Why are you mad right now?

[Seabeast2000]

I know it's a bit of a running joke, but honestly this is exactly why I don't talk to people here. And it's exactly why I didn't want to go to a branch in person.

And it turns out ...yep. It went pretty much like I expected.

Can't wait to get out of here next year. And that my friend is no joke.

I hear the maple syrup cartel is no joke.

 

[thebeesknees22]

I hear the maple syrup cartel is no joke.

Dude! You have no idea!

A few years back there was a major maple syrup heist worth millions! No joke!

 

[BlackMastodon]

Sorry to hear that, bud

Honestly, I'm fine with Detroit still having a bad rep because it means it won't turn into other hip cities like LA or Austin. Yeah, it's got its problems, but it's come a long way from where it was when there were riots. I've never had issues while over there, but I'm not a resident so take that with a grain of salt. I have heard co-workers say that people who live downtown don't lock their cars and just don't leave anything valuable in them so they don't get their windows broken.

 

[bostjan]

I'm actually trying to talk to the studio I work for into opening an ON hub. They know they need to do it, but they're slow about pulling the trigger on things until they have to.

They know with the laws in QC, and if this new immigration law passes that Legault is trying to push for where all immigrants into QC have to speak french, then that'll be the nail in the coffin for the studio in QC. We have to import 90% of the talent. It's just the way vfx has always been, and we have a hard enough time filling slots as is without more strict laws.

I'm 100% not going back to Vancouver so we'll see where I end up come the end of next year, or if I'm going to be hunting for a new job.

Which new law is that? I had only heard that they were trying to attract more French speakers outside of Quebec. I have coworkers in Montreal, so I am aware that there are already a ton of regulations about having all documents available in French and so forth.

And I get it. Quebec is surrounded by English speakers and people are afraid that French will go away. But, as language changes in Quebec, as it does everywhere around the world, any shortsighted efforts to preserve the language might just work against it. It is possible that, a couple centuries from now, Spanish becomes the lingua franca (this is ironic, since that Latin phrases refers to French as a universally understood language) or North America (this is already happening in Belize). If Quebec holds out in preserving French until then, maybe it will be secure for another couple centuries. But frankly (also an ironic adverb), French is a difficult language to learn, just as English is, and Spanish is fairly straightforward, so maybe we'd all be better off to just forget about our native languages with their ridiculous spelling rules and espouse something simpler, then use all of the freed-up memory in our brains for something more useful, like music theory or no-bake pie recipes.

 

[CanserDYI]

Dude I had the Adam Jones Epi in my fucking cart on zZounds...went to go get my card info and it was already out of stock?...jesus christ....

 

[thebeesknees22]

Which new law is that? I had only heard that they were trying to attract more French speakers outside of Quebec. I have coworkers in Montreal, so I am aware that there are already a ton of regulations about having all documents available in French and so forth.

And I get it. Quebec is surrounded by English speakers and people are afraid that French will go away. But, as language changes in Quebec, as it does everywhere around the world, any shortsighted efforts to preserve the language might just work against it. It is possible that, a couple centuries from now, Spanish becomes the lingua franca (this is ironic, since that Latin phrases refers to French as a universally understood language) or North America (this is already happening in Belize). If Quebec holds out in preserving French until then, maybe it will be secure for another couple centuries. But frankly (also an ironic adverb), French is a difficult language to learn, just as English is, and Spanish is fairly straightforward, so maybe we'd all be better off to just forget about our native languages with their ridiculous spelling rules and espouse something simpler, then use all of the freed-up memory in our brains for something more useful, like music theory or no-bake pie recipes.

this is the new one they're looking at as of last week or so.

100 per cent French: Legault wants all economic immigrants to speak French

Concerned about the decline of French in Quebec, particularly in Montreal, Premier François Legault says he will release more details of a plan that would require 100 per cent of economic immigrants to be French-speaking.

montreal.ctvnews.ca

This would apply to new immigrants only, but the message is clear enough.

"Concerned about the decline of French in Quebec, particularly in Montreal, Premier François Legault says he will release more details of a plan that would require 100 per cent of economic immigrants to be French-speaking."

I have no doubt this will go through.

 

[nightflameauto]

Which new law is that? I had only heard that they were trying to attract more French speakers outside of Quebec. I have coworkers in Montreal, so I am aware that there are already a ton of regulations about having all documents available in French and so forth.

And I get it. Quebec is surrounded by English speakers and people are afraid that French will go away. But, as language changes in Quebec, as it does everywhere around the world, any shortsighted efforts to preserve the language might just work against it. It is possible that, a couple centuries from now, Spanish becomes the lingua franca (this is ironic, since that Latin phrases refers to French as a universally understood language) or North America (this is already happening in Belize). If Quebec holds out in preserving French until then, maybe it will be secure for another couple centuries. But frankly (also an ironic adverb), French is a difficult language to learn, just as English is, and Spanish is fairly straightforward, so maybe we'd all be better off to just forget about our native languages with their ridiculous spelling rules and espouse something simpler, then use all of the freed-up memory in our brains for something more useful, like music theory or no-bake pie recipes.

SHeeeeeeeit. We'll all be speaking some simplified form of Chinese in a couple centuries. When they take over they'll realize the atrophied brains of North Americans can't handle the language as they speak it, and will develop a gutter-slang version for us simpletons to speak.

 

[bostjan]

this is the new one they're looking at as of last week or so.

100 per cent French: Legault wants all economic immigrants to speak French

Concerned about the decline of French in Quebec, particularly in Montreal, Premier François Legault says he will release more details of a plan that would require 100 per cent of economic immigrants to be French-speaking.

montreal.ctvnews.ca

This would apply to new immigrants only, but the message is clear enough.

"Concerned about the decline of French in Quebec, particularly in Montreal, Premier François Legault says he will release more details of a plan that would require 100 per cent of economic immigrants to be French-speaking."

I have no doubt this will go through.

Sounds like it'll be a while before anyone knows how severe that will be or if that goes through, though.

I've been to Quebec tons of times and there are definitely people out in the smaller towns who don't have interest in English, but, it seems like just about everyone in the big cities speaks English. I hardly know any French, but I always try to make the effort to speak it when I'm in Quebec. Once, this led me to a comical situation: The license plate started falling off of my little pickup track, and I had some extra screws, but I didn't have a way to actually attach the screws. I rolled into a petrol station off of the main autoroute and asked "Puis-je avoir un crayon et du papier, s'il vous plait?" and then proceeded to try to draw a screwdriver, since I had no clue what the word was for screwdriver, at the time. I then declared "J'ai besouin ... comment ca s'appelle ..." The clerk looked at the picture, looked at me, and then said, "You need a screwdrivaire?" Well, it worked, and I was on my way... Anyway, I guess it goes to show how bilingual most Quebecois are and how dumb Americans can be...

SHeeeeeeeit. We'll all be speaking some simplified form of Chinese in a couple centuries. When they take over they'll realize the atrophied brains of North Americans can't handle the language as they speak it, and will develop a gutter-slang version for us simpletons to speak.

I doubt it. China seems to have little interest in expanding its empire outside of Asia. And when they establish a strong influence there, they have little desire to export their culture.

 

[thebeesknees22]

Sounds like it'll be a while before anyone knows how severe that will be or if that goes through, though.

I've been to Quebec tons of times and there are definitely people out in the smaller towns who don't have interest in English, but, it seems like just about everyone in the big cities speaks English. I hardly know any French, but I always try to make the effort to speak it when I'm in Quebec. Once, this led me to a comical situation: The license plate started falling off of my little pickup track, and I had some extra screws, but I didn't have a way to actually attach the screws. I rolled into a petrol station off of the main autoroute and asked "Puis-je avoir un crayon et du papier, s'il vous plait?" and then proceeded to try to draw a screwdriver, since I had no clue what the word was for screwdriver, at the time. I then declared "J'ai besouin ... comment ca s'appelle ..." The clerk looked at the picture, looked at me, and then said, "You need a screwdrivaire?" Well, it worked, and I was on my way... Anyway, I guess it goes to show how bilingual most Quebecois are and how dumb Americans can be...



I doubt it. China seems to have little interest in expanding its empire outside of Asia. And when they establish a strong influence there, they have little desire to export their culture.

yeah, at this point I don't care about any of it. I was trying to learn for a while, but after a certain point I was just like screw this. I need to get out.


It's just not been an enjoyable adventure here. ... At all really. So it's time to move on. I just wish I would have moved after my last project instead of waiting until after this next one.

If I can make it through this last year without talking to a single soul here again outside of work other than a moving crew, I'll be happy.

 

[nightflameauto]

Sounds like it'll be a while before anyone knows how severe that will be or if that goes through, though.

I've been to Quebec tons of times and there are definitely people out in the smaller towns who don't have interest in English, but, it seems like just about everyone in the big cities speaks English. I hardly know any French, but I always try to make the effort to speak it when I'm in Quebec. Once, this led me to a comical situation: The license plate started falling off of my little pickup track, and I had some extra screws, but I didn't have a way to actually attach the screws. I rolled into a petrol station off of the main autoroute and asked "Puis-je avoir un crayon et du papier, s'il vous plait?" and then proceeded to try to draw a screwdriver, since I had no clue what the word was for screwdriver, at the time. I then declared "J'ai besouin ... comment ca s'appelle ..." The clerk looked at the picture, looked at me, and then said, "You need a screwdrivaire?" Well, it worked, and I was on my way... Anyway, I guess it goes to show how bilingual most Quebecois are and how dumb Americans can be...



I doubt it. China seems to have little interest in expanding its empire outside of Asia. And when they establish a strong influence there, they have little desire to export their culture.

I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but we're certainly not poised to retain our world power at this point. Russia's flailing around in what appears, from the outside, to be a downfall. We're determined to kill ourselves. UK is Pffffffffftin' about with trying to imitate our worst tendencies. China will be the last big world power player left the way things are going.

That is, if they don't manage to destroy themselves by getting too trigger happy with the clamp-downs on citizens. Something I would have thought impossible a few weeks ago, but apparently even the Chinese citizens are tired of being tread on.

Any way ya look at it it'd be neat to see where the world goes in two centuries. It's certainly poised on the brink of something right now. No idea if I'll be around to see what that something really is. Most of the last decade has felt like a giant, "OH SHIT! OH SHIT! OH SHIT!"

I'm just waiting for that moment my dad described when he and his friends rolled a car one night drunk out of their minds. He said as the engine cut, right before impact, all they heard was one of them going, "OH SHIT!" for the final time before the chaos.

 

[bostjan]

yeah, at this point I don't care about any of it. I was trying to learn for a while, but after a certain point I was just like screw this. I need to get out.


It's just not been an enjoyable adventure here. ... At all really. So it's time to move on. I just wish I would have moved after my last project instead of waiting until after this next one.

If I can make it through this last year without talking to a single soul here again outside of work other than a moving crew, I'll be happy.

Sorry to hear that...

What's the best and worst part of living in QC?

I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but we're certainly not poised to retain our world power at this point. Russia's flailing around in what appears, from the outside, to be a downfall. We're determined to kill ourselves. UK is Pffffffffftin' about with trying to imitate our worst tendencies. China will be the last big world power player left the way things are going.

That is, if they don't manage to destroy themselves by getting too trigger happy with the clamp-downs on citizens. Something I would have thought impossible a few weeks ago, but apparently even the Chinese citizens are tired of being tread on.

Any way ya look at it it'd be neat to see where the world goes in two centuries. It's certainly poised on the brink of something right now. No idea if I'll be around to see what that something really is. Most of the last decade has felt like a giant, "OH SHIT! OH SHIT! OH SHIT!"

I'm just waiting for that moment my dad described when he and his friends rolled a car one night drunk out of their minds. He said as the engine cut, right before impact, all they heard was one of them going, "OH SHIT!" for the final time before the chaos.

Meh, China is having more trouble than the USA. I doubt China ends up being the last one standing if the all crumble.

 

[nightflameauto]

Meh, China is having more trouble than the USA. I doubt China ends up being the last one standing if the all crumble.

Really? Funny how different the story is from different sources when it comes to China. Aside from the protests lately, I'd heard very little negative about where they're standing politically and economically. Human rights wise they never were on the up-and-up, but what's that matter when it comes to power?

Hell, maybe we'll all end up back in the stone age. One good ion storm could take out a LOT of progress quick. (Man I'm in a good mood.)

 

[thebeesknees22]

Sorry to hear that...

What's the best and worst part of living in QC?


Meh, China is having more trouble than the USA. I doubt China ends up being the last one standing if the all crumble.

well the worst part mmm mm....haha

ok so I've spent my adult life adventuring around here and there. LA, Sydney, Vancouver, MTL, etc....

LA- awesome for making friends. Made tons. but it got boring because no one would want to go north of the 10 or east of the 405, so I adventured on.

Sydney- friggin awesome experience. But it was more/less like summer camp but with working. Made a couple of lifelong friends there.

Vancouver - The experience was ....complicated. It took 6 months to get people to go out and do stuff and that was only because people I met in Australia moved there. 7 years later of a few up times, and a lot of down depressing times, I moved on. (it's just a super depressing city for me. Beautiful yes.... Rainy, dark, and depressing....yes as well. Plus it's insanely expensive and there's zero hope for a long term future there unless I want to be a serf). I did make some lifelong friends there though who I still talk to to this day even though I haven't lived there in years.

MTL - holy....crap. socially impossible. I tried hard for 2 years straight. Nothing. ZERO. Nadda! I did have a gf, for about a year here, but I knew her from Vancouver. Other than that...Holy....smokes. MTL is and has been from the get go, my fortress of solitude. And I've encountered enough stink faces and rudeness from people that I just don't talk to people here. I would drive all the way to Ottawa pre-covid just to go shopping instead of having to speak to someone here.

So the worst part about MTL/QC for me is having zero connection to anyone I've met here in going on about 5 years. And I've never had that to that degree anywhere else that I've lived. I can take that just fine for a while, but after a certain point ...... F it. Time to move. Move anywhere... except Vancouver lol





The best part though is I actually really like the weather. It's a hot proper summer, and lots of snow in the winter. Autumn is really amazing here too. Quite a lot of sunny days compared to BC. etc..

And my apartment here is HUGE, and with a good view. It was perfect for covid lockdowns. For living the Fortress of Solitude life, it's pretty great for that. And it's fairly good with blocking sound for the most part from the neighbors.

....I guess that's it for my good list.

 

[TedEH]

any shortsighted efforts to preserve the language might just work against it

Try telling them that. It's not really about the language though, it's about "the culture" and the language is just a tool in that argument. But it's a strong one. Every time a new law is passed around language, it sends a pretty clear message that they know who they want to include in "Quebec culture" and the rest of us don't belong. It honestly pisses me off a lot. Anglophones are as much a part of Quebec culture at this point as anyone else. Every time they clamp down on the language more, it's a slap to the face. Makes me want to learn the language that much less, just to spite them, almost. To just move away would be to let them win - because frankly, it's the goal. Assimilate or GTFO.

What's the best and worst part of living in QC?

They're both the same answer: Can't really talk to anyone. It's a double-edged sword for sure.

MTL - holy....crap. socially impossible.

I find that surprising, 'cause I've always found MTL to be easier to find English things going on than anywhere else in Quebec I've been. Granted, I have the advantage of just crossing the river, but that's kinda cheating.

 

[John]

"Copyright infringement" takedowns and warnings have been especially annoying, as of late. It's not a new thing per se, but it doesn't make it any less of a hassle to say the least. Doesn't matter if it's just someone wanting to share something on the side they're proud of with some friends, or someone who's involved in anything of this nature for the long haul.

As for my own experience, I've gotten swept under the rug for this more than once- except it's all for my own work. As in original stuff I've gone out of my way to write and whatnot.

I speak not only for myself, here. Other folks are getting hit with this type of crap, too. Even if it's not exactly for the same reasons. It also brings up a separate note that some guitar companies (or the folks working + stanning their stuff) within the last several years seem to have taken the extra effort to come across as kickable across the face whilst cementing the sentiment of never wanting to work with them nor support their stuff anytime soon.

 

[thebeesknees22]

...

I find that surprising, 'cause I've always found MTL to be easier to find English things going on than anywhere else in Quebec I've been. Granted, I have the advantage of just crossing the river, but that's kinda cheating.

yeah, it's not really about finding english things. It's more about just finding a good group of people to do stuff with. And that has been non existent for me here. :/

 

[bostjan]

Really? Funny how different the story is from different sources when it comes to China. Aside from the protests lately, I'd heard very little negative about where they're standing politically and economically. Human rights wise they never were on the up-and-up, but what's that matter when it comes to power?

Hell, maybe we'll all end up back in the stone age. One good ion storm could take out a LOT of progress quick. (Man I'm in a good mood.)

Well, China, being a country, doesn't actually literally have hopes and dreams. But the Chinese people do have some collective hopes and dreams and the Chinese leadership definitely does. Those hopes and dreams don't really seem to include influencing the language and culture of far-off places to be more like Chinese language and culture. Their motivations seem to be more aligned with money and prosperity for people who are Chinese enough. If you handed Xi the continent of North America, I'd be surprised if whatever they did didn't virtually amount to just stripping away of of the resources here and leaving us all to starve.

As for space weather... a lot of the doomsday stuff is overblown, but space weather does affect things for sure. Satellites for sure, aircraft could be unlucky, but at the point anything electronic near ground level is permanently damaged, anything living on land would probably be doomed anyway. There are, of course, cases of bits of data getting flipped by cosmic radiation, but before you get too excited, it's important to know that these are isolated cases of single bits over a network of a score or more of exabits of data, which is statistically, like, one in a pentillion. So a solar storm would have to be at least a hundred trillion times more powerful to start causing permanent widespread network destruction, when it'd only need to be a few billion times more powerful to give us all radiation poisoning.

well the worst part mmm mm....haha

ok so I've spent my adult life adventuring around here and there. LA, Sydney, Vancouver, MTL, etc....

LA- awesome for making friends. Made tons. but it got boring because no one would want to go north of the 10 or east of the 405, so I adventured on.

Sydney- friggin awesome experience. But it was more/less like summer camp but with working. Made a couple of lifelong friends there.

Vancouver - The experience was ....complicated. It took 6 months to get people to go out and do stuff and that was only because people I met in Australia moved there. 7 years later of a few up times, and a lot of down depressing times, I moved on. (it's just a super depressing city for me. Beautiful yes.... Rainy, dark, and depressing....yes as well. Plus it's insanely expensive and there's zero hope for a long term future there unless I want to be a serf). I did make some lifelong friends there though who I still talk to to this day even though I haven't lived there in years.

MTL - holy....crap. socially impossible. I tried hard for 2 years straight. Nothing. ZERO. Nadda! I did have a gf, for about a year here, but I knew her from Vancouver. Other than that...Holy....smokes. MTL is and has been from the get go, my fortress of solitude. And I've encountered enough stink faces and rudeness from people that I just don't talk to people here. I would drive all the way to Ottawa pre-covid just to go shopping instead of having to speak to someone here.

So the worst part about MTL/QC for me is having zero connection to anyone I've met here in going on about 5 years. And I've never had that to that degree anywhere else that I've lived. I can take that just fine for a while, but after a certain point ...... F it. Time to move. Move anywhere... except Vancouver lol





The best part though is I actually really like the weather. It's a hot proper summer, and lots of snow in the winter. Autumn is really amazing here too. Quite a lot of sunny days compared to BC. etc..

And my apartment here is HUGE, and with a good view. It was perfect for covid lockdowns. For living the Fortress of Solitude life, it's pretty great for that. And it's fairly good with blocking sound for the most part from the neighbors.

....I guess that's it for my good list.

Interesting. I've never lived in Montreal. I've never even stayed there for more than 3 days at a time. But my coworkers there seem more approachable and outgoing and even friendly than average. Although I did think it was odd that, at lunch time, everyone punched out and sat in their individual cars for an hour. Even when we split a pizza, everyone took their food and then fucked right off to their cars, rather than eat together in the lunchroom. I had never seen that before. I guess that's just a glimpse behind the curtain.

But I always thought both Montreal and Quebec City were beautiful places. Montreal has some great cultural diversity and good food. And I'm pretty sure you are infinitely more likely to encounter someone unironically wearing a black and white striped shirt with a baret and a baguette under their arm in Montreal than in Paris.

But perhaps it's a matter of cultural differences. I grew up in Detroit. I lived for a while (3 years) in Indianapolis, which I'd say is geographically close but culturally far from Detroit. I made zero friends there. People thought I talked funny and dressed funny and eat weird food. Here in rural VT, the culture is much more similar to the culture in rural Michigan, which I can sort of relate to. People here understand my accent, I can mostly blend in, and I still eat weird food, but the general culinary culture here is at least a lot closer to what I'm used to. But, most importantly, I've made friends here (not a lot, mind you, but there's a huge gap between zero and one), so it's enough to grow some roots.

Try telling them that. It's not really about the language though, it's about "the culture" and the language is just a tool in that argument. But it's a strong one. Every time a new law is passed around language, it sends a pretty clear message that they know who they want to include in "Quebec culture" and the rest of us don't belong. It honestly pisses me off a lot. Anglophones are as much a part of Quebec culture at this point as anyone else. Every time they clamp down on the language more, it's a slap to the face. Makes me want to learn the language that much less, just to spite them, almost. To just move away would be to let them win - because frankly, it's the goal. Assimilate or GTFO.


They're both the same answer: Can't really talk to anyone. It's a double-edged sword for sure.


I find that surprising, 'cause I've always found MTL to be easier to find English things going on than anywhere else in Quebec I've been. Granted, I have the advantage of just crossing the river, but that's kinda cheating.

There's a sad irony in a 400-ish year old culture so scared of being assimilated peacefully, when that culture itself violently usurped several native cultures that had been around for millennia before. Xenophobia is never a good look, but if your culture is so great, people who move into your area will be much more willing to assimilate. If you have to force people to assimilate your culture by threatening them with the law, then maybe the culture isn't really worth as much as you think it is. (rhetorical "you")

Heck, Vermont's biggest "city" is essentially a suburb of MTL. Actually, the four biggest towns in VT are all clustered in that same area. There are a few towns here where French is the language you are most likely to hear out on the street. But there seems to be very little cultural influence from QC. Maybe that says it all.

 

[bostjan]

"Copyright infringement" takedowns and warnings have been especially annoying, as of late. It's not a new thing per se, but it doesn't make it any less of a hassle to say the least. Doesn't matter if it's just someone wanting to share something on the side they're proud of with some friends, or someone who's involved in anything of this nature for the long haul.

As for my own experience, I've gotten swept under the rug for this more than once- except it's all for my own work. As in original stuff I've gone out of my way to write and whatnot.

I speak not only for myself, here. Other folks are getting hit with this type of crap, too. Even if it's not exactly for the same reasons. It also brings up a separate note that some guitar companies (or the folks working + stanning their stuff) within the last several years seem to have taken the extra effort to come across as kickable across the face whilst cementing the sentiment of never wanting to work with them nor support their stuff anytime soon.

Video sharing sites used to be the wild wild west. I was guilty of misunderstanding or neglecting the rules myself and posted tons of covers. When you tube started cracking down around 2012 or so, I moved to a different site until that started cracking down and repeated the process. Eventually, I wised up and, now, I only post my own content and never include anything that I haven't created myself from scratch.

But here we are, 10 years later, and these sites are still in over-correction mode. I've received copyright claims on my own songs that I paid my own money to publish and protect. Youtube, though, is this big faceless machine where the appeals process is automated and inhuman. So you rarely ever get the resolution that makes any damned sense. Oddly, the cover videos I posted over a decade ago that weren't flagged right away are still up, even though stuff I've posted with absolutely bizarre audio tracks that sound like nothing else on planet Earth are taken down for being claimed by some scammer in Lagos or Chennai.

I'm not sure which site did this to you, but I feel for you. The whole process is broken.

 

[TedEH]

Vermont's biggest "city" is essentially a suburb of MTL

I always forget how close border is. In my brain, the US might as well be on the other side of the planet.

 

[nightflameauto]

"Copyright infringement" takedowns and warnings have been especially annoying, as of late. It's not a new thing per se, but it doesn't make it any less of a hassle to say the least. Doesn't matter if it's just someone wanting to share something on the side they're proud of with some friends, or someone who's involved in anything of this nature for the long haul.

As for my own experience, I've gotten swept under the rug for this more than once- except it's all for my own work. As in original stuff I've gone out of my way to write and whatnot.

I speak not only for myself, here. Other folks are getting hit with this type of crap, too. Even if it's not exactly for the same reasons. It also brings up a separate note that some guitar companies (or the folks working + stanning their stuff) within the last several years seem to have taken the extra effort to come across as kickable across the face whilst cementing the sentiment of never wanting to work with them nor support their stuff anytime soon.

Dude, this shit is rampant everywhere now. There was just a big story a couple days ago about the Blender Corp (they make Blender 3D, and release hobbyist made films from it online pretty regularly). Some company in some other country popped 'em with a copyright infringement on something they posted, made by them. They've contacted Youtube something like four times, and every time Youtube tells them they don't own it because this other company claims it. And they don't have the money to sick a bunch of lawyers on them.

It's one of the reasons it's hard for me to continue posting my own work online anywhere. All it takes is one douchebag with a complete lack of conscience and you're done unless you've got the lawyers on retainer or can afford to hire them. And sorry, my hobbies suck enough money from me by the time I manage to create something worth sharing. I ever get hit with one I'd probably just crawl back in my hole and only share things directly with people I can hand them a some form of physical copy of the work and know I can trust them to not go, "But this is minez!"