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djpretzel

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Posts posted by djpretzel

    Remixes and copyright law - please help

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Fine. "Based on my legal advising and study of copyright law," will proceed my ridiculous opinions as of late from here on.

    If you feel like it; "I think" and "maybe" and "likely" are all far more elegant, the only problem being that you were specifically criticizing anyone using those more concise qualifiers...

    And yes, "fair use" will ultimately be decided by the court on a case by case basis, but if you want to know my opinion, I'd be happy to give it to you based on my legal advising and study of copyright law.

    blam

    I think you mean "maybe... blam" :-)

    I was kinda curious on your opinion, actually, because it seemed like by saying:

    It's not fair use. It's not using the original finished work. You're more often than not creating a derivative work. And there are usually two copyrights in the first place.
    You were implying/suggesting that:

    1. Fair use can only apply when using the original finished work. I'm curious what your definition of a "finished work" is in this context, and where you're drawing this concept from in terms of case law and the actual Fair Use doctrine. I'm not familiar with it.
    2. That somehow fair use does not apply to derivative works, which is not the case...

    Can you explain further?

    Remixes and copyright law - please help

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    hahah no you wouldn't.

    It's not fair use. It's not using the original finished work. You're more often than not creating a derivative work. And there are usually two copyrights in the first place.

    Bah.

    This is a lot more complicated than most take it for. If you want to get into it, we can. You can also search the myriad of threads that have popped up on this issue over the years on this board. Just ignore any posts where people start with, "I think," or "maybe."

    I think we answered OP's question.

    Well, at least with "I think" and "maybe" people don't come off as trying to be the ultimate authority on something, which can be rather dangerous...

    For example, when you say de facto that something "is not fair use," as you just did in the above quote, I think you're the one who should be using "maybe" or "I think," since fair use is an affirmative defense, the legitimacy of which is determined in court; prior to that event, you can only really express the legitimacy of fair use claims in terms of likelihoods, and you're expressing it as an absolute.

    This is misleading; people use "I think" and "maybe" for a lot of good reasons, one of which is to acknowledge and reflect the nature of fair use more accurately.

    If you're going to speak with authority and certainty, and criticize others for not doing so themselves, please try to be both correct AND specific in your language.

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    The funny thing about stereotypes (and why they almost never stand up to or factor into academic scrutiny) is yes, they do happen to pop out of thin air for the most part. They are composed of the most baseline, surface-level veneers of whatever given group of individuals they are intended to "stick to".

    ACTUALLY... yes and no. Pinker (I think helpfully) divides stereotypes into two categories in The Blank Slate - there are stereotypes primarily based on common observation & experience, and there are stereotypes primarily based on lack of knowledge and rumor/fabrication. There are also those that mix the two, but regarding the FIRST category, he writes:

    “The idea that stereotypes are inherently irrational owes more to a condescension toward ordinary people than it does to good psychological research. Many researchers, having shown that stereotypes existed in the minds of their subjects, assumed that the stereotypes had to be irrational, because they were uncomfortable with the possibility that some trait might be statistically true of some group. They never actually checked. That began to change in the 1980′s and now a fair amount is known about the accuracy of stereotypes.“

    “With some important exceptions, stereotypes are in fact not inaccurate when assessed against objective benchmarks such as census figures or the reports of the stereotyped people themselves. People who believe that African Americans are more likely to be on welfare than whites, that Jews have higher average income than WASPs, that business students are more conservative than students in the arts, that women are more likely than men to want to lose weight, and that men are more likely than women to swat a fly with their bare hands, are not being irrational or bigoted. Those beliefs are correct. People’s stereotypes are generally consistent with the statistics, and in many cases their bias is to underestimate the real differences between sexes or ethnic groups. This does not mean that the stereotyped traits are unchangeable, of course, or that people think they are unchangeable, only that people perceive the traits fairly accurately at the time.“

    To me the key thing is not so much the truth or fallacy of the stereotype, but how you as an individual let it influence your thoughts, words, and actions.
    the negative behavior that people show online is an extension of negative behavior that those same people express in every single aspect of their lives

    if you've really never noticed anyone get called a faggot/nigger/whatever outside of a video game, you must not be paying much attention to the attitudes that people continue to have towards other people in society

    I agree and disagree - I think certain forms of activity tend to bring out the worst in people. Personal observation: in stores, offices, etc. I see people being polite, saying "excuse me," and generally walking around in a civil manner. On the road, however, people devolve into vindictive, reckless, completely inconsiderate jerks. Something about the human mind, when placed at the helm of a vehicle, seems to change dramatically. Life becomes a competition, everyone else becomes an obstacle, and you see all manner of bullshit that you wouldn't normally see. My armchair psychology explanation here is that you're making it easy for people to dehumanize others - you're usually not looking at the FACES of other drivers, you're safe in your steel fortress with minimal human interaction, and to make matters worse, you're trying to accomplish a goal that everyone else on the road can only really impede. Add in a mix of entitlement, self-importance, and tendency to overestimate one's personal ability to multitask effectively, and you've got a pretty crap recipe.

    I'd argue that large aspects of online gaming share a lot of these characteristics, and thus share a heightened capacity to bring out the worst.

    Andy would argue that it's because games have too many boobs.

    You be the judge.

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    Gamer culture obviously and by definition revolves around video games. Developers make video games. Therefore, game developers influence gamer culture. Whether or not you believe in the rest of the argument (that the culture influences people, and people in turn influence game developers), this component is practically self-evident.

    Labeling things as "self-evident" is always convenient, because then... you don't need evidence. You said that game developers were a "major part" of the "feedback loop" you were describing. I was specifically questioning the use of "major," since it suggested you had a system for quantifying which components were more important than others. Since it appears that you do not, and would rather argue the "self-evidence" of things in response, I guess we can drop that thread entirely...

    If you have a problem with the earlier components of the argument then you're going to have a problem with the conclusion, but the deductive logic by which I've arrived here is extremely sound. If gamer culture is mostly male and hostile to women, women don't want to be in it. If we are influenced by our environment, and if game developers are made up of people participating in gamer culture, then game developers will be mostly male and influenced by a female-hostile environment. If game developers influence game culture, then by influencing it to be more inviting to women, then more women will participate, more game developers will be women, etc.

    I appreciate your informing me that your logic is "extremely sound," but I do not believe your assessment in this matter to be without bias. As a personal aside, it's also one of those things that shouldn't need to be said, the very saying of which calls the veracity into immediate question.

    • "Gamer culture is mostly male" - you linked a stat very early on that gamers are now 50% female, and have leaned on this stat in some of your statements. Are you now questioning it, or did you mean something else here? What do you mean by "mostly"?
    • "...and hostile to women, women don't want to be in it" - first off, I thought you backed off from "hostile" and were going with "unwelcoming," but whatevs. This isn't a logical premise, it's a guess. Nothing about it is "sound" - extremely or even mildly. And it bypasses any analysis or even conjecture as to OTHER reasons women might not want to participate. Even though half of gamers are female, as you said...
    • "If we are influenced by our environment, and if game developers are made up of people participating in gamer culture, then game developers will be mostly male and influenced by a female-hostile environment." - since we're fond of the logical fallacies, this is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation - you can't track the "influence" of gamer culture relative to culture at large, AND you're ignoring the fact that these individuals are the ones CREATING gamer culture in the first place; you're treating culture like an abstraction as opposed to a direct product of humanity, AND you're failing to explain the myriad exception cases, AND you're assuming that people take all of their hobby culture into the workplace... list goes on.

    None of this is extremely sound logic, or even logic. It's a series of "if... then" statements that might otherwise be confused for logic, save that all of the words between "if" and "then" aren't specific or defined enough to remotely resemble logical premises, and are woefully incomplete.

    I'll return again to something I wrote earlier, which is the risk vs. reward. If I'm right, then by encouraging game developers to create games with more appeal to both genders, the ultimate effect will encourage more women to participate in gamer culture and game development. If I'm wrong, or if the results are minimal, I don't see any negative outcomes.

    Did I EVER suggest that you, or anyone else, should NOT encourage "game developers to create games with more appeal to both genders"? Where did I write that? What are you responding to? Unless you're responding to someone else, this is completely non-sequitir. I've repeatedly pointed out that what it MEANS to "appeal to both genders" isn't universally understood and agreed on, but the majority of my statements have surrounded your rationale/justification, NOT the conclusion you draw from it.

    I should have defined "gamer culture" earlier, but what I mean by that term is the community of people that actively discuss games in online forums, that visit and participate in gaming news websites, that attend gaming conventions, etc. In other words, I'm talking about all the things that surround the actual playing of video games. The demographics for this are decidedly not 50/50 as evidenced by things like the earlier link to (I think) IGN's ad demographics.

    You JUST got done saying "by encouraging game developers to create games with more appeal to both genders" - now you're characterizing the gamer demographic not by the actual PLAYING/BUYING of video games, but by... everything else. If 50% of the people PLAYING games are female, doesn't that speak more to the "appeal" of the games themselves? Could it not be that gamer culture - not the games themselves - is primarily what needs to be "worked on"? Could it not be that gamer culture is not defined or even particularly influenced by individual games, but rather characterized by the types of people who choose to dedicate THAT MUCH of their free time to the hobby? You're all over the place. If quoting the 50% female gamer stat was worthwhile in the first place, where is the analogous stat to back up claims that gamer culture is lopsided? I'm not saying it's not, but you're saying decisively that it is. Since I would have assumed that the gamer demographic was lopsided - and it apparently is not - why should I assume that gamer culture, as you've defined it, is? I suspect that it is, mind you, but I'm not going to treat my suspicion as particularly logical, nor am I going to derive further conclusions from it, nor am I going to assume - in the guise of "deductive logic" - that the reasons behind any inequality can be linked in any way, shape, or form to sexual objectification in games.

    Those are leaps of faith, not logic.

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    The feedback loop I've described constitutes the basis for the conclusion of my argument - that we should encourage game developers to produce more games which appeal more to both genders. You're wrong that it equates to "interfering at any point in said loop". I'm talking about one thing and one thing only.

    Nope, you were talking about at least two things - reduction of sexual objectification in games themselves, and modification of "booth babe" & related practices at conventions. That's two by my count, exactly one more than one.

    I don't think this is a response to what I actually wrote. My point was that in gamer culture, women - actual women, not female game characters - are treated worse than men in the same culture. Yes, obviously adolescents tend to be hostile in general, but this doesn't change the fact that the hostility is particularly bad toward women. No, I don't have statistics on this. I don't think such statistics exist. But I've seen it firsthand in all corners of the internet, from YouTube to Reddit to playing games with voice chat to personal experiences from women gamers in my circle of friends.

    I didn't realize we were using the "I've seen it firsthand" standard of proof. What I wrote was a DIRECT counter to what you wrote. You're arguing from firsthand experience that women are "treated worse" than men in gamer culture. This assertion makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless it is a contextual comparison to NON-gamer culture, because otherwise you can't establish any causality that is UNIQUE to (i.e. directly caused by) gamer culture specifically. It could all just be cultural, or an aspect of behavior that is more common amongst adolescent males, etc.

    I'm trying to point out that your so-called "deductive logic" is really just leaping from vague observation to vague observation.

    So maybe we can figure out if we even agree on this at all. Do you think women are treated worse in gamer culture, or not?

    Define "worse"... define "women"... define "treated"... no aspect of any of this can be "deductive logic" of any kind, since the words/phrases you're using are all cloudy with a chance of meatballs... I don't mean to pull a Bill Clinton "that depends on what your definition of "is" is...," but seriously, you're just throwing words out and hoping they stick. Worse how? Treated by whom? I know what you think you mean, and my answer is probably yes, but the lack of specificity in your language only widens the gaping holes in your causal reasoning.

    Do you think that a male, any given male, gets the same level of harassment when playing online games? When streaming? Do you think they get the same comments about appearances, the same demands to flash their boobs?

    Of course not, I'm just not comfortable saying that any part of that is conclusively linked to gamer culture, specifically. It mostly reflects what I see elsewhere, using your "firsthand experience" barometer. I'm confused how you think this line of questioning addresses my point at all. I wasn't arguing that women are treated the same, I was arguing that the underlying causes of unequal treatment may not be unique to "gamer culture"... your rattling off questions like this doesn't speak to my point in the slightest; it's almost as if you didn't read my post...

    Do you think they are constantly hit on the same way? Maybe you do think all of this is true, and it is no worse for women than it is for men. In that case, we're at an impasse, since I don't think I can do anything to convince you otherwise.

    If you were actually interested in convincing me, you'd read what I was writing. At no point have I made claims that female game characters, game programmers, OR gamers are treated equally. You're the one putting up an insanely weak straw man in suggesting that you've been trying to persuade me of that. That's not what we've been talking about, and if you were reading what I've been writing, you'd clearly see that NONE of my arguments surround the non-existence of sexual objectification, discrimination, or differences in gender roles and gender bias in the gaming community. I just don't know what you're doing anymore... are you reading what I'm writing? I'm very confused because I keep saying more or less the same things, and - even when quoting my statements verbatim and responding directly beneath them - you're not actually speaking to the content of my posts, but rather what you seem to wish and/or misinterpret them to be.

    We don't fundamentally disagree on this point, and to suggest otherwise is either disingenuous or suggests you haven't been reading my posts.

    This is a straw man. NOBODY, least of all me, is suggesting ANYTHING that would limit freedom of speech. There is a difference between encouraging positive behavior and creating legislation. I am doing the former. It's no more of an infringement on free speech than it is to say "It would probably be nice for the Westboro Baptist Church to stop protesting at funerals." Countless commentators exist that seek to persuade game developers, Extra Credits being one of them. Are they trampling freedom of speech too?

    I see you're busting out the list of logical fallacies, but you're misusing them. Never did I directly state that you were advocating censorship. Go back, read it. I'm asking you to read my posts, and I'll keep asking you to read my posts until your responses suggest that you've read my posts. What I'm saying - what I've been saying this whole time - is that your so-called reasoning, your flawed methodology, and your suspect conclusions all SUPPORT the advocacy of censorship. You're using the same rhetorical toolset that censors do, but you're stopping short of advocating censorship yourself. If you're expecting a gold star & an A+ for your restraint, I suppose it's admirable, but it's the same exact framework - a series of specious assumptions & causalities leading to a supposed correlation between "art X" and "behavior Y" - that plagued and continues to plague the thought processes of censors and second-wave feminists alike. That you employ it - but find censorship an unacceptable implication of its outcome - does not excuse its usage!!!!

    Seriously.

    Also, you've been repeatedly using the "slippery slope" fallacy - if we start encouraging game developers to do X, then Y (a Bad Thing) might happen next. It just doesn't hold any water. Show me how Y will necessarily or even probably happen, or for that matter, what Y even is.

    Aren't you already encouraging game developers to do X? By simply posting on these forums? What form of "encouragement" did you have in mind? I think the burden on "showing Y" here belongs to you, not me, as what you're proposing is thus far rather pie-in-the-sky and quite nebulous. My "slippery slope" argument is in NO WAY specific to video games - it speaks to all forms of art. It observes that once you become overly comfortable with the idea that "X" type of art directly causes "Y" type of behavior or opinions, bad things tend to happen. This supposed causality is completely unscientific, for one, although you'll usually see people TRY and quote statistics or any sort of quantitative data they can find, AS IF they were making a scientific argument.

    You want to argue that games should have a wider variety of female characters, and better role models? I've already said I agree with that at least a dozen times. Go back and read my posts. You want to argue that harassment and equal pay issues for women in all industries, including the games industry, are problems that need to be addressed? I completely agree.

    You want to argue that sexual objectification and booth babes directly & inevitably lead to the disrespect of women? No dice on that one, for all the many reasons I've stated.

    But as far as encouraging game developers to do ANYTHING at all, how can I object to free speech? And as I've repeated ad infinitum, I think encouraging them to write more interesting female characters is a fantastic idea. I just don't think the reasoning behind this encouragement needs to employ the same deeply-flawed, unsupported causal arguments that are usually employed by censors. In fact, I think the request is far more persuasive when it does NOT employ these arguments.

    Almost anything involving social psychology on this scale is very hard to prove, especially when we're talking about such a new medium. How can you quantify the kind of stuff we're talking about here, such as people's natural biases and emotions? If you want that kind of proof, again, I don't think it exists. We haven't even been able to reliably show that video games are connected to violent behavior, much less something more subtle like what I'm talking about. But let me phrase this another way.

    Firstly, you're the one claiming certitude and "deductive logic," not I. No aspect of my arguments requires such proof, whereas you've been arguing as if the proof already exists. Secondly... we haven't "even" been able to link video game violence to violent behavior? The "even" suggests you think the link is likely? And what if it is? Surely violent behavior is worth trying to reduce just as much as sexism - perhaps moreso, right? Let's say they DO establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that video game violence leads to violent behavior. What then? What happens when you follow your arguments through to their natural conclusions? Jeepers, we could establish correlations between all SORTS of content and all SORTS of behavior we view as negative. You're arguing as if such proof already exists, and I'm arguing that not only does it not exist YET, but that if/when it DOES, that it shouldn't necessarily change how we weigh ARTISTIC EXPRESSION vs. the potential SOCIETAL IMPACT of art. Slippery slope? You're god damn right, and you haven't even bothered to think through the implications, and are citing video game violence just to make a point about general lack of evidence... shame on you!!

    Seriously. But also JK. But seriously.

    If I'm right and people ARE affected by participating in a male-dominated gamer culture hostile to women, and we can do things to make that culture less male-dominated (at a minimum), we are reducing that negative impact and influence.

    If I'm wrong, frankly, I don't see any negative outcome. There's really no risk involved here.

    Uh, given that you haven't suggested anything more specific than "encouraging game developers" to think differently, of COURSE there's minimal to zero risk. You haven't been specific at all with your "proposal," you've just employed a lot of flawed reasoning to support it instead. My objection hasn't been to the idea of suggesting to game developers that they consider tropes, objectification, workplace conditions, etc. more carefully, my objection has been to your justification for MAKING this suggestion in the first place. I think such a suggestion is compelling on an aesthetic level regarding games themselves, and on an ethical level regarding actual workplace issues. I think the argument quickly becomes preposterous and nearly offensive when you start including assertions that hinge on armchair psychology and causality, and that furthermore, even if such causality could be said to exist beyond a reasonable doubt, employing such data is STILL problematic.

    No, I'm not unnecessarily coupling them in the context of my argument. Look at the last sentence of the paragraph you quoted. I brought up all those things as verifiable negative aspects of the game industry that dissuade women from participation. Explain to me how that is not true, or how some of those items do not belong on the list of "things that make the game industry a place where women do not want to work".

    I'm saying your argument would be much stronger if you did not couple them. You can respond by saying "No, I'm not"... I suppose. It seems non-sequitir. Can I just reply with "Yes"?

    At any rate, you're coupling pragmatic civil rights issues with aspects of art and marketing. If you think that's such a fantastic idea, that's certainly your prerogative. I can only inform you that the coupling has been tried by second-wave feminism, resulted in a schism (the so-called "sex wars"), and has subsequently been decoupled by third-wave feminism. If you choose to ignore this, or side with second-wave feminists, that's your call. Regarding "explain to me how that is not true" - you've just asserted that sexual objectification in games is a "verifiable negative aspect" - but just a couple paragraphs above, you've indicated that "Almost anything involving social psychology on this scale is very hard to prove"

    So which is it? A "verifiable negative aspect," or "very hard to prove"?

    Do you not see a problem with this?

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