What are the implications for the Pinsound community (remixes), and indeed Pinsound itself?

Pinsound isn’t used for spike games. (They just sell speaker kits for those)

Maybe you are thinking pinbrowser... and obviously that is directly targeted by this eula

Seems like a move in the wrong direction. It's always sad to see "big" companies miss the larger possibilities of new technologies. But, that's how new innovative companies start, so that should be interesting.

Entertainment industries have always worked to stifle progress and control the narrative.

The pinball browser dude seams like a pretty smart guy and has got around all sterns current encryption attempts I don’t think a checksum would stop him or even signing?

Advantage of mmc is it’s all hidden away it’s just game over for the end consumer touching the firmware when you have no access to it unless you ssh in some how. Has any one ever ssh into a stern spike game if it’s running a Linux kernel I wonder if ssh is enabled? They must have uart exposed on the pcb for in-house debug I guess?

Locking hardware is pretty easy now, so you can rest assured that their next hardware platform won't be hackable in this way. Well, at least not by third party tools.

--Donnie

This!

Most of it is horrific for Stern themselfes, like... not being able to properly stream Led Zeppelin.
(First impression was allready not that great but the non-existant/ mute streams kill it for me.)

In addition:

1) At least parts of this EULA wouldn't even legally apply internationally, including prohibiting the distribution and usage of Pinball Browser.

2) There's one paragraph missing, that you're allowed to stream "Whoa Nellie" and "BKSoR" for all eternity to come.

Unlicensed themes for the win.......except no one wants them.

Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness were unlicensed themes...

It strikes me that pinball is a tiny, niche market that needs all the support it can get, a disproportionate amount of which comes from third parties and collectors, not the manufacturers themselves, precisely because we are such a niche. No-one is going to steal LZ songs by listening to a pinball stream!

So, to stifle third parties is a Really Bad Thing for pinball, I suspect. The manufacturers should be nurturing third party support, not killing it off Just my 0.02c.

I just downloaded the latest Pinsound remixes for the machines I upgraded. Can't be too careful!

Benefit of the doubt: Stern has been under pressure from licensors to protect their assets. The EULA is just “proof” to licensors that they’re doing their best to protect them. But in reality they have no intention of enforcing it, knowing full well it would be almost impossible to do so. Also knowing full well enforcement is not in their interest.

Licensing theater....not a bad thought.

Licensors & Stern like advertising, but apparently not free advertising. hahaha.

You know this?
Are you part of management at stern?
Why cant this be enforced when pinball goes internet?

Educated guess.

What education?

I remember when computergames meet internet. One of the first things started was copying protection with checksum controll for avoiding tampering with programs.

Observations on the way stern operates, the way the internet operates, the determination of people tinkering with things on the internet, and the current state of things. It's not exactly rocket science for anyone who is paying attention.

Stern just becoming less relevant as time goes on. Don’t worry, that magic line will be crossed then ‘poof’. Trading card fiasco 101. By then it’ll be too late and most of the money will move onto other hobbies. I’ve been done with Stern ever since introduction of Node board garbage.

As I said, “benefit of the doubt”. I don’t know anything for sure, I’m just choosing to give Stern some leeway based on my experience with Stern and in this hobby.

Past behavior can be a good indicator of future action, but the best indicator is still usually current behavior. Current behavior in this case tends to indicate changes on the horizon (which we have evidence of in what they are doing to “fight” Pinball Browser and now are being backed up in words with this new EULA). These changes seem very bad for the end consumer, as we’ve seen in the history of other companies who have made similar changes.

What I do know is the best way to fight changes bad for the consumer is to make them bad for the producer by not consuming.

—Donnie

I really can't say I'm mad at Stern, they really are protecting themselves. They have some of the biggest licenses, and they produce the most games (more likely to be streamed just based on volume), and they are the biggest pinball company so they have the biggest target on their backs. Hopefully they give some leeway in what end users are able to do, and this is nothing more than legal protection. But if you want to be that idiot that's like "Hey guys come watch my twitch stream, I have a jurassic park with all the movie assets loaded on", then you sorta deserve to get strikes against your channel, maybe even banned from future updates.

This is exactly the mentality I don't understand and think is dangerous to end consumers.

So many of us are like "oh, sure, let companies do whatever and people deserve it."

Why? When it comes to your example, pinball uses nothing but short clips that *already exist* in nearly pure form on YouTube and the like. Got a favorite movie line you like from ANY movie? Just punch most of it into the search bar and you'll be able to share your favorite clip with everyone via whatever social media you like.

So let's say someone takes clips from a copy of JP that they bought and puts them on the JP pinball that they bought. That's legal under fair use. So now what you're saying is you're fine that they can do that (I assume), but it's not fine that they can show it to the world? What have we come to? There's literally NO DAMAGE to the owner of that work, and if anything it might increase their revenue (by causing someone to buy JP the movie or a JP pinball, both of which trickle revenue up to the JP creators). I just don't see the harm, and I definitely don't get the attitude of someone doing that kind of streaming "deserves" some kind of punishment for it. Never will.

--Donnie

With as good as bots are today, I'm amazed any of that still exists on youtube (unless you're a channel that specifically pays royalties for those clips).

Because an executive that works at a license company assumes nobody is smart enough to hack a pinball to put their own clips on so it must be Stern leaking some sort of code to consumers. Also if it's that easy then Stern should be doing something to prevent it because if it's that easy then what's the point in licensing anything? I mean why pay for cable, everyone should just be torrenting all their content since the web is making that possible.

Look do I think these media companies are greedy? Absolutely, I hate how many streaming services there are now. Used to be you could pay for cable and that was it. Now you have Disney plus, HBO max, CBS all access.. Now this Discovery plus wants to seperate out HGTV/Food network/TLC/animal planet/Discovery so you can also pay a separate fee. I also have a choice not to pay for those things. I don't have FOMO, there are SO many things to watch today. If Stern doesn't want me putting my own content on their platform and streaming it because it might break ties to a licensor, then I get it.

Well why have streaming at all? There. Case closed. End user has no rights. Play your game and keep it to yourself. You don't need to show it off to anyone outside of your house. Hell, you don't even need to buy it, they don't want you to actually have it anyway because 'can't milk you more'. In fact, why put music on them? Your neighbors could hear it, and you can't have that!!!

It's just complete stupidity and always has been. Yes, we get it. Don't make copies of someones stuff and sell it. Other than that, the rest is complete over reaching bullshit.

You think Fleetwood Mac or Ocean Spray sued this dude for copyright infringement? Quite the contrary, they loved the exposure he brought to their products/brands and actually rewarded him.

And therein lies the critical point you overlook... The companies could CHOOSE to allow it or not. If you take the approach of "oh it doesn't hurt anyone" you effectively are saying they have no choice to participate or not and must accept any outcomes.

Not sure if "you" refers to me specifically or everyone in general, as I didn't "overlook" your point (what you stated was actually my exact point). Indeed, copyright holders are entitled to protecting the use of their properties by the letter of the law if they so choose, regardless of how anyone thinks about it. However, many would argue in certain use types they would actually endure themselves to the public and benefit their business by allowing their brands/properties to be promoted in non-abuse scenarios.

In this particular case, Ocean Spray realized the benefit to their brand via the free advertising provided and actually gifted the man a new truck full of Ocean Spray products, and the CEO posted a video of himself copying the original video. Likewise, Mick Fleetwood also emulated the video. Stevie Nicks has been featured in a commercial with skates on, "Dreams" has discovered an entirely new audience 40+ years later, and who knows how much Fleetwood Mac has made from all the new download sales.

Streaming is free advertising and companies are cretins to ban it.

I seriously doubt stern give a shit if you stream your stock machine. But if your advertising some illegal product or IP the machine did not come with I can see how they / licensor would be upset. If you get 100 views who cares but they might crack down on the big boys. I think people making there own original mods have nothing to worry about but if you are creating mods with logos or using licensed art, again I can see why they would be upset but seriously doubt they care unless your selling hundreds.

I think it’s mostly legal babble to protect them self and prove to licensors they are trying to protect there IP but seriously doubt they actually give a fuck unless your making some decent $$$ out of there IP.

PPS cracks down on William stuff pretty fast I’m surprised it’s taken stern this long.

That's the thing. Half of artists don't mind when their stuff is used in a reasonable manner in YouTube videos. But the other half think they should get a cut of the $5 you made off of YouTube for streaming a video that contains part of their song. Rick Beato had a couple of really good videos explaining this.

I suspect Led Zeppelin are in the latter camp, and requested that Stern add a streaming clause to their EULA. Heck, even if the clause wasn't in Stern's new EULA, any pinball streaming video that contains a Led Zeppeling song would probably get a copyright claim against it anyway.

Same thing for adding the clause against reverse engineering and distributing modified versions of their code. If Stern only wanted to license a handful of songs for their pinball machine, I'm pretty sure the rights holder didn't want unofficial trivial "remix" versions of the firmware that add a bunch of additional songs to be freely available a few days later on the Internet.

While you can be mad at Stern for giving in to the rights holder's requests, ultimately the rights holders are who you should be mad at.

We've been buying all manner of art from all manner of other companies since the beginning of time and doing what we want to it and showing it off in all manner of ways.

Look at how protective Harley-Davidson is of the *sound* their motorcycles make and yet aftermarket exhausts exist. Look at how proud Porsche is of the lines of their cars and yet RWB exists. I could go on until the end of time. I give not two shits that there's a difference in that Stern is licensing someone else's content to sell and Porsche designed the car themselves. There wouldn't be any difference in JP licensing their content or creating their own pinball machine, apparently because it's in a pinball machine everyone thinks it deserves more protection somehow. Makes no sense to me.

Art is art, and as long as I'm not selling it you can't stop me from doing what I want to art that I buy and reasonably displaying it. Yes, we've made some weird gray area since a handful of people can monetize themselves displaying the art via streaming, but that's just showing THEMSELVES playing a game. It doesn't in any way let you play it remotely. You simply can't convince me that there's any justification for anyone being able to stop people from showing something off in that way.

I mean sure, if you hook up the flipper buttons to the browser and put a camera on it and let people "play" the machine remotely, that's an entirely different story. But showing people YOU are playing it? Shouldn't matter if it's stock or modded or what, it's yours and it's yours to show off.

--Donnie

Better start stocking up on Color dmd's.

Why? They already have permission to do what they do nothing has changed there.

If music in pins being streamed is really the issue, I'm curious as to why they are adding a DJ mix on to every pin?

If truth be known I'm curious as to why it's there anyway, especially on non-music pins? I don't particularly want the option to listen to the soundtrack of a ball in the shooter lane of my AIQ, and if I did I'm sure I could find it in the main menu sound test, rather than having access to it from attract mode (in freeplay).

The DJ Mix seems like something one of their coders came up with on one game and they realized it'd be easy to put it on all the games. (Maybe it was part of a testing menu cleaned up for end users?)

It's a neat little feature. Probably doesn't sell any more games, but it's neat for the 1% of owners that will engage with it.

It has no bearing on the streaming stuff.

I was wondering about ColorDMD too.

The hardware - shouldn't be an issue since it sells w/o game specific software. W/o software, it's just a display.

The colorization - I don't know. Did ColorDMD need licensing rights? They didn't alter the original game code, that's still in the pin, so obviously no problem there. I think they just look at the data that would have been sent to the original display, and somehow figured out what colors to assign when. Could be wrong on their process tho. The thing I don't know about is if what they do is still considered sort of 'original code', but just being reprocessed, albeit w/color. Sort of the same thing as when they colorize B/W movies.

Almost certainly will have a deal with Rick at PPS as they are playing with IP content and use it to sell there product. If they don’t I’d be absolutely amazed and will eat my hat

Streaming has been one of the biggest factors for pinball's recent renaissance. There are times where literally thousands of people are tuned in watching pinball, many of them seeing games for the first time. What was once an in-person or in-bar past time has become a world-wide hobby experience that can be shared from the comforts of our couches. Stern knows better than to poke the bear - they even sponsor the Stern Pro Circuit because they know it brings them a lot of exposure.

Stern hasn't done anything beyond what Twitch did. Unless Stern starts knocking on my door before Twitch telling me I can't stream their games, then there's nothing to worry about. Even if they did, I'd tell them to pound sand. That would be like Stern trying to tell Pinside they can't use the pictures of Eddie from the Iron Maiden game in the website headers - ridiculous!

They don't have any real power when it comes to how people share the games they bought, and they wouldn't be dumb enough to use it if they did. If they make streaming too difficult and content creators start to drop out, they'll be killing their own free underground marketing movement.

I am 100% fine with this crackdown on streams that show me games. All the pinball locations around me are gone, so I can't play new games. I'd always await streams, but that isn't the same as playing it. So now they will be down to a couple times a year at pinball shows showing me what they made, and a pinball show is NO place to make a real judgement of a game because you can wait 30 minutes to play it for a few minutes. Some of the more popular games at pinball shows might even be on 2 ball in a difficult environment.

So now Stern would like me to spend many thousands of dollars on a product I won't be able to evaluate. If I try to evaluate it from a stream, Stern may not like the stream, so that stream goes away... and if it has something negative it will receive a takedown notice. That really doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me.

I think you need to prepare to eat your hat. ColorDMD ships with no copyright artwork whatsoever and never has. They aren’t paying an upstream license fee to anyone AFAIK.

And in fact, I feel fairly certain that under Stern’s new EULA, a ColorDMD would *now* become “illegal”, where it wasn’t before. Not only that, but if Stern were capable of devising a way that the game could detect the ColorDMD (I don’t think they can, but if they could?), they could, under the terms of the EULA, brick your machine for it.

—Donnie

Interesting thought. I don't think the checksum that I heard would be used to detect programming changes would detect a color DMD, as the actual code is not affected. Perhaps that in itself would not brick a machine. That is not to say that Stern would still not allow it...

Color DMDs won't really be a concern unless they come out with an add-on Wi-Fi board for DMD titles. I think this really applies to future games, which will have color displays anyway. They could possibly produce an add-on board for old games, but they're not updating the code on those anyway, so why would anyone install it?

The point is that the EULA, as it was originally released, covered all code updates to all machines going forward, including the last release of any firmware. So if you were already on the last release of a game that doesn't see an update again or just *don't* update again, then you wouldn't have to agree to the new EULA and thus it wouldn't cover you. But if you weren't on the latest release and decided to update and just clicked through, then it would.

And I'm not saying they would or would even try to brick a machine with a ColorDMD in it. But I *am* saying that the placement of the EULA as well as the language in the EULA means that legally they *could*. Which is, IMHO, a very bad situation for consumers. You bought something with one understanding of your licensing, and then they changed the game out from under you. But of course, only if you want the bug fixes you've come to expect, I suppose.

--Donnie

This is Disney, all day long..look at all the IP they've gobbled up in the last two years. they own everything now, Fox, Marvel, Pixar, Universal and Star Wars.
Stern will need to show they are actively protecting Disney's IP if they want to continue to get licenses.. Gary named them..and he said they're going to make an example out of a couple people..and that's what Disney does.

Expect a couple custom Mods/toppers makers based on unlicensed Disney IP to be sent C&E and if they don't comply they'll be sued into oblivion. We'll all watch in horror and everyone else will fall into line.

I mean everyone was disappointed in the lack of movie assets for JP..everyone.. if Stern could have made that deal (and afford it) they would have.
To have a large online presence simply add the assets themselves is seen as theft..its a loss of potential licensing fees that Stern was denied but their customers are getting for free without paying Disney. Hence the Your customers are thieves comment in the Gary interview.

It was good while it lasted..but it was never gonna last.

The streaming concession in the Cares act just shows have far their reach has gotten.

I take issue with the “that their customers are getting for free.” If you buy the movie, you did not get the assets for free. Again, it’s called “fair use.”

—Donnie

I haven't bought the movie, nor given any money to Disney in anyway shape or form - but I can get the assets in to my JP2 without paying anything for it. I am literally getting it for free.

Surely that isn't fair usage by the person who distributed the movie asset

Fair use would be something like making a film review and using short clips while going through your talking points.

This is more like classic hip hop cutting up stuff from old 60s and 70s albums and remixing them to make new songs. Which spoiler alert, is not considered fair use.

It's no longer for personal use when it gets distributed for others to enjoy. It doesn't matter that it's given away for free. (maybe if you had to supply your own movie and cut out the assets yourself it could skirt the law)

I don't like the law, but that is the law. It's antiquated and didn't foresee issues like these.

Well you bought the game so they got something. But yeh, Stern didn’t pay for the clips, so they’re not getting as much as they should be.

Not if I bought the machine second hand