Excrubulent

@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microchips⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Idk who downvoted you, I guess people who think the problem with Musk is that he’s cringy or like a cartoon supervillain. No, all billionaires are evil. If you think Gates is a good guy that’s because you don’t understand what it takes to be a billionaire, what he does with his “charity”, or the history of how he’s run his business or destroyed antitrust purely because he was embarrassed at how bad he looked under cross examination. He has the charity specifically to launder his image, and as a result he’s found ways to be evil using it as cover that he wouldn’t have found back in his embrace, extend and extinguish days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I had to try it to believe it⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Didn’t work, I am G̶̘͌̂l̷̤̺͠r̷͕̱̭͘r̴̻͛b̶̯͌ļ̷̜̈́͘ẙ̴̗̲̤ṯ̷̙͂̇h̸͎̿͒ the ageless and I exist outside of time.

  For your punishment I will neglect your world for another 10,000 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Wants Game Pass On PlayStation, Nintendo, And "Every Screen" Possible⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Piracy is important to protect the legacies of material for exactly this reason. It used to be just that items physically degraded, now they’re being deliberately removed.

  Since I’ve started routinely pirating shows I no longer have to ask the question, “is this show available?” Because if I’ve heard of it then someone has uploaded it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, that’s some good research! I’ll edit my comment about this, I don’t think my glowing description of their policy should stand without this info.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Copyright is a tool that gives creators the ability to commercialize their work. That its spirit, nothing more.

  That’s what we are told is the purpose because otherwise we wouldn’t accept its existence. In practice it doesn’t work that way. The persistent story is that artists get very little compensation whilst whichever large entity is acting as the middleman for their copyright - often owning it outright despite doing nothing to make it - takes the vast majority of the profit.

  It is a tool of corporate control, nothing more. Without copyright there would be no way a middleman could insert themselves and ripoff artists, take their money, and compromise their work with financially-driven studio meddling.

  And the idea that the “spirit” of copyright is for artists, that completely falls apart when you understand that modern copyright terms exist almost entirely to profit one company’s IP - Disney is just delaying the transfer of Mickey Mouse into the public domain. That’s why copyright is now lifetime +75 years, or something ridiculous like that. That is not for artists to be compensated. Mickey Mouse isn’t going to be unmade when that happens. If Disney can’t operate as a business with all the time and market share they’ve built then they should just go under. There’s no justification for it beyond corporate greed.

  Also without copyright there couldn’t be monopolies like Disney buying Fox, Marvel and Star Wars. That is an absurd situation and should be an indication that antitrust is effectively gone.

  And as for artists getting paid, we’re transitioning more and more to a patron model, where people are paid just to create, and release most of their work for free with some token level of patron interaction. You don’t need copyright for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d be interested to see what Wolfire’s case is, if there’s more to it that I don’t know about I’d love to understand, but if the article is characterising their case accurately…

  claiming that Valve suppresses competition in the PC gaming market through the dominance of Steam, while using it to extract “an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store.”

  …then I don’t think this will work out because Valve hasn’t engaged in monopolistic behaviour.

  This is mainly because of their extremely permissive approach to game keys. The way it works is, a developer can generate as many keys as they want, give them out for free, sell them on other stores or their own site, for any discount, whatever, and Steam will honour those keys and serve up the data to all customers no questions asked. The only real stipulation for all of this is that the game must also be available for sale on the Steam storefront where a 30% cut is taken for any sale. That’s it.

  Whilst they might theoretically have a monopoly based on market share, as long as they continue to allow other parties to trade in their keys, they aren’t suppressing competition. I think this policy is largely responsible for the existence of storefronts like Humble, Fanatical, Green Man Gaming and quite a number of others. If they changed this policy or started to enshittify things, the game distribution landscape would change overnight. The reason they haven’t enshittified for so long is probably because they don’t have public shareholders.

  To be clear I’m against capitalism and capitalists, even the non-publicly-traded non-corporate type like Valve. I am in fact a bit embarrassed of my take on reddit about 7 or 8 years ago that they were special because they were “private and not public”. Ew, I mean even if Gabe is some special perfect unicorn billionaire that would never do any wrong, when he’s gone Valve will go to someone who might cave to the temptation to go public. I honestly think copyright in general should be abolished. As long as copyright exists I’d love to see better laws around digital copies that allow people to truly own and trade their copies for instance, and not just perpetually rent them. I just don’t see this case achieving much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, I understand now. [MODIFYING JOKE MATRIX TO ACCOMMODATE NEW INFORMATION]

  “Your honor, I need to fire my lawyer.”

  “Mr Newell, no competent lawyer in this country would defend you on this point. If you do not answer the question I will hold you in contempt.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean the simple response from the lawyer is, “Objection, relevance,” and the question gets tossed out.

  I demand accuracy in my jokes, even if it kills them.