Hello. Are you ready for today's episode

of your favorite show? That's right.

We're back for another episode of how

you're getting I'm your host,

Louis Rossmann, and today we're going to

continue to hammer home why it is

breaking DRM, in my opinion, is

completely justified, moral, and should

never be a violation of federal law.

Today, we're going to be talking about a

piece of software called FaceFX. FaceFX

is a piece of software that costs about

a thousand dollars, give or take. It's

like $988 and some cents. And this was

software that allows you to animate

somebody's face based on audio. So, if

you take a picture of my face and you

want to put it into a video game and you

have me saying certain things, it'll

have my face animate based on the audio

that it hears, which is pretty useful. A

lot of solo game developers are using

this because it cost about a thousand

dollars, and it was pretty useful. And a

user recently got a communication saying

that his perpetually licensed FaceFX

Studio Professional had that had been

bought for $988.68

was going to stop working on November

30th, 2026. And that continued use of it

would require FaceFX Unlimited at

$35,000 per year, or FaceFX Runtime at

$25,000

a platform. They said that they

understand that as a solo developer,

these costs may not fit within your

budget. Your FaceFX Professional license

>> [laughter]

>> I mean,

yeah, I paid a thousand dollars for it.

And they're not saying, "Okay, you have

to pay a thousand dollars again."

They're not saying that you have to pay

two thousand dollars again. They're not

saying you have to pay a thousand

dollars a year. They're saying, "You

know that thing you paid a thousand

dollars for once? How would you like to

pay twenty-five to thirty-five thousand

dollars a year?

And if you don't, we're going to take it

away from you." But wait, it gets

better. This is completely legal,

apparently, in the United States of

America, because of this one part of

their terms of service. Term: This OC3

Agreement is effective until terminated.

You may terminate this agreement at any

time. OC3 may terminate this OC3

Agreement upon notice to you. Very

similar to what I was discussing in the

video on Amazon and their contract,

where they had something that didn't

have ads, you could pay to have video

without ads. They put ads into it, and

they said if you want to not have ads,

you can just pay more money even though

you already paid for it. And that's okay

because the contract says that they can

change what they give you at any time. I

mean this from the bottom of my heart.

This is not just about me hating on this

particular company or even wanting this

particular scenario to change. Forget

about this company. Forget about Face

FX. If you have a contract that says

you've paid a thousand dollars to have

access to this and you put somewhere in

the contract that we can take it away

from you and say, "LOL JK, a thousand

dollars isn't enough. We actually want

35,000 a year." When you do something

that ridiculous, this is not just saying

that your $300 license is suspended. We

can't support this software forever. Pay

300 again. You are taking it to a level

of absurdity that makes it impossible

for people to respect contract law. And

the reason that we have contract law in

the United States and in most developed

countries is because when you don't have

contract law, you have people that pick

up a screwdriver or a hammer and smash

people on the head with it to get what

they want. For most of human history,

99% of human history, it was whoever was

the strongest won. You have to think

about the society that we live in at

this point where when you look Look at

eBay. For all the problems at eBay,

people are willing to give away one or

two thousand dollars of their money to

somebody they've never met, that they

don't know, that they can't see, and

they just have faith that after one

thousand dollars has been taken from

them, that somebody they don't know is

going to package something and then

somebody else that they don't know is

going to deliver it to them. That's

crazy. For most of human history, this

would have not been possible. It's only

possible because we now are starting to

live in a high trust society. And

unfortunately, that high trust society

that took hundreds of thousands millions

of years to build is being destroyed

inside of five to ten years in a very

speed run process. I'm not even saying

this for your company. Like your

company for a moment. Forget about it.

And I say this as a business owner. And

like I I'm known as a consumer advocate

on this channel at this point, but I'm

first and foremost a business owner. And

that's one of the And I come at this

from the standpoint of a business owner.

From the standpoint of like the things

that I would and would not do to my

customers and what I would expect my

customers to do to me if I did this to

them. There are a number of things that

I don't do because I don't have an

office with security. I have a basic ass

store that anybody can walk into and

half of the time when I'm there, you can

see where I am. And if I do something

that is up enough to my

customers, somebody is going to walk in

with a machete and let me know what's

up. I'm not saying this is an evocation

of violence at all. I'm saying this

because I want you to understand what

goes through my mind anytime I'm

changing my policies or decisions on

what I'm dealing when I'm dealing with

my customers. I have dissatisfied

customers. I've been in business for

over 15 years at this point. I'm not

going to get hit everyone out of the

park and sometimes I think even if I've

done everything right, there are some

people that are just really unreasonable

and just want to be mad. And there are

sometimes where situations just suck

where I've done the best I could and in

spite of putting in all the effort that

I can, I fail anyway. But that is

different from situations where I've

engineered something where you're

practically begging somebody to hit you

in the face with a hammer. The reason

this pisses me off, not just as a

consumer advocate, but also as a

business owner, is because I would not

in a million years have the balls to try

any of these things because I have that

basic self-preservation of I don't want

to get hit in the face with a hammer by

one of my customers. Maybe it's cuz I

spent too much time in New York City and

in Bed-Stuy before gentrified, but

there's just certain things that you

just don't do to people if you want to

have a business. It's insane to me that

there are companies out there that think

that this is okay. So, there's a company

that purchased the company that produced

the software. I don't want everybody to

blame OC3 Entertainment. It does look

like OC3 Entertainment was acquired by

Speech Graphics and it was after the

acquisition that this happens about less

than a year. So, this is a very common

thing you'll see happen now where a

company will sell to somebody else and

after they sell, they do something like

this. Now, it's funny cuz you actually

have a couple of the responses from the

CEO. Hi, I'm the CEO of Speech Graphics.

I saw your post about wanting to keep

your FaceFX Professional going past its

end-of-life date on November 30th, 2026.

I think we can find a way to make it

work, but I want to be straight about

why we're retiring it. FaceFX

Professional was priced for Indies, but

it cost us more to maintain and keep

that license server running than it

brings in. On top of that, large studios

have been using the indie instead of

licensing unlimited, which is what it's

built for. Between the two, the product

isn't sustainable in its current form.

Now, again, I I I I I shouldn't be

interrupting this. I should finish the

whole thing, but I can't. It just makes

me angry. When he When he says licensing

server, what he means is the thing that

allows you to activate the product. So,

they don't trust me that I'm not going

to pirate the product. So, what they do

is they punish the legal owner of the

product, never the pirates. The pirates

never have to deal with this But,

the person who bought the product and

paid $1,000 for it, every time they

install it, they have to activate this.

And sometimes the product is going to

phone home with different pieces of

software to figure out whether or not

you're using a legitimate copy. Again,

something that never happens with the

pirated version, only happens with the

paid one. And you it's going to figure

out whether you're using a real copy of

it. And that costs them money. And to

me, that's a them problem. If I sell you

data recovery, and I say I will recover

your data for $600, I can't come back

next year, take your data away from you,

and tell you it's going to cost $15,000

cuz I actually figured out that all the

marketing I'm doing so that I could get

customers like you was costing me much

more than I thought.

I could never say that. That's insane.

That's a me problem, not a customer

problem. The same way that your your

licensing server is a you problem. So,

here's what I would propose. If it's

costing you so much money to run that

licensing server,

turn it off. And send everybody a patch

for the software so it doesn't require

the licensing server anymore.

That's a great way to solve the problem,

right?

You You're not going to do that. Of

course, you're not going to do that. And

that, in my opinion, is why piracy is

completely justified. I say this

as somebody that paid $79.99

for open source software as a

13-year-old teenager. I'm willing to pay

for the things that I find valuable, but

I will not for one second accept

any of these excuses from any of these

companies as to why it is you're allowed

to take away my because you can't

afford a licensing server.

Okay, distribute an offline patch.

We don't want to do that. Well,

you.

You bought the company, you bought the

resources, you bought the debts, you

bought the obligations. Fulfill your

obligations. They sold a

perpetual goddamn license. If you don't

want to offer that, then give the

company back, or give people an offline

patch so they can continue to use the

software without ever having to connect

to your licensing server on any computer

they want. DRM is not a paying

customer's problem. It's a you problem.

And if you want to keep doing like

this, sending out emails telling people

that their $900 software is now $35,000,

NOT ONCE A YEAR, don't be surprised if

we return to a society where nobody has

respect for contract law or the law in

general. That's not a world that I want

to live in cuz contract law benefits me.

Being able to have contracts with my

customers where we write down on paper

what we're both expecting and we both

live up to our obligations has been very

beneficial for me as a business owner

for damn near 18 years. And I don't want

all of that to be destroyed and just

return to the rule of the jungle where

somebody just knocks me on the head with

an SD card reader cuz they don't want to

pay for their data recovery at the end

and takes the drive back.

But that's the world that people like

you are speed running us towards. And

you for it. And last thing I want

to get over here is because somebody

suggested that this get put on the

consumer rights wiki. A lot of people

were suggesting that this get put on the

consumer rights wiki and somebody from

the consumer rights wiki said that this

would not be fitting because it needs to

have a certain number of coverage. It

can't be just one person's original

research. That is technically true.

However, what you can do is you can make

a user space article. So, this article

that I have on consumer rights that wiki

right now is not actually a main space

article. It's an article on my user

space. See how it says user Colden

Lawis? This is kind of like a blog

article. I'm going to be instructing the

moderators at the wiki to come up with a

very short guide on how to make a user

space article. A user space article is

an article that may not necessarily live

up to the standards for a main space

wiki article, but allows the entire

issue to be cataloged so that once it

does get all the information that it

needs, once there are more citations,

once we are able to independently verify

it by a number of other people, we can

then easily take that and turn it into a

main space article rather than having

nothing at all. I don't want that to

discourage you from actually making

articles on the wiki when these things

show up and if you want to get my

attention on something, I do read my

inbox every day, but if you have made a

wiki article on an issue, that's much

more likely to get me excited to discuss

it in a video. If you've made a wiki

article and I think that's a good way to

go forward if I want to try and utilize

and leverage my audience to try and

document all these abuses of consumer

protection in organized way rather than

it just be "Hey Louis, here's an issue."

and like I have 800 emails a day and

people want me to look into I can't look

into 800 issues a day. So, I'd like to

start leveraging my audience to do that.

The reason consumer rights.wiki has the

high standards that it does is because I

want to be able to show this to

legislators. I want to be able to show

this to a court someday. I want to be

able to show this to to judges, to

senators, to congress people. So, when a

lobbyist says that the legislation that

we're suggesting is a solution in search

of a problem that doesn't exist, I can

show them in the most disciplined way

possible that this problem does indeed

exist. The user of the software said

something that makes a lot of sense.

Regarding the business challenges of

maintaining it, I understand, but that's

the reality of acquiring a company

assuming it's an existing agreement from

a consumer perspective, speech graphics

bought a product and is now simply

choosing to brick it. If speech graphics

is unwilling or unable to maintain the

software I purchased, the solution is

simple, issue a full refund of $988.68.

I hope this gentleman goes ahead and

takes them to court and here's the

thing, like it's one of these things

where

it's not even about whether you win,

it's about wasting this company's time.

I want to see speech graphics get taken

to court in small claims court or

commercial claims court 15 to 30 times.

When you go to normal court, you're ex-

pected to have a lawyer, but when you go

to small claims court or commercial

claims court, you're not expected to

have a lawyer. And the great part about

going to small claims court and not

being expected that you have a lawyer is

usually only have to pay a filing fee of

20 or 30 dollars. If one person does

this, nah, whatever. But if 20 people,

if 80 people, if 500 people do it, their

expenses to respond to all these legal

battles are going to be more expensive

than keeping up that licensing server or

more expensive than coming up with an

offline patch for the software. I can't

do that. I I make a suit on behalf of

you because I wasn't aggrieved. If

you've used FaceFX software, I really

hope that every single person who ever

has opens up a small claims court or a

commercial claims court against Speech

Graphics for stealing away what it is

you bought and paid for. And even if

they win in court because of what it

says in the end user license agreement,

even if this wins, that's not even the

point. The point is they are trying to

take away something from you. At the

very least, you should take away

something from them. And when I look at

what it cost to have a lawyer defend you

on these types of claims,

uh I think they're going to wind up

paying a lot more in legal fees than

they would pay in refunds. It is your

job to make sure that they pay way more

in legal fees than they do in cost to

keep up that licensing server if they

decide to go ahead with things in this

manner.

Let me know what you think in the

comments down below. That's it for

today, and as always, I hope you learned

something. I'll see you in the next

video. Bye now.

>> We also have the duty not to infringe

[music] the IP rights in the process. It

is in fact the manufacturers who have

the relevant rights, not consumers.