1. He’s going to court without a lawyer, which is always always always a bad idea (I wish that weren’t the case but it is a fact);
2. He’s tried to claim he doesn’t own or operate the business in question;
3. His defenses are spaghetti thrown at the wall:

His defenses include fair use, invalid copyrights, a lack of standing, fraudulent inducement, an arbitration clause, failure to state a claim, and unjust enrichment.

Many of these (in fact, all but the arbitration clause; that’s probably from their TOS but won’t save him) are SovCit arguments and simply do not apply. They’re going to be dismantled in seconds in court, and I know that with at best a slightly-better-than-layperson understanding of the law. This guy is going to get thoroughly Bowser’d.

As reported by Torrent Freak, Ryan Daly, the alleged owner of modding company Modded Hardware, has denied any wrongdoing in court — even that he owns and operates the business at all.

Daly mostly responded to the lawsuit’s claims by saying “denied” and otherwise claimed he lacked “sufficient information to either admit or deny the allegations.” His defenses include fair use, invalid copyrights, a lack of standing, fraudulent inducement, an arbitration clause, failure to state a claim, and unjust enrichment.

This guy sounds halfway to SovCit and entirely fucked.

I see a “Bibi defEnder of Israel” sign in that second screenshot you posted. Doesn’t sound like those guys are too happy about Bibi or the war.

How about unless you know every Israeli, you don’t just paint them all with the same brush? The people are not the government, and Israeli protesters are being suppressed with extreme violence: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israeli-police-crack-down-on-protesters-with-violence-false-arrests-and-surveillance/00000190-3a6a-dea6-add5-faea16460000

This shit needs to end, Bibi is going to start World War Fucking Three at this rate, but do not for a second believe that the Israeli population is united behind him. They’re not, no matter what the poll numbers Bibi approves for publication might say.

No. Israeli is a nationality. Nazi is a political ideology.

They’re Zionazis.

Check out some trailers for Falling Frontier, it looks like it has a lot of potential at least.

Also, Star Sector: https://fractalsoftworks.com

Doesn’t matter where they’re from, or what language they speak, or even particularly what the laws are in your country: The far right are criminals, every single fucking one of them.

Edit: bloody hell, I hadn’t looked into Brave that deeply yet, fuck Brendan Eich and fuck Peter Thiel.

Jesus. A day without bad news from Mozilla would be nice. I am beginning to feel a distinct need to switch browsers. and Brave is currently looking like the best balance between compatibility and privacy. I’ve only been resistant to Brave because it’s based on Chromium and I want to support non-Chrome browser engines, but the Firefox forks I’ve tried like Waterfox and Pale Moon just aren’t there yet in terms of usability for me (primarily, wide protocol support for web video playback).

Anyone got any better suggestions, by any chance?

Like the custom endocrine systems of combat sleeves in Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon edit: I think I was thinking of Iain M Banks’ “Culture” series actually, but both are worth a read! Need to be strong or fast? Just give yourself a little squirt of adrenaline! Time for slow heart rate and low energy use? Slow-release a skoche of acetylcholine.

You make a good point about subscriptions. The repo when you stop paying would be pretty grim.

Accurate. In order for this to stop the punishment needs to be more than the cost of doing business. Thankfully, Valve seem to be hell bent on doing right by their customers, in most cases at least (just to leave room for scandals I haven’t heard about or forgot 😅)

If you think that an arbitration company isn’t going to end up sympathetic to the people signing their cheques after some amount of time in operation, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Even if the loser pays (and that’s not a guarantee, some companies foot the bill regardless to make it seem like the better option to the consumer), it’s still the company contracting the arbitrators and the consumer doesn’t get a look in on that, so future business is absolutely an incentive to put the thumb on the scale. “After all, both parties agreed to be bound and waive their right to trial, so what are consumers going to do?” is the logic. Most will drop it after losing arbitration, and there are savings on court costs there too.

I don’t assume arbitration wraps up in any arbitrary amount of time (🥁). I say it’s quicker than litigation because it is, every single time. Because it is quicker it is also cheaper, every single time. Small claims court is different again, and not at question here, just to head that off at the pass.

You however do assume a lot like my location and the location of the suit I brought though, based on my vernacular, and I’d recommend against that. “Mate’s rates” could put me in the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or even some places in South Africa and other former colonies. None of those would be accurate.

If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.

Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.

Hey hey, you’re an honorary American now! Your flag and genocide kit are in the mail (don’t worry, we’re pretty sure we got the right address from that darkweb database).

But for real there’s not much you can do but keep an eye on it. If Europe has similar credit agencies to the ones in the US, then freeze your credit and keep it frozen until you need to apply for more (new card, car, house, etc).

Use a password manager so if an account gets compromised they can’t get into anything else.

And, as advised, watch for unusual activity (but forever, not just a few months, that’s just a false sense of security).

This should keep you largely safe. My data has been leaked in dozens of breaches, but I do the above, and while I’ve had two instances of card fraud, I don’t see hard enquiries into my credit that I didn’t make even after 6+ years.

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https://rightsafrica.com/2024/03/30/what-does-senegals-new-president-have-in-store-for-lgbtq-people/

He’s not going to turn Senegal into a liberal paradise; his party and policies sound to be more of the same homophobia. But it seems like he will actually try to end the corruption and put the country on the track to independence rather than looting it like Sall. Secularity is a cornerstone of the party, which is an important first step. Here’s hoping Senegal is on its way up!

Your taste in games is good, friend! As long as you have fun with what you play, how could it be otherwise?

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For what?

I think you don’t understand the difference between fundamental rights and regular old rights. A right does not have to be fundamental to be a right.

And, if copyright law were about encouraging creation, it would not restrict the use of other peoples’ work.

Would you do me a favour? Read back over this thread until you realise you just argued creation is “encouraged” by a category of law which only restricts the use of other peoples’ work, including modifying it to create derivative works, and has been used as a club against creation to boot. Consider, how does Nintendo kill Smash tourneys? How many YouTube videos have been wrongly DMCA’d?

That’s crazy! At my job, I just help our users. I don’t have to build (and then maintain) infrastructure with them.