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Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

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Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#441

Post by gopher_space »

jcranmer wrote: post #407
amyjess wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need something like actual malice--specific knowledge of falsity IANAL, but as I understand it the definition of malice also includes "reckless disregard for the truth". I'm sure a good lawyer can argue that not having human lawyers review, investigate, and confirm computer-generated abuse reports before sending them to outsiders constitutes a reckless disregard for the truth.

A lawyer might argue that, but it's not going to be a compelling argument. Recklessness is generally a conscious disregard of the consequences; as applied to defamation-like claims, it's generally seen as "you specifically voiced doubts about the truth". Failing to vet automated abuse reports is going to be at best negligence (and I'm dubious of even that, because given the nonbinding nature of abuse reports, it's no…

Knowing that you'll absolutely generate false positives and not providing a method of automatically fixing those would be a deliberate action, not recklessness or negligence. I wouldn't be surprised to find code that pings staff based on account size.

It seems like providers could remove themselves from the situation by just giving their clients a "fair use!" response button?

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#442

Post by saghm »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #360
saghm wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me…

A bad law is bad if it leads to injustice even beyond its original scope. We have seen numerous problems with DMCA abuse and copyright strikes in other forms. We have patent trolling and this abuse artificially feds a whole industry of dubious lawyers. I think this is not even a small problem and all these factors combined does make it a bad law, even if it would still protect innovation like it once was to meant to…

I'm not sure how you came away from my comment with the idea that I disagree that the DMCA is a bad law. My argument isn't that that the law is good, but that I don't think it's anywhere close to the primary cause of this incident, and that there's much lower hanging fruit that could stop stuff like this. I'm also not sure why the _registrar_ needs protection in the case we're talking about; no part of this happened because the registrar needed protection, but the main cause of pain was that the registrar completely trusted a false third-party report that alleged _fraud_, not copyright issues.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make at all with your comment. None of it seems to address anything that I said, and if anything, it almost sounds like you managed to infer the opposite of what I meant in most cases.

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#443

Post by saghm »

registeredcorn wrote: post #439
saghm wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me…

>the easiest way to fight back against this isn't to try to change laws to avoid this but for non-malicious entities like the registrar not to allow their customers to get exploited by this sort of behavior. Easiest? Perhaps. Nothing around law is particularly easy (except breaking it, of course!) :) So, not altering existing laws, or not making new ones, would absolutely be the easiest method to that desired outcome…

My main point probably got muddled a bit, but the main argument I was trying to make was that copyright law, however bad it might be, wasn't why the registrar acted the way it did (because it was acting on a false report of fraud and phishing, not copyright infringement), and ultimately even with a troll trying to get the site taken offline, the registrar could have acted responsibly, and there wouldn't have been any significant downtime.

From the timeline of the incident given at the top of this thread by the maintainer of the site, it sounds a lot more like the registrar was lazy about investigating whether the report of fraud/phishing was valid than that the registrar was fully aware that the actual intent was to take an entire site offline due to an allegation of a singular user infringing copyright. It sounds like the issue with the registrar could happen just as easily even if we magically waved a wand away and eliminated copyright law; if someone made an allegation of fraud and phishing, it sounds like the registrar might act the exact same way it did in this incident and take the site offline. That's why I'm arguing that copyright law isn't the primary cause of what happened here, and why reforming it seems pretty orthogonal to stopping this specific thing from occurring regardless of its merits as a goal in general.

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#444

Post by [deleted] »

breakingcups wrote: post #125
leafo wrote: post #31

I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you: From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud…

Filing false reports like this should count as fraud.

[deleted]

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#445

Post by hungariantoast »

foobarchu wrote: post #434
Suppafly wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they get rid of TLDs once the country they are assigned to goes away? I assumed they'd sell them to someone or something.

Nobody really knows. There are only a few precedents, i.e. the old Soviet Union .su tld being kept around, or the 2 letter country code that I can't recall which was reassigned to a new country after the old one went out of existence. There isn't really a precedent for a tld with as many domains under it as .io, it's a very strong possibility it will be kept around and given to a private entity or even to GB.

.cs for Czechoslovakia lasted from 1990 to 1995.

.yu for Yugoslavia ran from 1989 to 2010.

Wikipedia has comprehensive articles on both of those ccTLDs, if you're interested in learning more

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#446

Post by anitil »

vasco wrote: post #391
SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a static site, you could move it to Cloudflare Pages to reduce the cost to zero.

And make my story worse? I feel like to optimize for spite I need to pay a little as well. You made me laugh though - have a good day :)

> I feel like to optimize for spite I need to pay a little as well

A fantastic sentiment, I do exactly this as well

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#447

Post by xinayder »

leafo wrote: post #31

I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you: From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud…

You should change registrars. Sort the situation and move to a better one.

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#448

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

disjunct wrote: post #179

Funko as a brand exists entirely on derivative content, albeit licensed. Seems like exactly the sort of brand that would trip auto-DMCA software.

It also works out pretty well for them, as they’re basically /the/ symbol of soulless commercialism, sanding down everything distinctive about characters and producing a cuboid of concentrated Brand. Anyone who voluntarily looks at that and decides they want to be a part of it is already on board with the corporate hellscape, so nothing they do could possibly harm their reputation among their customers.

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#449

Post by ikiris »

salawat wrote: post #424
raxxorraxor wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad law is bad if it leads to injustice even beyond its original scope. We have seen numerous problems with DMCA abuse and copyright strikes in other forms. We have patent trolling and this abuse artificially feds a whole industry of dubious lawyers. I think this is not even a small problem and all these factors combined does make it a bad law, even if it would still protect innovation like it once was to meant to…

The platform will always be preferentially targeted because the larger you are the more you have to lose, the more likely it is you actualy have assets to go after if you don't deal with the alleged noncompliance. How have y'all not realized that's how all this works? It's why DNS is an anti-feature. As long as registrar's exist, it'll be an active lever utilized for basic deplatforming. Until everyone can host their…

How do you expect people to find things without an authoritative lookup database?

Re: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

#450

Post by lxgr »

kvdveer wrote: post #43
rf15 wrote: post #7

Brand Shield and other AI slopware needs to be sued to death for all the damage they cause, including their customer's reputation and bottom line

Of course the problem is that legally speaking, they don't cause any damage - service providers they target cause the damage. BS have no true authority over these service providers, just the threat of some legal claim. The service providers comply voluntarily as they don't want to spend time checking if the claim is valid.

Then there needs to be some cost associated with sending a completely false claim.

Doesn’t need to be huge – just enough to cover their cost and thereby make it uneconomical to outsource the work these companies are charging their customers for to their targets.

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