Minorating.com (drivers thread)

Which thread is that mate?
Not really doing anything other than SRS races at the moment. If only they would use MR for the SRS servers to help filter the hot lap specialists (who have no clue how to actually race) out of the top split.

 

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...olicy-a-show-stopper-for-tracking-apps.49496/

Last messages from Minolin don't sound optimistic.

 

Sad to see MR go down but thanks heaps for all your work. At least it makes my decision to not renew my public servers as they werent being used much anyway and without MR I wouldnt want to run in them either with less then a week left for them. Will see what ACC brings in terms of servers and most likely kick them off again once we have MP in EA with dedi server options.

For our league servers I will see how it goes with no MR but may end up using an stracker whitelist, anyone wanting access will need to make contact in the league forums so its less likely new guys will just be able to join the servers.

I will test it with no auth for a while and to see what the general public is like these days. Im sure the league guys will make it known fairly quick if this turns to crap and we either need a password for prac servers or use a whitelist.

 

Sad to hear, but I can fully understand the decision.

Anyway, thanks for creating, supporting and further evolving MR over the years.

 

That GDPR thing is yet more pointless kindling thrown onto the boring legal fire, but unfortunately we have to accept more and more of this kind of rubbish these days. I completely understand Minolin's position here, and agree that it is better to eliminate any possibility of ending up in court before it happens. On the positive side....look where it got you!

 

I will surely miss the colours in helicorsa.

 

I understand your concerns @Minolin. As a developer who runs a business supplying technology for the market research sector, GDPR has been front-and-centre for me this year. Fortunately, my other-half is a data protection and privacy consultant who’s been in the game for over 12 years. Little else has been discussed in our household for the past few months (“there will be time when we talk about things other than the GDPR, won’t there?” has been pleadingly uttered by her more than once of late.) She knows her stuff.

I’m gutted I didn’t see the other thread about this a while back. Is this really a done deal? MR is such a fundamental part of enjoyable public server racing in AC that it would be a travesty to see it go. Knowing how much I love AC and MR, she’s she’d love to help with some advice if you’re interested?

 

Sadly we are witnessing the end of an era today

Thanks @Minolin for all the work you have put into this remarkable piece of software and for your commitment over all these years!

 

Do people read nothing but tabloids or so these days? So much paranoia and hysteria about one of the best things to have happened to the end user on the Internet ever. If Minorating were in breach of the GDPR then just about every activity on the Net would be. The kind of tracking that the GDPR targets is many orders of magnitude beyond what MR does. I fail to see which lawyers would have standing to bring a case against MR?

Still, it's Minolin's call of course. And his other arguments have far more validity.

 

Well, back in the day there were multiple law firms in Germany whose only business it was to serve notices for ppl. with copyright infringements (emule, BitTorrent), they didn't actually want to file a lawsuit to be brought to the courts, but 'settle' by paying a penalty and fees, usually ranging around 500-800€ (sometimes up to 1000€), often paired with a cease and desist order.

Those (I call them shady/immoral) law firms have moved on to other things, like false/incorrect/non-conform credit infos on webpage/webshops and now the fear is that this GDPR will open another gate for those possible infringements. (pretty much a couple of new EU-wide regulation or newly enforced old regulations have been used for this 'kind of business')

Usually small businesses or private ppl. either stop what they are doing (in fear of suits), pay the 'fine and fees', but most can't afford to fight these things as nobody knows how much that would cost and how the courts will decide.
The big companies just hire a department for that, have lawyers on speed-dial or even have own lawyers hired, so they don't really get hurt by it apart from spending staff salary / lawyer fees which is pocket change for them.


So yeah, if you don't know the situation with some 'prick' lawyers (/law firms) in Germany you might not fully understand Minolin's decision.


Edit:
to clearify: sometimes these processes aren't engaged by law firms, but it's possible on a commercial stage that a business competitor started the process; in these cases I don't blame the law firms

 

Yes, you are right with that. Almost all net activities in europe need actions due to GDPR.

And that's also why I think that a good idea worked out very very badly: Big players survive with their lawyers (doing the very same thing than before as far as I can tell) and the ordinary guys are having troubles.

 

Indeed.

Totally agree that the risk for Minolin with something like MR would be very close to zero, but as he says, anything above zero just isn’t worth it for him and I get that.

That said, Minolin, is there any personal data that MR processes that Kunos don’t already with AC (and shortly ACC)? Could all the risk be mitigated by transferring the ownership and running of MR to Kunos? I would like to think that 505 Games have a phalanx of lawyers all champing at the bit to take down any would be litigious trolls.

 

I think you totally misunderstand the spirit of GDPR. You just understand the words used.....

 

That’s the whole point of it.
Read it, or better try to.
Reference about reference about reference.
It’s made to do everything they want.

 

I get that it can seem all a bit overwhelming (my GF really helped me get my head around it) but the heart of the GDPR is very much in the right place. It actually came about by human rights activists petitioning the EU to better protect people from *****le corporations.

The language can be a little hard to understand but with a bit of help it’s not actually too bad. Take for example its five core principles:

https://gdpr.algolia.com/gdpr-article-5

Which basically breaks down to:

a) Identify which of the six lawful bases you are operating under when you process people’s personal data (making sure that what you want to do is actually something you’re allowed to do) and then be open and honest with them about what you’re doing with their data.

b) Be explicit about what you’re doing with their data and don’t do any other nefarious **** with it.

c) Only collect the data you need, to do what you need to do.

d) Do what you can to keep people’s personal data up-to-date.

e) Delete personal data when you no longer need it (or anonymise it).

f) Keep people’s personal data secure.

The ICO, the UK data protection regulator has some great guides on what it all means and how to navigate it all.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/

Give it a year or two, once the furore has died down and we’ll all be in a better place for it.

 

Actually, the other day I thought about how the GDPR might impact sTracker and MR, and came to the conclusion that there will be trouble, as there is no way to either opt in or out by design. So I was not really surprised this happened, and I don't even the GDPR for it, for tracking and storing user related data without consent is something to be reconsidered. Hopefully future AC versions will take care of this.

However, I will miss Minorating. Besides helping to cleaner online races, it acted as some kind of a rewarding system for me, resp. "Stay A!" was a good motto for me and, to be honest, kept me from doing one or more revenge fouls.

Thanks for the good work, @Minolin, and as your spirit lives on in ACC, let's be looking forward to that.