I really liked Panic's products, but I really did not like their approach to dealing with a person they didn't like playing their video game (they used the copyright system to take down videos of a streamer playing their game, which is in my eyes a deep abuse of the copyright system).
I don't care for the person they targeted, but I care for the casual abuse of a system that is already hurting content creators.
Edit: In fairness, clicking through to the Firewatch site does say "in cooperation with Panic," so it's not entirely a Panic product, but there's certainly a degree of involvement. I'm seeing other comments [1] placing those actions on the game studio, so I suppose my first impression was incorrect.
Campo Santo is the developer and Panic is the publisher.
Obviously we can't know Panic's involvement in the debacle, but the Campo Santo founder did take ownership of the decision by announcing it on his personal Twitter account. In other words, it wasn't a faceless Campo Santo or Panic blog post.
At which point I think it's kinda unfair to poison the comment section on such an unrelated development. This is currently the top-voted thread on a post announcing a code editor. Meanwhile, Vanaman is a creative writer for Valve.
How many more times will HN discussion around this editor have to be side-tracked by Vanaman's tweets until HN considers Panic atoned?
I don't give a damn about the person in that incident. I do give a damn about blatant political abuse of the law, particularly by people in our industry who have no excuse for not knowing better.
> poison the comment section on such an unrelated development.
You don't think ethics of the company's leadership are relevant, in situations involving products that they create or hold copyright or exclusive distribution rights to? Bringing it up is not just distaste for Sasser's politics, but a view into what may happen to users or reviewers of products sold by them. You may decide the risk is extremely low (it probably is) or that you don't care, but it doesn't seem entirely irrelevant to me.
I wonder if in that particular case the demand came from Panic of from the game studio (Campo Santo) they were collaborating with. It's even worse since they explicitly allowed anybody to stream and upload videos using the game and then renegged on the agreement.
Actually.. it's bullshit. If playing a game online infringes the game maker's copyrights, then playing a guitar online infringes the guitar maker's copyrights.
Generally not, at least if it is produced in any quantity. Typically, they are protected by design patents and industrial design rights.
As an example, in Canada, if you produced less than 50 of an item like a guitar, you could copyright it. Basically this is intended to cover an artist making sculpture. If you are making it for utilitarian purposes to be widely distributed, you use the other methods in the law for protecting your designs.
I don't care for the person they targeted, but I care for the casual abuse of a system that is already hurting content creators.