Quoting: Lachu

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: LachuI do not known English well, so I do not understood everything. As I understood, they emulator allows to play games outside authorized (by Nintendo!) hardware. But, I do not seen anything related to piracy. They mention users use they emulator to piracy, but how? By playing games on PC? Perhaps, Nintendo should not have rights to restrict this. I only reminder, that British government, many years ago, discovered they cannot opens document created in old Office Suite. They decided to switch to OpenOffice, so MS decided to "standardize" (pheff) OOXML. What about case, when you cannot longer play "your" games, because your hardware were broken and cannot buy new?

Parts in the DMCA prohibits sale, distribution and manufacturing of software or hardware that circumvents digital protections. So the issue here is that the emulator circumvented Nintendo's DRM that they use to sell licenses for to for companies to allow them to release software for the platform. And this circumventium is more than "ignore to check", it involves using the encryption keys built into the Switch itself.

Ok, so problem was not a way to play games on PC, but release games on Nintendo hardware, without asking Nintendo for it. It is battle with moders. Even MS get money from modding XBox (Linux media player was very popular in early days of XBox).

Basically yes, plus that even if the user had to extract the keys from their local Switch there was nothing stopping people from sharing that key or from any one extracting their key and then reselling the Switch but keep using the extracted key. I don't know for sure but it is also possible that the emulation allows for game files to be distributed (aka piracy) freely while the Switch only allows bought copies to be played.

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Quoting: LachuI do not known English well, so I do not understood everything. As I understood, they emulator allows to play games outside authorized (by Nintendo!) hardware. But, I do not seen anything related to piracy. They mention users use they emulator to piracy, but how? By playing games on PC? Perhaps, Nintendo should not have rights to restrict this. I only reminder, that British government, many years ago, discovered they cannot opens document created in old Office Suite. They decided to switch to OpenOffice, so MS decided to "standardize" (pheff) OOXML. What about case, when you cannot longer play "your" games, because your hardware were broken and cannot buy new?

Parts in the DMCA prohibits sale, distribution and manufacturing of software or hardware that circumvents digital protections. So the issue here is that the emulator circumvented Nintendo's DRM that they use to sell licenses for to for companies to allow them to release software for the platform. And this circumventium is more than "ignore to check", it involves using the encryption keys built into the Switch itself.

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Quoting: KROM

Quoting: F.UltraHow would a sales ban protect the industry? I've always seen the strict age thing in Germany being connected with your long history of conservative Christians in the politics.

That's a quite difficult for me to explain, more so in English.
It's not about sales bans, but age verification in itself. There are so many areas where age verification isn't required at all, like e.g. YouTube, TikTok, X, you name it, but when it comes to explicit things, our institutions are very serious about it.

They, for example, demand the well known video portals to require German visitors to pass a real age verification - not talking about the "Yes, I'm 18+" button, but a real identity check.

While one can argue that this is a good thing - I don't think it is - it is only enforced when it comes to this kind of stuff. My take is, that it's not about protecting minors but about protecting the local industry, which has no other choice than to obey to these rules, as our laws directly apply to them. That puts them at an disadvantage compared to companies outside of Germany, so they are lobbying that those rules/laws that apply to them, should apply worldwide to anyone catering German users. This is just wild, IMHO.

Don't get me started that there were talks to try to force *international* websites to show explicit materials to German visitors only after 10 p.m. local time, because kids are (should) be in bed by then. That's just not how globalization and the internet works, that's just some crazy mindset by German bureaucrats.

So back to Steam. Why can any (German) minor buy any game, regardless of its rating, but nobody, no matter the age, can buy explicit (or what our institutions deem to be explicit, where a lot of that is laughable) games? There is some broken logic there. Now, when one thing is blocked already, it's easy to have the other thing blocked as well, if they seem it fit. It's just one more step, as the first step was already made.

In the end, it all wouldn't matter that much if Steam would offer some sort of one-time age verification for accounts. That my account in itself is older than 18 years doesn't seem to count. :)

I just don't want our institutions to go wild and force Steam to block any 18+ games in the future, regardless of their topic, for us Germans. It's not super likely, but I wouldn't wonder. We had some crazy stuff going on here already from the BZKJ in the past <insert "I've seen things" meme here>. That's why this is a sensitive topic to me, I just don't like any kind of paternalism.

Sorry for the rant... :)

But that is just how laws work. If say gambling isn't allowed in state X then obviously people in state X are also not allowed to gamble on the Internet in state Y so state X will try and prohibit state Y to allow people from state X to gamble online there. This is how it works in any state, so Germany isn't special here.

And Germany haven't blocked any game. This is just a side effect (an unfortunate one for people in Germany ofc) of Valve refusing to implement age verification on their store which means that all games that are unrated, automatically gets the 18+ rating and since Valve doesn't perform age verification they are not allowed to sell those games in Germany.

So what you see is a clash of ideas. And this have been highly criticized to Valve for at least 12 years now: https://www.hlportal.de/files/avs_report.pdf [External Link] so they are well aware of it but still do nothing, they are also loosing sales over it in a very large market and still do nothing, so Valve must really be against implementing it.

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Quoting: maddovr

Quoting: F.UltraAFAIK their closed drivers supports HDMI2.1

They don't, you can see my post above about it. They can't since even their proprietary drivers are based on the open AMDGPU in the kernel.

ok, that makes sense. Never used their closed drivers so thought that they perhaps also included a closed kernel module, but that was probably only back in their catalyst days.

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Quoting: pbWait so Germans can't buy any of the new small indie games that don't have a rating?

Germany have always been quite strict when it comes to age ratings. For e.g movies on DVD you had to send in a picture of your national ID or drivers license to prove your age if you wanted to buy a 18+ rated movie.

It also spilled over to smaller markets like here in Scandinavia since we are such a small market and Germany is quite large, so distribution companies often made one version of DVD/BRs for Scandinavia+Germany and while we have no age rating on consumer media (only on cinema distribution) we still would get censured versions from time to time due to the company requesting a lower rating in Germany (to sell more copies) and was thus forced to cut stuff from the movie.

Quoting: KROMIt just sucks. All the explicit games are already banned in Germany, because there is no proper age verification in Steam and our institutions demand this - to protect the children, they say, to protect the "industry", I say.
Explicit games are 18+, yet I can buy and play pretty much any non-explicit 18+ game - for now. It just makes no sense.

Thing is, they could also extend this to pretty much any 18+ game, cuz laws and I'm unable to prove to Steam that I'm over 18. I'm just pissed to be a grown up man and being told by our institutions what I'm allowed to play, directly or indirectly. *sighs*

How would a sales ban protect the industry? I've always seen the strict age thing in Germany being connected with your long history of conservative Christians in the politics.

And looks like it has some bearing (from Wikipedia on the history of FSK):

Moreover, youth protection played no role in admission to movies of the occupying powers, so minors had unrestricted access to movies. Because of this, at the start of 1948 the German secretary of education of the western occupied zones set up a commission to answer the question of whether young people were endangered by movies. It was intended to develop suggestions for nationwide youth protection connected to films. The work of this agency began in the Hessian ministry for culture in Wiesbaden. As well as the representatives of the other countries' secretaries of education, representatives of the movie industry, the churches and the Katholische Jugend Bayern (Catholic Youth of Bavaria) were also invited to the hearing.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusI see a simple fix that shouldn't cause too much trouble for anyone: have any "Store name" changes require manual approval. That's not something that should legitimately need to be changed very often, so it shouldn't unduly burden Valve employees, and it won't matter that the description, screenshots, etc. can be changed if the name remains the same. It's a little odd to me that it can be changed at will right now.

Apply a fee for name changes and the burden goes away fully (as would probably the scam attempts).

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: maddovr

Quoting: F.UltraSave your money, you have no legal standing and your case would be thrown out of court.

There could possibly be a case against AMD however. I'm not in the legal field of studies, but AMD is advertising HDMI 2.1 on their RX 6000 and 7000 cards even on linux when that is not the case. So maybe...

AFAIK their closed drivers supports HDMI2.1

Quoting: pete910Thing is, If all the major TV maufacures + AV OEMs turned round and said "From next year all equipment will drop HDMI in favour of Display port" the HDMI license ect would all of a sudden become next to nothing if not free!

Small problem here is that it is the major TV manufacturers that make up the HDMI consortium, that is also why HDMI is on every TV while DP isn't.

Founding members of HDMI:

Hitachi, Ltd.
Panasonic Corporation
Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.
Panasonic Corporation
Philips Electronics N.V.
Silicon Image, Inc.
Sony Corporation
Technicolor S.A. (formerly known as Thomson)
Toshiba Corporation

Which makes me wonder. Don't all their set-top boxes and smart TVs and stuff run Linux? So why fuck us around?

Because they don't want the specs to be open, they have zero problems with AMD putting HDMI2.1 support in their closed drivers. Apparently the entire spec is behind severe NDA.

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Quoting: maddovr

Quoting: F.UltraSave your money, you have no legal standing and your case would be thrown out of court.

There could possibly be a case against AMD however. I'm not in the legal field of studies, but AMD is advertising HDMI 2.1 on their RX 6000 and 7000 cards even on linux when that is not the case. So maybe...

AFAIK their closed drivers supports HDMI2.1

Quoting: pete910Thing is, If all the major TV maufacures + AV OEMs turned round and said "From next year all equipment will drop HDMI in favour of Display port" the HDMI license ect would all of a sudden become next to nothing if not free!

Small problem here is that it is the major TV manufacturers that make up the HDMI consortium, that is also why HDMI is on every TV while DP isn't.

Founding members of HDMI:

Hitachi, Ltd.
Panasonic Corporation
Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.
Panasonic Corporation
Philips Electronics N.V.
Silicon Image, Inc.
Sony Corporation
Technicolor S.A. (formerly known as Thomson)
Toshiba Corporation

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Quoting: finaldestSo I have a fantastic 55 inch gaming capable TV which I paid over £2k for so I could have all the HDMI 2.1 features and £1k for a HDMI 2.1 capable GFX card but the HDMI forum wont allow me to use said hardware because they refuse to allow AMD to release drivers.

If I had the money I would be looking at taking legal action. I am now 3k out of pocket thanks to the HDMI forum.

I use my TV for UHD4k Bluray and Gaming Consoles and all these require HDMI. This is why I chose HDMI for PC also. But now I am forced to buy a new display that used Display Port if I want to use all the HDMI 2.1 features I have already paid for.

I really wish HDMI would just Die. Sick of jumping through hoops.

Save your money, you have no legal standing and your case would be thrown out of court.

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Quoting: MadWolfi know a way that can fix this problem but it may be easier said than done

1. mark any snap that has been uploaded by any one that is not part of the project team or Canonical as unofficial
2. all unofficial apps need to be checked to make shore the snap dose not contain malicious code
3. all snaps need to be randomly checked to make shore the snap dose not contain malicious code

Well it is how to perform #2 and #3 that is the question, not that it should be done, but how. AFAIK they are closed source.

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