cleantowels

Looks like they are starting back up tomorrow at 10AM EST/ 9AM CST / 7AM PST.

I'm glad to see that some people (read: Issa, Polis, Lofgren and Chaffetz) understand and are actually bringing to light the potential worst case scenario situations where the bill can and most likely will be abused. If you accomodate for these possible situations and then plan out accordingly you would plug the massive amount of holes this bill has it in that has everyone up in arms about. All the way from requiring court orders and arbiters for the take-down notices, impact on business owners and end-users all the way to immunity for the proper parties involved; you know, the stuff that this bill would directly affect.

Every single argument I heard tonight AGAINST the amendments to the bill that would fix it, seem to be based off of "oh well this blah blah already kind of does this if you twist the words around" or "well I just don't think that makes any sense because I don't understand it" sort of mentality. That or objecting to the amendments simply because it would force the entity bringing about the claim to go through the court system or to pay their own costs to enforce a takedown notice. Most of the big backers of this bill are large content providers that would probably like nothing more than to screw the little guy and enforce arbitrary enforcement for content they may or may not own! Hell that was an argument even brought up and the amendment to prevent that was killed!

I only just caught the last part of the debate from around 5p CST til just now so I'm not sure what else was covered, but if this last part was any indication.

The fact that a claimer can issue a notice and said site can be killed off and effectively sealed away without any sort of review of the notice before hand is essentially the equivalent of the NDAA's provision of Indefinite detention of american citizens for websites. It is utterly distigusting.

Lofgren seems to have her shit together. Go her, seems to be one of the few people with some common sense.

Chaffetz, Polis, Lofgren and Issa seem to be the only ones making strong and legitimate arguments to allow for equivalent due process for take down notices

Goodlatte's point about getting a court order 'burdensome' is fucking asinine and lazy. The court order prevents duechebags from abusing the system. These companies have shitloads more money than 80% of the damn population. Boohoo you have to spend your own money for enforcing and protecting your own copyright and IP

Hi Rob, JAK, Jeff and Rory! Congratulations on the launch of the new Homeworld game! Glad to see you all back in the saddle.

I'm Nova from Relicnews / Homeworld Discord server. Been a LONG time fan of the Homeworld universe since 1999 when I was easily more than half my age now. Homeworld played a massively huge part in me growing up during my formative years and left a lasting impression me to this day. The ideas of tremendous loss, finding your lost home, revenge, and reclaiming your own forgotten history along this magnificent journey really blew my mind. I cannot thank you enough for that as it is rare that a video game's story, music, art direction, hell the entire experience that Homeworld has can deliver such an emotional impact. To me that speaks high volumes to the work you all put in.

My first question has a bit of a lead in...

With Deserts of Kharak being a prequel to Homeworld 1, Cataclysm and Homeworld 2, obviously there were bound to be some backstory differences and conflicts that arose in developing the world that is Kharak prior to the discovery of the Guidestone and the Khar-Toba. As us folks at Relicnews can attest to over the many discussions that were had; aspects of the history were either vaguely covered or just not mentioned at all in the backstories in HW1/HWC/HW2 resulting in questions for many things.

1. What is BBI and/or Gearbox's approach when it comes to possible retcons/changing the already established lore/backstory of previous games with Deserts of Kharak and any potential future Homeworld games? (ie: the multitude of crashed ships on Kharak in DoK, or the hyperspace core Far-Jumper change in HW2)

2. How is the backstory and lore of Homeworld created? Is there a person or group that are responsible for creating the history of the Homeworld Universe that we know, or is it more of a collaborative effort between everyone during development of the game?

3. How easy/difficult has it been working with Unity for the development of Deserts of Kharak compared to other Homeworld games?

4. How has the relationship with Gearbox been when it comes to your usage of the Homeworld license. Did they basically give you free reign to do whatever?

Oh And Rob, I still am keeping it safe for you. http://i.imgur.com/6bfeCCM.jpg

(FYI that is the original hand drawn ink/pen sketch from Rob himself.)

Polis: '... biggest competitive advantage to those who have the most lawyers.."

A thousands times to why this is huge. The need for a legal check against the take-downs would be a big boost to keeping frivolous notices out of the court system. A massive control factor to prevent the big guys from trying to screw over the small people and user generated content sites exactly like reddit