> if no one can run the binaries, despite them being accessible, then the regulation has failed and there will be a new movement to alter the regulation.
This isn't the 2000s. People can rent a computer out of a data center. This isn't some hard problem here.
> What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't?
How about "the government forces you to release the code"? That's seems fair.
Unless you hid your source code in USB drives under your bed, the government can probably just force GitHub (or similar )to release it. I bet they've got it backed up.
The government will release it with all the copyrighted code and assets that's owned by a bunch of third-parties?
Ex. if I license my artwork, music, characters, code library, etc. to a game developer and they don't create a legally releasable version of their server, then the government will forcibly break our licensing agreement and I just get screwed?
So you're assuming game devs write every line of code in their server infrastructure. First, could be using a third party library you have license to use on a limited number of machines that make up your backend servers. Second you could be paying for third party API access to something like snowflake.
You either have to rip out the code (which may or may not break the server, but still requires developer time to do) or write replacement code which likely takes even more dev time to do or you would have done it instead of paying for the library/access to the service.
Of the 7 AAA games I’ve been part of making, not a single one used HTTP (well, not as a primary driver of anything), HTML, CSS or anything that could be construed as a “web technology” so, what are you talking about please?
What I'm saying is you have programs running on user machines, and programs running on your machines. There's an interface between those two over a network. There's a problem that consumers face today where they pay to play games that are not functional without data flowing over that interface.
There's a claim that implementing the backend side of that interface is so complex and impossible or too difficult/time consuming/etc to design in a way without 3rd party dependencies.
I'm asking: what are those 3rd party libraries doing? And why can't you design server APIs and client code in a way to provide a different backend if consumers need to do it themselves when you stop supporting the game?
I'm not interested in hypotheticals. In AAA games that you have worked on, concretely what 3rd party code did your servers rely on that would prevent you from distributing either the server itself or sufficient description of the servers' behavior to allow a reimplementation?
And even if we're talking hypotheticals: stupid example. I haven't worked on a backend where the actual server infrastructure wasn't open source, trivial to open source because it was first party, or irrelevant because the only thing that matters would be the API and protocols, which again, trivial to make open.
I'm actively trying to remove my own ignorance of the domain which is why I posed the question! You're not breaking confidentiality by saying "I need X to solve Y problem which is offered by Z and we can't expose even the application layer interfaces." Right now it sounds like you don't have an answer, or even understand the question.
Getting all defensive and not answering it doesn't really help your industry's case here.
Web servers, message brokers, physics engines, anti cheat, fraud detection, flood mitigation, ranking systems, chat moderation, match making systems. There are thousands of possible components which may have been licensed in any given game server system. In some cases the entire game engine runs on the server.
I guess what surprises me here is how much of this is 3p code that couldn't possibly be distributed. Like why would you not be using an open source web server, or widely available message broker? Things like chat moderation/match making/anti cheat/etc seem like add on services that would be implemented per game (well, maybe not match making) and aren't relevant to the problem that the "stop killing games" people are trying to solve.
Frankly it's none of your business why, and it's completely irrelevant. The fact is that this 3p code exists and this law needs to account for it or it's unworkable.
This is kind of needless aggression that doesn't help non domain experts understand.
I've worked on a lot of complicated and deeply optimized networked applications. They're almost all closed source. I know exactly how I would design a system to support these kinds of initiatives. What I'm curious about is why that's impossible for game developers, because either I'm missing something, or game developers are just bad at software design.
The "server" being the computer program not running on a user device. The intent of the initiative is to allow people to substitute or replace that program to allow the game to continue to function even if the original publisher/developer disables access to it.
It's pretty obvious to me as a gamer and engineer what the intent and design constraints are here, so I'm just wondering what makes this seem impossible?
And how do they force release of all the proprietary dependencies? Overriding contract law is a hell of a lift, and a terrible precedent.
The whole "Stop Killing Games" movement is deeply misguided, and most of the people supporting it have absolutely no clue about how software or anything computer related actually works.
> do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't.
Almost definitionally it would. If society is saving a bunch of money on all that saved labor, that extra value is still there, it just needs to be appropriately redistributed
It doesn't have to be criminally illegal. Instead it could simply be civil. The apartment complex, which you do not own, would be the ones setting the rules here.
And you, of your own free choice, would have the choice to either follow the rules or go live somewhere else. The person you are responding to doesn't have an issue with you smoking in your own purchased home. Instead this was about apartment complexes.
And it wouldn't even have to be a law applied to you. It could be applied to the apartment complex. Apartment complexes already have to follow lots of laws. So they could simply be required to have this as a rule.
And then you, could make your libertarian choice to live there or not. Its not your apartment complex after all. And since its someone else property, they would absolutely have the free to make you not do this in their own property.
You aren't being forced to do anything that you didn't agree to. You aren't the apartment owner, you instead just signed the contract and have to follow the apartment rules.
I don't see why you get to complain about what someone else is doing with their own property. Its their property. What laws apply to them are none of your business as you simply signed the contract.
How would society benefit if all the benefit collects to the top of the pyramid? Same old trickle down? The technology isn’t inherently bad but if it comes with massive unemployment and creates social unrest while a few at the top profit… That’s what is what makes me uncomfortable.
C'mon. You know what they meant. They are clearly saying that the EFF used to to focus on pretty specific, arguably more bipartisan ideas and initiatives and now it has switched to a much more broad strategy that has strayed from its original mission. Surely, you should be able to understand this pretty basic point.
I do not agree that your statements are implied by GP, I do not agree with the suggestion that the reason for that is my incapacity to understand, and I do not agree with the new statements that you are introducing here either.
"but EFF has changed from neutral rights-focused activism into questionable political activism. "
This is saying that they strayed from their original mission. They were focused on a narrow set of beliefs before, and then it changed to focusing on unrelated and more partisan politics.
An interesting thing about this era is that things which were bipartisan in the 2000s are now seen as partisan. Some examples of things that I remember as bipartisan in the 2000s which are now seen as left-leaning ideas: NATO membership, suffrage for women, freedom from state religion, the Forestry Service, national parks.
Its a bit silly to say that they are declining. For its specific niche (mass short form/viral content) there simply aren't any relevant competitors that even come close.
Maybe because there’s no critical and widely used software written by LLMs so far? Which says a lot about LLMs are failing to even approach the level of capabilities you would expect from all the hype? The goal has always been, even before LLMs, to find something smarter than our smarter humans. So far the success at that is really minuscule. Humans are still the benchmark, all things considered. Now they’re saying LLMs are going to be better than our best vulnerability researchers in a few months (literally what an Anthropic researcher said in a conference). Ok, that might happen. But the funny part is that the LLMs will definitely be the ones writing most of these vulnerabilities. So, to hedge against LLMs you must use LLMs. And that is gonna cost you more.
So today, most of the vulnerabilities being found by these tools are in code written by humans. Your hypothesis is that down the road, most of the vulnerabilities will be in code written by LLMs.
What seems more probable is that the same advances that LLMs are shipping to find vulnerabilities will end up baked into developer tooling. So you'll be writing code and using an LLM that knows how to write secure code.
Better security is a good thing, no a bad thing, regardless of which companies are more difficult to hack. Hemming and hawing over a clear and obvious good is silly.
This isn't the 2000s. People can rent a computer out of a data center. This isn't some hard problem here.
reply