Id Software Goes After Doomscroll
wired.com
wired.com
Funny that Microsoft now owns both parties of the lawsuit.
God forbid art tackles unhappy things
How the best shooter studio has fallen
Edit: typo
Or 'bomb', obviously.
I had always assumed that id Software under ZeniMax is a completely different company, different people, different tech stack, different ethics. But as an outsider of course I don't know how much of this is true.
edit: Bethesda => ZeniMax
I assumed it was referring to John Carmack before reading the article.
And it seems with Kevin Cloud there is someone who worked on the original Doom 1, as also the latest incarnation Doom Eternal.
Why do we still claim the world runs a democracy when the judicial system is clearly biased towards and abused by those who has the most time and resources to burn? The most mindblowing example I can think is when megacorps file bullshit claims that they know they would never win because they know the opposite party won't have the money to contest it.
> It would have been too expensive, he guesses.
This attitude really bothers me. Why didn’t he find out how much it cost? It probably costs nothing to writing your own opposition and send it back to the trademark office. You’re only trying to convince an administrator, not a judge, and worst that can happen is you fail. But all you’ve lost is some time.
Most government processes are designed so it’s possible for a lay person to figure it out. The real trick lawyers have managed, is convincing us all that you can’t engage with government or the justice system without an overpaid lawyer.
If you engage with the case and the legal system you aren’t at work, you aren’t developing your product/company, you aren’t spending time with your family. You spend you time doing something other than the thing you want to be doing, you sacrifice all the possible opportunities you could have had doing other things.
If you pay a lawyer or if you do it yourself it is expensive.
Even if you only spend half an hour writing an email, that’s time you’ve lost, and that time is more valuable to you on a small scale than the cost for the legal department of a massive company that can have someone writing emails all day and eating up all your time.
Most countries legal systems have very strong skews towards individuals, to make it easy(ish) for individuals to take on much larger entities. Most of the time these skews are so extreme that merely demonstrating that you understand how to send a correctly written letter is enough for most companies to back off. Large corporates prey entirely on the fact that people grossly underestimate how many rights they have, and make zero effort to enforce them.
If spending 30mins to write an email is too much effort. Then clearly the issue isn’t significant to you. In which shut up and go away. If you can’t be bothered to write a 30 min email, then why the hell should anyone else give a shit?
I'd rather have a society where millions of people could fuck a company but in practice they don't, than one where a company can fuck millions of people and in practice it does.
In many parts of the world we already do. People just don’t realise it. Companies only get away with fucking people because most people never make any attempt to report bad behaviour or know their rights.
Consumer apathy and ignorance is the number one thing that enables corporate misbehaviour.
The US legal system is basically at the stage where you either hire bodyguards (attorneys), bulk yourself up (extensive legal study), or allow yourself to be pushed around by others.
Interacting with the current legal system is nowhere as easy as you're making it out to be. As a software engineer, yes one can straightforwardly read the law, develop legal intuition, and do a decent job representing yourself. I personally have done my own deeds, administrative court filings, and contract reviews. But I recognize that doing so took many days that I could have spent doing something else. It's nice to be able understand a different system at that level, do my own work, and really know what I'm dealing with - but it's anything but free. And I don't know that I'd ever be comfortable representing myself in a trademark dispute against professional adversaries that know the system intimately.
FWIW online surveillance is basically at the same stage of development. I've got a pretty good setup of VMs, custom router, VPNs, browser extensions, etc that does a good job keeping me protected. But I recognize that this takes resources to setup and maintain, and it would be ridiculous for me to tell the average person that surveillance isn't a problem because they can "just" do what I've done.
That said, you need to do your homework if you try this and it is a bit time consuming, but it was just a few hours of work for me to research and talk to a couple of trademark lawyers (for free) to get a very basic assessment of what was happening and how common opposition filing is. Responded on my own and the Trademark office was surprised that I had no lawyer.
BTW, filing an opposition is easy and costs almost nothing to do, so why wouldn't an existing trademark holder do it?
Most oppositions never go to a full blown trial. The trademark office really pushes for the parties to settle their claims.
I had a strong case though so I was certain I could defend my trademark application.
The lawyers will tell you the best case and worst case of any action, so I would definitely get other opinions then just relying on the word of one lawyer.
The lesson I learned is that before purchasing a domain name, secure a trademark from the USPTO. It’s not cheap though. Can run $300 to $1000, which is nothing for a big corporation, but a big barrier for individual creators trying to get something off the ground.
This experience made me lose a lot of faith in “the law”. Rather than an level playing field among equals, it seems more like a protective moat for the rich and powerful.
Silicon Valley is a nexus for this kind of thinking but at least there's a decent chance of doing that if you're not stupid about it and just spend a decade or two here jumping from one failed startup to another until one sticks. But be very careful, the virtue police here claim they don't like job hoppers (as they themselves jump from one position to another).
As long as you're an at-will employee you owe nothing more than at-will loyalty. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise unless they pony up the cash upfront.