The copyright-strike against despacito isn't a very hotly debated topic. There's not much to talk about, right?
A guy called Taiga was fed up with Sotark's pp-mapping antics and copyright striked his map.
The community seems to unanimously agree: "Fuck the person who did this, how dare he do this? This is going too far, he's endangering the whole game. Over a simple feud with a mapper?"
And while the death threats are steadily filling Taiga's inbox and a thousand competent teenage reddit psychologists steadily make progress in figuring out Taiga's motives (spoiler: the only thing these idiots ever come up with is "for attention"), everyone is ignoring two things:
1) Taiga is completely in the right here, because Despacito was actually a severe copyright infringement.
2) This is true whether or not anyone copyright-strikes it, and the game is at risk whether or not someone gets hung up on pp-maps. .
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who is the villain, Taiga or Sotarks?
Picking sides is fun, I get it, but this is a stupid question and a dangerous distraction. The answer that few people think of but that is the correct one, is: Neither. Everything we do here pales in comparison to the economic damage that this game causes the music industry.
When you download a map, you also download the song. You get a copy of the song on your harddrive, an mp3 file. You can put that file in your Itunes library, you can share it, you can do whatever the hell you want with it - for free. Sounds shady? Hold on tight, it's only getting better.
Let's be very generous and assume that only 10% of the songs in osu are infringing on copyright and should rightfully be taken down. There are currently 8.3 billion ranked plays. Some of those are on several difficulties of the same song, and some maps have the same songs, but then there's also unranked maps and maps that people download but never play. So, how many songs did people download? For simplicity sake, let's assume 10 billion. Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. It's less than 80 songs per player, and active players often have more than 1000 songs on their harddrives.
10 000 000 000 songs, 10% of which are infringing (again, very generous). Say you SHOULD HAVE bought the infringing songs on Itunes for a price of $1.29...
I'll let you do the math, but let's just say that this is enough money to invite Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee to your private mansion to give you a lapdance while Despacito is playing in the background.
All of this has been going on for years, and it has nothing to do with either Sotarks or Taiga. Taiga might endanger the game by drawing attention to it, but more importantly: The game endangers itself by letting this madness continue for so long.
It's like a long time ago the game lit a fire in its own living room and still keeps it going to this day. Now someone threw a bit of fuel in it. Shouldn't we ask ourselves why the fire is there in the first place and why nobody seems to really care about putting it out for good?
this is a ranked map
Doesn't osu have a copyright policy?
Yes, but it's no better than "we'll look the other way until someone reports something". See if that holds up in a court of law.
This game has been setting itself up for a lawsuit of epic proportions and one day it might hit. Taiga or not. What can be done to prevent this?
The Featured artists were a good start, but sadly they never really caught on.
Maybe it would be wise to systematically remove every problematic map from the game, ranked or not. Possibly enlist the communities help, or even better - employ an algorithm that scans maps automatically and takes them down for further review if it detects a copyrighted song. After all, a game with fewer songs is better than no game.
As it stands, this game remains on the verge of utter legal destruction, and it's neither Taiga's nor Sotarks fault. It's the fault of years of continued sloppy copyright policy.
If osu gets shut down tomorrow, nobody can say that it didn't have it coming.
A guy called Taiga was fed up with Sotark's pp-mapping antics and copyright striked his map.
The community seems to unanimously agree: "Fuck the person who did this, how dare he do this? This is going too far, he's endangering the whole game. Over a simple feud with a mapper?"
And while the death threats are steadily filling Taiga's inbox and a thousand competent teenage reddit psychologists steadily make progress in figuring out Taiga's motives (spoiler: the only thing these idiots ever come up with is "for attention"), everyone is ignoring two things:
2) This is true whether or not anyone copyright-strikes it, and the game is at risk whether or not someone gets hung up on pp-maps.
who is the villain, Taiga or Sotarks?
Picking sides is fun, I get it, but this is a stupid question and a dangerous distraction. The answer that few people think of but that is the correct one, is: Neither. Everything we do here pales in comparison to the economic damage that this game causes the music industry.
When you download a map, you also download the song. You get a copy of the song on your harddrive, an mp3 file. You can put that file in your Itunes library, you can share it, you can do whatever the hell you want with it - for free. Sounds shady? Hold on tight, it's only getting better.
Let's be very generous and assume that only 10% of the songs in osu are infringing on copyright and should rightfully be taken down. There are currently 8.3 billion ranked plays. Some of those are on several difficulties of the same song, and some maps have the same songs, but then there's also unranked maps and maps that people download but never play. So, how many songs did people download? For simplicity sake, let's assume 10 billion. Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. It's less than 80 songs per player, and active players often have more than 1000 songs on their harddrives.
10 000 000 000 songs, 10% of which are infringing (again, very generous). Say you SHOULD HAVE bought the infringing songs on Itunes for a price of $1.29...
I'll let you do the math, but let's just say that this is enough money to invite Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee to your private mansion to give you a lapdance while Despacito is playing in the background.
All of this has been going on for years, and it has nothing to do with either Sotarks or Taiga. Taiga might endanger the game by drawing attention to it, but more importantly: The game endangers itself by letting this madness continue for so long.
It's like a long time ago the game lit a fire in its own living room and still keeps it going to this day. Now someone threw a bit of fuel in it. Shouldn't we ask ourselves why the fire is there in the first place and why nobody seems to really care about putting it out for good?
this is a ranked map
Doesn't osu have a copyright policy?
Yes, but it's no better than "we'll look the other way until someone reports something". See if that holds up in a court of law.
This game has been setting itself up for a lawsuit of epic proportions and one day it might hit. Taiga or not. What can be done to prevent this?
The Featured artists were a good start, but sadly they never really caught on.
Maybe it would be wise to systematically remove every problematic map from the game, ranked or not. Possibly enlist the communities help, or even better - employ an algorithm that scans maps automatically and takes them down for further review if it detects a copyrighted song. After all, a game with fewer songs is better than no game.
As it stands, this game remains on the verge of utter legal destruction, and it's neither Taiga's nor Sotarks fault. It's the fault of years of continued sloppy copyright policy.
If osu gets shut down tomorrow, nobody can say that it didn't have it coming.