That’s a pretty interesting idea. Unfortunately it depends on being somewhere where copyrights ever actually end.

I know it’s not going to happen, but I would love it if legislation could go as far as requiring companies to open-source their engines and servers after maybe a period of time, or on ending support for the game. It could be done ID-style where the company retains full rights of the content and trademarks, which would still require players to buy the game to legally play it.

I’m aware there are a lot of cases where games include middleware that’s licensed from 3rd parties that complicate preservation efforts. But if open-sourcing the code is the path taken, there’s a simple solution for that: just release what you can, even if what’s released is in an unplayable state without the middleware. It then becomes the responsibility of any volunteers to take that code and bring it back to a usable state however they choose.

This drama highlights that there’s still a great need for better computer literacy. Anyone with even a basic education in how software, source-code, and software licensing works can tell PirateSoftware is full of shit pretty much immediately. That is, anyone educated who are themselves not grifters.

I hope this guy is caught, arrested, and prosecuted. I have no doubts his mind is full of the whole spectrum of maga christofascist psychosis, and I hope we get to see all of that on full display.

The more awareness the country has of how deeply disturbed, and corrupt, Christian fundamentalism is, the better.

I have a PC with a version of Ameliorated Windows 10 on it. At a glance the project seemed promising, but then after install it did this thing where the lockscreen background is supposedly a blurred picture of the guy who made it. No matter how much I dug through the settings apparently I, as the owner of my PC, do not have high enough admin privileges to get rid of that despite my account being the administrator…? Pretty sus.

On top of that the update process takes more effort, so I haven’t updated the system in literally years. The whole situation overall leaves me unable to trust my own computer, but even that feels more trustworthy than the default Windows-is-malware experience.

Next time I turn that PC on will be to install Debian.

This is a good point. I was also thinking that alternatives to the internet itself might become more important. We need more meshnets.