Yeah I have to say, I'm having a had time having that much sympathy for the author. I suppose it is "not knowing how to play the game of capitalism" in the same way that not knowing how buying...
Yeah I have to say, I'm having a had time having that much sympathy for the author. I suppose it is "not knowing how to play the game of capitalism" in the same way that not knowing how buying things works and going into a store and leaving with merchandise and not paying. The store is not out to get you as a cut-throat capitalistic actor by trying to have you pay for things.
I'm honestly hard pressed to really identify his grievances. It seems that Notch wanted a poem to be at the end of the game, solicited offers from Twitter, liked this guys work, he wrote a poem. Going by this substack, you can probably tell how the emails to Carl went
And it WAS meaningful! The universe wrote it! Which also made it hard for me to chase him about it, because what was I going to say, “I think I deserve a chocolate Santa Claus for this thing the universe wrote?”
(what??? wtf are you talking about?)
He was paid $20k for his work, and honestly that seems reasonable? A poem at the end of the game for a game that has no story, for which no one plays for any kind of story, and few people finish?
Then the game blew up, for some reason he expected something like royalties? He seems to have some delusions of grandeur here; making a poem that, let's be honest, pretty much everyone skips is far from "I had helped him create the actual game". It's Minecraft. It's not a story heavy game. This is an exceedingly minor part of it, and I have a hard understanding how he thinks that his contributions are equal or above the Mojang employees who worked on the rest of it when he complains that the staff received a bonus during the acquisition, let alone the implicit boundaries for contracted work.
He’d said they would give me and my other work what he called “massive exposure to the Minecraft community”; they didn’t.
My dude they put your work at the end of the game such that any player that finishes will read it. I'm so confused.
I'm not surprised that Carl was infuriated by the end.
I do feel sympathy for the author in that it seems like he's in a bad place, but of all the people in this story, I think his actions are the most unreasonable.
He had an agreement with Mojang to sell his contracted work for $20k to them. Both parties agreed. Mojang sent him the money and the contract. He just... ignored it? Still spent the money, though. And this is bad on Mojang in a cut-throat sense - they should have been more rigorous and made him acknowledge the contract. But they certainly fulfilled their side of the implicit handshake. Then he took their negligence and at one point tried to extract more money from them.
This isn't an unusual perspective from someone who has spent a lifetime in the arts. Many artists have made a statement around them just channeling some higher power when making a notable piece of...
(what??? wtf are you talking about?)
This isn't an unusual perspective from someone who has spent a lifetime in the arts. Many artists have made a statement around them just channeling some higher power when making a notable piece of work. Then there's the common sentiment of putting that work out there as "not theirs" that usually compounds it.
Yeah... I had pretty much the same thought process while reading through this. While I do sympathize with his situation, and I do think that what he wrote really is beautiful, I don't completely...
Yeah... I had pretty much the same thought process while reading through this. While I do sympathize with his situation, and I do think that what he wrote really is beautiful, I don't completely understand his grievances. Maybe he just didn't do a good job of articulating it so that others could understand, but I really don't see his point here.
He wrote something, wasn't even expecting to be paid in the first place, and then just sort of... refused to sign the contract? He got paid by accident, and while I'm not sure how this sort of stuff works, I feel like they really could have tried to claw that money back if they had wanted to. I do understand his desire to maintain ownership of the work - after all, C418 still maintains ownership of all the songs he wrote for the game - but he could have tried negotiating for that. Instead, it seems to me that he just sort of ignored the possibility of signing a contract altogether. I really don't understand what his point is here. I feel like the point of whether or not he deserves some sort of royalty or other compensation for his work is moot when he (seemingly) barely tried negotiating for it in the first place.
Again, maybe there are details left out here that would help to justify his point of view, or maybe I missed something. But, the general impression that this left me with is that he's being a little entitled. That being said, I do think it's incredibly cool of him to release it to the public domain.
Man, I've never seen so many people get so irrationally angry at someone whom has unambiguously public domain-ed their work and decided to share their story in doing so. If they didn't sign a...
Man, I've never seen so many people get so irrationally angry at someone whom has unambiguously public domain-ed their work and decided to share their story in doing so.
If they didn't sign a contract explicitly agreeing to copyright transfer, guess what, they probably had a shot at a multi-million dollar settlement. And instead decided to share their story and give it away. No demands from Microsoft or anyone else.
I'm not even done reading. And this is beautifully written, thank you for sharing.
To the haters: Just walk away then. You're not the target audience. Nobody is trying to sell you anything.
Edit: And this passage is just so spot-on. Always love a head nod to Cory. Glad to see that Cory reached out and helped get this on more solid legal footing.
Copyright law was originally brought in to help artists make a living. But over the past century, corporations like Disney, Sony, Universal, and Microsoft, have lobbied hard to twist those laws out of shape. Now, the vast power imbalance between rich corporations and poor artists (particularly when negotiating) allows the corporations to stripmine the copyrights from artists, and keep the artists poor. To see how, just look again at the contract I refused to sign. It’s astonishing that such a mafia-shakedown, you-will-never-see-your-kid-again contract is legal; that it is considered a standard way to treat an artist, rather than greeted with gasps of horror, and treated as a crime. This is why none of your favourite comic book writers and artists own any of their creations. This is why Alan Moore, who created Watchmen, cannot use his own characters in his own work. This is why the original blues musicians, whose talent transformed global culture while creating a hugely profitable industry, died broke. This is why, even today, for every $1,000 of sales in the modern music industry, the average individual musician gets $23.40.
Twenty three bucks.
If you give a shit about this, about the legal destruction of ordinary middle-class artistic life – the destruction of the lives of artists you probably love – you should read Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow’s new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, which gives the history of what’s happened, and lays out several shovel-ready changes we could immediately make to the law, to protect broke artists from being relentlessly ripped off by rich corporations. I don’t agree with everything Rebecca and Cory say, but it’s by far the best analysis of a complicated problem.
I saw this linked on HN, but thought the nuance of Tildes might lead to better conversation. It's a very interesting post. I have a lot of thoughts which I'll try to summarize. By the author's own...
I saw this linked on HN, but thought the nuance of Tildes might lead to better conversation.
It's a very interesting post. I have a lot of thoughts which I'll try to summarize.
By the author's own admission, they misunderstood the business negotiation as it happened. They didn't play the capitalism game (as they put it), which led to this feeling of being robbed after the fact. I can completely commiserate. We're not all built for that world, and often have no experience navigating those waters.
At the same time... it wasn't his first rodeo. He had an agent, and had negotiated deals before. Friendship or not, I can't help but think the author bears most of the responsibility in how things turned out. That's not to chastise him (he seems to accept this), but I do think some of his feelings are misplaced.
I'm only reading a one-sided stream of consciousness here, but it almost seems like a parasocial relationship to me. Mojang were looking for a contractor for a job, and the author was trying to be a part of something bigger. He sees himself as one of the original creators of the game, or at least a part of it. I can see why that would put them at an impasse.
I do remember Notch tweeting about the poem. How he was looking for a writer, and how thrilled he was with it when he found the author. Despite the fact that they'd met once before, it doesn't suggest an earlier (or ongoing) friendship. To me it suggests a business relationship. But again, I can only infer from what is written.
Ultimately I'm not as confident that the writer is that he still holds the copyright. He accepted money, a "verbal contract" was established, and he let it go uncontested for nearly a decade. There is a reason they say that possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you already own something, or appear to, now the other party has to prove that you don't own it.
It seems like a big muddled ball of emotion for the author though, and I feel for them. I don't have that mentality of love and sharing that the author describes, but I can appreciate it, and I'm glad that others still think in those terms. It's endearing, even if I can't wrap my head around it.
I'm also glad to see them make an argument in favour of artists and against corporations. They're completely right, and it's not fair that executives make so much more than the artists do. I've also evangelized the kinds of platforms that benefit artists (itch.io, Bandcamp, etc), so I'm glad to see more of that.
Ultimately this is a tough one. I read the post because I remembered Notch's tweets about the poem, and wanted to learn more backstory. I come away saddened that the artist has not done particularly well afterwards, and harbours ill will. I hope that by taking this action, they free themselves of some of those negative feelings.
I don't think it's likely that Microsoft would take legal action here - though not because of the section pleading with their lawyers on a personal level. Microsoft has been on best behaviour lately, probably because they are taking part in the much larger acquisition of Activision. I don't see any benefit to them to raise a legal battle over this right now, even if they believed completely that they owned the copyright.
I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to do anything either. Minecraft is a game that many people don’t play to the end. They could remove the poem from the game and it wouldn’t affect sales.
I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to do anything either. Minecraft is a game that many people don’t play to the end. They could remove the poem from the game and it wouldn’t affect sales.
I think you're right, but I'd say worst case it didn't hurt, and best case it convinced someone to maybe try taking a stand in a meeting. It was a good read and a good reminder that we should all...
I think you're right, but I'd say worst case it didn't hurt, and best case it convinced someone to maybe try taking a stand in a meeting. It was a good read and a good reminder that we should all be mindful and try to do things as human beings and not as cogs in the machine.
JulianPGough 0 minutes ago | prev | next [–] Source: Hacker News
JulianPGough 0 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic part of the story, or the emotional part. It's as though those things are simply not there, or were invisible. Fascinating! I particularly enjoyed the comments where blokes (so many blokes!) got angry at me for even HAVING emotions about this situation, when the law seemed, to them, to make such emotions invalid. Almost the opposite of the Reddit r/Minecraft comments, which are all about the emotions and the art. Anyway, thanks for this insight into a particular way of looking at the world. Very revealing, very interesting, very enjoyable. Have a great day!
Honestly, this makes me even less sympathetic to him than I already was. The r/Minecraft thread isn't really comparable. It was a text post - and not just a link to the essay - framed in a wholly...
Honestly, this makes me even less sympathetic to him than I already was.
Almost the opposite of the Reddit r/Minecraft comments, which are all about the emotions and the art
The r/Minecraft thread isn't really comparable. It was a text post - and not just a link to the essay - framed in a wholly different manner. For example it doesn't mention that he was in fact paid for his work, and it doesn't show how absurd it was that he thought he was friends with the Mojang team (which he still seems to think for some reason... There was no indication in his essay that they were friends, or anything more than freelancer and client.)
I also think the HN crowd are more likely to read the whole essay than the minecrafters on Reddit (and though both HN and r/Minecraft are anonymous, I'd guess the gender distribution isn't very different, so I'm not sure why he's going on about the "blokes".)
Yeah I have to say, I'm having a had time having that much sympathy for the author. I suppose it is "not knowing how to play the game of capitalism" in the same way that not knowing how buying things works and going into a store and leaving with merchandise and not paying. The store is not out to get you as a cut-throat capitalistic actor by trying to have you pay for things.
I'm honestly hard pressed to really identify his grievances. It seems that Notch wanted a poem to be at the end of the game, solicited offers from Twitter, liked this guys work, he wrote a poem. Going by this substack, you can probably tell how the emails to Carl went
(what??? wtf are you talking about?)
He was paid $20k for his work, and honestly that seems reasonable? A poem at the end of the game for a game that has no story, for which no one plays for any kind of story, and few people finish?
Then the game blew up, for some reason he expected something like royalties? He seems to have some delusions of grandeur here; making a poem that, let's be honest, pretty much everyone skips is far from "I had helped him create the actual game". It's Minecraft. It's not a story heavy game. This is an exceedingly minor part of it, and I have a hard understanding how he thinks that his contributions are equal or above the Mojang employees who worked on the rest of it when he complains that the staff received a bonus during the acquisition, let alone the implicit boundaries for contracted work.
My dude they put your work at the end of the game such that any player that finishes will read it. I'm so confused.
I'm not surprised that Carl was infuriated by the end.
I do feel sympathy for the author in that it seems like he's in a bad place, but of all the people in this story, I think his actions are the most unreasonable.
He had an agreement with Mojang to sell his contracted work for $20k to them. Both parties agreed. Mojang sent him the money and the contract. He just... ignored it? Still spent the money, though. And this is bad on Mojang in a cut-throat sense - they should have been more rigorous and made him acknowledge the contract. But they certainly fulfilled their side of the implicit handshake. Then he took their negligence and at one point tried to extract more money from them.
This isn't an unusual perspective from someone who has spent a lifetime in the arts. Many artists have made a statement around them just channeling some higher power when making a notable piece of work. Then there's the common sentiment of putting that work out there as "not theirs" that usually compounds it.
Said by one Stephen King, one of the greatest writers of our times, if not all time.
Yeah... I had pretty much the same thought process while reading through this. While I do sympathize with his situation, and I do think that what he wrote really is beautiful, I don't completely understand his grievances. Maybe he just didn't do a good job of articulating it so that others could understand, but I really don't see his point here.
He wrote something, wasn't even expecting to be paid in the first place, and then just sort of... refused to sign the contract? He got paid by accident, and while I'm not sure how this sort of stuff works, I feel like they really could have tried to claw that money back if they had wanted to. I do understand his desire to maintain ownership of the work - after all, C418 still maintains ownership of all the songs he wrote for the game - but he could have tried negotiating for that. Instead, it seems to me that he just sort of ignored the possibility of signing a contract altogether. I really don't understand what his point is here. I feel like the point of whether or not he deserves some sort of royalty or other compensation for his work is moot when he (seemingly) barely tried negotiating for it in the first place.
Again, maybe there are details left out here that would help to justify his point of view, or maybe I missed something. But, the general impression that this left me with is that he's being a little entitled. That being said, I do think it's incredibly cool of him to release it to the public domain.
Man, I've never seen so many people get so irrationally angry at someone whom has unambiguously public domain-ed their work and decided to share their story in doing so.
If they didn't sign a contract explicitly agreeing to copyright transfer, guess what, they probably had a shot at a multi-million dollar settlement. And instead decided to share their story and give it away. No demands from Microsoft or anyone else.
I'm not even done reading. And this is beautifully written, thank you for sharing.
To the haters: Just walk away then. You're not the target audience. Nobody is trying to sell you anything.
Edit: And this passage is just so spot-on. Always love a head nod to Cory. Glad to see that Cory reached out and helped get this on more solid legal footing.
I saw this linked on HN, but thought the nuance of Tildes might lead to better conversation.
It's a very interesting post. I have a lot of thoughts which I'll try to summarize.
By the author's own admission, they misunderstood the business negotiation as it happened. They didn't play the capitalism game (as they put it), which led to this feeling of being robbed after the fact. I can completely commiserate. We're not all built for that world, and often have no experience navigating those waters.
At the same time... it wasn't his first rodeo. He had an agent, and had negotiated deals before. Friendship or not, I can't help but think the author bears most of the responsibility in how things turned out. That's not to chastise him (he seems to accept this), but I do think some of his feelings are misplaced.
I'm only reading a one-sided stream of consciousness here, but it almost seems like a parasocial relationship to me. Mojang were looking for a contractor for a job, and the author was trying to be a part of something bigger. He sees himself as one of the original creators of the game, or at least a part of it. I can see why that would put them at an impasse.
I do remember Notch tweeting about the poem. How he was looking for a writer, and how thrilled he was with it when he found the author. Despite the fact that they'd met once before, it doesn't suggest an earlier (or ongoing) friendship. To me it suggests a business relationship. But again, I can only infer from what is written.
Ultimately I'm not as confident that the writer is that he still holds the copyright. He accepted money, a "verbal contract" was established, and he let it go uncontested for nearly a decade. There is a reason they say that possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you already own something, or appear to, now the other party has to prove that you don't own it.
It seems like a big muddled ball of emotion for the author though, and I feel for them. I don't have that mentality of love and sharing that the author describes, but I can appreciate it, and I'm glad that others still think in those terms. It's endearing, even if I can't wrap my head around it.
I'm also glad to see them make an argument in favour of artists and against corporations. They're completely right, and it's not fair that executives make so much more than the artists do. I've also evangelized the kinds of platforms that benefit artists (itch.io, Bandcamp, etc), so I'm glad to see more of that.
Ultimately this is a tough one. I read the post because I remembered Notch's tweets about the poem, and wanted to learn more backstory. I come away saddened that the artist has not done particularly well afterwards, and harbours ill will. I hope that by taking this action, they free themselves of some of those negative feelings.
I don't think it's likely that Microsoft would take legal action here - though not because of the section pleading with their lawyers on a personal level. Microsoft has been on best behaviour lately, probably because they are taking part in the much larger acquisition of Activision. I don't see any benefit to them to raise a legal battle over this right now, even if they believed completely that they owned the copyright.
I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to do anything either. Minecraft is a game that many people don’t play to the end. They could remove the poem from the game and it wouldn’t affect sales.
I think you're right, but I'd say worst case it didn't hurt, and best case it convinced someone to maybe try taking a stand in a meeting. It was a good read and a good reminder that we should all be mindful and try to do things as human beings and not as cogs in the machine.
JulianPGough 0 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
Source: Hacker News
Honestly, this makes me even less sympathetic to him than I already was.
The r/Minecraft thread isn't really comparable. It was a text post - and not just a link to the essay - framed in a wholly different manner. For example it doesn't mention that he was in fact paid for his work, and it doesn't show how absurd it was that he thought he was friends with the Mojang team (which he still seems to think for some reason... There was no indication in his essay that they were friends, or anything more than freelancer and client.)
I also think the HN crowd are more likely to read the whole essay than the minecrafters on Reddit (and though both HN and r/Minecraft are anonymous, I'd guess the gender distribution isn't very different, so I'm not sure why he's going on about the "blokes".)