Brainlord’s Petition to Change the EULA

[invision]

no one is forcing you to agree. if you dont like the EULA then you do not have to accept it.

Edited March 12, 2018 by invision

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

15 minutes ago, Gorman said:

I don't agree with much of what you (the OP) is saying, but have you emailed that open letter to T2? Or are you just having a rant on this forum and enjoying some interaction with forum members. Because if you are just posting that on this forum only and then hoping a T2 lawyer is going to reply on this thread, then I don't know what to tell you.

Well, a little of "A" a little of "B"

Mostly I guess this was a way to say "goodbye" to you guys with good reason.

I fully believe TT is aware of everything that happens here, even if they do ignore us, the community is what they bought. Anything less would be incompetence. Or reading that EULA maybe it is incompetence. 

I think they may be more attentive when #KSP=Spyware starts showing up on twitter. Which, unless I hear a response will be Friday.

 

12 minutes ago, invision said:

no one is forcing you to agree. if you dont like the EULA then you do not have to accept it.

A third option is a petition for change.

 

Edited March 12, 2018 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Gorman]

Quote

I think they may be more attentive when #KSP=Spyware starts showing up on twitter. Which, unless I hear a response will be Friday.

Before you do something like that, I would talk to a lawyer friend if I were you, or else you could be on the receiving end of a defamation lawsuit.

[invision]

2 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Well, a little of "A" a little of "B"

Mostly I guess this was a way to say "goodbye" to you guys with good reason.

I fully believe TT is aware of everything that happens here, even if they do ignore us, the community is what they bought. Anything less would be incompetence. Or reading that EULA maybe it is incompetence. 

I think they may be more attentive when #KSP=Spyware starts showing up on twitter. Which, unless I hear a response will be Friday.

 

A third option is a petition for change.

 

a petition wont change anything tho, the only way to get your voice heard is by simply not buying anything related to the game.

this is the way i look at it. KSP is a single player game that has gone far past its expiration date, yet it still gets updates. if take-two kills the game with ELUA and stupidity i already got my 40.00 out of the game and move on. yall should do the same as fighting with them will get you no where.

[Clockwork13]

I'll sign it but just know that the chance of Take Two listening here is precisely zero. The 'new' EULA is just the one the use for all of their games, and I highly doubt they'd make an exception for KSP. Hell, they probably aren't even aware of the drama going on here right now.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

1 minute ago, Gorman said:

Before you do something like that, I would talk to a lawyer friend if I were you, or else you could be on the receiving end of a defamation lawsuit.

I have not defamed anyone, I have stated fact and personal opinion. (I am not responsible for what other people say on twitter)

Attention TTI: If you do wish to sue me,  you will have to do so in the State of Florida (as I have not accepted your agreement to accept arbitration in New York), please note it will be a Pro Se defense, and I am quite familiar with the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, especially those concerning discovery.

[The Aziz]

5 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

 Or at least I'm not signing.

Well, you probably have seen a popup about new terms of use, few days ago, here on the forums, and also on wiki. If you're still using this forum, then you have already accepted new rules. Because it stated clearly, paraphrasing here: "if you're not accepting it, you must stop using the software from this moment".

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Just now, The Aziz said:

Well, you probably have seen a popup about new terms of use, few days ago, here on the forums, and also on wiki. If you're still using this forum, then you have already accepted new rules. Because it stated clearly, paraphrasing here: "if you're not accepting it, you must stop using the software from this moment".

LOL I disagree.

They'll have to get a judge to tell me that they get to turn a game I already bought into spyware, and then tell me not to play it while they keep my money. 

[KSK]

21 minutes ago, invision said:

no one is forcing you to agree. if you dont like the EULA then you do not have to accept it.

Can't speak for the Brainlord but I don't accept it. To that end, I have deleted KSP from my hard drive (as required by the EULA) and have no intention of reinstalling it or purchasing the expansion. If the EULA changes, I may reconsider but until then I'm done.

Unfortunately, I had to to agree to the new privacy policy and forum T&Cs, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here. The only reason I am here is so that I can finish up a long-running project and not have to move it elsewhere, thereby inconveniencing the good people that have been kind enough to support me  - some of them for many years. Otherwise, I'd have been asking around for contact details (so that I could continue to support a number of other threads without being able to post on them directly), shortly before blowing this pop stand for good. As it is, once that project is done, I doubt I'll be hanging around here much or posting any new content.

[Gorman]

11 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

I have not defamed anyone, I have stated fact and personal opinion. (I am not responsible for what other people say on twitter)

Attention TTI: If you do wish to sue me,  you will have to do so in the State of Florida (as I have not accepted your agreement to accept arbitration in New York), please note it will be a Pro Se defense, and I am quite familiar with the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, especially those concerning discovery.

If you do what you are threatening to do, i.e. to quote your own words:

"I think they may be more attentive when #KSP=Spyware starts showing up on twitter. Which, unless I hear a response will be Friday",

then you will be defaming them. A defamation is any public statement you make which is false and which causes damages to a party. You claim that KSP in its current state is spyware is patently false, as has been proven by others in a separate thread. Also by taking your views to a larger forum, i.e. twitter, then you have the potential of turning away potential consumers who have not been privy to all the conversations that have been happening here.

[linuxgurugamer]

19 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

have not defamed anyone, I have stated fact and personal opinion. (I am not responsible for what other people say on twitter

Not yet, but if you start that Twitter hashtag thing, you will be.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

5 hours ago, Gorman said:

If you do what you are threatening to do, i.e. to quote your own words:

"I think they may be more attentive when #KSP=Spyware starts showing up on twitter. Which, unless I hear a response will be Friday",

then you will be defaming them. A defamation is any public statement you make which is false and which causes damages to a party. You claim that KSP in its current state is spyware is patently false, as has been proven by others in a separate thread. Also by taking your views to a larger forum, i.e. twitter, then you have the potential of turning away potential consumers who have not been privy to all the conversations that have been happening here.

I disagree. (that's becoming a recurring theme)

I have said that I believe that their refusal to address these legitimate concerns would be a tacit admission that this is spyware. Perhaps #KSP=Spyware? is more accurate. By why go there? Why shouldn't they just confirm for us that this is NOT spyware? Why is this on me on not on them?

 

[snip]

Edited March 13, 2018 by Vanamonde

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Here guys I'll put it this way:
I didn't used to be a privacy advocate, I didn't used to be a social justice warrior.

But  then they tried this with KSP.

[snip]

Edited March 13, 2018 by Vanamonde

[linuxgurugamer]

[snip]

Or maybe an opinion, or a statement of fact.  Again, you are putting words in everyone else's mouth just to fit your theories.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Vanamonde

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Back on topic: we now have 25 users on the Petition! 

[Starman4308]

6 hours ago, KSK said:

Leaving the arguments about spyware to one side, I have serious objections to this paragraph:

“…the information we collect may include personal information such as your first and/or last name, e-mail address, phone number, photo, mailing address, geolocation, or payment information. In addition, we may collect your age, gender, date of birth, zip code, hardware configuration, console ID, software products played, survey data, purchases, IP address and the systems you have played on. We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.“

1. I can see a rationale for collecting your name, address and payment information, since you'll need to hand those over in any case to buy KSP or the expansion. I could quibble about mailing address vs billing address but that's getting picky, since for most people, I imagine they're one and the same. I can see a rationale for collecting hardware configuration and console ID. The first provides them with useful information that could actually benefit the player base (hey we know that 99.9% of our players are playing KSP on a machine that can handle x, y and z graphical features - why don't we add those to the next expansion?). The second sounds like it might be useful in combating piracy. Might - I don't have a console so don't know how that works.
2. Software products played, survey data, purchases (of what?), photo (of what? My bare bottom?  My raised middle finger?), geolocation - I see no KSP related reason for collecting those. I'm sure that Take Two would love the extra data for marketing purposes but that's not an adequate reason.
3. Age - possibly relevant, although a basic 'are you old enough to play KSP based on its rating' check, would be preferable. Whether I'm 28 or 68 is frankly none of Take Two's business. Likewise gender - I can see some positive reasons for collecting that but at the same time - it's really none of Take Two's business.

But in any case: "We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.“

No. No you may not. That's just basic stuff. Aggregating data is acceptable under some circumstances. But a 'privacy policy' that allows for combining that kind of information - and then sharing it with third parties is... well it's a policy. It certainly isn't any sort of privacy policy. 

Now, given the varied privacy legislation in different countries, it's debatable how much of this over-reaching piece of mulch would actually stand up in court. But, at the end of the day, I believe the onus should be on Take Two to use an EULA (or heck, even to have more than one EULA tailored to different jurisdictions) that is compliant with the relevant law, rather than using a ridiculously over-reaching agreement and leaving it up to their customers to either trust them (hah!) or challenge them on it, in court or otherwise.

Squad were a small company, with limited resources. Going with a boilerplate EULA was excusable if not ideal. Take Two do not have that excuse. 

1) While Take Two may be a big company, KSP is a small IP for them. Why should they bother making a separate EULA to soothe the feathers of a few players for a small, small fraction of their customer base?

2) Most of those data items listed (such as geolocation) are a catch-all for things like surveys or prizes. It is not a declaration of intent to collect them, but rather notice that it might be collected as a part of KSP-related activities... and is really mostly just boilerplate from their other IPs.

Do not confused "we may collect" with "we will collect".

3) The third-parties thing may be as benign as "we use this third-party company to secure our data rather than hire our own data-security experts".

4) Historical precedent suggests EULAs are intentionally written to be very broad in scope, to protect the company rather than to declare what they will do. "May collect", not "will collect".

 

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Well the simple answer to that is for Take Two to not put out a wall of legalese that's open to misinterpretation and doubt and then stay resolutely silent when people get concerned about it. Instead, they could pull their collective thumbs out and craft a reasonable agreement that's more suitable to a game like KSP which has grown up as an early-access game with a heavy emphasis on community involvement. But instead they throw their standard 'we reserve the rights to own everything and have total control' boilerplate at us.

Or in other words - don't pull a dork move, refuse to explain said dork move  and then act surprised when people call you on it, reasonably or unreasonably.

And yeah - about explaining themselves. I'm curious why you think that Take Two would conflict themselves by providing clarification on their own damned agreement. Because I'm really not seeing how that works. If you are right (which is possible I suppose), then you end up with some ridiculous situations:

The wall of legalese is a legal document, written by lawyers for lawyers. To be precise in their communications with other lawyers, they may utilize jargon or phrases that mean something very specific in legalese and something different in common parlance.

Furthermore, it's not a negotiated contract. Negotiated contracts between parties of roughly equal standing can involve some give, some take, and a bit of trust. A video game EULA? If they slip and make a mistake, they literally cannot afford to send lawyers to every single customer or even really a small fraction thereof, and in reverse, they cannot afford to be sued by more than a tiny fraction of their customers. $40/copy does not stretch all that far. This is very dissimilar to even a tenant-landlord contract where thousands of dollars wind up transferred, nevermind a major business contract where millions or more may be on the line for a single transaction.

Before spreading panic and fear, please at least get an actual lawyer to read through the document. You have no idea whether or not "collect this data" can even legally imply anything more than storing the data you send to them for things like transactions, surveys, etc. While I am still not a lawyer, I could easily see a judge saying "it would not be reasonable for a document of this scope to permit data harvesting from anything outside the video game of interest, you now owe everybody whose rights you infringed $1000. And no, I don't care that each copy you sold was only $40, pay up for millions of counts of identity theft".

EDIT: To expand on that, I think it incredibly unlikely Take Two would court the slightest risk of that happening with some sort of spyware. Even if their lawyers say "99% chance that $1000-per-customer lawsuit won't succeed", that's still a 1% chance of losing $1000 per customer, for an expected value of -$10/customer. I find it very unlikely they could sell your data for an average of $10/customer. Even in the limit of extremely unethical corporate policies, it's still a foolish business decision.

Your only evidence for this is a couple paragraphs' worth of legal document, with no historical precedent and no other evidence to suggest they are going to nefariously collect and sell your data.

Edited March 12, 2018 by Starman4308

[Kernel Kraken]

Given the backlash that Take Two is taking, (and given their response to other community protests) the more you struggle, the more they ignore you. But if they DO see this, in signing this petition like John Hancock.

 

TheMadKraken2297

 

 

 

[Dfthu]

I agree with Starman completely here. I don't get why people are getting all crazy over this and why they're the leaving the game. Why would they only screw us over, a small community and not there biggest IPs? If people are really that paranoid I don't know what to say.

[Kernel Kraken]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

 

Speaking personally, with these new terms and conditions, I feel that  Take Two are not remotely invested in the community and just expect us to be a good little flock of geese that take whatever we're given with gratitude and keep laying those golden eggs of free KSP content without complaining. 

 

Even more so they're not invested in the community, they just Control- C Control- V'd their other EULAs. I know I'm just feeding the flame, but from what I understand about computers,  you cannot get our info from a game which is not connected to the internet without a software bug. Might just be me but I feel like that's the definition of spyware- or a Trojan horse. Hey look, here's a game about explosions and happy green guys! (Company is allowed to issue an update in which spyware- is included).

[Starman4308]

4 minutes ago, Dfthu said:

I agree with Starman completely here. I don't get why people are getting all crazy over this and why they're the leaving the game. Why would they only screw us over, a small community and not there biggest IPs? If people are really that paranoid I don't know what to say.

Seriously. Why would they screw over one of the most tech-savvy, well-educated, most-likely-to-catch-them-out, and also smallest of their player bases?

Just now, TheMadKraken2297 said:

Even more so they're not invested in the community, they just Control- C Control- V'd their other EULAs. I know I'm just feeding the flame, but from what I understand about computers,  you cannot get our info from a game which is not connected to the internet without a software bug. Might just be me but I feel like that's the definition of spyware- or a Trojan horse. Hey look, here's a game about explosions and happy green guys! (Company is allowed to issue an update in which spyware- is included).

Get a lawyer before making the claim that the EULA lets them harvest data outside of the technical data they harvest (operating system, if it's modded, monitor resolution, and other non-identifiable bits of information that may actually be relevant to developing the game).

I've had it with this assertion with no expert opinion on the EULA supposedly letting them harvest data. You have no idea about the legal context or jargon involved, you have no idea if the "we may collect data..." clause legally entitles them to harvest data outside of strict technical information available within KSP itself.

I dunno about you, but I'm not in the habit of plugging my Social Security number, bank password, address, mother's maiden name in as the names of my craft files. How would they obtain such information without very blatant, easily-caught-by-antivirus spyware and suffering from a gigantic PR backlash at a bare minimum, quite probably followed up by lawsuits?

[KamenRiderzero1]

This is the same complaining I’ve seen all over the the internet when it comes to players dealing with the publishers.

 

If you want to know why the EULA is so wide reaching and especially towards modding... remember who you’re dealing with and then these two words:

 

Hot Coffee....

[Kernel Kraken]

16 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

Seriously. Why would they screw over one of the most tech-savvy, well-educated, most-likely-to-catch-them-out, and also smallest of their player bases?

Get a lawyer before making the claim that the EULA lets them harvest data outside of the technical data they harvest (operating system, if it's modded, monitor resolution, and other non-identifiable bits of information that may actually be relevant to developing the game).

I've had it with this assertion with no expert opinion on the EULA supposedly letting them harvest data. You have no idea about the legal context or jargon involved, you have no idea if the "we may collect data..." clause legally entitles them to harvest data outside of strict technical information available within KSP itself.

I dunno about you, but I'm not in the habit of plugging my Social Security number, bank password, address, mother's maiden name in as the names of my craft files. How would they obtain such information without very blatant, easily-caught-by-antivirus spyware and suffering from a gigantic PR backlash at a bare minimum, quite probably followed up by lawsuits?

We're not saying that that WILL, we are saying that the EULA is so broad to the point that it dosen't even specify where they're collecting the info from. Sure I might not be putting my bank account information in my Module Manager but given the EULA they're allowed to collect our info from anywhere, not just our KSP files.

Also: have you even read the EULA? If not I'd suggest to stop suggesting a lawyer. You don't need a lawyer when it's so blantantly stated. Any common idjit can understand it.

Edited March 13, 2018 by TheMadKraken2297

[Starman4308]

Just now, TheMadKraken2297 said:

We're not saying that that WILL, we are saying that the EULA is so broad to the point that it dosen't even specify where they're collecting the info from. Sure I might not be putting my bank account information in my Module Manager but given the EULA they're allowed to collect our info from anywhere, not just our KSP files.

Get a lawyer and ask him exactly what that bit of legalese entails. Ask him if it would be legally enforceable for external data harvesting. Ask him if it's being used as some sort of technical legal jargon. Ask him if laws against things like identity theft would supercede that clause of the contract if Take Two actually installed spyware.

Otherwise, I'm going to continue to regard this argument as fundamentally absurd.

[Kernel Kraken]

1 minute ago, Starman4308 said:

Get a lawyer and ask him exactly what that bit of legalese entails. Ask him if it would be legally enforceable for external data harvesting. Ask him if it's being used as some sort of technical legal jargon. Ask him if laws against things like identity theft would supercede that clause of the contract if Take Two actually installed spyware.

Otherwise, I'm going to continue to regard this argument as fundamentally absurd.

If you don't like out arguments, you don't have to argue back. Mabye we want to believe what we want to believe. If we think it means this but you think it means that, WHATEVER! If you don't want to sign/ like the petition than just get out of the discussion.

[Starman4308]

Just now, TheMadKraken2297 said:

If you don't like out arguments, you don't have to argue back. Mabye we want to believe what we want to believe. If we think it means this but you think it means that, WHATEVER! If you don't want to sign/ like the petition than just get out of the discussion.

Then you are continuing to engage in "social media justice" AKA mob justice.

You have extremely tenuous evidence (layman's interpretation of a legal document), for which you are crusading against Take Two. It's a witch hunt that goes against fundamental principles of modern democracy and rule of law.

Innocent until proven guilty. Not "guilty because I am reading this legal document with the scariest possible interpretation without any of the years of legal training that actually goes into interpreting legal documents".

Until you come up with something concrete, I will continue to regard this as being an uninformed, unethical panic, using slander to attempt to hurt Take Two's sales.