- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
I’ve just watched the video. I find it pretty outrageous. The word about it should spread.
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if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing
there, upvotes to the left pls
As a fun aside, unauthorized sharing is the only reason I tried and bought the game back in early beta days before there was a demo (friend A owned, friend B didn’t, I tried it from friend B’s unauthorized copy of friend A’s game and got the copy too, later gave friend A $20 and info to activate my account because I didn’t have internet at home).
Same. I played MC in early Alpha when you could play free in a web browser. And then I used a cracked game for another year or so. Once I had adult money I bought it. I’ve since bought it probably 6+ times over between Java, Bedrock, consoles, mobile and accounts for my kids.
I probably would never have bought it otherwise, or at least not for a long time.
Pirated Minecraft was a staple of my childhood. Basically everyone I know had it pirated too. I thought that, when I am an adult with my own money and my own debit card, I would buy the game since I liked it so much. Well, I guess that isn’t happening.
The only times I’d excuse piracy are if the original product is outright unavailable in your region, or if digital rights management leads to a vastly inferior or unusable product for paying users (i.e. strict installation limits, always-online DRM in a single player game.)
I don’t condone pirating Minecraft, regardless of Microsoft’s anti-consumer bullshit.
I’ve paid my upvote tax
Meanwhile everyone screaming AI is stealing from them.
in this case, microsoft just decided that they didn’t have to bother supporting legacy accounts because they didn’t feel like it, so they pulled them without consent or compensation
in the case of ai generated media, companies just decided that they just had the rights to use existing published media, so they harvested it without consent or compensation
both complaints are the same complaint: that businesses are just deciding on contracts unilaterally and then imposing them on people without the need for consent
Microsoft has a history of doing so, both with Minecraft customers and others. They just don’t care.
in the case of ai generated media, companies just decided that they just had the rights to use existing published media, so they harvested it without consent or compensation
Have you read the ToS of your favourite social media site lately?
In any event, it might well be that companies (and you yourself) have the rights to use existing published media to train AIs. Copyright doesn’t cover the analysis of public data. I suspect that people wouldn’t like it if copyright got extended to let IP owners prohibit you from learning from their stuff.
You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies? Implying that they weren’t before? Also, are we exclusively talking about cases where sites gave consent to provide data? Rather than just having it be harvested without their knowledge or consent?
And in any case, you’re missing the key point, which is that legality doesn’t matter in either case. You can’t fight a megacorporation just doing whatever they please unless you happen to have an army of lawyers lying around. Most consumers don’t.
I suspect that people wouldn’t like it if copyright got extended to let IP owners prohibit you from learning from their stuff.
Learning from things is a very obviously a completely different process to feeding data into a server farm.
Quite why proponents of AI-generated media still think this argument holds any water after 2 minutes of thought, let alone after almost a full year to consider it, is beyond me.
You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies? Implying that they weren’t before?
Being more specific is not the same as changing something from illegal to legal.
the update to the legal contract they have you agree to was in no way legally motivated?
CYA is not necessarily the same as changing the substance.
LLMs were a big paradigm shift. They’re not necessarily something that could’ve been imagined when writing the original TOSs
You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies?
The ToSes would generally have a blanket permission in them to license the data to third-party companies and whatnot. I went back through historical Reddit ToS versions a little while back and that was in there from the start.
Also in there was a clause allowing them to update their ToS, so even if the blanket permission wasn’t there then it is now and you agreed to that too.
Learning from things is a very obviously a completely different process to feeding data into a server farm.
It is not very obviously different, as evidenced by the fact that it’s still being argued. There are some legal cases before the courts that will clarify this in various jurisdictions but I’m not expecting them to rule against analysis of public data.
you agreed to that too
you know that a company putting a thing in their terms of service doesn’t make it legally binding, right?
hence why they all suddenly felt the need to update their terms of services
It is not very obviously different, as evidenced by the fact that it’s still being argued
people continuing to use a bad argument doesn’t make it a good one
I’m not expecting them to rule against analysis of public data
tell me you haven’t followed anything about this conversation without telling me you haven’t followed anything about this conversation
you know that a company putting a thing in their terms of service doesn’t make it legally binding, right?
And you know that doesn’t necessarily imply the reverse? Granting a site a license to use the stuff you post there is a pretty basic and reasonable thing to agree to in exchange for them letting you post stuff there in the first place.
hence why they all suddenly felt the need to update their terms of services
As others have been pointing out to you in this thread, that also is not a sign that the previous ToS didn’t cover this. They’re just being clearer about what they can do.
Go ahead and refrain from using their services if you don’t agree to the terms under which they’re offering those services. Nobody’s forcing you.
Piracy is piracy.
But the only one that owns Minecraft is Microsoft, since they bought it for over 2 billion dollars. Everyone else just bought a license to use it. Just like in all the other cases of buying music, video, or software. Unless lots of lawyers were involved, you only bought permission to use it, in a certain way at that. Pretending otherwise or not knowing in the first place has never been a legal excuse.
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. And that is the reason that using proprietary software and SaaS is a problem. If I’m only buying the right to use a copy of something as a company sees fit, then I’m not really buying anything. I’m essentially paying a company a tribute to use their software in their way.
Decades ago, it was the same way, but it felt different. We got physical media, and we could do what we wished with the files: modify them, delete them, etc. Hell, the EULAs for some '90s and early '00s software even said you could use the software in perpetuity, and we could use software in anyway we saw fit. The biggest constraint was on selling copies. Back then, and even now, that seems pretty reasonable. (Though, as an aside, it would have been better to also get access to the source code, but I digress.)
Now, we have to use company’s software exactly how they want us to use it. Personally, I refuse to go along with this (as much as I can), so I have migrated most of my digital life to FLOSS.
Then the button shouldn’t say “buy now” but “license now”
Joke’s on them, my instance doesn’t allow downvotes, so my comment is happily at +9 from where I’m standing ;)
Ain’t got no time to worry about popular opinions.
Yes, BUT…
There is buying a licence to use.
And there is buying a copy you can use.This is very much different. Maybe buying a copy of music with a tag attached saying you cannot distribute it further is ok, but saying they can take this copy you bought at any time and make terms how you can use it is another level.
Some video games are open source; you can modify and redistribute it or even sell it. We need more of those and less fat cats playing a trading card game of copyrights while they erode ownership rights.
I’m sure there are exceptions if you’ll look hard enough. However, even in the case of most open source software, you’ll never become the owner of the intellectual property, you’re just free to use, modify and share it.
We don’t own the patients to our hardware but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it. Users don’t need the copyright of software they use to control it - to modify and share software is to own it.
(The only thing they may lack is the option to relicense the software if it’s copyleft, but I’d argue that ensures software freedom for 3rd parties).
but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it.
Yeah, that’s where misconceptions like the one in this thread stem from. Repeat a lie enough, and you’ll start believing it.
Two people can speak the same language in name and yet the same word can mean something different to them. Words do not have innate definitions, they have usages.
In my possession are many things which I presume have copyright/patent and fewer things which do not. It seems to me we just draw the line of “ownership” around different things.
Yeah, this is corporate bullshit. However…
Minecraft is a rare bird that lets you download every single public release (that was archived) all the way back to the original test builds. I recently re-downloaded 1.14 to play a unique seed that only loads all the features correctly on that version.
And when you play Minecraft, you download the entire game as a .jar file to your computer and it stays there, even if you upgrade to a later version. There are third-party launchers that let you load those .jars and play without logging into anything.
So, it’s up to you whether or not you tow the company line and use a Microsoft account and the official launcher or just download some fan-made software and run the old versions forever.
I recommend anyone who lost their Mojang account to just dig out the latest version downloaded to their computer and run it through a custom launcher, or look up instructions on running the game without a launcher.
(This only applies to the Java version of the game, but that’s the best version anyway because of features and custom mods. Playing roms of the console/mobile games requires modding the appropriate system and that’s a lot more involved.)
I backed up all of my own files except the jars apparently (because when you download every one they added up, and I didn’t do that when the servers were at stake). I even had a launcher still logged in but none of the files will download now. Prism is lame (but understandable, I guess) in that it just says “contact microsoft support if you didn’t migrate” or something like that, but you can just copy over
accounts.jsonfrom polymc to use an offline acct. Though a few mods I’ve tried don’t work (and I feel like mod discoverability might not be the best?).Also a small bit not directly in reply to you: I’m pretty sure this is actually the second migration too, at least for accounts that were started on the minecraft website (username–>email login+mojang acct). But of course searches only give info on this one.
Also a small bit not directly in reply to you: I’m pretty sure this is actually the second migration too
Yup. First there were Minecraft logins, then Mojang accounts, now Microsoft accounts.
btw, the game doesn’t actually require auth in order to download jar files and launch the game (server’s come with online checks enabled by default tho, so you’ll only be able to play single player)
What is the seed?
This is true and quite nice. Really the only major limitation is that the only supported form of server authentication is via Mojang/Microsoft account. So if you want to run a sever on a public address you are in for a bad time if you disable the authentication. If only there was a password option you could live pretty comfortable without any Microsoft services.
Except for the iOS iPad version…
tow the company line
https://proofed.com/writing-tips/idiom-tips-tow-the-line-or-toe-the-line
There is a reason they deactivated the accounts, but it doesn’t justify removing the ability to migrate at any time. For those interested:
The old mojang accounts were not secure, and there were millions of accounts that could be accessed without email ownership. This created a grey market for cheap Minecraft accounts. These cheap accounts were almost exclusively used to cheat on non-cracked servers, which sucked for a lot of players who did competitive Minecraft games on servers. The migration did fix this problem, by requiring access to the original email or answers to the security questions. Migrating your mojang account also gave access to the windows 10 version of the game. It probably should have been allowed forever, and I have no clue why they didn’t.
Mojang accounts are not secure
Minecraft was the reason I started using password gens and managers, as my shit appeared in some list of usernames and passwords for the game that is still easily googled.
So this is why there were some legit Minecraft accounts sold at like 30 BRL while in the official site it’s 120 BRL.
competitive Minecraft games
???
Bedwars gets pretty competitive for example.
Never underestimate a dedicated community to make anything competitive
There’s speedrunning for Minecraft. It gets pretty crazy, and there’s already been cheating scandals. Including ones where key people who uncovered previous cheaters were also involved in cheating.
Ah the joys of software as a service.
I do wish I could say it will pass, but the ability to sell someone something they already purchased is the holy grail of sales. This isn’t going to go away, and the EULAs you agree to ensure that it is entirely legal.
The only way to fight back is to vote with your wallet - sadly in monopolies that isn’t really an option.
We need more FOSS. If our governments weren’t utterly captured we could publicly fund worthwhile projects.
I got locked out of my now 8+ year old account because I had set it up with an old ISP provided email which has since been deactivated. I can’t migrate because I have to verify with the email and I can’t change the email without setting up security questions, which also requires the email. Support can do nothing.
i used a Gmail account mostly for some videogames services but Google locked me out of that account after several years because i didn’t provide a phone number for it after a few years and i refused to… So a lot of my old game accounts can’t be accessed anymore…
That’s also why i’m considering wheather it is better to use an email provider or maybe use your own domain for that purpouse… Maybe the combination of both could be the best bet (by that i mean using an email provider like proton mail and using it with your own domain so you can control the domain if anything goes wrong).
Thats just so sad to read :( I’m really sorry about that…
I’ll tell ya more, if you read hardware license agreements then you know that even with hardware you don’t “own” anything, you just bought license to temporarily use it, i was shocked back in the day when i read license agreement on my iPad 4 in 2013, there was point about it, that i don’t own but only bought temporary rights to use it
I see people going “this is what you get for buying digital”, and that’s what they are not seeing. This is not about digital being more unreliable than physical. This is an attack at the concept of customer ownership itself.
Preach brother, always has been, as they trying to push “you won’t own anything and be happy” we thought it was a joke, but surprise, these corporations literary want to build their cities, own all the property and have wage/rent slavery and neofeudalism
Almost everyone I have heard say that is quote also a right wing boomer and corporate apologist that also harps on about “15 minute cities bad” etc yet voting for exactly the people that are enabling most of what they complain about, except for if any of those things are actually good but they are too blind to see it. I almost wish there was an annual exam to verify mental capabilities as a requirement to voting but that would definitely end up rigged pretty quick.
No bad faith in my comment, but all “wingers” are bad, it’s class war, if you support upper class, you support all this shit, because corporations have their lobbyists at both sides at the same time, unionise and fight for your rights, corporations fear unions, what we all must do is be a community, not divided as they want us to be, if you want examples of success, recent Starbucks unions, 1900s ford and Chrysler unions
Even better; turn them into worker cooperatives!
This would be perfect
Yea, it is so annoying. As if DRMed disks or DRMless digital downloads don’t exist.
Wow? Seriously???
Yes, i don’t know if they changed anything, but in high school I’ve read license agreement of my iPad 4 and was shocked
I do not have any of GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) accounts and this is nice “achievement” to have in life for me.
Maybe if I would need them for something important like becoming a video creator, having to publish an Android app for a company or promote my buissness on social media I would create one. But for just one game it’s a pass for me. The most important game in my life, but I have grown up and do not play it anymore.That is an impressive achievement. Out of curiosity, do you have a smartphone? And if so, which operating system do you use?
With most of my things I use being standardized or common formats, I find deGoogled Android builds to more than enough.
Currently LineageOS on my OnePlus. I have a phone with Linux mobile for testing, it’s close but missing things like camera is too much.I’m on the journey to get there too… :') I hope I succeed.
There is no success to have here. You get rid of 5 big tech things, but left 2, that won’t mean you failed :P.
It’s not something to be avoided at all costs, just something unhealthy to freedom of one and society.
Wow… 🫡
I had an old Alpha account. I missed the migration window out of a mix of laziness and not really checking my email.
Surely this cannot be legal and all this shit about forced arbitration cannot hold up in a British court?
I never even received an email. I haven’t touched Minecraft in years, probably never would have again, but my daughter is getting into it and I thought it would be fun to play with her. I found out about the migration when trying to troubleshoot why I couldn’t log in.
I tried to contact support and they told me that they had “widely communicated the migration through email and social media” and that because I had missed the migration window, I would simply have to buy a new copy. I double and triple checked. No emails regarding the migration and I’m not on social media.
It shouldn’t be, but fighting Microsoft in court would be hellish, and not even a guaranteed win given how much undue influence corporations have over the justice system and politicians.
The “purchase” agreement probably says that they can terminate the license for any reason at any time. If you bought the game years ago I suspect they are actually fine to revoke access. See for example EA and other shit game companies that have taken down games when they take the online DRM servers offline.
Yeah fun fact I actually looked this up a few days ago in the wayback machine because I own a beta account. Back then it was just Notch selling the game and the “agreement” if you can call it that on the site basically just said “you own the game forever, no drm”.
I’m not a lawyer or anything but I suspect that unless they somehow tricked users of old mojang account to agree to Microsoft TOS after the purchase of Mojang what Microsoft did may be very legally questionable. But the main issue is who is gonna sue them over 20 bucks. They know they can get away with it
TL;DW?
Microsoft buys Minecraft; forces users to migrate to Microsoft accounts; after ~3 years all non-migrated accounts are deleted. In contrast, if you have a pre-Google youtube account, you can still migrate that 17 year old account.
Mojang Minecraft accounts were paid for, but Microsoft deleted them if they didn’t migrate after those three years. Many people who had “bought” the game weren’t able to access multiplayer any more after serving in the military, getting out of prison, etc.
He argues that buying a videogame doesn’t mean you actually own; however, in my view since you can still play offline, you can.
Are there like hobby Minecraft servers not related to Microsoft? I’m thinking like the Library map and such.
*I feel I must add that I’ve never played Minecraft.
Most if not all Minecraft servers aren’t related to Microsoft. There are lots of smaller servers with 5-20 regular players and of course there are few with hundreds or thousands of players, of which some might be affiliated with M$ but I don’t know.
I wonder how well the open-source Minetest would serve as an alternative for people who aren’t happy with Minecraft in 2024.
Mintest is a game engine actually. The actual Minecraft clone is MineClone2
Minetest is an interesting project, but it’s not a replacement for Minecraft. It’s more similar to Minecraft Beta but with modding.
I play a lot of MineTest, using the Asuna “game” (big modpack) and a huge custom set of mods, and have a game that’s like MineCraft but utterly different. Others play the MineClone2 game, and it’s fine, like MC 1.12 + some stuff. Repixture is an adorable mini-minecraft-like. There’s a lot of people who use it more as creative, and many servers with various games.
It’s definitely a little harder to set up the specific thing you want, but it’s incredible how much variety there is.
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All the mods are processed hostside; the block info and etc. is sent over the network. This limits what can be delegated to clients, but lets joining completely ignore your mods, making it incredibly easy. Installing mods is also a few clicks, and there’s a built-in mod browser. Finding mods is the hard part. (also games are effectively modpacks)
Mineclone2 has been retired in favour of mineclonia
I stopped playing around release 1.8, the Minetest games I’ve tried mimic the features/style that I disliked (annoyance of hunger and inventory clutter at least). Nothing close enough that makes me want to refine it into my own vision.
Surely impossible for Microsoft to keep a few gigabytes (at best) of old account data in a database indefinitely until migrated.
Yeah, what do people expect? It’s not like they own massive, self-sufficient data centers on several continents.
Are there like hobby Minecraft servers not related to Microsoft? I’m thinking like the Library map and such.
Maps aren’t servers. They’re just maps as in any other videogame. You can play maps offline and with local multiplayer.
Most servers aren’t related to Microsoft, but they also use the default server software which requires proper authentication. Now that Mojang account servers are down you can’t log in with them anymore. One’d have to use patched server software that completely turns authentication off or uses an alternative authentication server to allow people without Microsoft accounts to join.
cracked servers (that dont need a microsoft account and dont use their authentication) are quite common, in fact you dont need “patched” server software to make one, it is literally a setting in the default microsoft provided server!
you would want some sort of in game authentication through a plugin (spigot, bukkit, etc) to prevent people from claiming to be your username and the server blindly trusting them and getting your stuff stolen though.
Happened to me. Or well, my wife.
I’ve been playing on and off for a bit. So my account got converted. I tried to do the same to her account but got an error, but since she wasn’t really playing I decided I’d try again later. Well, guess who simply forgot and tried logging in recently? Something I bought and still is being sold is suddenly just gone. Great.
It was a minecraft account, then mojang and now you’d need a Microsoft account…
If you want to play on a server with friends, you need to disable account verification on that in order to allow non-logged in players to access it. So, possible. But not always practical.
Me too
I’m guessing from the thumbnail and title that Microsoft said that Minecraft users need to merge their Minecraft account (100% in Microsoft hands) with a Microsoft account. The user said no because reasons and then now they can’t play
I migrated and they locked my new account. Now they’re essentially extorting my phone number
Wow… They want you to add your phone number to the microsoft account, right?
Yes they’ll supposedly unlock the account if I enter my number
Oh… :(
I still haven’t migrated my Minecraft account. I don’t have a Microsoft account and I don’t want one. I’d prefer to lose the game.
Nevertheless, the most important bit here is that, you shouldn’t have to loose the game and it’s a very scammy move from Microsoft.
Just a friendly reminder that mineclone2 exist.
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Yes! It’s a good alternative. I started playing minetest a couple months ago… :)
They have stolen mine as well. It was a nice game, but it was not worth getting a Microsoft account for it.
Now you’re completely entitled to join the Minecraft piracy world
Other developers have nice software, too!
I’m starting to think that switching to Minetest maybe isn’t such a bad idea…
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/rUFDRAEducI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hasn’t for a long time for most junk
That’s why we should fiercely fight against it :)
