Itch.io games site taken down
Bluesky Post (this was also posted on twitter)
I was hoping to find a statement from the aggressor, but it seems to be too early.
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That’s fucking crazy. Anyone notice how AI has only made everything shittier?
Why develop and create something in a vacuum when you can beta test it on everyone.
It’s really just the DMCA.
This kind of faultless takedown shouldn’t be legal, but the DMCA carved it out decades ago.
yes, maybe AI winter was a good thing
AI is a great tool. But tools need to still be handled by humans. AI should compile a list of sites “infringing” and this list should be checked by a human. There always should be a human filter with all AI uses. Cool, let your stuff be written by AI but check what is written and fix weird or wrong shit. Have the meat be done by AI and the details by humans.
If a copyright bot makes false DMCA notices, the programmers should be held responsible as if they sent out the notices. That’s how we’d handle it for any other crime.
It’s automating the enshittification. A large language model doesn’t need to sleep and doesn’t have a conscience.
AI as we know it now is, in a nut shell, the automation of “I was just following orders”. Or a digital factory line of evil. Either way, this is about removing the human element from as many decisions as possible.
It would be tricky, unethical, and in some cases illegal to get people to do the sort of things the owner class and fascists want to do to society. But it’s easy to let an AI program go nuts. The cruelty is the point in the case of the fascists. And in the case of the owner class it clears out anyone who couldn’t afford a lawyer.
This is crazy. How can they just take down your domain without at least discussing the issue.
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Sorry, obviously the public awareness of the people making these decisions is dangerous information.
DAMN YOU ANTHROPOMORPHIZED COMPANY RUN BY NOBODY WHO THEREFORE CAN MAKE SHITTY DECISIONS HIDING BEHIND CAPITALISM!!!
Thank your glorious mods for protecting our corporate overlords.
I’m with you about not anthropomorphizing faceless companies as the bad actors here, but also I really doubt the CEO was the one who enacted this decision. It probably came from some middle manger who clicked “yes” on some report they didn’t actually read.
Comment removed or am i dumb? What did it say?
FYI: you can just look it up.
It was a picture of the CEO of Funko captioned with a death threat.
Well, fair enough.
Cynthia “Philip Morris” Williams
I like the joke, but does this situation really warrant a death sentence?
Of course not. But do people really get to make shitty decisions that impact other people while hiding behind the veil of corporate structure without being directly named and shamed for their decisions?
My only comment here is that I run a small business and decisions can occur that I don’t always see up front and with which they negatively impact employees or customers. I also know many large clients where the leadership delegates decisions down to sometimes stupid or misguided staff. The balance here comes to how a leader reacts when they learn of the hurtful actions and is there an opportunity for change.
I think that from your standpoint, the small business owner, it makes sense to do this.
I think the corporate demons pulling the strings of these massive companies love, and I mean love, when people look at them like you.
Wow wow wow. Who said anything about death? This clearly calls for a broken leg at most.
But it we take into account the amount of trash they generate…
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she also led fulfillment by amazon lol
okay lemme grab my coat
okay lemme grab my
coathoodie
At first I was like “WTF does an indie games site have to do with Funko?” then I Googled it…
Looks like they hosted a BUNCH of infringing games, so Funko, instead of doing the righteous thing and sending them a takedown request, just nuked the whole domain…
Sounds about right for funko lol.
( though tbh, listing all games that taken the funko brand would be a massive task lol ).Still, this one hell of a messy shit i wouldnt want to touch legally haha
though tbh, listing all games that taken the funko brand would be a massive task lol
That’s what the brandshield “AI” was supposed to automate. Hell, I could possibly cobble some python script to crawl through itch and create a list of infriging games/devs, something that wouldn’t take more than 1 day.
Sure, but for a lawsuit you should also validate that list to make sure there were no mistakes. Same should have happened with the ai bot. But nooooo, too many people takes scripts and ai output as facts -_-
So from what I’ve heard at least some of those are just fan pages that just link to the official site.
Fucko pop should be forced to pay damages. It’s too easy for shitty companies to send out takedown notices and too difficult for those takedown notices to be contested by comparison.
That was the whole point of the DMCA, though. Prevent bad publicity by claiming copyright infringement and companiea have to take down the content before they investigate any response. Any time a company doesn’t do that they are risking their own necks. So usually they only ignore it if they know for sure it’s bogus which requires that they spend the resources on a person reviewing every notice before the required time expires.
the “oh our automated system did it oopsies please forgive us” excuse doesn’t make it any better either
I hope this teaches them the valuable lesson of always having domains with more than one registrar.
Or, hopefully, we migrate to a system more advanced than DNS registrars where your “name” can be taken down by an unrelated third party. The current system sucks and the fact that even the Fediverse relies on it (accounts are tied to domains, making full account migration impossible) makes even the remains of my pre-graduate CS student brain rumble.
The current DNS implementation works well but there should maybe be some ICANN rules that restrict regristars more.
I can’t really think of a way to make it better without making it less secure.
what do you mean
Maybe he’s talking about some sort of peer to peer thing
maybe
Or even blockchain!
no no no no, I prefer the current status of things to anything blockchain.
If lawmakers would simply make the entity responsible for the operation of these AI powered tools be fully liable for every decision that it makes, right or wrong, this kind of nonsense would vanish overnight.
I hope the people running itch.io have great lawyers, because I would be trying to take Funko to court for punitive damages over something like this.
Also, while we’re at it, reform the DMCA to disallow automated copyright related takedown requests without some sort of human reviewing it at the other end. It’s been abused to hell and back by big business.
Also, while we’re at it, reform the DMCA to disallow automated copyright related takedown requests without some sort of human reviewing it at the other end. It’s been abused to hell and back by big business.
Itch.io shared on hackernews that they apparently sent a report for fraud and phishing, not copyright infringement. So sounds like funko was abusing the system even if automated copyright claims weren’t a thing.
If you think about it, until now there’s been an u spoken, automatic limit on all government activity because some person has to actually implement all government activity.
That’s been, through all of history, at least some kind of filter on the actions government would take.
(I’m using the term “government” ultra loosely, since in this case it’s a private entity implementing policy; “government” as in an authority who can halt a person’s operations as they see fit. “Government” in the same way management or command structure or the principal’s office is like a “government” in its little realm of operation).
Up until now, government has to be done by people. But AI makes it easy to do tons of activity, which can have a larger disruptive impact.
If lawmakers would simply make the entity responsible for the operation of these AI powered tools be fully liable for every decision that it makes, right or wrong, this kind of nonsense would vanish overnight.
They are? AI isn’t some autonomous entity with its own legal rights and responsibilities.
The problem is that these actions aren’t illegal. This is all a civil issue, and yeah, hopefully itch.io puts a hurt on Brand Shield but I doubt it.
I’d bet these fan projects lead to more sales of their garbage products, but these corporations don’t see that because they want that licensing money now. Or they’re just spiteful and vindictive like Nintendo.
On one level, I sympathize with companies like Nintendo, I don’t want to, BUT companies are supposed to make efforts to protect their IP or they run the risk of losing those exclusive protections when it matters later on (abandonment). So if they want to continue their IP rights, they’re supposed to defend it against anything that comes along. I still don’t like it, but I kind of understand why they have to do it.
Granted, I think they could come up with some sort of licensing terms that would made it easy for solo developers to still develop small-time projects to encourage people to create these one-off labors of love, similar to what alot of TTRPG developers do, but for whatever reason, they go the hardball approach, which just creates bad feelings in the community.
https://www.themyerslg.com/blog/what-happens-if-you-dont-defend-your-ip/
I don’t want to, BUT companies are supposed to make efforts to protect their IP or they run the risk of losing those exclusive protections when it matters later on (abandonment).
My understanding is that 1.- they are not forced to defend against every possible case of trademark usage 2.- they are not obligated by law to be jerks about it and 3.- this applies to trademark only, not copyright or patents.
They have to defend their trademark. They don’t have to defend copyright, and most of Nintendo’s reputation comes from copyright claims. Someone streaming a let’s play isn’t selling a counterfeit Mario game, they’re just showing you things in a real Mario game, so there’s no trademark claim.
They’re also big abusers of the fact that most of the people they make copyright claims against can’t afford to defend themselves against such a behemoth. Even if you’re sure you’ve not violated their copyright and your lawyer’s sure, too, it’ll be much cheaper to roll over than get the legal system to agree with you.
Holy fuck
more details by itch.io dev
This is the future of Feudalism
Not only is this absolutely inexcusable, also, Funko Pops are ugly and creepy-looking and I don’t understand why people spend so much money on them just because they look vaguely like the characters or people they’re supposed to represent.
God I hate our whole system.
Funko pops are for people that lack a personality and try to create one by buying dumb shit that sits on a shelf and depreciates in value. They’re just memecoin bros
That’s basically what I was trying to say, but you put it better. Thank you.
It’s beanie babies 2.0
Hey.
Just because I dont have a personality and try desperately to fit in doesnt mean I am as stupid as the cryptobro morons.
I mean, it sounds like a lawsuit to me.
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A takedown request was issued on false grounds.
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This takedown was then actioned without any due process.
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The issue has caused tangible, and measurable, loss (calculable from prior sales records).
Honestly, there needs to be a fixed penalty fine for bad takedowns…
Honestly, there needs to be a fixed penalty fine for bad takedowns…
Absolutely not, fixed fines become expected costs, and immensely favor monied actors. Make it percentage based so it hurts equally, and rich people actually have to pay a measurable amount.
Fixed fine on a sliding scale for repeat offenders
Funko would drag a lawsuit out for years, but Itch might have the spite to push through it.
They’d probably settle. It’s not worth the cost to funko either
Would the lawsuit be against funko or the registrar (or both) ?
Probably both if you can make the case for it. Funko for the false request, the registrar for not doing their due diligence in honoring it. Depending on the wording of the law the registrar may be off the hook however, so whether there’s a case to be brought there would be a question for their lawyers.
Hopefully this ruins Funko Fucks
Takedown requests being spammed everywhere is sort of standard, what’s crazy is that their domain holder immediately honored the request, completely ignoring how massive itch io is with millions of users…
Fixed minimum penalty
I believe all of this is legal thanks to DMCA.
Maybe if they followed the dmca process
They made a false fraud report, not a DMCA takedown (which shouldn’t have taken down the entire site anyway).
Domain names arent copyrightable. This falls into trademark laws.
The DMCA doesn’t make false requests legal (I’m also not sure if this specific issue falls under the DMCA), but it does fail to define any meaningful penalty for making them.
Fixed penalties just become the cost of doing business. Like actors, we need to start asking for percentage of gross.
Imo we need to start attaching criminal penalties to the people behind businesses that knowingly abuse their power and position like this. Corporate bullying isn’t a financial position, it’s a failing of ethics.
Yup. The first couple of times might have been a mistake subject to fine. The third time you’re facing criminal contempt of the rule of law.
Imagine if in America, corporations were subject to the three strike rule
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It works for me now? Not sure how long ago this was, timewise, but at least they are back on.
Still doesn’t work for me.
That can be just your DNS server having it cached. The servers behind it still exist
Yup. 45.33.107.166 works.
Every single DMCA request should have to be filled out by hand and signed by the infringed party, not on their behalf by a third parry, under penalty of perjury. This is absolute bullshit.
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The DMCA still has a lot of problems. Like if someone uploads something behind a paywall, the victim has to pay before they can even send a valid notice.
