Woke Inc.

Its actually must worse, that's a very surface view. This is subversive political warfare.

They are retroactively editing history, and no copyright grant should ever allow you to do that or to damage property that you have already legitimately paid for, especially without consent.

Its a violent subversive attack on ideological aspects of people's culture, lives, and property rights.

Honestly, they should have the copyright immediately revoked if they start pushing ideological or subversive edits into classic works. Make a clear statement that you only get these granted protections if you play by the cultures rules, and corruptive behavior will not be tolerated.

Now do Star Wars Special Editions.

I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a clever counter point because no one was happy with that either.

But at least it was the creator themselves editing their own works. And Lucas didn’t reach into your DVD collection and stop you watching the originals. It was just a new edition.

> But at least it was the creator themselves editing their own works

Original author vs rights holder, doesn't matter to me. Once art is released, it belongs to the public. The rights holders are entitled to make money from it at least.

> It was just a new edition.

Considering that the best quality release of the non-special editions is a Laserdisc, it's basically as good as deleting the originals from history.

That’s a bit entitled. If I make something, I get to modifying it as much as I like as the creator, if I change my mind. Maybe my changes suck. But that’s not my problem as the creator.

Complaining about format is also a bit silly. No one has to continuously release things you like in the format you choose. Loads of things are out of print. That’s just the nature of technology. And in this day and age, there’s a torrent.

Calling it violent is a poor way to get people to see your side. Makes me want to disagree with you when I agree with everything else you've said. I question if you've ever seen real violence if you're willing to write that

> Calling it violent is a poor way to get people to see your side.

We will have to disagree. I call it like I see it. Its an insidious but violent attack on shared cultural experiences.

You either defend your culture and way of life or you don't, and recognition of the attack for what it is, is absolutely necessary to come to that understanding. Some of us operate on a larger world view and time horizon and know just how much darkness is out there, and the insidious ways it creeps in.

Moreso than others who would snipe at word usage for something as serious as this.

Let me ask you, do you think these changes will impact you personally if you are late in your adult life? No?

Who do you think they will impact the most and how?

Who is the target audience of those books... its children who have no previous experience of the stories, or world experience to compare against, who often read these books prior to the age of reason or shortly after.

Children who through social intelligence absorb what they read and experience like a sponge, and then imitate.

In other words they read these at the point before or at which they can only just begin to biologically think critically, and tell and detect lies.

So why would you go through the expense of doing these things, it certainly isn't to align with a minority groups temporary message that will burn out in a few years.

So why would you do this... nothing productive or good comes to mind except to alter a future generations ideology for some intended private purpose. Its taking classic works, changing them to a slightly different message, and then calling them the same thing (when the original message is lost). Its a fundamental act of corruption of a shared cultural medium, which when internalized becomes a part of people's identity.

What could they gain from indoctrinating millions of children who might even be required to read these books in their public education classes at an age where they can't recognize the harms of internalizing aspects?

I can't think of a more serious matter with the stakes higher.

Businesses have no right to interfere with children's development, and this change would do just that in a un-quantifiable way. Its an unprofitable choice, so there's clearly some alternative motive to justify the cost.

What sort of indoctrination are children going to go through by reading that a character is "enormous", instead of reading that the same character is "enormously fat"? Did you even see the list of changes?

You're proposing a conspiratorial idea to a scenario that has a way easier explanation.

Well , let's pretend for a moment that we're not all highly focused children's book authors.

* I don't know what those changes in the book will cause, I'm not the author who carefully and selectively chose his words -- neither are the people that have decided to change the selection. *

First of all, you neglect to realize that what you say is just the first round of changes. Once you allow it, it doesn't stop, ever.

First its enormous, then its tiny, then its something else. Before you know it, there's no relevance and its discarded as no longer culturally significant, and that's just the cultural identity portion of it (a shared mooring being removed).

Second, its not conspiratorial at all, there's actually a large body of vetted documentation in terms of the threats of political warfare dating back to the 1950s, and the more recent psychological blindspot research and manipulation which many of those threats and material choose to apply/target in some form to bypass critical thinking. This is what we are talking about when it comes to allowing an avenue for subversion and indoctrination into culturally significant works read primarily by children who have no defenses.

You have no idea how happy I would be to be wrong about this, but this is the real world, and letting these things happen is a recipe for disaster and an abandonment of generational contract responsibilities we have for our children.

Here's a link with vetted introductory material that's up to date and recent, for the uninformed, it is filled with references. https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press...

>This is after they announced a separate release of non-bowdlerized versions.

That's not clear. The person quoted as having it happen to them posted that it happened the same day as the announcement of the non-bowdlerized versions, and the linked article was also published that day.

Does it really matter which came first? It doesn’t change the possible intent.

Yes? The publisher's intent changed when they decided to publish both copies. If they are unwilling to revert the change they pushed out, the op's claim of it being a money grab might be accurate.

No, the motive is ideology, not money. This way ensures almost universal replacement.

The default user action is null. If they had the new one released separately, nobody would have purchased it. By replacing the old one, few will buy the original.

The bleaching will be much more complete this way.

>If they had the new one released separately, nobody would have purchased it.

This is true, and they wouldn't have wanted to do that, not least because it would reflect poorly on the changes, but this would have been an alternative honest way to have released the new editions had they wished to, in contrast to what they actually did.

>No, the motive is ideology, not money.

Not any more.

The True Believers of Wokeness^tm are now completely sidelined and we're in the feeding frenzy stage of the fad. Wizards of the Coast cash grab for D&D was the first time that I was someone _completely_ transparently trying to fleece their customers while being draped in a rainbow.

Weren't WotC blatant cash grabbers well before D&D or draping? Didn't really seem related in their case.

They were, but it's now hip to blame 'wokeness' for the horse bolting out the barndoor, the milk going bad, and other similar calamities, like rains of frogs, poor stock performance relative to the S&P500, and so on, and so forth.

>When we initially conceived of revising the OGL, it was with three major goals in mind. First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products. Second, we wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in web3, blockchain games, and NFTs by making clear that OGL content is limited to tabletop roleplaying content like campaigns, modules, and supplements. And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-g...

In their own words.

Wokeness has reached its due by date. The great washed masses need to find something else to colonize and destroy now.

I'm not sure that link says what you think it does.

The very first sentence in the 'what's next' part of that post starts out, "The next OGL will contain the provisions that allow us to protect and cultivate the inclusive environment we are trying to build"

So sounds to me like they're doubling down on the ideology while relaxing (at least some of) the licensing terms.

That's rain_BOWS_ of frogs, thank you very much

If the motivation was ideology, why release non-censored versions?

To mitigate backlash.

True. And it's almost guaranteed that the uncensored editions will be "out of print" after a few months.

Copyright needs to include a concept similar to abandonware

Then why not just shorten copyright?

Unless you shorten it to low single digits (which would be nice, but so are unicorns) you'd still want a way to make things available that the original author no longer has a commercial interest in. It doesn't benefit society to make things unvailable, even if it is "only" for 10 or 20 years.

>No, the motive is ideology, not money. This way ensures almost universal replacement.

It isn't an either/or situation. Seems likely they are motivated by both money and ideology. If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all (which would cost them money).

> If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all (which would cost them money).

That doesn't make sense, how would that make them money?

Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?

>That doesn't make sense, how would that make them money?

They are retroactively altering/censoring the books that people have already purchased, and offering the original uncensored version as a new purchase.

>Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?

They are not "releasing" copies of the originals, they are selling them for money. People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.

> They are retroactively altering/censoring the books that people have already purchased, and offering the original uncensored version as a new purchase.

But that wasn't what was said, unless it was a typo.

> > If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all

Implying that they wouldn't offer the originals if it was all about money. That was what I meant by "that doesn't make sense". It sounds like you agree so it was just miscommunication.

> People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.

You originally said it would cost the publishers money, which is what I questioned. But again, I think we agree and this is just a language barrier.

It's a grift, the Sensitivity readers whip up backlash to anything remotely offensive and then sell the "Cure" to any company Stupid enough to listen to a loud minority on twitter.

Everyone knows demand For his books was going nowhere, the only change is these new people pretending they're the arbiters of everything proper and polite. Wasn't a fan of churchy nobodies telling me what media I shouldn't consume, nor will I kowtow to a bunch of Otherwise irrelevant art graduates.

What they have done is stupid and bad. But reducing it to "money or ideology" is a false dichotomy, there are other reasons that may have motivated their stupid choice, and it is probably a mix of all those.

If it is ideology, how do you explain that they changed a reference of Conrad to Austen? A third option is that they acted clumsily in good faith by trying to keep the book up-to-date with the new generation. The fact that some people are offended and want so much believe into a culture war move tells more about these persons than the publishers.

> If it is ideology, how do you explain that they changed a reference of Conrad to Austen?

Replacing male with female author.

Not just that. Conrad is pretty controversial these days in certain circles. Many people consider "Heart of Darkness" to be racist. I think another male author would have been passed over without remark.

But why did they choose the replace Conrad by Austen instead of replacing Hemingway or Kipling. Both Hemingway and Kipling are more controversial in certain circles (for Hemingway, cf. the Ken Burns' documentary, for Kipling, he is a jingo imperialist). As far as I know, critiques of Conrad were done in the 80's and never really stuck. So, no, it does not make sense: if they wanted to remove someone controversial, they would have started with Kipling, then Hemingway, then Conrad.

But they did not replace other reference to a male character by a female one. In particular, in the same paragraph, they did not replace Hemingway and Kipling (who are way worst in the "woke circle"). I feel that this is a good example that everything can be shoe-horned into a "woke agenda". They would have replaced Austen by Conrad and some people would have said "these woke had to switch to an anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist". If you read everything with the idea that there is a woke agenda, you will always find "reason" why what you observed is secretly part of the woke conspiracy.

The reference to Kipling was replaced by one to John Steinbeck, I assume because Steinbeck was a leftist, and Kipling is perceived to have been politically on the right (certainly he is relative to contemporary standards).

That's exactly what I'm saying: you are _assuming_ because you want to find a "woke agenda". On the other hand, Steinbeck is also an author that a contemporary Mathilda-like kid would read, while they would not read Kipling. This is the problem here: it really looks like that the equivalently probable hypothesis that it's not a woke conspiracy is totally impossible to imagine for some people, and this is a problem: they are deep in their paranoia.

I don't know if the reason is that Steinbeck is leftist or not. It is even possible that it is a woke agenda reason. What is worrying is that some people are just wanting sooo much for it to be a woke agenda, and the problem is that you can always turn everything into a woke agenda. If they would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling, you would have said "it's because Kipling's books are talking about other cultures and Steinbeck talks about America, and for the wokes, it's bad to talk about America".

That being said, maybe I'm a bit biased, because so far, in a lot of cases, those moral panics turn out to be blown out of proportion: the "bad wokes threatening freedom" turn out to not defend the ideological position they are told they have. It may be the case here too: all this story may be just idiots who clumsily tried to keep the book relevant for what they think was the new taste.

>That's exactly what I'm saying

>they did not replace Hemingway and Kipling

In fact, they replaced Kipling.

they did not replaced Hemingway and Kipling BY A WOMAN. Sorry, I should have been clearer, but this sentence was completing the previous sentence.

At the end, it's basically what I'm saying: they replace Conrad by Austen, and one says "it's woke because they replace men by women", but they replace Kipling by Steinbeck, and one says "it's woke because they replace a man with a right ideology with a man with a left ideology". They would have replaced Austen by Conrad and one would have said "it's woke because Conrad was anti-imperialist". They would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling and one would have said "it's woke because Kipling is more multicultural than america-centered Steinbeck".