- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/27970929
Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be “appropriate.”
Below is a message from owner of the server.
Free Speech Under Attack
Dear friends, I don’t often post announcements of this sort, but I feel it’s very important for you all to know what’s currently going on.
From the very start, over 15 years ago, one of the key founding principles of MinecraftOnline has been free speech. What started out as an uncontroversal, common sense policy, has proved to be a cornerstone of this increasingly unique community. As time has passed and Western society has wavered back and forth in its political leanings, free speech has repeatedly come under attack for political reasons. It has now become common to see arrests for posts on social media in countries such as Britain and Germany, in the name of political control, which have overtaken the numbers even of traditionally totalitarian countries such as China and Russia - a truly dystopian nightmare for freedom of expression and personal liberty.
Throughout this decade and a half of change, MinecraftOnline has held steadfast to its libertarian principles, and remained an oasis of freedom and openness in an increasingly closed and controlled internet. That is, until now.
Microsoft, through their subsidiary Mojang, have issued an ultimatum to MinecraftOnline. We have been told to do away with our free speech policy (which long pre-dates Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang), within 7 days, or face a a permanent block. If that happens, nobody will be able to play on MinecraftOnline again, and the 15-year history of this beloved server will come to a sudden and bitter end. The full email we have received today, signed facelessly only as “Mojang Enforcement”, is included below.
The email makes extremely vague claims about “harmful interactions” and “harmful comments”, and we are asking Microsoft to clarify what specific interactions and comments they consider harmful. In the meantime, please spread the word, share this info on social media. Defend free speech.
-SlowRiot
I’m confused - how can Microsoft enforce this? Aren’t individually hosted Minecraft servers outside of Microsoft’s direct control?
If this server is hosted on azure or something they would have control over, then yeah, I suppose they have to comply with Microsoft’s rules.
The biggest issue here is the server using the trademark “Minecraft”. This feels like a threat to take actions for using that name if they don’t align with what Microsoft wants. Which is reasonable, the server calls itself “MinecraftOnline”. Microsoft does have a reasonable right to put a stop to that usage if it reflects badly on their branding.
Once the server stops using their branding, then Microsoft loses a lot of it’s teeth, especially outside of the game itself (like on discord). Even in the game, if it is java edition and requires a direct IP connection Microsoft has very little ground to stand on, but they could kick them off Realms, if they are present.
That’s one thing I miss about old games. Anyone could run a game server, and you could always directly connect to them even if they weren’t listed on the server list, or gamespy was down.
Did Microsoft mention their branding though? I could understand if they just said “please stop using our branding” but it seems different than that
Your right, that’s not mentioned here, but that is pretty much their only legal tool to enforce this request. If I were the server in question, I’d drop the Minecraft branding off my server name real fast.
So what I gathered:
Microsoft told them they were a partner server (they aren’t)
Microsoft said they disobeyed community guidelines (Which were for users only. They were also written after the server not only released, but it’s running 1.12, which was released before these “guidelines”)
The server has been using the term “Minecraftonline” before Minecraft was even trademarked
Someone asked someone on Microsoft’s moderation team and they cited a screenshot of a message from a banned player talking about masturbating in the shower.
Source: https://youtu.be/7R7toMRMz3s
Several actions on a server ping Microsoft’s servers for authentication, I couldn’t login to my self hosted server because of the azure outages yesterday
Interesting, I gotta look into that more.
I’d prefer if my server for my friends didn’t phone home
There’s an “online mode” setting you can set to false, but you also won’t have skins, and if your server was online, your inventory will be reset, and so will your spawn point
“you also won’t have skins” is fucking wild if true given those are just tiny, local assets.
They are tied to your
MojangMicrosoft account, though.Yup
They’re not tiny local assets, they’re tiny assets tied to your account and downloaded on demand from official servers, including if you don’t even join a server and just have your player head/skull spawned in in some way.
It would be nice to be able to officially have skins in offline mode, but that’s not how the game is meant to be run, and a minor enough thing I don’t really see it as an issue.
That’s called offline mode. It’s a setting you can choose in the server configuration. The drawback is that there is no official account validation (because of course there can’t be, since it’s not reaching out to the authentication servers), meaning you have to basically “bring your own security”, installing a client whitelist or some other authentication method otherwise it’s open season to trolls, and that’s why it’s not as common as you might imagine it would be.
There are custom ways of validating account
You’re technically bound by the Minecraft/Microsoft EULA. As others have noted, the game phones home for authentication, so Microsoft can control that.
That said, if they’re hosting the Java edition it is absolutely trivial to defeat the authentication. This is technically a license violation, but if I were these guys I would just become a pirate server and build Microsoft a nice 128 block tall obsidian and sea lantern middle finger.
How is it a liscence violation if its already coded in and you just have to change from block to allow?
Every Minecraft server uses Mojang’s authentication servers, so every login attempt has to go through Mojang. That’s how they can enforce these things.
I’d imagine disabling authentication prevents this - but also makes a whitelist probably impossible
I have no idea how MC is handling it. Some people are talking about phoning home. That might be the only method. However, it could also be baked into the client to not connect to certain banned IPs. It wouldn’t be hard to remove this, but it would prevent any unmodified clients from connecting to them.
It sounds like this might be similar to delisting - MinecraftOnline won’t be allowed to authenticate users against the server,
and presumably won’t be discoverable through whatever server discovery Minecraft uses. I assume Microsoft controls those.They don’t have server searches, it sounds like it’s all about authentication - without this, they need to set up their own whitelists, and custom skins won’t transfer.I’m a little shocked “Thank you for your attention to this matter” is used seriously…