FYI: Civ6 contains Red Shell Analytics Software

I'm an attorney. A patent attorney, even. I've been programming since I was in the 7th grade. I've coded in BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, COBOL, Java, JavaScript, Python, Perl, PC assembler, and lord knows how many others I just can't remember offhand. I still code a little here and there. I've run an Ubuntu box for my kids' Minecraft servers, I hand-write my web sites in HTML using vi, blah, blah, you get the idea, I understand technology pretty well.

The GDPR is the right policy concept, but the utterly wrong implementation. It's trash. We all like the consumer-facing parts we see, but compliance is impossible and the fines are outrageously disproportionate. The EU commission tasked with enforcing it can't even comply with it. It's grossly unfair and unreasonable. If the United States passed a law like this, the EU would be (justifiably) howling for months about economic imperialism. The GDPR rings of a regulation written by a bright-eyed high school student who has never had to wade through a real-world commercial environment of any substance.

 

Yeah, well, at least they're trying. I'm sure that the flaws will be worked out over the next few years. Meanwhile, in the US, we've gone backwards on data protection. It's quite sad, really.

 

I respectfully disagree. Ill-conceived regulation for sake of "doing something" is often worse than doing nothing. These regulations have consequences. It would be one thing if the penalties were reasonable and proportionate, but they're not. I'm also not sure I agree that the U.S. has gone "backwards" somehow. Rather than trying to cram every situation into a one-size-fits-all bucket, the U.S. silos privacy rules into industry-specific buckets to deal with specific problems, such as youth privacy (COPPA), medical privacy (HIPAA), and so forth. The major hole was identity theft, but as of July 1 of this year, all 50 states and all major territories have data breach notification rules. The other major privacy hole is revenge porn, and the states are rapidly adopting rules to deal with that too. Finally, you've got biometric data privacy, which is currently biting Google and Facebook because they use facial recognition algorithms for tagging suggestions. Since these laws are poorly written and have civil penalties and statutory damages, plaintiff's lawyers are filing class action lawsuits over it. It's absurd.

I don't see the U.S. going backwards. More and more privacy regulations are enacted on a near-monthly basis across the country. What the U.S. doesn't have is a gigantic sledgehammer one-size-fits-all omnibus privacy policy. I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

 

Backwards because we had a policy to prevent ISPs from selling user data and Congress canceled it just before it was set to take effect.

 

It wouldn't make much difference. The NSA, CIA and other TLAs soak up data then
get their head people to lie to Congress, with impunity. Corporations can get
away with the same flagrant disregard if they have protection from their
friends.

Look's like Red Shell is winning!
Last I saw on Steam, about 18 companies had removed or were about to remove
redshell's code. About 40+ were not about to, or hadn't made a decision yet.

 

While government surveillance is problematic for numerous reasons,I'm far more concerned about corporate surveillance. The government is at least somewhat accountable to voters. Corporations are accountable to nobody once they've bought off enough politicians.

I'm not sure that losing almost 1/3 of your customers in a week is "winning", but OK.

 

It's like falling off a 100 story building. The 1st 99 floors are no problem.

 

I'm not sure I know what you're referring to, can you provide a little more detail?

 

Maybe you're following in the footsteps of David Pollak? He was a patent lawyer turned programmer, and very prolific too. I worked with him on a project about 5 yrs ago. (He told me patent law is mind numbingly dull...so he changed career). I'm making the reverse transition cos I was diagnosed with a serious medical condition that will prohibit me from continuing as a coder/programmer

But you bring up an important reason why we're not getting any real legal advice on GDPR (at least from the UK) Red Shell, EULA, etc. cos Solicitors and Barristers (attorneys in this country) are not allowed to dispense freely with legal advice. It's a regulated profession. The Law Society and Inns of Court will expel you.

So the only advice re: GDPR and if Red Shell's use in Civ VI is in breach of it is from law students in the UK. (TBH IDK about law academics though).

 

Net neutrality (no scare quotes needed!) is a separate issue. I'm talking about this:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/...ll-back-internet-privacy-protections-you-read

They subsequently did pass the bill to cancel the regulations, thus removing the privacy protections.

 

I read some German news today which mentioned that Trump want his own American-GDPR (which is important because the EU needs something like that if Privacy Shield falls).

https://www.golem.de/news/datenschu...fenbar-gegengewicht-zu-dsgvo-1806-135074.html

 

Should we have a poll to get an impression from this community whether we are happy with Civ VI having Redshell or not?

 

Civ doesn't need Red Shell at all. Why? The Mac App Store and iPad versions don't have Red Shell (they have Apple Analytics instead, which is very easy to opt-out).

 

Kerbal Space Program, developed by Squad and owned by T2I, removed Red Shell in the latest patch after the uprising in the entire community.
I would love to see how Firaxis and other game developers deal with problems like these.

 

Speaking of which, the crap going through EU right now is awful. GDPR and others are looking at pretty much overt selective enforcement. Same things being done by different people is almost certainly going to see different treatment in terms of legal consequences and publicity, and fair use is under pretty significant heat for some of this stuff from what I understand. Somewhat ironically I expect a significant proportion of this stuff supposedly protecting people to be used to monitor itself, and in contrast with Red Shell it can be used to control actions legally. Not pretty. As grimey as Red Shell installation is in this context it can definitely get worse.

 

Thankfully, GDPR is separate from the terrible copyright bills currently working through the European Parliament.

 

Yes, that is far more egregious and potentially damaging to individual users. But I'd not underestimate an overt effort to pass legislation that creates open season on selectively penalizing people/competition/etc as a method of control. That kind of stuff has consequences too, and they tend to "trickle down" pretty effectively.

 

No, it would not be useful. There is more than enough for devs and their Marketting
Myrmidons to chew over on Reddit, Steam, here and elsewhere.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/8t28ut/red_shell_removed_from_ksp_also_owned_by_take_two/

Good chance this issue will be moot soon. I already opted out though.