better than others in not treating it as merely a plot development, and I believe games could as well. I think it may be possible to create a game about violent misogyny and rape that seriously deals with the issue.

I am saying that if rape is going to be addressed in a game, it needs more careful thought behind it. Making a game about rape is not something you just do.

A note to people who don’t play games: Games don’t have to be fun to be games. They don’t have to be for kids to be games. They can deal with adult themes. They can inform.

Games mean something and they say something to the world. Even if you think they don’t say anything, THAT says something. Playing a game featuring casual misogyny such as the Batman:Arkham series of games says something to us about the views of the creators, views that potentially get absorbed by the players. These games aren’t going to turn every fan into a raging women-hating fiend, but it sure doesn’t help to be exposed to hours of game play normalizing certain attitudes toward women.

A game about being a violent rapist says something about the creator’s views, views that can get absorbed by it’s players. People might see this game and think, whether consciously or not, “Huh, someone made a game about being a rapist. I guess that’s a thing now.” And rape gets even more normalized in more minds.

I don’t know what to call for in terms of this specific game. I’m not asking for it to be banned or removed from Ludum Dare, but that’s more because I don’t know if it should be. I’m still a bit shocked that someone thought to make it in the first place.

But in general, I am asking that game developers take the responsibility for what they put out into the world more seriously. You’re creating culture. Act like it.

Categories
Politics/Government

Another Reminder about the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Another, apparently needed, reminder: the 1st amendment is about the government not being allowed to stop you from speaking your mind. You can’t be arrested for stating your opinions, no matter how terrible or controversial.

The 1st amendment DOES NOT protect you from the consequences of that speech with regard to your fellow citizens or the media, who have their own right to decry what you say, including calling you a bigot if they think you’re being a bigot.

You aren’t being censored illegally just because you don’t like that someone’s opinion of your speech is negative.

You’re just being censured, legally.

Categories
Personal Development Politics/Government

Independence Means Having Real Choices and the Opportunity to Make Them

In game design, balance is important. If you create a variety of options for the player to choose from, but one is superior to the rest, then the rest might as well not be in the game because the player will always choose the the best item.

Dominant strategies are often an accident. Whether it is a lack of play-testing or an oversight, designers don’t usually put them in on purpose.

But it is easy to see how the existence of a dominant strategy ruins things. Instead of having a lot of choices as the designer intended, the player effectively has none.

Technically you could argue that the player still has choices, and if he/she wanted to play with an extra challenge, it’s possible. People try to finish the original Legend of Zelda while collecting the minimum of upgrades, for instance:

But in most cases, the player is trying to optimize their play, and the existence of an always-optimal choice means the player is always going to make that choice.

There are also choices that are always terrible. They also might as well not exist because the player will never choose it over a superior option.

In real life, balance is not guaranteed. People make all sorts of choices in all sorts of circumstances.

For many people, these choices aren’t real choices at all.

For instance, who to vote for. While we seem to be gaining a U.S. presidential candidate every other week, eventually it will get pared down, with our two-party system causing many people feel like they only have two choices: bad, and worse.

Technically, they have two other choices: not voting, or voting third party. But many feel that these aren’t real choices. One abdicates responsibility, and the other feels like you barely doing any better since the majority of people think they only have two real choices and so your third party vote ends up having a negligible effect. You feel like you’re railing against the wind because not enough people joined you.

In other cases, the choices might be there; you just can’t take advantage of them.

In some countries in the world, practicing your faith is deadly. Talking about the problems of the government is deadly. Protesting is deadly. You could say that the citizens still have a choice, that they are independent, but it would take unusual courage and strength for them to stand against their oppressors. It’s heart-breaking. The door to the cage might be open, but those armed guards don’t look like they’ll let you walk through them unscathed.

In countries like Greece, bad policies have resulted in the majority of the population paying for the sins of a few major players. The people can’t leave the situation easily, and it is frustrating because the way out of the situation isn’t obvious.

It’s easy to take our independence for granted. People have fought for our rights for centuries, whether it was winning our independence from foreign enemies or our livelihoods and dignity from domestic ones.

People can complain about the President’s policies or the way Congress can’t seem to cooperate to put together meaningful legislation, and they don’t generally need to worry about retaliation from the government.

You can leave a job with terrible conditions and find another, or start your own business, or go on strike and demand better conditions. Yes, some choices here are more painful or terrifying, but not overly so. We as a nation frown upon monopolies specifically because the lack of real choice is seen as harmful. We get concerned when one company seems to be able to set their own terms independent of competition or the health of their workers.

You can change your religion, and aside from sharing in awkward family meals or attempts to make you feel guilty, the consequences don’t tend to result in a shortened life expectancy.

Sometimes the guards to the cage door are only ourselves. Maybe we’re blinded to the opportunities, or we don’t have all of the information to make an informed choice, or it takes more effort than we realize, or our circumstances make it difficult, or maybe we aren’t bothering to participate.

But we can fix or change any of those circumstances. We can learn more about the situation. We can make plans. We can get help.

Don’t waste your opportunities. Don’t take the easy route. Don’t go with the weaker strategy in life just because everyone else around you is using it.

Take advantage of your independence. You have choices, and even if it is hard to do so, you can make them.

Categories
Personal Development Politics/Government

Revisiting Your Existing Knowledge

I went to a Catholic grade school which included kindergarten all the way through to 8th grade. There was no clear break between grade school and middle school. To me, I went to grade school, then high school.

Often when I tell people about my grade school experience, I realize that people get confused about how young I was, so sometimes I have to say that it was my grade school/middle school.

Now that that’s explained, when I was in grade school, I recall distinctly the lessons about the Civil War. I remember the teacher specifically saying that the war was not about slavery, that it was about states’ rights.

I remember thinking, “Oh! I didn’t know that! The little I knew about the war was North and South, the country splitting between free states and slave states.” Learning about the slave states that stuck with the Union was kind of like learning about a piece of trivia and reinforced the idea that no, it wasn’t about slavery specifically. It was about whether or not the government can tell states what to do.

And in the end, the federal government won. The United States of America is a single entity, not a bunch of individual states.

And I carried this knowledge throughout my life. Whenever the Civil War came up, this fact about the reasons for the war being about states’ rights as opposed to slavery came with.

When I visited a Confederate museum in Virginia, I hadn’t seen the war from the Confedrate perspective, and while the museum was tiny, it was full of uniforms, battle standards, carvings such as an engagement ring made from a peach pit, and all matter of fascinating pieces of history. I found no mention of slavery, and I was not surprised.

So after the tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina in which 10 people were shot in a church by someone motivated primarily by race, I found it odd when a few friends posted on Facebook about calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol.

They kept talking about racism and slavery, and I was confused because, after all, the Confederacy wasn’t about slavery, right? Calling for the removal of the Confederate flag seemed irrelevant after a shooting driven by hate.

Then this article in the Atlantic called What This Cruel War Was Over published some of the rhetoric and public documents prior to the war.

Oh. It very much was about slavery.

It was about slavery, and it was about White supremacy. The election of Abraham Lincoln with his party’s radical agenda of stopping the spread of slavery was in direct opposition to the desire of leaders in the Southern states to spread slavery into the larger empire of America, which touches on our tensions with Mexico in a way I never saw before. The end of slavery would mean that Blacks would be bizarrely considered equal to Whites, and if that happened it would be the end of civilization as we know it. Even when the Confederates realized the rest of the world wasn’t so keen on helping their cause and so diplomats tried to spin it as states’ rights, it was abundantly clear by the writing and opposition that there was no reason for people to feel embarrassed about slavery, that it was actually a force of good and they should be proud of what it has accomplished.

It was about slavery. That people think so is not perversion by extremists. It isn’t miseducation. It’s part of the historical record, and it isn’t interpreted as it is part of the primary documents we have about the war. To the extent it was about states’ rights, it was the right of states to continue keeping a good number of their population as slaves in order to ensure equality among Whites. It’s an odd thing to today say is part of your proud heritage, and I now understand why people conflate slavery, White supremacy, and the Confederate States of America a lot more closely than I thought they deserved.

And I look back on my grade school days and recognize some of the things I’ve learned since. I remember a high school teacher informing our class that most text books are published by Texas and have a certain point of view built into them. Lies my teacher taught me, indeed.

Now, I’m from the Northern part of the country. In my mind, I always thought WE won the civil war. I identify with the Northern states despite the fact that I was born to immigrants over a century later and have no direct tie to the war. I can only imagine how painful this kind of knowledge can be for people who identify with the South, or who have ancestors who held such views and proudly fought for them.

There are things you learn from a young age, and you never think to question it because it just was. You have a base to build your knowledge on.

And then you find your base is a lie or wrong. It can be difficult because you feel like you are starting over. If that base was wrong, what about everything built on top of it?

But when is the truth ever not the goal? You know, when cynicism and duplicity aren’t involved?

Sometimes your continued education in life isn’t isolated to gaining new knowledge. Sometimes it is about relearning what you thought you already knew.

Categories
Marketing/Business Politics/Government

GOG Galaxy: The DRM-Free Online Gaming Platform

I haven’t been following much of the news, but apparently GOG has an optional client to use that will automatically update your games and allow you to play online with friends.

They call it GOG Galaxy:

I found out about it because I just got an email offering me a free copy of Alien vs Predator Classic in exchange for joining their beta-test program. Oddly, for such a huge service, I am surprised I only just learned about it from them.

I’ve been a big fan of GOG’s DRM-free approach. I know Steam is now available for GNU/Linux, but I haven’t found myself too compelled to run it regularly. Most of the games I have purchased online came from the Humble Bundle or GOG, partly because they are DRM-free offerings I can play on my preferred system.

I know people like the convenience of Steam, but the concept of DRM, the idea that what I can do with the games I purchased is restricted in arbitrary ways, still bothers me. Single player games which require you to be online to play, or games that complain that I’ve installed them one too many times or on too many of my own systems? No thanks.

I’m interested in what GOG is offering, if only because it is optional and still allows me to play my games no matter what. I just wish that Alien vs Predator was available for GNU/Linux. As it is, I apparently signed up for the beta-test of the Windows version.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical General Politics/Government

Why Does Your Game App Need My Browser History and Photos?

Years ago, I started paying attention to the usage of so-called digital rights management (DRM) in games and made my purchasing decisions accordingly. I might have missed out on some major cultural impacts, but I wasn’t going to passively accept what I thought was a draconian form of copy protection. A form of protection that, by the way, doesn’t even work most of the time, so only legitimate customers get punished.

In practice, it meant not buying many major games. Spore is one very famous example, and I wrote a bit about it in this post about it’s reception in the market. Reading it today, I can see I was a bit angry about the DRM:

Do I like the game? I haven’t played it. Apparently Spore has some crappy so-called DRM solution attached to it, and it’s definitely not available for Gnu/Linux, so my choice is to boot up Windows AND suffer this DRM crap, or play a different game on my preferred system. It’s too bad. If things were different, I’m sure I would have liked Spore, too, but I refuse to pay for a steak dinner delivered on a garbage can lid.

Ooh, burn!

It was my attitude, and it still is today, partly because DRM is fundamentally flawed and partly because it’s a system that makes it easier to be a criminal.

But this post isn’t really supposed to be about DRM. Today, I find myself concerned about downloading free-to-play games on my smartphone that require bizarre permissions.

Recently, I was looking for a good strategy or simulation game to play on my Android smartphone. I found some that seemed promising and popular, and I found myself stopped when I clicked the install button because the requested permissions were ridiculous.

Why does this game need access to my browser bookmarks and history? Or why does that game need access to my photos?

Actually, it seems that Google’s API just doesn’t allow very fine-grained control of what is and isn’t allowed to be accessed by an app. According to this What’s on Dave’s Droid? post, if an app needs access to the state of the phone to know when to minimize if a call is coming in, it has to get that information from the same permission that gives it access to the identity of who is calling.

And this isn’t a new story. I’ve just only become aware of the problem myself.

I get that the permissions section can’t be too complex for the user experience. People don’t read EULAs as it is, and I’m sure many apps are perfectly safe, but is it weird that we’re being so trusting of apps by hoping that they don’t cross a line we’ve given them permission to cross? Especially in a world where we know we’re being spied on?

For now, I feel that I need to treat some apps just as I treated games packaged with so-called DRM. I’ll ignore the ones that ask too much or that are made by someone I have no reason to trust. Maybe I miss out on a gem, but I’ve survived without Sony’s rootkits and the pain of not being able to install a game I’ve legally purchased in the past. I think I’ll survive not playing a game that may or may not be compiling a list of my contacts and recording my location.

Categories
Game Development Politics/Government

Public Domain Jam Next Weekend #PDJam

Copyright law is kind of messed up. Actual copyright law is actually a combination of codified law and legal rulings to clarify or provide exceptions for such laws. For a primer on copyright law for indie game developers, see What an Indie Needs to Know About Copyright.

The Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution states that Congress is empowered “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

That is, copyright is a tool to promote science and art, and it does so by providing a temporary monopoly for creators.

It is NOT meant to provide monopolies for creators as an end in itself. It’s just the means to an end.

Once the temporary monopoly’s time period expires, the work in question enters the public domain.

The public domain is the set of all creative works that are available to the public. There are no licenses required, no fees to pay, and no patents to worry about. That is, someone was able to benefit immediately from creating it, and in exchange, for the rest of posterity, everyone can benefit from it and build upon it. That’s the way it should be.

The nature of creation isn’t completely independent invention. Instead, a new creation tends to rely on existing creations. For example, the invention of the electric motor relied upon the knowledge produced earlier on the nature of electric currents and their interactions with magnets. Another example is the popular BBC television series “Sherlock” which is based upon writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from the late 1800s.

Unfortunately, copyright law keeps extended the “temporary” monopoly indefinitely and there doesn’t seem to be an indication that it will stop, which means the public domain has been frozen in place for decades. So while, for example, Disney was able to build an empire off of freely available public domain works, such as the story of Snow White and the seven dwarves, no one has been allowed to build off of Disney’s works in turn. Basically, some people got some advantages from free culture and aren’t returning the favor, and what’s more, they are actively lobbying to ensure they won’t have to.

Lawrence Lessig is the author of Free Culture, which explains more about how copyright law used to work and how it no longer does. I highly recommend reading that book if you want to understand the vital importance of a healthy and constantly replenished public domain.

But what are we doing today? The public domain that exists, as stuck as it is, still has plenty of great works to build upon. And yet, when it comes to games, are we seeing a lot of unique work?

We have the ubiquitous space marines (including Relic’s Space Marine), zombies, and military shooters. We have the Tolkien-esque fantasy games, the interstellar wars with hostile aliens, and the dudebro hero’s journey.

And yet, there is so much more out there to build games upon.

Enter The Public Domain Jam.

Gritfish explains:

I announced the Public Domain Jam a month ago as a reaction to the over-use of some themes in the indie game scene, but since then, I’ve been flooded with nothing but enthusiasm from people over their love of works in the public domain.

The tagline for the jam is “Because there’s more out there than zombies.”

To encourage the publication of games that immediately contribute to free culture, “Nothing to Hide” creator Nicky Hide has donated a $1,000 prize to be awarded the top rated game published under a Creative Commons Zero license.

There are a number of other incentives, including free art and sound assets, free licenses for cross-platform game engines, and more.

I think it sounds like a fantastic idea. The only concern goes back to my assertion at the top of this post: copyright law is messed up.

Years ago, I wrote about Zorro, the public domain, and derivative works. The Curse of Capistrano is the first story to feature Zorro, and it is in the public domain. The Mark of Zorro was the 1920 film about the story. It’s also in the public domain.

Except, copyright law is different from one country to another, which means that while you can make your game based on this story in the United States, you might not be able to distribute your game in some countries where the story is not yet in the public domain.

Moreover, even though the copyright for some stories about Zorro are in the public domain, the trademarks for Zorro do not expire.

Which is why Zorro Productions is able to exist. If you want to make a Zorro-based film, TV show, comic, game, or book, you probably want to license the rights from them to avoid legal trouble. The claim is that the original story does not describe Zorro the way people expect to see him today. Characters such as his horse Tornado are introduced later in works not in the public domain.

There have been a number of lawsuits, including one last year involving a musical based on the public domain works that Zorro Productions claims is a violation of their trademarks and copyrights. The creator of the musical sued them, and it will be interesting to see if this case plays out in its entirety instead of being settled out of court like they usually do.

So, again, the Public Domain Jam sounds great, but copyright law is complex, and everyone should be careful because otherwise public domain works might have certain organizations asserting they own some piece of it. And in the case of international distribution, they might be right in some cases depending on the laws of certain countries.

But remember, the entire point of the Public Domain Jam is to get us away from building “Yet Another Game About XYZ”. The rich variety of source material available in the public domain should provide plenty of innovation and without as much legal risk.

Categories
Politics/Government

Vote to Ensure You Get Political Mailings Next Time

US Election Day is tomorrow. It’s supposedly a tight race, and a lot of us will be glad when it is over if only so we can stop hearing about how close it is.

Of course, every election cycle, there are those who don’t vote. They don’t vote because of a number of reasons, some silly, and some well-reasoned.

But Seth Godin insists that by not voting, you lose any say at all about what you want to see more or less of. In Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy, he argues that by opting out of the process, no one has an incentive to make their approaches more pleasing to you.

The goal of political marketers isn’t to get you to vote. Their goal is to get more votes than the other guy. So they obsess about pleasing those that vote. Everyone else is invisible.

Steakhouses do nothing to please vegetarians who don’t visit them, and politicians and their handlers don’t care at all about non-voters.

In 2004, there was a lot of talk about “values-based” voting. Suddenly everyone was bending over backwards to let you know that they were all about values.

In 2008, it was change and hope. Suddenly, every candidate was trying to insist that they were the real “change” candidate.

Today, we have a President who insists on moving “forward”, no matter how slow the pace seems to be, versus a candidate who hasn’t explained how his so-called plan is any more than a list of goals (“A goal without an action plan is a daydream” –Nathaniel Branden). They both insist that they are there for the middle class. And they’ve both been courting voters hard.

If you didn’t vote in previous elections because you don’t find the options appealing, is it any wonder that today’s candidates aren’t appealing to your interests? And why don’t politicians ever express concern for the lower classes? Probably because they are less likely to vote.

A friend has a quote from Plato as a signature in his email:

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

I consider myself to be a smart person, and I’m voting tomorrow, if only to help tip the numbers back. B-)

Categories
Politics/Government

Why I Am Against SOPA/PIPA

I’ve been meaning to write about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, and even though they have been put on hold thanks to widespread Internet activism, they’re not dead yet, and laws like them are sure to follow.

I am a game developer and a writer. And I do not support SOPA or PIPA.

Why?

Because I rely on the Internet and copyright, and these laws would undermine both the Internet’s functionality and the perception of copyright by the public in ways that would negatively impact me.

Some Copyright History

Copyright is complicated. There isn’t one law you can look at that incorporates the entirety of it. I wrote an article long ago as a what an indie game developer needs to know about copyright, but a lot of copyright law is related to court case rulings, so to really understand copyright, you probably need an expensive lawyer.

And that’s a mere symptom of the issues I have with SOPA and related laws.

The U.S. Constitution has what is known as the Copyright Clause: Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution specifically says that Congress shall have the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, and it specifies how Congress shall do so: “by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Some people have this backwards and they think that the purpose is to protect creators, but copyright is supposed to be a means to encourage the creation of useful things.

Copyright used to last 14 years, with the right to renew for another 14 years. New laws changed the length over the last couple of centuries, and today we have copyright lasting for 70 years plus the life of the author, or in the case of a corporation, 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

Stacking the Deck

Effectively, copyright is no longer limited. Whereas creators from 50 years ago were able to depend on a rich replenishment of the public domain in their lifetimes (Disney was able to leverage the public domain to build up a very successful company), creators today see that the public domain hasn’t changed since that time. The constant change in copyright law and copyright length benefits those creators and businesses who have the resources and existing copyrights while making it more difficult for new creators and businesses.

Recently, the Supreme Court said that the public domain isn’t permanent, and while the case was about granting copyright to foreign works that were supposed to have copyright in the first place, the idea that the public domain can be made even smaller by an action of Congress stinks for new creators.

But even if you forget about the benefits of a healthy and rich public domain, copyright laws have become more and more biased towards large, existing companies and organizations.

Abuse of Copyright

Remember the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)? It was signed into law in 1998, and among its provisions, it made it a felony to merely own the means of circumventing copy protection mechanisms, even if you didn’t use the means. Even if you did circumvent the protection and weren’t committing infringement as a result.

The DMCA was supposedly necessary to protect jobs and copyright owners, yet it was horribly abused, even by those who weren’t trying to protect their copyright at all. Google found that out of all of the takedown notices it has received, more than half involved a business issuing a takedown against a competitor, and over a third were for invalid copyright claims.

For one example, under the DMCA, Viacom issued thousands of takedown notices to YouTube, and some of the content taken down wasn’t Viacom’s copyrighted works. In another example, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and a number of other retail stores issued a takedown notice to FatWallet.com to force them to remove user-posted sales prices for their Black Friday sales, even though price lists don’t fall under copyright.

In both cases, large companies with lawyers on staff were able to leverage the law against someone else’s legitimate postings. If you are targeted wrongly by a company using the DMCA, your recourse is expensive and slow.

You can read more about other DMCA abuses at the EFF’s Ten Years of Unintended Consequences page, but these abuses are getting to the crux of the matter.

The DMCA wasn’t about protecting copyright. It was about control.

Respect for Copyright Eroded

In the past, most people didn’t create copyrighted works. It was expensive to create and distribute books, movies, TV shows, and other content. There were gatekeepers and high barriers to entry. You needed a lot of capital to start a business that relied on copyrighted content.

Today, 48 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every day, and most of it is not produced by the MPAA. Today, print-on-demand and ebook publishing means there are more self-published books than traditionally published books. Today, many long-standing newspapers have found it difficult to compete in a world of citizen publishing. Today, the Internet and social media has created plenty of successful new business models.

And yet we keep hearing about how the major media companies are threatened by all of this individual expression and creation, as if a few companies are supposed to be the sole producers of culture and content.

The problem is, a lot of people act as if the media companies are right!

Most people don’t have much education about copyright law. Again, part of this is because of how complicated the law is, and partly because historically most people didn’t create copyrighted works. But part of it is because the major media companies have done such a good job of telling this story. Politicians are heard parroting absurd numbers provided by the MPAA and RIAA, and any media coverage is entertainment anyway so forget about getting the facts there.

So even though copyright is a tool for all creators, what happened is that the general public views copyright as a tool of the major media companies to abuse customers and make more money. And when laws like the DMCA and SOPA are supported by politicians who clearly have no idea what impact the laws would have on new businesses and new creators, it furthers this perception of copyright as a tool of companies who can afford to buy it.

SOPA and PIPA

If you still don’t know much about SOPA or PIPA, they are twin pieces of legislation that are supposedly about protecting U.S. copyright owners against offshore rogue websites dedicated to piracy. In reality, they would do nothing to prevent actual piracy while giving major media companies more tools to (ab)use the public with. Here’s a very informative video explaining the problems with how these laws would “work”:

Now, there’s a lot of problems that people have identified. Some of it sounds overly sensationalized, yet information security experts, free speech experts, computing experts, and business experts have all agreed that the problems are real. But I’ll leave it to them to talk about the technical, financial, and social problems with the proposed laws.

SOPA supporters say that the people who are opposing it are bringing up worst-case scenarios and that the imagined abuses wouldn’t happen in real life. Well, companies such as Viacom have shown that abuse will happen, and likely sooner than later.

The infamous comparison by the MPAA that the VCR is like the “Boston Strangler” and the broadcast flag regulations are attempts to control when and how people watch movies and TV. SecuROM are attempts to prevent copying that sometimes worked so well that legally purchased games wouldn’t run on some computers. Sony BMG’s rootkit made many legitimate music CD customers unhappy when their computers were compromised, especially as the company’s President seemed to shrug about the issue. And so on and so on.

Why I Care about Copyright Law

The failure rate of entrepreneurship is high, and I have enough trouble bumbling through learning how to run my own business. This crony capitalism makes it harder for me as an independent game developer.

There are new businesses taking advantage of the reality of the Internet. We like being able to take advantage of the ease of creation and distribution. Why do we have to worry about old businesses changing the laws in order to break what new technology allows so that they can continue their old scarcity-based business models? Why are they more important than the people starting new businesses and creating new jobs, especially in this economy?

When they cry that they are having existential dangers that need to be stopped while simultaneously reporting record profits year after year, why is the U.S. government saying that “online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs”? Who told them that? Where is the actual evidence? The Cato Institute analyzed the numbers presented by the MPAA, and it seems we have been conned.

And after all of the duplicitous, all of the lobbyist money buying regulations, laws and policies, and all of the chafing, I am supposed to expect that my potential customers will respect copyright law, no matter how absurd and one-sided it gets? I can’t make a living in a world where the major media companies get their way.

And they’re fine with that. Less competition for them.

And if the above didn’t convince you of the problems we’ll be facing in the coming years from the established media companies, this TED talk by Clay Shirky is a quick summary of the problems laws like the DMCA and SOPA/PIPA pose to small businesses and individual creators: