neatchee

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  • neatchee , (edited )

    Oh boy, let's take this piece by piece...

    DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

    First: let's talk about the difference between copyright, patents, and trademark

    A patent protects a method of doing something - like a novel piece of code, or a newly invented drug formula - from being duplicated and used or sold without your consent.

    Copyright protects creative works - like art, books, and computer software - from being mimiced. It literally deals with the rights to copy something

    Trademark protects brands - like a logo or company name - from being used by other people for profit. It usually deals with marketplace confusion, as when someone creates a competing product with a similar logo to try to benefit from the logo's recognition and popularity.

    So, with that said, what are YOU dealing with?

    Well, since you're not selling software or utilizing anything from the WatchDogs game universe, you're pretty much free and clear on both patent and copyright.

    What about trademark?

    Well, on the one hand, you are not competing with Ubisoft in any way, nor are you attempting to represent yourself as related to WatchDogs. So, by the letter of the law (in the US), they don't have a valid complaint.

    However, trademark under US law has this funny feature where an entity that holds a trademark is required to vigorously defend it when they become aware of potential infringement. This is to prevent the selective application of trademark. That is, if I know John is using my trademark and I don't go after him, then Steve uses my trademark too, I can't suddenly claim to have an interest in defending it when I didn't care before. Steve can point at the fact that I didn't go after John and say "you already gave up your trademark by failing to enforce it".

    So how does this impact you? Well, unfortunately, even if you are technically allowed to use "dedsec" under US law, if Ubisoft has a trademark on the term "dedsec" specifically, AND if someone at Ubisoft became aware of your use of their trademark, they would likely come after you for trademark infringement just to cover their ass. You might even win in court, but it would cost a whole lot of money that you would likely never be able to recover.

    The good news is that the very first step in a trademark dispute is a cease and desist letter. They'll demand you stop using their trademark. At that point you can either comply, refuse, or offer to settle the matter by selling them the domain.

    What you do with this information is up to you.

    neatchee , (edited )

    Are you suggesting that the massacre itself wasn't a mistake?

    EDIT: To clarify, are you saying it wasn't an immoral choice? Or simply that it was intentional?

    neatchee ,

    Found the war criminal! 🙋

    Why are neurotypicals in charge of making up the social rules? They're not even very good at it.

    Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world....

    neatchee ,

    To expand on this, consider that others cannot know what you're thinking without you telling them.

    You might feel "I'm looking forward to that and I think we will have fun together."

    But if you don't tell someone that, they are left to guess for themselves. That uncertainty is very uncomfortable.

    Neurotypicals learned to give and use clues to help navigate life and determine if they need to change their actions. But it's a complicated balance. Most people don't like being told "I'm not interested in that." They'd rather hear "no thank you, maybe some other time." But they'd also much rather hear "that sounds like fun!" than hearing "yeah sure".

    It can be very difficult to imagine what it's like to have a different set of information than what you yourself know. Practice this skill! It will help you in lots of situations. Do your best to reduce uncertainty while considering how it might feel to hear the new information you're sharing for the first time.

    Good luck out there! <3

    neatchee ,

    Anyone else immediately go check if it was daylight savings tonight?

    neatchee ,

    Troll mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Rick Astley

    Troll activist mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion live reading

    Troll comedian mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Monty Python's The Life of Brian

    Activist mode: Find a set of movies to rename that teach about the harm religion has caused

    Ethical absolutist mode: Refuse to host them, and explain why

    Non-confrontational familial support mode: Give Mom a unique user and make the god movies only accessible to that user

    In all seriousness it depends on what your priorities are. Is it more important to you to provide judgement-free support to your mom so she knows she can rely on you, or is it more important to try to reduce harm in the world by deplatforming harmful media? Or maybe it's more important to try to teach your mom what's wrong with those movies and you can come to an arrangement where she can watch those movies only if she agrees to watch movies you choose in equal amounts (since you can track it) to counteract the propaganda?

    What is most important to you?

    neatchee ,

    Yeah, so, Google already has this data about you. What they're doing here is trying to reduce the specificity of information given to advertisers about your behaviors, and simultaneously give you the ability to never inform specific third parties about your interest in the specific topics you choose

    I see this as a good thing. They were literally already getting and using all of this data. In that case I'd much rather have some control over who knows which things about me, rather than leaving it entirely up to Google

    neatchee ,

    The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

    A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

    neatchee ,

    There are lots of reasons to pirate stuff, but this argument in particular boils down to "We should steal stuff now because maybe some day in the future I won't be able to use the paid version after they go out of business." And that is shitty.

    You bought it, so go crack it now that the license check is broken and nobody will care. That's GOOD piracy. Support the creators, pirate when you can't or it's unreasonable to pay (more).

    Don't just pirate to mitigate theoretical future inconvenience. Do it to circumvent actual inconvenience, or to get things you couldn't otherwise afford, or to say "fuck you" to big, shitty companies.

    But pirating from a small-time dev just in case there are maybe license problems far in the future is not The Way

    neatchee ,

    Absolutely. I do that regularly. Purchase to support the creators, pirate to meet some specific use case.

    neatchee ,

    Totally. Though, that case can be a tiny bit tricky. Like, people should be allowed to remove stuff from the Internet that they've created if they want, but it should also be okay to archive content that may be abandoned or lost. Hard to create rules that differentiate the two effectively for enforcement

    neatchee ,

    Sure I'm just thinking about how you'd write a law or policy that accommodated both reasonable scenarios

    neatchee ,

    What's interesting with the comparison to books is that you can stop it from being published. You can't force people to give up the copy they already bought, but they can't make more copies and distribute it.

    Hard to draw that distinction in the digital world

    And if you want a better comparison, though of YouTube like a drive-in theater. You're not allowed to make a copy of the film with your camcorder and go distribute it.

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