#morality in computer games

[tangent101]

The Ethics of Empathic Powers in LiS:TC

One of the big selling points for Life is Strange: True Colors was that Max CaulfieldAlex Chen's magical powers would be empathy - more specifically a combination of Object Reading (through the strength of emotions felt concerning those objects), Emotional Intelligence (being able to manage your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you), and Emotional Manipulation. Of these, the most questionable would be Emotional Manipulation, and it's an ability that Alex uses several times... with two significant events where that ability ends up with significant repercussions.

The two moments include a moment when Charlotte is feeling intense anger at her son, whose actions indirectly led to the death of her fiancé Gabe (Alex's brother), where Alex can... take in Charlotte's anger, and in the fear being felt by Officer Pike (where Alex again can take in the fear and help Pike overcome his paranoia and fear of the mining corporation Typhon).

Interestingly enough, this was an area where I disagreed with my spouse, as they chose not to manipulate Charlotte but did take in Officer Pike's fear. My reasoning was that if it is unethical to take in Charlotte's anger, then would it not be unethical to do the same for Officer Pike? What's more, Alex was in the wrong. She had stolen property from a Typhon employee and recruited someone to break the encryption on it to get evidence of potential wrong-doing by Typhon. Legally, the evidence is not admissible in a court of law as it was stolen and not a whistleblowing event from an employee.

(The smart thing to do in this case would have been to copy the data and then return the flash drive as "found when I was cleaning up" as it would lessen suspicion, and then deliver the evidence to a news organization as they are not a court of law.)

Here's the thing. Is it ethical to use emotional manipulation/control on a person to save your life? I would say yes. But is this to save Alex's life? No. Alex is threatened with arrest (and rightfully so), though the value of the flash drive is minimal. It would be a misdemeanor at best. The evidence on the flash drive is embarrassing and reveals that the company was covering up malfeasance but the financial value of the stolen property is... most likely under $100. What's more, if news organizations learned that Typhon had had arrested the sister of a man who died because of mining activity Typhon was involved in, especially given that it would be easy to access satellite phone records that reveal that Gabe did in fact call Typhon? It would most likely result in an investigation that causes Typhon a lot of trouble. Typhon was just trying to scare Alex. And it works.

So it's unethical to use Alex's abilities to influence Officer Pike. Using her Emotional Intelligence aspect of empathy to learn more about his fears of Typhon are allowable (if borderline questionable) as anyone with sufficient emotional intelligence would be able to determine this sort of thing just by reading body language and the like. (A lot of empathy is subconscious emotional intelligence rather than anything psychic, and people can unfortunately allow that psychological perception of a person to influence their own emotions - which makes me suspect emotional intelligence has two separate elements which are not necessarily equal - someone may have control over their own emotions and yet not be able to easily understand the emotions of those around them... and vise versa.)

One of the nice things about TC is that we actually see repercussions for Alex unethically using her empathic abilities - she flies into a rage if she chose to take in Charlotte's anger, and Charlotte refuses to side with her against Typhon because it doesn't matter to her now, and she suffers a bout of intense paranoia and fear if she takes in Pike's fear and likewise, Pike starts acting in a... unprofessional manner during the final confrontation with Diane and Jeb.

This is also one of the nice things about True Colors over the original Life is Strange... that we see actual ethical issues in play here. With Max and the Rewind, there is little actual ethical issues in play here over her use of her abilities. Even the ending choice is not a matter of a "Good End" and a "Evil End" (no matter what certain folk working for Deck Nine might claim) as we never had any evidence that the Rewind caused the Storm and the person who does accuse Max of causing the Storm also thought the Storm was a Category 6 Storm (which doesn't exist) (and he was also a 16 year old boy whose knowledge base came from watching movies - and his choice of movies that he enjoyed were... questionable.) The second Life is Strange game did start wandering down the road of ethics, but this was more building on what was more important: family or following the law (even when the law was unjust).

[tangent101]

Take Life is Strange.

Max's Choice at the end is gray morality.

On the one hand, you let nature take its course and a small town is destroyed, almost all of the homes destroyed (if not all), and many of those people who were at Arcadia Bay on a Friday at noon died including students at Blackwell Academy. (So we're talking probably 100 students, faculty, and another 100 or so people in Arcadia Bay who were not away at work - and Arcadia Bay is stated to have a depressed economy so those who live there have to work outside of the town. Also there is no Elementary School or Middle School so all kids from ages 5 to 14 were also out-of-town.)

On the other hand, you take a leap of faith, go back in time, and allow the girl you love to be murdered by Nathan Prescott. This is going to destroy Nathan's life. We're going to ignore LiS2 and other works for now and just based off of the original game, we have no proof that Nathan wouldn't get off on a Self Defense defense or that Jefferson was arrested for his involvement with Rachel - he was just brought in for questioning. But no matter what happens with Nathan... he ended a life, he had her blood on his hands. Max has to live with the fact that she murdered Chloe. She planned her death by knowing for a fact Nathan was going to murder her and hoping that the blood sacrifice of this teenage girl would keep a huge-ass Storm from destroying her home town.

Would anyone say that Sacrifice Chloe was a good ending if at the end of Sacrifice Chloe, the Storm hits anyway and destroys everything? No. Everyone would say Max made a dumbass move based on a hunch. But Max had no idea that letting Chloe die would in fact fix anything. It comes out of the blue. It's only with 20/20 hindsight that players have given the Sacrifice Chloe choice any semblance of morality. If those who had not chosen to kill Chloe never knew of what happens with Sacrifice Chloe... then they would insist that jumping into the past, blindly trusting that letting someone die would somehow magically fix everything, is quite immoral. But if those who sacrificed Chloe ended up killing the town anyway, with their choice being pointless... that would not darken the morality of the choice any more than it lightens the morality of the choice to let Chloe die in blood sacrifice to save a town.

Let's go one step further: What if it took an actual blood sacrifice to save Arcadia Bay, with Nathan Prescott chaining down Chloe in the bathroom and taking a blade to slice her throat open... does that make the choice less moral than his just shooting Chloe? I mean, the blood sacrifice saves a town! So why is his accidental shooting and thus sacrificing Chloe that way, more moral? And why is saving Chloe the less moral choice?

All are grey morality. And none of the choices are good ones. They both have negative consequences. The question is: which choice can you live with?

People think "gray morality" in fiction is about Both Sides Are Partly Right Actually but so much more often it's about choices having inescapable negative outcomes that have to be weighed against the benefits, or it's about having to choose between a series of bad options, or it's about making hard decisions about what you are willing to sacrifice to achieve the outcome you believe is good.

So often, I seem to see people angry that a story in a video game didn't present a Good Option with no collateral damage and no negative outcomes whatsoever, and if there are any downsides it's seen as the writers punishing you for the decision, because they see the primary purpose of stories to be moralizing rather than exploring the complexities of human experience. Or they argue that the collateral damage didn't really happen, or that the negative outcomes weren't really that bad actually, and thus miss the point altogether.

And I feel like it's important to remember that a narrative telling you a decision is difficult is not the same thing as the narrative telling you it is wrong.

[aliettali]

normal essay for normal people!

normal essay for normal people

fuckkkkk

[they-have-the-same-va]

The Prince in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Two Thrones, and Forgotten Sands shares a voice actor with Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Earth-1048) in the Insomniac Spider-Man games.

Voiced by Yuri Lowenthal

[dandyshucks]

prayer circle that I receive some sort of copy of pkmn su/mo from my family in 8 days so that i can run around alola and see my beloved 🙏🙏🙏

[tangent101]

Okay. Now let's take this two steps further.

The very first thing in the game... is the Storm. Max wakes getting drenched and moves toward the lighthouse and sees the Storm... and dies. At that point she wakes up and is in the classroom. And for all the time travel, it's not until the end of the first day/chapter of the game that we learn the Storm is going to destroy Arcadia Bay in five days. In short, we see the Storm at the start of the chapter and at the end of the chapter we learn when and where the Storm hits. The Storm exists before Max has time travel abilities.

So then, the Storm is a predetermined point. It is going to happen. And the one major difference is that Max has time travel abilities and is thus able to avoid her fate of dying in the Storm. So then... Max gains time travel in order to avoid dying in the Storm. It's a most selfish reason to have an ability... and she promptly uses it to save the life of a stranger - and she had no idea that Chloe was the stranger she was saving, all she wanted to do was save that strange girl's life.

Now here's point two and where it gets even stranger. Because yes, you can say that this is a Trolley Car Problem but I'll state it's also very much another trope: Appease the Volcano God. Essentially, a human sacrifice is needed to keep an angry god from destroying things. And you are left to wonder: is it ethical to appease an angry god by murdering a life? Is it ethical to allow someone to kill themselves to appease that god (as in the film Birds of Paradise)?

What's more, is it works. Chloe dies and the angry god is appeased and even throws Nathan into jail for three years and throws Jefferson in jail for a short period of time though given Nathan gets out in three years on appeal, I'm willing to bet Jefferson does as well. But is it the ethical thing to murder someone to appease God? Because I know that Chloe at the start of Life is Strange would laugh in Max's face if she told her "your older self sent me to convince you to let Nathan kill you to save everyone in the town."

So it's not even a willing sacrifice. Older Chloe is murdering her younger self and relying on her best friend to do the deed. And in doing so she ruins Max's life. (Alternatively she stays with Max in the Save Chloe timeline and they find happiness together.)

Was it ethical for Abraham to just put a knife to his son's chest and plan on murdering him (and when God said "dude, I was drunk and joking, don't do it!" he ends up lopping off the tip of his son's dick instead and starts the whole partial-castration practice of circumcision, how wonderful)? No. It wasn't. And it sure as hell ain't ethical to take a leap of faith and murder Chloe hoping it saves a town full of people without even having a clue if it would work.

Bae is the good ending, actually

I would argue that not only is Bae the good and moral ending, Bay is the evil, immoral and - dare I say - selfish ending.

Let’s start by stating the obvious - the ending choice of Season 1 is a form of trolley problem.

A trolley problem is a type of thought experiment which presents you with a moral problem. The basic parameters are as follows: You find yourself near railroad tracks. There is a main track and a side track. There is a trolley coming down the main track. There are people both on the main track and on the side track. The people standing on the track the trolley is travelling down are in mortal danger. You can’t stop the trolley, or remove people from the track. The only thing you can do is to pull the lever and direct the trolley to the side track, thereby sparing people on the main track, but killing those on the side track.

Obviously, in the scenario we are analysing, the trolley is the approaching storm, the town of Arcadia Bay and all its denizens are located on the main track, Chloe finds herself on the side track and Max can pull the lever to divert the deadly danger from Arcadia Bay towards Chloe by using the photograph to erase the events of the week.

Since the last choice of Season 1 is a trolley problem, I think the moral solution is the same as with all other trolley problems – do nothing and let things happen. Let me explain.

Often, when presented with a trolley problem, people instinctively adopt a utilitarian approach. Utilitarianism is an ethical system which favours actions that decrease the amount of suffering in the world.

If there are two people on the main track and only one person on the side track, the utilitarian solution would be to pull the lever, because two deaths would cause more suffering in the world than one.

If there’s a young person on the main track and an old person on the side track, the utilitarian solution would be to pull the lever, because the young person hasn’t had the chance to live out their life to the fullest yet, so their death would cause more suffering.

If there is a person with a big family on the main track and a lonely person on the side track, the utilitarian solution is once again to pull the lever, because the death of someone who would be missed by many would cause more suffering than the death of someone who wouldn’t be missed by anyone.

I imagine that most people would be instinctively willing to agree with the first solution. Saving two people instead of one person? That makes sense. But I think (or at least hope) that most people would disagree with the next two examples, of the old person and of the lonely person. Who are we to judge who is more “worthy” of life and whose death would cause more suffering? But realize this - when you consider the quantity of lives at stake, your thought process is exactly the same as when you consider their quality.

If you choose to pull the lever in a trolley problem, you have usurped for yourself the right to judge who is more worthy of life. You have usurped for yourself the right to kill the people on the side track. Even if it’s an entire town on the main track and only one person on the side track. When you pull the lever and direct the trolley to the side track, you kill that one person. The fact that you saved the people on the main track doesn't erase that. Ends do not justify the means.

From my point of view, the moral answer to any trolley problem is to do nothing, because no matter how insignificant the life of the person on the side track may seem, nobody has the right to judge them unworthy of life.

A purely utilitarian approach to a trolley problem fails to take into account the substantive difference between letting things happen and actively causing someone’s death.

The final choice is made not on Monday, but on Friday. On Friday, Chloe is no longer in danger. Max can redirect the mortal danger from the town to Chloe, but it requires her action. On Friday, the "natural" course of events which doesn't require any input from Max is for the storm to level the town. If you sacrifice Chloe on Friday, you're killing her. You're pushing her back onto the barrel of Nathan's gun. But if Max sacrifices the town, she's only letting things that have been in motion since Monday proceed. She lets them proceed, because to stop the storm, she would have to kill someone. Max simply refuses to pay such a high price.

Having established the sheer immorality of sacrificing someone "for the greater good", let's move on to the selfish part. If Max sacrifices Chloe, that means she values her guilty conscience more than Chloe's life. That she doesn't want to live with guilt more than she wants to live with Chloe. Notice that when the storm comes, Chloe says it all happens for a reason and it couldn't be any other way. Only when she sees how distraught Max is, she does a 180 and offers her sacrifice. Her offer is mainly motivated by the desire to save Max from her guilt. The selfish thing would be to accept Chloe's sacrifice.

[leofrith]

acv hate on my dash and i can't even be mad about it because they make some good points 😶

[anto-pops]

Do I aim for an eviler Durge run for my third playthrough or do I try to resist it…………. I’m conflicted

[surveillance-0011]

What I will say about the whole Garten of BanBan debacle, the brothers and any future banban posting.

On the matter of this game and its quality, it… definitely sucks. The sequel shows improvement with a better story and some humor but it’s still rushed, glitchy and made with mostly money or recognition in mind, by two folks who aren’t necessarily the best at taking criticism.

Speaking of Faris and Ghepo, they do have to take criticism better. A lot of folks, even if a little harsh or prone to being annoying about it, do just want to see them improve. I do, too. Especially considering the even worse (esp morally) trainwreck that is Introvert. From what I’ve seen (not a full playthrough, but clips and summary) it’s tasteless and also just. Confusing and falls flat. It’s fucked to fumble such heavy topics so bad and I believe they should just apologize for it and not make a sequel. Because of this I cannot really align myself with them. I’m also surprised people don’t really bring it up? Unless everyone is more in the dark abt it than I thought.

However they definitely don’t deserve death threats or other harassment. Yes, it’s the internet, so people will be harsh, but there were definitely people saying some fucked up shit to them. It’s unwarranted, even if the two have made many a faux pas and scummy… uh, whatever you call what they’re doing.

I hope that being off of Twitter will give them some more time to reflect on this whole situation and change the way they work. More importantly I hope they feel safe, and take some time to refresh. Even if I’m not their biggest fan (that’s an understatement) I do think the way this whole thing has been going is a bit more extreme than warranted and I’d rather see improvement than stagnation or a further downgrade.

As for BanBan on this account? I haven’t said much about it but I do have redesigns and a slight rewrite I intend to share, mainly for fun. I do not see this as something that supports or apologizes for the Brothers, or something meant to bully them or anything either. Just a little creative experiment.

[tangent101]

And likewise, it makes you wonder: is it better to remain in hiding? Don't forget, Chloe asked for Max to hide in the closet because her presence would cause trouble. Furthermore, you can't talk Chloe into letting Max hide the weed - even just tossing the joint out the window would have David smell something but have no proof. So you are stuck with these choices that make no sense.

Seriously. Hide the weed, he has no proof. He never searches for Max in the closet. And by Max witnessing David hitting Chloe... sure, it's not defending Chloe but it lets Chloe know that she has a witness. And Max could even tell Joyce the truth: I was hiding in the closet because Chloe was scared my being over would cause trouble with David, especially after I chased him off from picking on Kate Marsh.

LiS kind of forced you into certain choices that ultimately make little sense when you consider what time travel would allow... and the fact that if Max caused the Storm, Chloe's death should not undo that Storm - ultimately, it's Max who has to die. Can you imagine Chloe letting Max return to the past to die?!? She would rip up the photo herself and insist that it's a foolish choice. In fact, Sacrifice Max would require Max to Rewind, not tell Chloe that Max is going to sacrifice herself, and then go back in time with that Choice.

There are many ways the game could change if we just had a little more time and imagination on what Max could do, especially with Chloe giving her ideas. :)

Something I love about Life Is Strange is the moral ambiguity of all the choices.

I don't think a single decision in the game is an open and shut case of doing right or wrong. You can debate all day what someone should do in that situation and the "right" answer is going to boil down to your moral beliefs.

I think a good example would be taking the blame for Chloe's weed or not.

It's easy to make a case for why standing with Chloe is a good thing. She's a long term friend who has a shitty home life and just did something incredibly kind for Max (Giving her William's camera) moments before. Standing with her and protecting her from David is an act of loyalty that shows how much Max still cares about her wellbeing. Therefore making it a very understandable choice.

However, I do feel like you could argue that Max shouldn't be expected to take the blame. If she takes responsibility for the joint that isn't hers, David threatens the scholarship that got into Blackwell. That's a huge finical blow that will put Max's educational opportunities in jeopardy. It's not an empty threat either as we learn from Mark in Episode 2 that David has told Wells that Max is dealing pot.

So in that regard is it selfish of Chloe to expect Max to loose a major opportunity for her? Or is it selfish of Max to let someone she cares about get hurt? Are both choices selfish since either outcome screws one of them over? Or are neither really that selfish since both girls are placed in a really bad spot?

I could make a post like this about of the choices. All of them are wrong to a certain extent just as much as they are right. Nothings black and white and a lot of the choices simply boil down to "Who do you want to screw over more?" Which is an interesting moral dilemma as it means you can never really win.

[fates-theysband]

might do something phenomenally ill-advised

[euphorial-docx]

no because neil druckmann’s tlou2 palestine/israel allegory thing to push his zionist views makes no sense from a writing standpoint. because i fucking hate the group meant to represent israel too. what was he trying to do with that.

[medicinemane]

So, I decided I wanted to check out this modpack that had looked interesting, so I go and download the curseforge app (cause modpacks are kind of a pain to launch without a launcher... as in I'm not sure how you even do it)

Dear god, which a fucking monster. They've got fucking ads running all over the fucking place

Instadeleted it, you do no get to serve me ads under any circumstances, if you do fuck you, I'm not using you. You're not a website, you're an app, and if you're pounding me with ads regardless of what I'm doing, then I don't think you're secure (and even if you are fuck you)

So I've had to track down an alternative one called uh... GDLauncher. Can't say for sure, but so far seems much much better... seems like an opensource launcher that's just a launcher and that's it

Not that any of you play modpacks so not that this matters, but that curseforge shit was just so bad I had to complain

[boorines]

bf!wonwoo thoughts

genre: fluff, suggestive

-

bf!wonwoo who thinks everything is better if he does it with you. playing games on his computer? wordlessly hands you a controller so you can play with him. reading a book? it’s much more enjoyable if you’re resting your head on his shoulder while he turns the pages for you. wonwoo who always has your favourite mug ready when he pours himself a cup of coffee. he refuses to leave bed in the morning if you’re still asleep, only willing to start his day when you start yours. he’ll trace patterns into the skin of your arm or run a finger along the curve of your cheek while you sleep, smiling sheepishly if your eyes blink open. wonwoo who says shopping for groceries is 100%, definitely, always a two person job. doesn’t matter if it’s only to pick up a carton of milk, he’s coming with you. says it’s for ‘moral support’ (he would superglue himself to you if he could).

bf!wonwoo who is so subtly flirty it drives you crazy. eye contact with frequent glances at your lips. sly smiles and once overs, then twice overs, when you try on a new dress. a hand darting out to wipe pasta sauce off the corner of your mouth. two hands wrapping a scarf securely around your neck. wonwoo who takes every opportunity to dote on you. in private or in public. slides your joint hands into his coat pocket as you walk together. opens his coat and pulls you flush against him when you’re not warm enough for his satisfaction. picks fluff out of your hair like it’s second nature. wonwoo who notes the way your cheeks flush pink and laughs, placing a kiss to your nose. wonwoo who follows up with a kiss to your lips when your ears bloom the same shade as your cheeks. “why so shy?” he whispers. but he knows.

bf!wonwoo who thinks the sound of your laughter is the prettiest he’s ever heard. so he does everything that he can to hear it. cheesy pick up lines when you fuss over the stove with him in the morning. stupid dad jokes that make you chuckle with a roll of your eyes. his eyes trained on you as a comedy film plays on tv, praying he catches your soft laughs at the scripted jokes. wonwoo who won’t hesitate to coax them out of you if he has to. soft pokes at your stomach, victorious when you splutter out a laugh. fingers tickling the soles of your feet as they rest on his lap, pulling whiny giggles from your throat. wonwoo who has a deep frown on his features when he sees your face wet with tears and your eyes bloodshot. wipes at your cheeks and places soft kisses to your hair, warm and soothing. relieved when you give him a watery smile. makes a mental note to never let you nip to the corner store alone, even if you relentlessly insist.

bf!wonwoo who gets a little jealous even if he pretends not to. wonwoo who simmers a little when you smile sweetly at the old friend you bump into in the frozen foods aisle. wonwoo who can’t help but let out a gruff sigh when you tell him how that friend had a penchant for cracking the silliest jokes. he mumbles under his breath when you question the change in his demeanour, getting sulkier the longer it takes for you to catch on. and when you do? the shy smirk you give him makes him short circuit. wonwoo who is quick to press his lips against yours the second the door closes behind you. wonwoo who mutters things like ‘mine’, ‘my baby’ and ‘no one but me’ into the crook of your neck. wonwoo who grins smugly when you nod feverishly, pressed against the door. wonwoo who peppers your skin with kisses, returning your need for him tenfold.

-

written with @waldau in mind! since wonwoo is ur ult <3 thank u for reading and enjoying my work, ur reblogs make my day!!

[they-have-the-same-va]

Dr. Curtis Conners aka The Lizard (Earth-1048) from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 shares a voice actor with Reed from Goodbye Volcano High.

Voiced by Mark Whitten

(Requested by @werewolf-cuddles)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.

That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.

Now, rents: "rent" is the money a rentier makes by owning a "factor of production": something the capitalist needs in order to make profits. Capitalists risk their capital to get profits, but rents are heavily insulated from risk.

For example: a coffee shop owner buys espresso machines, hires baristas, and rents a storefront. If they do well, the landlord can raise their rent, denying them profits and increasing rents. But! If a great new cafe opens across the street and the coffee shop owner goes broke, the landlord is in great shape, because they now have a vacant storefront they can rent, and they can charge extra for a prime location across the street from the hottest new coffee shop in town.

The "moral philosophers" that today's self-described capitalists claim to worship – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – hated rents. For them, profits were the moral way to get rich, because when capitalists chase profits, they necessarily chase the production of things that people want.

When rentiers chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a capitalist pays in rent – licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc – is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services that society desires.

The "free markets" of Adam Smith weren't free from regulation, they were free from rents.

The moral philosophers' hatred of rents was really a hatred of feudalism. The industrial revolution wasn't merely (or even primarily) the triumph of new machines: rather, it was the triumph of profits over rent. For the industrial revolution to succeed, the feudal arrangement had to end. Capitalism is incompatible with hereditary lords receiving guaranteed rents from hereditary serfs who are legally obliged to work for them. Capitalism triumphed over feudalism when the serfs were turned off of the land (becoming the "free labor" who went to work in the textile mills) and the land itself was given over to sheep grazing (providing the wool for those same mills).

But that doesn't mean that the industrial revolution invented profits. Profits were to be found in feudal societies, wherever a wealthy person increased their wealth by investing in machines and hiring workers to use them. The thing that made feudalism feudal was how conflicts between rents and profits cashed out. For so long as the legal system elevated the claims of rentiers over the claims of capitalists, the society was feudal. Once the legal system gave priority to profit over rent, it became capitalist.

Capitalists hate capitalism. The engine of capitalism is insecurity. The successful capitalist is like the fastest gun in the old west: there's always a young gun out there looking to "disrupt" their fortune with a new invention, product, or organizational strategy that "creatively destroys" the successful businesses of the day and replaces them with new ones:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

That's a hard way to live, with your every success serving as a blinking KICK ME sign visible to every ambitious person in the world. Precarity makes people miserable and nuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

So capitalists universally aspire to become rentiers and investors seek out companies that have a plan to extract rent. This is why Warren Buffett is so priapatic for companies with "moats and walls" – legal privileges and market structures that protect the business from competition and disruption:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-explains-moat-principle-164442359.html

Feudal rents were mostly derived from land, but even in the feudal era, the king was known to reward loyal lickspittles with rents over ideas. The "patents royal" were the legally protected right to decide who could make or do certain things: for example, you might have a patent royal over the production of silver ribbon, and anyone who wanted to make a silver ribbon would have to pay for your permission. If you chose to grant that permission exclusively to one manufacturer, then no one else could make it, and you could charge a license fee to the manufacturer that accounted for nearly all their profit.

Today, rentiers are also interested in land. Bill Gates is the country's number one landowner, and in many towns, private equity landlords are snappinig up every single family home that hits the market and converting it to a badly maintained slum:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

But the 21st Century's defining source of rent is "IP" – a controversial term that I use here to mean, "Any law or policy that allows a company to exert legal control over its competitors, critics and customers":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is in irreconcilable conflict with real property rights. Think of HP selling you a printer and wanting to decide which ink you use, or John Deere selling you a tractor and wanting to tell you who can fix it. Or, for that matter, Apple selling you a phone and dictating which software you are allowed to install on it.

Think of Unity, a company that makes tools for video-game makers, demanding a royalty from every game that is eventually sold, calling this "shared success":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Every time one of these conflicts ends with IP's triumph over real property rights, that is a notch in favor of calling the world we live in now "technofeudalist" rather than "technocapitalist":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Once you start to think of "IP" as "laws that let me control how other people use their real property," a lot of the seemingly incoherent fights over IP snap into place. This also goes a long way to explaining how otherwise sensible people can agree on expansions of IP to achieve some short-term goal, irrespective of the spillover harms from such a move. Hard cases make bad law, and hard IP cases make terrible law.

Five years ago, some anti-fascist counterdemonstrators hit on the clever idea of blaring top 40 music during neo-Nazi marches, on the theory that this would prevent Nazis from uploading videos of their marches to Youtube and other platforms, whose filters would block any footage that included copyrighted music:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

Thankfully, this didn't work, but not for lack of trying. And it might still work, if calls for beefing up video copyright filters are heeded. Cops all over the place are already blaring Taylor Swift songs and Disney tunes to prevent their interactions with the public from being uploaded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

The same thinking that causes progressives to recklessly argue in favor of upload filters also causes them to demand that web scraping be treated as a copyright crime. They think they're creating a world where AI companies can't rip off their creation to train a model; they're actually creating a world where the Internet Archive can't capture JD Vance's embarrassing old podcast appearances or newspaper editorial boards' advocacy for positions they now recant:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's not that Nazi marches are good, or that scraping can't be bad – it's just that advocating for the use of IP to address either is a cure that's not just worse than the disease – it's also not a cure.

A problem can be real, and still not be solvable with IP. I have enormous sympathy for gamers who rail against cheaters who use aftermarket hacks to improve their aim, see through buildings, or command other unfair advantages.

If you want to tell a stranger how they must configure their PC or console, IP ("any law that lets you control your competitors, critics or customers") is an obvious answer. But – as with other attempts to solve real problems with IP – this is a cure that is both worse than the disease, and also not a cure after all.

Back in 2002, Blizzard sued some hobbyists over a program called "bnetd." Bnetd was a program that provided a game-server you could connect to with the Blizzard games that you'd bought. It was created as an alternative to Battlenet, Blizzard's notoriously unreliable game-server software that left gamers frustrated and furious due to frequent outages:

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

To the public, Blizzard made several arguments against bnetd. They claimed that it encouraged piracy, because – unlike the official Battlenet servers – it didn't check whether the copies of Blizzard software that connected to it had a valid license key. Gamers didn't really care about that, but they did respond to another argument: that bnetd lacked the anti-cheat checking of Battlenet.

But that wasn't what Blizzard took to the court: in court, they argued that the hobbyists who made bnetd violated copyright law. Specifically, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans "circumvention of access controls to copyrighted works." Basically, Blizzard argued that bnetd's authors violated the law because they used debuggers to examine the software they'd paid for, while it ran on their own computers, to figure out how to make a game server of their own.

Blizzard didn't sue bnetd's authors for pirating Blizzard software (they didn't – they'd paid for their copies). They didn't sue them for abetting other gamers' piracy. They certainly didn't sue them for making a cheat-friendly game-server.

Blizzard sued them for analyzing software they'd paid for, while it was running on their own computers.

Imagine if Walmart – one of the biggest book-retailers in America – had a policy that said that you could only shelve the books you bought at Walmart on shelves that you also bought at Walmart. Now imagine that Walmart successfully argued that measuring the books you bought from them and using those measurements to create your own compatible book-case violated their IP rights!

This is an outrageous triumph of IP rights over real property rights, and yet gamers vocally backed Blizzard in the early noughts, because gamers hate cheaters and because IP law is (correctly) understood as "the law that lets a company tell you how you can use your own real, physical property." Hard cases make bad law, hard IP cases make batshit law.

It's more than 20 years since bnetd, and cheating continues to serve as a Trojan horse to smuggle in batshit new IP laws. In Germany, Sony is suing the cheat-device maker Datel:

https://torrentfreak.com/sonys-ancient-lawsuit-vs-cheat-device-heads-in-right-direction-sonys-defeat-240705/

Sony argues that the Datel device – which rewrites the contents of a player's device's RAM, at the direction of that player – infringes copyright. Sony claims that the values that its programs write to your device's RAM chips are copyrighted works that it has created, and that altering that copyrighted work makes an unauthorized derivative work, which infringes its copyright.

Yes, this is batshit, and thankfully, Sony has been thwarted in court to date, but it is steaming ahead to the EU's highest court. If it succeeds, then it will open up every tool that modifies your computer at your direction to this kind of claim.

How bad can it be? Well, get this: the German publishing giant Axel Springer (owned by a monomaniacal Trumpist and Israel hardliner who has ordered journalists in his US news outlets to go easy on both) is suing Eyeo, makers of Adblock Plus, on the grounds that changing HTML to block an ad creates a "derivative work" of Axel Springer's web-pages:

https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-infringes-copyright-ancient-sony-cheat-lawsuit-may-prove-pivotal-240729/

Axel Springer's filings cite the Sony/Datel case, using it to argue that their IP rights trump your property rights, and that you can only configure your web-browser, running on your computer, which you own, in ways that it approves of.

Axel Springer's war on browsers is a particularly pernicious maneuver, because browsers are the best example we have of internet software that serves as a "user agent." "User agent" is an old-timey engineering synonym for "browser" that reflects the browser's role: to go out onto the web on your behalf and bring back things for you, which it displays in the way you prefer:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Want to block flickering GIFs to forestall photosensitive epileptic servers? Ask your user agent to find and delete them. Want to shift colors into a gamut that accounts for your color-blindness? Ask your user-agent:

https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

Want to goose the font size and contrast so you can read the sadistic grey-on-white type that young designers use in the mistaken belief that black-on-white type is "hard on the eyes"? That's what Reader Mode is for:

https://frankgroeneveld.nl/2021/08/24/most-underused-browser-feature/

The foundation of any good digital relationship is a device that works for you, not for the people who own the servers you connect to. Even if they don't plan on screwing you over by directing your user agent to attack you on their behalf right now, the very existence of a facility in your technology that causes it to betray you, by design, is a moral hazard that inevitably results in your victimization:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

"IP" ("a law that lets me control how you use your own property") is a tempting solution to every problem, but ultimately, IP ends up magnifying the power of the already powerful, in contests where your only hope of victory is having a user agent whose only loyalty is to you.

The monotonic, dangerous expansion of IP reflects the growing victory of rents over profits – income from owning things, rather than income from doing things. Everyday people may argue for IP in the belief that it will solve their immediate problems – with AI, or Nazis, or in-game cheats – but ultimately, the expansion of a law that limits how you can use your property (including your capital) to uses that don't threaten neofeudalists will doom you to technoserfdom.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law