Thread by @juliangough

Hmmm. I just had a bizarre experience, involving a global news organisation and a trillion dollar corporation. (I got caught in the middle, so... owch.)
It’s not the sort of experience the people involved usually talk about in public… so I think I’ll talk about it in public.
🧵

It's personal, but of general interest, I think. If you've ever read some interesting news on Twitter/Reddit/Substack that seemed legit, about a major corporation, and then wondered why the mainstream media never picked up on it, this glimpse behind the scenes might explain why.

Background/Recap: Eleven years ago, I wrote the ending to Minecraft. I never signed a contract, so I retained copyright. Then Microsoft bought Minecraft for 2.3 billion dollars, I was put under pressure to sign a contract giving them my copyright, I refused, and things got messy.

(For those who like a little evidence with their story, here’s the original contract, which I refused to sign when I wrote the ending in 2011, and refused to sign again when Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2016.)

I basically kept quiet about the whole mess for years. Wasn’t sure what to do. Then, late last year, after a lot of thought, I decided to place the ending to Minecraft in the public domain, under this Creative Commons Licence.

creativecommons.org/publicdomain/z…

So, I gave away my copyright. People were now free to do what they liked with the narrative at the end of Minecraft (the End Poem). Set it to music, use it in a school play, make T-shirts and posters of it, paint it on the side of their van, whatever.

But there’s no point giving people a present if they don’t KNOW they’ve been given it. So I wrote a long piece on Substack, telling the story. It went mildly viral. A terrific editor at a major global media organisation read the piece, and got in touch.

I won’t name the media organisation, because that lets me be more indiscreet here. Anyway, the editor and I worked on a shorter version of my piece, for publication by them. As part of the process, it was vetted by the media org’s lawyers.

I sent the lawyers all the relevant email chains, the original contract, everything they asked for. And they said, yes, you clearly own the copyright, you can indeed legally place the work in the public domain, etc. Piece was fact-checked, all was good.

Then Microsoft were asked for comment. And everything ground to a halt.

Microsoft employ 1,700 people in their legal department. That’s a lot of lawyers. And they are all very familiar with the Streisand effect. (I know YOU know what the Streisand effect is, but I will explain in case my mum is reading this.)

“The Streisand effect is the way attempts to hide, remove, or censor information can lead to the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand…

So the traditional old cease-and-desist letter, demanding you take down a post, is out of style. So are empty threats. They just draw attention to the problem. What works best is the POSSIBILITY of a negative response… but not the actual response.

And so Microsoft, with 1700 legal staff available, didn’t reply to requests for comment from a major global media organisation about an about-to-be-published story explaining how Microsoft didn’t own the ending to the most successful game of all time.

And… it worked. Silence worked. The lawyers at the media organisation, understandably but annoyingly, lost their nerve. Because you fill silence with your own most vivid fears. Maybe Microsoft had a secret, second contract signed in blood at midnight!

Without a comment, even a “no comment”, it was impossible to tell what Microsoft knew or planned to do. And that was too much risk for the media organisation’s lawyers, because Microsoft have 1700 lawyers and unlimited financial firepower.

So, a great editor, with huge experience and passionate belief in the piece, and an established writer with books published in over thirty languages (and who has, if anything, a reputation for being TOO bloody honest)… couldn’t get a truthful, fact-checked piece over the line.

To be clear, if this story was about some tiny little indie company with no legal department, it would not have faced anything like this scrutiny, and it would have been published weeks ago. It’s been obsessively fact-checked by lawyers. It holds up.

But the simple existence of the seventeen hundred people in Microsoft’s legal department were enough to kill the story. They didn’t need to say or do anything. Indeed, saying or doing anything would have weakened their position.

If they said or did anything, we could have reacted to it.
If they made a good objection, we could have changed a few lines, and published.
If they made a bad objection, we could have shown them proof that we were right, and published.

The hilarious thing is, the original 10,000 word version of this story, with far more detail, has already been published. It’s been on my Substack for the past month, and Microsoft have done nothing. There’s nothing they can do: my story is true.

What they CAN do is try to minimise the SPREAD of the story. No point attacking me when they don’t have a leg to stand on, because that would trigger the Streisand effect.

I know that journalists at several national newspapers have, by now, asked Microsoft for comment, and they have been blanked too. If you are a trillion dollar corporation, this strategy works. You can intimidate the mainstream media, without triggering the Streisand effect.

What can YOU do about this? Well, I wrote the piece to let people know that the narrative that ends the most successful game in history is now in the public domain. So you could read my original piece, retweet this thread; let people know that it's free now, they can use it.

More specifically, if you’re a journalist, you can read my original 10,000 word version, and see if you think there is a story in it.
And then you can ask Microsoft for comment.

Here’s the original 10,000 word piece that tells the whole story.

theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-st…

And here’s the first tweet, if you want to retweet this thread. Thanks for reading this far! And happy new year...

https://twitter.com/juliangough/status/1611031552472793089

Well, I woke up to see that this thread had taken off. Which is great! Because I spent all day yesterday trying to get that thread right. To make it a good, truthful, fun read. And now it’s keeping people Engaged And On The Platform. So…

I’m a professional writer who worked all day yesterday, for free, to make more money for Elon Musk.

And that is a BEAUTIFUL example of exactly what I talked about in the suppressed piece I wrote about Microsoft and Minecraft. Things are now structured so that corporations (and billionaires) keep all the money generated by the work of writers and artists.

So, if you liked this thread, or my Substack piece, or the End Poem (or any other writing I’ve given away for free), and you would like to thank me, rather than Elon Musk or Microsoft; well, great, here’s a donation button!
paypal.com/donate/?hosted…

And maybe consider subscribing, for free, to my writing on Substack sometime. It’s a platform that treats writers with respect. Here’s the 10,000 word version of this thread there, with all the fun details…
theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-st…

And here’s the first tweet in this thread again, if you want to retweet it. Have a great 2023.

https://twitter.com/juliangough/status/1611031552472793089