Probably, but I think that every month that CDL went unchallenged was slowly building a precedent. I wonder if they had stuck to CDL if we’d still be waiting for the publishers to blink.

During the pandemic, Internet Archive very publicly announced they were relaxing their one physical copy per digitally loaned copy.

I think of they had maintained their 1:1 CDL method, the publishers would still be uncomfortable to be the one to sue first, especially since there was a decent argument and IA would have been pretty sympathetic.

Their pandemic policy was effectively not substantially different from a shadow library., and just set up a slam dunk case for the publishers.

I think if they hadn’t abandoned the CDL modern during the pandemic, they could have kept it going indefinitely. Even if it wasn’t likely fair use, it might have been. More than that, it would have been bad press for the publisher to make the first move.

Abandoning CDL during the pandemic was just waving a red flag and giving the publishers a slam dunk case.

I think if IA had just held the line with CDL, they could have over time just effectively established a precedent. Lost opportunity.

The developer of another game distributed by WB, Fist Puncher, commented on the Ars Technica story about this.

Found it, it’s the “Promoted Comment” now.

therealmattkain I’m one of the creators and developers of Fist Puncher which was also published by Adult Swim on Steam. We received the same notice from Warner Bros. that Fist Puncher would be retired. When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators.

This is incredibly disappointing. It makes me sad to think that purchased games will presumably be removed from users’ libraries. Our community and our players have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped fund Fist Puncher (even some who have cameo appearances in the game) who will eventually no longer be able to play it. We could just rerelease Fist Puncher from our account, but we would likely receive significant backlash for relaunching a game and forcing users to “double dip” and purchase the game again (unless we just made it free).

Again, this is really just disappointing. It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form. March 7, 2024 at 12:51 am

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/its-kind-of-depressing-wb-discovery-pulls-indie-game-for-business-changes/

It’s been years since I used a private tracker (pre-Netflix), but your experience seems to mirror mine.

I’ll expand on the quality angle for video, I’m going to be watching on my tablet, anything beyond 720p is going to be marginal at best. I also wear glasses, so reality rarely reaches 4K. For music I appreciate FLACC, but I’ll be hard pressed to notice the difference between that and a 128kbps MP3 I encoded 25 years ago most of the time.

Still, a well seeded deep collection is something I miss. Public trackers are fine for popular stuff, but trying to load my wife’s MP3 player with musicals is proving the limits of public trackers.

On the other hand, running a seedbox is a bit more involved than a VPN. In order to maintain ratios, keeping a seedbox is highly recommended from what I recall.

I think Samsung subs in their own “Gallery” software on their phones. Other manufacturers may as well.

That is exactly the XKCD I pictured.

It’s the exclusive deals that fuel the fragmentation. If you could watch the same content on any streaming service, you wouldn’t need to subscribe to a half dozen (or turn to piracy).

Of course that’s exactly why Netflix, Prime, Apple, et al started making their own exclusive content that they totally control.

Just finished the James Burke “Connections” reboot on Curiousity. It will probably be the last thing I watch as a subscriber.

The last few years have been nothing but price hikes, fragmentation, and reduced offerings among the streaming services.

I’ll pay for a seedbox again before I pay for another streaming service.

Exactly right! Maybe the EU will save us all. It seems somehow monopolistic that Disney+ is the exclusive official streaming service for so much. I guess this is why Netflix put so much into Netflix originals.

I’d like to at least see some requirements for open licensing of shows, such as maybe a sunset period or something.

Good to know. I was joking since they sponsor so many YouTubers.

I usually recommend looking at TorrentFreak’s VPN reviews.

https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/

Seed box or VPN should be options.

This comment sponsored by NordVPN :)

AI has been the name for the field since the Dartmouth Workshop in 1956. Early heuristic game AI was AI. Just because something is AI doesn’t mean it is necessarily very “smart”. That’s why it’s commonly been called AI, since before Deep Blue beat Kasparov.

If you want to get technical, you could differentiate between Artificial Narrow Intelligence, AI designed to solve a narrow problem (play checkers, chess, etc.) vs. Artificial General Intelligence, AI designed for “general purpose” problem solving. We can’t build an AGI yet, even a dumb one. There is also the concept of Weak AI or Strong AI.

You are correct though, ChatGPT, Dall-E, etc. are not AGI’s, they aren’t capable of general problem solving. They are much more capable than previous AI technologies, but it’s not SkyNet (yet).

Virtualization is the key. Multiple VMs, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling.

I’d agree. In theory, there are many legitimate reasons to “sell” FOSS software. If I was putting it on a DVD, labelling, and mailing FOSS software my time and materials certainly deserve to be rewarded. Likewise, listing it on closed store like the MS store but keeping it updated from sources might make it easier for people embedded in the MS ecosystem to keep up to date.

I would expect legitimate repackagers/redistributors to be open that the software itself is freely available though. Besides I fear the well is poisoned by hustlers trying to sell something free for cheap to make a quick buck.

Or a renewal step. If it’s not worth renewing, let it into the public domain.

This is why It’s A Wonderful Life became a Christmas classic. Because it was in the pubic domain, it was used as late night filler.

The MPAA and RIAA miss the point. If It’s A Wonderful Life was still copyrighted, it wouldn’t have become a classic.

It’s like the concept of Abandonware. If video games had a large copyright clearing house like the MPAA or RIAA, Abandonware wouldn’t work, but abandoned media will disappear. Heck, non-abandoned media also disappears because profits don’t reward preservation.

No captcha’s for any of my banking services. I don’t know how effective captcha’s are anyways. I suspect slow cooldowns are probably more secure.

Cool to learn a bit how Lemmy via Mastodon behaves. I accidentally subscribed to a Lemmy community via my Mastodon account, but I just ended up unsubscribing and resubscribing via my Lemmy account.

I think video games were mentioned as well, not as in they were causing the riots, rather that young rioters were behaving like they were in a violent game. So the criticism might be kind of valid? I don’t know if the translation stripped the quote of some subtext, but video games are mainstream enough that I would generally expect most Gen-X and younger to understand me if I said that crossing a street under construction was “like playing Super Mario” that maybe I had to hop across something. If I said something was like CoD, I expect many people to get that as well (of a certain age). The quote I saw was like that, but if the person didn’t know games. So, a little awkward. The rioters were treating it like it was one of their video games. This has a “Hello fellow teenagers” vibe. Do you mean they are out there like it’s Stardew Valley, and it’s the last day of the month and you want to get your crop in? Or do they mean they are out there like it’s Grand Theft Auto, and they can wreak havoc and then just let their heat score drop?

That’s exactly how Office365/Microsoft365 got it’s start. Now, instead of buying a copy of Office, you subscribe to Microsoft365.

I’m assuming that the path from cloud as an option to subscription based OS will be a little faster. To be fair, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stripped down locally installed version is offered as a Freemium option. Air-gapped and non-online computers usually just do one thing anyways. Most aren’t being used to watch movies, buy stuff, etc.

My prediction would be that within 5 years, probably sooner, if you don’t subscribe to your cloud-based Microsoft Windows OS, you’ll have a bare-bones experience. Good enough for kiosks and such.

Granted, you are correct, the article passed around only talks about how it’s an option right now, with some benefits… but we’ve all seen Microsoft do this exact same play before.