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
it's probably 2 ways:
first: every public server (and really every server) needs to include an acknowledgement of the EULA that comes with the server files, or the server won't even start. so this is something that the server host has already agreed to. if they are in violation of the EULA, then they can probably be forced to comply with a cease and desist or similar legal action by a court order.
second: if the server is discoverable in-game via mojang hosted services, i.e.: if you can just search "Minecraft online" on the multiplayer menu in-game and find the server, then they can kick them off that service. pretty sure that's the IP ban they are talking about, but could be something else too (don't know enough about how big Minecraft instances are managed, i just play with friends on self-hosted servers where all of this is irrelevant, since they are private anyways)
apart from that i guess general lawsuit shenanigans against the hoster, which could mean either the Minecraft online team, or, if they are using a hosting service to run the servers, the hosting service itself.
so there's quite a few ways, all except the second would effectively kill the server.
all that said... I'm very suspicious about the entire exchange:
the words "libertarian" and "free speech" are almost always code for bigotry.
and the mojang email is super weird too; why is there zero concrete examples of what the problematic content actually is? it's absurdly vague and impossible to comply with.
which would also make sense if the first assumption is true, that it's a server full of bigotry, then mojang might feel that there is no need for examples, since they assume the hoster knows exactly what they're talking about...
anyways....very, VERY weird situation.
one of the two is definitely dishonest, but i can't say for sure which one... although I'm leaning towards the server hosters for now...seems suspicious...
Minecraft doesn’t have a server browser, you have to input the hostname directly.
The way it works is Mojang publishes a text file of all the banned hostnames and the client downloads this when it starts up. If the server it tries to connect to matches any entries in the blacklist, the connection attempt fails with a cryptic network error.
It’s very shady.
shady and it sounds extremely easy to circumvent: just replace the file with an empty/blank one...
do forge servers also download the blacklist? cause it can't remember ever seeing one, and I've set up a lot of servers...though i never went looking for the list either...
re: server list; you can search for servers though, right? cause i seem to remember that mojang used to provide a service to have servers searchable without the IP address, kinda like a DNS service in-game.
am i misremembering?
I could be misremembering, because i haven't played anything other than heavily modded MC for like 10 years... and always on self hosted servers, where you always need the IP anyways...sooo... that's one part of Minecraft I've never really interacted with...
Unless it was added in the past couple of years, Minecraft Java Edition does not have a built-in server browser. You can save servers to your list manually, but there’s no central list of them.
Yes, you could of course modify your client to connect to the server anyways, but that requirement would prevent all from the most dedicated players from joining a server and essentially kill the server’s player base.
no, hasn't been added; I'm just misremembering!
like i said: exclusively played on private servers....guess i just assumed there's an easier way to join, but apparently not!
Great point about the eula=true flag.
Yeah the whole thing seems odd to me. It's gotta be discovery on the in game browser they are referring to.
But why mention discord? How does Microsoft even know what discord channel is related to what server?
good question!
i think it might have to do with Intellectual Property law:
since the discord server, presumably, uses the name "MinecraftOnline", that means they are using Mojang's trademarked name.
which means Mojang can probably take legal action, if they feel like the conduct surrounding either the discord or the Minecraft server is damaging their reputation.
and i think that's not even necessary, since i doubt Minecraft Online has an agreement in place to even use the name "Minecraft", so I'm pretty sure they can be nuked via cease and desist at basically any point by Mojang for any reason...
something else I've realized since the previous comment:
i read in a different comment that apparently Minecraft servers authenticate against Mojang's server at login/join to a server....that seemed really weird to me, since i know for a fact all of my servers run just fine without any internet at all!
...then i remembered that i exclusively play heavily modded (neo-)forge packs, and forge comes with it's own server binaries, so i guess that's why I don't have to worry about authentication much!
(the user profile/MS account is cached in the launcher, so i do have an official account, it just doesn't need to authenticate at every login and certainly not when joining a server. don't know if that ever runs into a timeout though...maybe it does need a connection to mojangs servers every X days or something? dunno...)