Title of this post is a bit misleading. You’re suggesting the article spells out how Disney’s, and other companies’, rabid protection of its IP is a Bad Thing, when it’s really more of a history and primer on what’s changed with Steamboat Willie entering PD.
Thats a fair point, but money changes people. That kind of money is obscene because it effectively puts you above most laws. I, too, would like to believe that the folks on this list would do only good with the money; but the longer the list, the more likely you witness the “Bad Change!” At the end of the day, most folks have families and other concerns outside of their public pursuits. That kind of money, while bringing its own problems, can get rid of just about any “normal people” worries (obviously not something like inoperable cancer)!
Same here. I see a lot of people complaining gabout paying for it, but it’s solid software, and worth the money. It’s helped my wife and I manage our finances and we never argue about money. That’s worth a lot of money IMO.
Whether or not they comply with law enforcement is not the issue. Any company will comply with their local law enforcement if they want to keep their doors open. What’s important is what data they keep on their users. Unless I’m mistaken, Nord, like many others, only keeps billing info and limited connection info for load balancing purposes (deleted after something like 15-minutes). So, the Panamanian government (where they’re headquartered); who IIRC has no data retention laws and isn’t part of 5-eyes; asks for logs, they will get something, but not much to tie a specific customer to anything.
Also, Nord has been independently audited multiple times in the past. Something quite a few other providers can’t say.
It’s popular to bash on Nord b/c they advertise a lot, but I haven’t seen a legit reason not to use them. If it exists, I’d love to see it.
I don’t know if the Air & Space Museum has an online gift shop, but they have stuff for all ages. Even if you’re not close to the ones in DC, they have storage hangars all over that they open to the public. Keep an eye out for that.
Adding to this, there’s probably a general feeling that, especially with publicly traded companies (which Nord isn’t… yet), profit motive will inevitably cause a company to make decisions that don’t align with its customer’s best interests. The idealist in me thinks it’s possible for a company to be profitable without being shitty towards its customers. The cynic in me thinks there’s probably more profit in being shitty.
That said, profit keeps companies in business. If you’re getting it for free, you’re either the product, pirating it, or relying on others to keep it going. I won’t say paying for it guarantees future availability and development, but that profit motive also motivates continuing development. Kind of a double edged sword, there.
Adobe and Microsoft only kinda care about you. You’re one person. All the freelancers out there are still a fairly small part of their respective balance sheets. If you’re a freelance worker, some of your customers might require you to show valid licenses for the software you use, because they want to make sure their partners are ethical (at least, in this regard). Alternatively, you could use FOSS apps.
As someone else already said, if you are making money using commercial software, you really should be paying for it. The cost of your software should be factored into what you charge your customers. They should understand that.
The 4k77 guys pretty much provided what fans have been asking for. Lucas had his chance and chose to charge the fans for something they didn’t ask for.
The IT company I work for purchased me, along with some number of my coworkers and our product line from my former employer. Leading up to the cut over, we’re told that on midnight of the change, our company email will stop working. No forwarders or anything. BUT, we will get a new email that consists of gibberish@stupidsubdomain.company.com. When the password on this new account expires, because we can’t change it because we’re no longer employees, we have to go to a website to request a password change. This emails us a link to our new company email address, but we can’t use that link. We have to manually change part of the URL for it to work. I had them manually change my password twice before I gave up on the whole process. Figured I didn’t work for them anymore. What would they do if I stopped using this bogus account/email address, fire me?
This is something I’ve been wondering for awhile: if I were a mod on Reddit, and was being threatened by the admins to bend the knee, as it were, my response would likely be to remove any and all tools i had put in place to help me moderate, and say, “goodbye.”
I’m sure there’s something I’m just not understanding, but why isn’t this happening?