UFC COO Publicly Pushing 'Notice And Stay Down' Reforms To DMCA, Despite That Being Horrible For Almost Everyone
from the fight! dept
In the United States, the DMCA has a "notice and takedown" process. Section 512(c) outlines all of this and provides details on what obligations service providers, such as websites and social media platforms, must meet in order to retain their safe harbor provisions. This summary from Wikipedia is a good primer:
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, passed into law in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides safe harbour protection to "online service providers" for "online storage" in section 512(c). Section 512(c) applies to online service providers that store copyright infringing material. In addition to the two general requirements that online service providers comply with standard technical measures and remove repeat infringers, section 512(c) also requires that the online service providers: 1) do not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, 2) are not aware of the presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent, and 3) upon receiving notice from copyright owners or their agents, act expeditiously to remove the allegedly copyright infringing material.
I added the bolded section for emphasis. Why? Well, many in the copyright industries hate the notice and takedown system because it requires them to notify service providers of individual cases for infringement. That requires work, of course. Work that these service providers very much do not want to do. Instead, many propose a notice and stay down system. What that would do would be to allow the copyright holder to essentially notify a service provider of infringing material once, after which it would be up to the service provider to do the policing of that content on their own sites. This was recently exemplified by the UFC's COO, Lawrence Epstein.
The DMCA is a “very reactive type of protocol,” Epstein notes, since the law places the onus on the copyright holder to act. This presents a timing problem for a live sports broadcast. The highest value for that broadcast—especially one distributed through a PPV arrangement—is when the event happens. A notice and takedown can take several minutes, even a half hour. By the time an illegal stream is removed, it could be too late. The Poirier-McGregor match lasted only about five minutes before McGregor suffered a leg injury and Poirier was credited with a TKO victory.
“It’s not an appropriate remedy,” Epstein charges, adding that the “vast majority” of the piracy is taking place on “big platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” Epstein also stresses that “we see the same people doing it. There are repeat offenders who aren’t deterred by the process.”
The UFC would like to see the DMCA amended to include a “stay down system” whereby the copyright holder need only notify the service provider of infringing material. It would then become the obligation of the provider to monitor repeat infringers and prevent them from engaging in illegal streaming and other piracy on the provider’s platform. “These big platforms have to take responsibility for what happens on their platforms,” Epstein asserts. “It can’t be reactive.”
For context only, the latest UFC PPV event raked in $125 million. And, to be clear, I can sympathize with Epstein on the concept of how this all works for live-streamed, pay-per-view broadcasts. It's not the same policing a movie on the internet as it is policing infringing live-streams.
But, and this is the key part, that is a business model issue, not an issue requiring the wholesale retrofit of the DMCA. Put another way, if the notice and takedown system is overall beneficial for most of the public interest, altering it is not an appropriate remedy simply because it isn't working for the UFC.
And there are very good reasons why a notice and takedown system is better for nearly everyone than a notice and stay down system. For starters, while Epstein invokes the "big players" like Facebook and the like, those big entities are the ones that at least would stand a chance of operating in a notice and stay down system. They have the money, tools, and people to throw at the problems such a system would create. But what about smaller companies and sites? Startups? How in the world are they going to police other people's content for them? They won't and the liability such a system would create will keep startups from every... you know... starting up.
Beyond that, it's not like the "stay down" part works well in practice even when tried. The uploading of content by one person that is infringing does not make the uploading of it by another infringing. Viacom found that out directly by suing Google over a bunch of YouTube videos... that Viacom staff uploaded on purpose. In an effort to stop piracy, Viacom attempted to stop promotion of its own material by its own staff. If the companies responsible for content can't properly police copyright infringement of that content, what hope do service providers have?
And, as one professor explains to Yahoo! Sports, there is all of that plus issues of fraud and censorship that suddenly are opened up by a stay down system.
Ryan Vacca, a copyright law professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law who has represented clients in the sports and entertainment law industries, agrees that placing the burden on copyright owners to police copyrights creates persistent challenges for owners in a world where streaming has become so omnipresent. “Given the enormous amount of copying and performing that occurs online,” Vacca explains, “it’s understandable that content owners want to shift that burden to other actors in the online ecosystem.”
Yet Vacca also sees “countervailing concerns” that could arise ”if the law is changed to make it too easy to have materials taken down.” He cautions that some copyright owners make infringement claims “not to protect their copyright, but to censor legitimate uses of copyrighted materials, such as critical commentary or parody.” Vacca adds that placing the burden on platforms “has the potential to disadvantage startup competitors by imposing additional costs on them that are more difficult to absorb than for established companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube . . . This could have a negative effect on innovation for online platforms.”
So, the open question in summary is: should we really be altering the DMCA that has allowed for so much innovation and flourishing within the online ecosystem just so the UFC can possibly make even more than the $125 million per event it's making now? That feels like a question with an obvious answer.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca 512, lawrence epstein, notice and staydown, notice and takedown
Companies: ufc
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ala "Minority Report"
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I wonder how fast the content industry would change their position if ISPs were to interpret "notice and stay down" as including all copies of the content, including legitimate copies from the content provider's website.
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Still?
Are we still having this DMCA argument about piracy and the lack of business models? I thought that was a resolved issue thanks to streaming. If the UFC hasn't jumped on the internet bandwagon along with the rest of the sports leagues they have nobody to blame but themselves for their inability to change with the times and offer their customers a convenient way to legally enjoy their product.
Though I seldom shop at Steam anymore (My priorities of buying games are 1. Switch 2T. GOG 2T. itch.io 4. Steam. That being said, I did preorder a Steam Deck), Valve's Gabe Newell hit the nail on the head when he said that Piracy wasn't a matter of prices but of service: people will give you many if you're served well. I mean, he's right; It worked for Disney out of all companies once they released Disney+ which was a bargain!
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Re: Still?
Derp, I just realized my typo. It should be "people will give you money if you're served well." My bad!
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I agree with him that it's problematic for PPV profits when a fight is done in under 5 minutes. Yet they keep trying to sell people terrible matchups and get mad when people don't want to pay for an overhyped main card that's done before the DMCAs hit.
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Re: Still?
I don't think that's the issue. The stream can be pirated by capturing and re-streaming it through an unauthorized feed.
I used to work for a web hosting company, and we would occasionally get a pre-emptive DMCA notice when some big PPV event was coming up. They knew it had no legal force, it was more like "hey, this is a heads-up, we know that people are going to pirate this, we want there to be a way for us to get prioritized response." That is a fair point, considering that my company only processed DMCA notices during certain hours. If UFC happened on Friday night at 10pm, there was nobody in the office to do anything about any pirate streams until the next morning, and by then it was too late.
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Re:
In that case, piracy seems more like a boogeyman than an actual problem. Notwithstanding any copyright policy argument, if people are generally no longer interested in the product/service/content you're providing, then the solution is to change it up and offer something your customers will like. That's Business 101. Competition is bound to be more successful if your product is inferior to what your competitors are offering. And piracy has always been about competition and not legality. Tougher anti-piracy measures and changing the law to better benefit your position are not just wrong, but they're also bound to still fail if people legitimately aren't interested in what you're offering them.
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'It's too hard to do the work myself' has never been an acceptable excuse to offload it on to someone else, if they don't like having to take down individual pieces of content then too bad, they don't get to demand that others do it for them.
As for the 'once infringing always infringing' idea that is notice and stay down I say apply it to them first and foremost, let them get a taste of what that would amount to in the form of blocking every piece of their content no matter who uploads it, including them, because after all it might be infringing. They want to push all the work on someone else and insist that context doesn't matter then great, they should have no problem having all of their stuff blocked as that's the easiest way for platforms to accomplish that goal.
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They should ask themselves...
“How do you make content stay down?”
“Will platforms REMEMBER the same content that got reposted elsewhere and to take those down as well?”
These copyright industry don't really understand and have not research actual information that “effectively” policing the internet is not possible. TheMysteriousMrEnter highlighted the impossibility of policing content at scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-dRZ4uB1Mo
-Human moderation: Too slow
-Automation (static algorithms): People can easily bypass/game the system and needs CONSTANT updates.
-Automation (learning algorithms): People can feed it with wrong information and cause it to not work in the intended way.
-Top-down moderation: People can just set up their own website, or migrate to another existing site that is not under the control of whoever is in charge.
-Laws: Have your stuff hosted where it is harder to enforce or isn't even banned at all.
It isn't just copyright law that is struggling to enforce, any law that pertains to the internet are on the same boat.
They're just trying to create a medicine that they didn't know doesn't cure the piracy problem, it is a medicine with nasty side effects, that a user uploaded something that was previously taken down, and the OSP may not know this have occurred (and bypasses any potential automated filtering system) , and the platform gets in trouble.
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Re:
I disagree: Prove real damages.
Not every fight (or total event) is done in under 5 minutes.
For an example stream taken down while in progress,
1) How many people watched the stream?
2) Once the stream was taken down, how many of those people then paid for the (remaining) PPV content?
From there, we can at least some data with which to extrapolate damages for streams that were not taken down while the event was in progress. Without that data, all you are claiming is "potential revenue losses", which is complete bullshit.
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Epstein also stresses that “we see the same people doing it. There are repeat offenders who aren’t deterred by the process.”
Well... if you identify the bulk of the issue as being caused by repeat offenders, then 1) they very well lose their accounts, your claims about deterrence notwithstanding, and 2) sue them you jackass.
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There will always be some people who pirate content, the solution is too offer good content at a fair price that's easy to use, learn from apple, it took Steve jobs to drag the music company's into a digital future, and also company's like Spotify who pioneered streaming music, learn from the best instead of trying to make dmca even worse for everyone
Try putting up public domain music on YouTube it, ll be dmca, by Sony or some other company who seem to think they own All classical music
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Re: Re:
That people are pirating indicates one of several things:
They don't think that the stream is worth the cost.
They can't afford the streaming service.
The stream is not available where they live.
The first group are unlikely to pay, as there is no guarantee that they will find a pirated stream. The other two groups can't pay.
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Re: Re: Still?
I don't think this pattern works properly. I only got $48 after doing 8 years of work.. Don't you think that the effort should be rewarded with something slightly larger sums of money? You can't buy a meal for one day with $48, much less 8 years.
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Re:
They probably wouldn't mind - they could flog DVDs for 100x the cost to produce again.
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If they want to modify the DMCA..
How about adding some real penalties to false notices? Screw up too often on invalid automated notices and lose your right to submit them perhaps.
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Oh, it works just great - if you have a product that people want.
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Re:
You mean once they get hit with one of their own DMCA false positives courtesy of an overeager bot?
They'll be screaming to the high skies, of course, and demand congress change the laws to favor them over all others even more.
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Re: Re: Re: Still?
"I only got $48 after doing 8 years of work."
Wasting 8 years of your life producing garbage the market doesn't want isn't a failure caused by piracy. It's a failure all your own, Mr. Meshpage.
It's a similar situation as that faced by artists. Many called, few chosen, and when you find out that you aren't going to be the next hit, retrain yourself into a business there's a demand for. Like everyone else, really.
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Re: Still?
"I thought that was a resolved issue thanks to streaming."
It was. And then, true to form, the unteachable fuckwits in media marketing started trying to build walled gardens again and turn streaming services into cable channels. With predictable results.
Because although people have proven willing to pay for content subscriptions, no one is willing to spend the effort subscribing to a dozen streaming services. They'll subscribe to the two services offering the most of what they want and hit up The Bay for the rest.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
Too bad you cannot say the product is garbage because you refused to try it. Unfounded claims and bashing of other people's work isn't going to work unless you actually spent the time to evaluate the product properly. Given that none of you could even get a cube to the screen with the technology, means that you haven't properly evaluated the technology. If you haven't explored the main feature of the technology, i.e. 3d graphics and web tecchnology -combination, then you cannot say anything meaningful about quality of the product. Declaring other people's work as garbage without any idea what the technology is actually doing is easy way to declare other people idiots, but it simply cannot say anything meaningful about the technology I have available.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
To make your own system work properly, you need to get the system to work "for all persons who spent the time to get a product to the market"... Not just those that created product that people want. This is why you fail, you divide people to worthless scums and awesome overperformers, but you fail to understand that both groups need money to purchase food during the time when they develop products for your use. Once the food runs out, there will be significant problems. I just got robbed by some scums like that when the system couldn't prevent them from turning to criminals. System is broken if it doesn't properly evaluate all the work that is being done in the system.
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Re: They should ask themselves...
technically, "notice and staydown" is easy to implement. You need to be able to detect when two copyrighted works are the same work, via comparision operations. This compare operation would be an equivalence class, where any work that looks similar to another work can be recognized. With the equivalence classes, the whole work can be reduced to a hash value, and large number of hash values can be used to reject new uploaded material. The quality of the equivalence class evaluation strategy is how different companies can compete in this market. Cost of the operations are linear to the work size for the hashing, and O(n*m) where n is number of existing works multiplied by the number of uploaded works for the actual staydown mechanism.
So any claims that the technology is impossible to implement properly is just bullshit. The plan above provides explicit means how the implementation might work. Other ways to do it are also possible. So this concludes our proof that "notice and staydown" strategy is technically possible and it's only laziness of the companies if they fail to implement it.
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Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
“technically, "notice and staydown" is easy to implement.”
Oh wait you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.
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Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
After the tech problems have been solved, it's just irrelevant policy decisions and bashing of the RIAA/MPAA which is left. That's the power of technology, it doesn't really take part in trolling and politics. It can only decide the question "is this technology possible with the available methods", and all the politics are not entering the picture at all.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
"Too bad you cannot say the product is garbage because you refused to try it."
I'm sure this has been explained to you before; Your failure to bring your product to market isn't anyone's responsibility but you. You are simply that failed artist who whines to the high skies that if only people had heard his music he'd be rich.
"Given that none of you could even get a cube to the screen with the technology, means that you haven't properly evaluated the technology."
Given that by your own admission no expert actually working with 3d graphics has been using your program we don't need to in order to make the assessment that your program has been deemed unnecessary and redundant by the extant body of experts.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
"After the tech problems have been solved..."
But they haven't, because in the end the only technical solution to people copying media is to pull the plug on the internet. After which the sneakernet will still be around.
By the time this paradigm shifts we will have had personal teleporters and FTL travel for a while.
"It can only decide the question "is this technology possible with the available methods", and all the politics are not entering the picture at all."
And will you look at that; 30 years of politics desperately throwing money at the tech sector to come up with even a hint of the required "solution" to piracy has kept coming up with "not possible. Ever".
Given your prior admission of just being around to troll, tp...just give it a rest. You aren't funny. Not any longer.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
The required cube is part of the beginner tutorial I have available in the faq. You don't need expert in 3d graphics to execute the steps needed. I didn't even require experts to look at it, since the application is meant to be used by small children. It's your own twisted rules you impose to yourself that you cannot properly evaluate the technology. Basically your skills are lacking and laziness wins the battle. You're a loser.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
This isn't true. Web browsers managed to implement downloading properly and their solution is still considered best in the tools that allow downloading. They simply don't allow users to spread the material further than their own computer. All the zip files containing copies of the web pages are simply not existing, and if some scraping tool allows that, it's at least not web browsers that did the problem.
But given that copyright law has decided that all material in internet by default are illegal to use (without a license), pull the plug on internet might not be too annoying operation to implement. Basically it's legal area and technology area fighting over dominance.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
The government still isn't using your tech despite your insistence that we're all losers, fam.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
There is no obligation for the government to subsidize anyone who thinks they put in enough effort. What, did you want participation trophies?
For the umpteenth time, welcome to how reality works.
And if nobody purchases or uses that product, they don't suddenly owe you money just because you asked. If a person takes the bus to work they don't suddenly owe Ford several thousand bucks for not buying a car.
Nobody believes you or the publisher NDA you're surgically attached to.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
If web browser download functions were considered fine as is, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The RIAA and fanboys like you demand that everyone else bend over backwards because you feel that you're not being personally catered to enough, which is why the legal wrangling is coming from your end. You chose to start this fight.
You first. Pull the plug on your Unreal Blender ripoff.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
I still need to send bug reports to chromium whenever chromium crashes on my web site. This activity might make chromium more unstable for all of us, so your browsing habits are in danger because the technology exists and needs to be supported/maintained by the community. When society actively needs to maintain the technology, it's like government was using the tech.
Software unstability increases whenever software is maintained. It does not matter whether users actually use the technology, mere maintainance activity causes the unstable software.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
So we've gone from "the government needs to make mansions using my modeling software because I put in the effort to make it" to "my buggy piece of bloatware creates so many crash reports it uses someone else's time, which means everyone is affected, which means the government is affected, and that magically counts as using my software".
Sure, you had to bend over backwards, move those goalposts over several continents and lower your expectations beyond rock bottom, but you finally got the government using the tech, so maybe you can finally shut the fuck up about your revolutionary counterfeit Unreal Engine.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
Unreal engine doesn't have proper web porting of their engine. And it's already outdated technology.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Still?
And by your own definition the government is already using your technology, as hamfisted and exaggerated your definition of "usage" is. So why does the fact that Unreal still exists in the market bother you? Oh, right - because actual developers are using it, while all you have is a publisher NDA that you're desperately trying to pass off as a game.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
You missed the precondition for the rule. Basically I do not need a license to "Unreal Blender ripoff" since I'm the author. The material is only illegal to use, if you didn't create it yourself. So the onerous rules apply only to lazy people like you who cannot get any copyrighted works done. Smart people who actually create stuff are freed from the limitations. The content is my own, mine alone.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves...
This is rich coming from a useless fuck who has to beg the government to use his tech and openly uses third-party 3D models in demonstrations without asking for copyright permission. Your wet dream of demanding the Internet shut down because your feelings got hurt is duly noted.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselves..
At least my tech is finished and available for users to use.
That's kinda a requirement before you can even consider the following:
Government has tons of resources, so why can't they use small part of their resources to do a mansion for me? Do I actually need to do everything myself, all alone in the night, as if the whole society had stopped and they just keep idling all day long. As a minimum requirement for users to use my technology, they need to do some steps:
1) hand over small part of their money supply to me
2) build some mansion-plans with the tool
3) spread the word to their fellow citizens
Now you're lying. The web site even mentions where I received my copyright permission from. You're just lazy enough that you didn't bother to read the label.
Internet keeps shutting down all on its own, usually some mistakes in the pipes/connections. Demands like this are easily met.
On this topic, I just received upgrade to my internet connection, now 250M net connection allows all kinds of new activities that were just impossible with the old 100M pipes.
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Re:
a) So my content is at url https://meshpage.org
b) The fair price is zero.
c) and it's so easy to use that even children can use it.
But internet still keeps rejecting the material, last time by anonymous coward in this thread. Basically the difficult steps seem to be:
1) downloading the tool
2) typing the url to the web browser
3) installing the tool
4) reading the faq to see examples
5) creating a cube node
6) right-mouse button menu opening with display item in it
Basically that's all that is required for users to pass our first level test and earn our respect. But no, the steps are too difficult.
The 2nd level test is significantly more difficult, when you need to be able to create run_window node and connect it to the rest of the graph. After this 2nd level, they see the full power of the solution I am offering.
But as far as I know, even the 1st level is giving problems.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask themselv
Boasting about how you removed the ability for your users to publish their creations is not what anyone reasonable would call "finished tech". What you have on hand is like a toilet that refuses to flush when the chain is pulled.
Here's something that might shock or surprise you, or (better yet) even offend you, but the government isn't obligated to dedicate resources in order to make you feel better about your personal vanity project.
That's how passion projects work. You might have had someone to help you do the work but your message history already proves that you can't stand the idea of working in a team.
And before users even get to that point you need to give them a reason. So far for all the three, four-odd years you've been here you haven't given any reason aside from you worked hard on this vanity project. A vanity project that bans people from publishing anything regardless of whether they own the IP, created by a lazy fuckwad whose idea of advertising to Finnish users is one ad in a London bus and insisting that his tech is aimed at children because all experts and 3D modelers are idiots. You're like a waiter in a restaurant who demands a 50% tip because he took the effort to step on every customer's feet and piss in their drinks.
You know, when you used to write your trash anonymously, tracking your lies was mildly inefficient, but since you were dumb enough to sign up with an actual account, calling you out on your lies has become so much easier. I won't bother quoting the entire Techdirt thread and just point out that by your own copyright rules you should have been fined for millions of dollars, jailed for 30 years and have Meshpage nuked off the face of the Internet.
Yeah, like in 2012 with SOPA. No, wait, that attempt to shut down the Internet failed, because everyone realized that copyright fans like you are scum.
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works as specified.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should ask
Admitting that your own tech is useless outside of your constantly shifting, yet extremely niche definitions is not a convincing argument for the government to give you money. What you've done is no better than a four-year-old piling up a mound of sand, calling it a mansion and demanding money for it. Except that instead of a four-year-old, it's (judging by the sound of your voice) a forty, fifty-year-old product of Finland's welfare state begging to bankrupt everyone else so he can get an erection. And he honestly thinks nobody can tell that he's throwing a whopping fat tantrum.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They should
you missed the point. I expect government employees to create a sand mansion for me. I never demanded any money, just blueprints for mansions created with my tool. Basically the demand only requests that some end users try my tool and get mansion plans done. Its simple enough task that one person can easily do it, even without nasa's help. And you don't need to be rich bastard like Elon Musk. It's enough that you download and install the tool and create a mansion plan.
but guess that's too much to ask. Internet is full of lazy people who do not bother doing even simplest of tasks, even if there's significant reward available at the other end of the tunnel.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They sho
On the contrary. Going by the countless threads you've shitted on for hundreds of posts, it's safe to say the only person missing the wood for the trees is you.
You can demand a mansion out of air and it won't convince government employees to create it for you. Plenty of people are dependent on government for paychecks, welfare, healthcare, infrastructure and so on. Some random asshole masturbating his own ability to code is not government priority no matter how much you want to piss and moan about it.
So why do you need government help? For that matter, if you've argued multiple times that your software is easy enough for children, and experts are not the target audience you want because you think experts are dumb for overthinking... why are you not marketing your tech to children? Why aren't you marketing your tech as a solution for schools? Why are you here, complaining about artists who draw maps of subway networks?
Like the guy who expects the government to kiss his ass and suck his cock because he came up with a cheap 3dsmax substitute.
What significant reward? The privilege of not getting insulted by Tero Pulkinnen the 50-year-old nobody? Yeah, fam, I don't think the government in Finland is shedding any tears because you're angry that they won't worship you as their sovereign lord for not using your trash-tier tech. You're here entirely as a source of low-brow entertainment. I'm genuinely amused that one of the world's best-known countries for governance managed to churn out an absolute unit of a human like yourself who thinks that every shit he leaves in the toilet is a gift of God.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: They
In the previous messages it was blender/unreal/unity substitute, now you're claiming I'm also competing against 3dsmax?
Sounds like you've already realized how good quality the offered product is. It can not only compete against one of the competitors, but pretty much all of them.
This is the problem I'm trying to solve. Government has all the resources and our tax money, but still they're resting on their laurels. This must stop, and I'm giving government opportunity to show that our tax money is going to good causes. Basically it doesn't matter if government's own employees are doing it, or if they make some other person from our society to do it. But the activity is better than idling. And I'm only seeing idling around, even mighty techdirt has just lazy people in it...
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If you're going to be in the field promoting your 3D modeling, animation and game development software you're going to compete against the people already in the industry. This isn't a stretch of the imagination. This is fact. If you try to make hamburgers in the US you'll compete with McDonald's, Wendy's, In-and-Out, and various independent artisanal outlets making burgers with their own twist.
What it doesn't mean is that you're good enough. You can technically "compete" in the same way that a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair can technically "compete" with Usain Bolt in a 100 yard sprint. It doesn't make the wheelchair user good.
You being in the 3D modeling market does not by itself make your technology good. Anyone looking for a 3D modeling solution in the market right now is not going to use Meshpage over all the other competitors. The fact that you keep whining here that the government is not using your solution is proof that you're not a good competitor.
Bureaucracy and inefficiency is a bitch, ain't it? Once again, welcome to reality.
If you're angry that Finland's high taxes aren't going to causes that you actually want, that's something you take up with your government. But again, who do you think is going to care about one 50-year-old nobody when the government has bigger priorities like transportation, welfare, healthcare, law enforcement and so on? Why do you think the rest of the country needs to starve because you feel personally insecure about your investment?
I'm not going to claim any form of government is 100% efficient, but the idea that everyone else isn't using your tech must be idling around is laughable. Your definition of "lazy" is so ridiculously broad you'd call someone working on improving the COVID-19 vaccine as "lazy" and "idling". But this is par for the course for Tero Pulkinnen, really. Anyone looking up your name on Google is only going to find some lonely code monkey begging for the government to suck his cock and give him money like an OnlyFans whore. That's all on you.
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The steps required for avoiding this lazy-evaluation is very simple. You just execute very small number of steps. The real usage of builder tool is significantly more complicated than what I'm requiring people to do to avoid evaluating you as lazy. If they can't execute even those minimal steps, it means they didn't even try. When people do not even try to solve problems in the world, we can call those people lazy.
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No, what you do to evaluate other people as lazy is insist that everyone is either using your tool or spraypainting graffiti on neighbors' walls. And since nobody is using your tool, you define people as lazy and idling. This shit isn't hard to prove. Techdirt readers have found multiple posts where you made that very claim.
What is lazy is some no-name fucknugget spending his time angry at the government for not giving him the narcissistic attention he wants, and claiming that the world's problems can be solved if only porn producers were allowed to jail and fine innocent people by destroying the public domain, instead of advertising his technology to people in literally the country he lives in except of one random bus in London.
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You might have trouble understanding the concept of "independent artist" or indie. Basically people are independently creating works of art, without cloning other people's warez or without copying their source code. Creating useful stuff without violating those magical copyright rules. And when this happens, you can't call it "counterfeit" or "Unreal Engine". Counterfeit has very specific meaning and you cannot fullfil its requirements. Unreal Engine is trademarked product and the name cannot be used in this context. Basically you bashing is failing. You're not a good troll, when your arguments don't hold water. Proper packaging is the key to make it tight enough enforcement that arguments can be trusted.
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Bold words coming from someone claiming that nobody else can shoot a photograph of the moon, or build a mermaid statue.
And once again, with feeling: copyright law doesn't care. Your "stricter rules" of copyright don't care; if it looks similar enough to what someone else has done, your "stricter rules" of copyright entitle them to bring you to court and preemptively shut down, or permanently destroy your little pet project.
A trademark doesn't prevent someone else from making a counterfeit. You're in no position to debate another person's understanding of law, especially seeing that you've consistently insisted that copyright law is determined by how expensive something is. If Malibu Media or the Edvard Eriksen estate created a browser-based modeling program that looks similar to yours, they'd be fully entitled to sue you regardless of what they called their product and what you called yours.
Of course, by your "stricter rules" of copyright, you'd have to be open to letting them sue you, or accepting the penalties they demanded. But you won't - because you're a hypocritical, self-serving fucknugget, like every copyright fanatic.
Not everyone can be a professional troll like you, but on the other hand I don't throw my weight behind failed legal eagles like John Steele or Paul Nicoletti. Your heroes of copyright end up in jail.
The projection is strong in this one. Oracle lost their lawsuit. Prenda Law lost their lawsuit. Malibu Media lost their lawsuit. Richard Liebowitz lost his lawsuits. Your arguments couldn't hold water in a reinforced titanium bucket.
You can't even package your software to prevent the use of Scott Cawthon's IP, like you swore your technology preemptively could. Nobody would trust you to package groceries at a supermarket checkout line.
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This is true. And more dangerous than you think. The similarity of builder's graph data structure with similar structure in unreal or blender etc is a result of some operations that are dangerous in copyright law. Basically two independently created works can have similar end result, even though the works were truly created independently. This is because the state space that contains both works are limited in such ways that the independent processes create the same result. Similar thing happens with the recorded moon images. The sharing happens even though the works are created independently. And then you'll be in trouble with copyrights because lawyers simply cannot understand the fine details encoded inside our CPU's of computers, and how the limited state space inside computers could cause some pieces of code to look similar even without explicit copying happening. The infringement requires proof of copying, and in this case, all those proofs are somehow invalid.
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Thanks for confirming once again that your operations are dangerous by stricter copyright law standards, although I won't hold my breath waiting for you to submit yourself to copyright police.
Dependent on the lawyer. Most proper lawyers aren't so desperate for money and notoriety that they'll sue every instance of alleged similarity, except for Malibu Media and the other trolls you regularly champion and defend.
The good news is that judges, seeing a suspicious trend of lawyers and plaintiffs like you trying to demand exorbitant sums of money from copyright lawsuits, have started to read up on caselaw and tech. The result is judges ruling that IP addresses do not stand up as sufficient evidence in copyright infringement cases, and the lawyers involved have either been sanctioned, fined, or jailed.
Okay, it's probably not good news to you, but your disappointment is something worth celebrating.
That'll be up for your lawyers to decide, and if it came down to a fight between Unreal's lawyers and whatever sleazebag you manage to hire, I imagine that the result of said fight would be the legal equivalent of Ben Askren versus Jake Paul. As in, you're the Jake Paul of that equation. A woefully underprepared, fatally self-destructive braggart who hurts his own case simply by existing, and got decked by the professional fighter he was dumb enough to challenge.
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