• 3 Posts
  • 403 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • Oh boy, let’s take this piece by piece…

    DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

    First: let’s talk about the difference between copyright, patents, and trademark

    A patent protects a method of doing something - like a novel piece of code, or a newly invented drug formula - from being duplicated and used or sold without your consent.

    Copyright protects creative works - like art, books, and computer software - from being mimiced. It literally deals with the rights to copy something

    Trademark protects brands - like a logo or company name - from being used by other people for profit. It usually deals with marketplace confusion, as when someone creates a competing product with a similar logo to try to benefit from the logo’s recognition and popularity.

    So, with that said, what are YOU dealing with?

    Well, since you’re not selling software or utilizing anything from the WatchDogs game universe, you’re pretty much free and clear on both patent and copyright.

    What about trademark?

    Well, on the one hand, you are not competing with Ubisoft in any way, nor are you attempting to represent yourself as related to WatchDogs. So, by the letter of the law (in the US), they don’t have a valid complaint.

    However, trademark under US law has this funny feature where an entity that holds a trademark is required to vigorously defend it when they become aware of potential infringement. This is to prevent the selective application of trademark. That is, if I know John is using my trademark and I don’t go after him, then Steve uses my trademark too, I can’t suddenly claim to have an interest in defending it when I didn’t care before. Steve can point at the fact that I didn’t go after John and say “you already gave up your trademark by failing to enforce it”.

    So how does this impact you? Well, unfortunately, even if you are technically allowed to use “dedsec” under US law, if Ubisoft has a trademark on the term “dedsec” specifically, AND if someone at Ubisoft became aware of your use of their trademark, they would likely come after you for trademark infringement just to cover their ass. You might even win in court, but it would cost a whole lot of money that you would likely never be able to recover.

    The good news is that the very first step in a trademark dispute is a cease and desist letter. They’ll demand you stop using their trademark. At that point you can either comply, refuse, or offer to settle the matter by selling them the domain.

    What you do with this information is up to you.



  • I’m an effort to get you an answer that isn’t dismissive:

    1. Youth indoctrination, social conformity, and cultural isolation. If your parents, friends, and most of your community tells you something is true, you are unlikely to challenge it for a variety of reasons including trust (most of what they’ve taught you works for your daily life), tribal identity, etc

    2. People naturally fear death, and one coping strategy for the existential fear of death is to convince yourself that the death of your body is not the end of your existence. Science does not provide a pathway to this coping strategy so people will accept or create belief systems that quell that fear, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Relieving the pressure of that fear is a strong motivator.

    3. Release of responsibility. When there is no higher power to dictate moral absolutes, we are left feeling responsible for the complex decisions around what is or isn’t the appropriate course of action. And that shit is complicated and often anxiety inducing. Many people find comfort in offloading that work to a third party.







  • Hmmm. I want to push back on this a bit…

    We can all recognize deeply, egregiously unhealthy parasocial relationships, so I’m not going to bother talking about those.

    But there are plenty of what I would call parasocial relationships the track back quite a long time in human history that I think are completely normal.

    Take, for example, the famous athlete. If you find a particular athlete to be your favorite, and you watch their interviews whenever they’re available, and you get excited when they get paid a bunch of money in a trade, that’s a low-key parasocial relationship. Maybe you even send them regular fan mail, cheering them on when they do well or consoling them when they do poorly. You are invested in their life without reciprocity, and find joy and value in simply observing their existence.

    There are lots of actors and actress that we love to love, where many people have formed a parasocial relationship: Tom Hanks and Keanu Reeves are two that come to mind.

    These are situations that go beyond “yeah I’m a fan” and into feeling some level of investment in their success. It doesn’t have to be extreme.

    I think, as with many things, there are healthy ways to engage in parasocial relationships in moderation. It becomes a problem when it becomes detrimental to your daily life, especially if it begins to replace other forms of human interaction. If it’s just a thing you enjoy on top of other, more typical relationships, them IMO there’s nothing wrong with that.