Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#51

Post by trylfthsk »

How effective is the DMCA in being a force for good? I continue to see stories where it seems they combine all the fun of a jury summons with the customer service of google.

To me, this SEGA claim seems to border on a perjury violation for false DMCA claims (IANAL). But in practice, the victim has neither the ability nor funding to utilize the legal mechanisms for discouraging this behavior. To say nothing of the second issue which is Megacorporations having no obligations to communicate with the proles. And a third issue naturally consequent elsewhere: the hamfisted DMCA enforcement from the major media platforms.

I'm sure this horse has been beaten to a pulp at this point, but are there any good breakdowns of the merits in DMCA repeal/reform/status quo?

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#52

Post by nitrogen »

plussed_reader wrote: post #49
qalmakka wrote: post #29

I think that until the USA gets rid of legal lobbying from interest groups (aka, legalized corruption), this kinds of things will keep happening. Having to pull content down without any order from a judge is nonsense. These companies would be more careful if they had to go through some legal process instead of just ordering their lawyers to send empty threads to people that can't financially afford the economic burde…

How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters? Individual email? A chosen spokesperson to 'lobby' their interest? If an individual company chooses one employee(say someone with a legal background) to interact with an elected official is that person a lobbyist or an employee? I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

Representatives were supposed to scale with the population so that one rep could reasonably represent all of the people in their district.

There are tons of ways to restructure the US legislative system that would ameliorate the current problems -- uncap the number of reps, allow individuals to override a fractional vote of their rep, split representation into technocratic branches and let everyone vote for a different rep on each domain, let people vote for committee membership, switch to approval voting or proportional representation, introduce term limits for reps and their staff, etc.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#53

Post by Accujack »

plussed_reader wrote: post #49
qalmakka wrote: post #29

I think that until the USA gets rid of legal lobbying from interest groups (aka, legalized corruption), this kinds of things will keep happening. Having to pull content down without any order from a judge is nonsense. These companies would be more careful if they had to go through some legal process instead of just ordering their lawyers to send empty threads to people that can't financially afford the economic burde…

How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters? Individual email? A chosen spokesperson to 'lobby' their interest? If an individual company chooses one employee(say someone with a legal background) to interact with an elected official is that person a lobbyist or an employee? I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

>How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters?

Setting aside the reasons this situation exists and the problems it's creating, I believe the usual methods are mail, e-mail, and phone calls.

Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.

Everyone who knew about the DMCA before it went into effect hated it, but the monied interests pushed it through. Corruption in action.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#54

Post by cwkoss »

jaywalk wrote: post #21
thayne wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If the risks for making a false DMCA takedown request were that high, I would expect to see less false takedown notices, and less aggressive bots. Or maybe the aggressors are just assuming that the victims don't have the resources to fight a megacorp in court? If it's the latter it seems like an organization like EFF should step in to fund such a fight.

I believe for all of the above to apply, it would have to be proven that the request was knowingly malicious, as in they had full knowledge that the page did not infringe but decided to send a takedown notice anyway. That's highly unlikely, and good luck proving it anyway. However, they are still liable and can absolutely be sued civilly for an improper takedown notice. But the penalty probably wouldn't extend beyond…

They were informed by the victims that they made an error and proceeded anyways.

Their inability to route that information to the right person should not be a valid defense or else incompetence becomes a business advantage.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#55

Post by ziddoap »

hedora wrote: post #48
midjji wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would crush any small company in the prelude, even if they didn't intend to. I dont really think that copyright can be fixed, but at the very least we would need new laws to the effect of if you get sued for wrongful dmca, you pay the oppositions legal fees in addition to lost income and you risk losing the ability to make takedowns if the claim was in bad faith or negligent.

Small claims court is also an option. This is a hobby site, after all. It’s also a clear cut case. How many takedown notices have they sent? What percentage got kicked back historically? Non-zero? Then they knew they were sending fraudulant claims. If not, they still knew this claim was fraudulent after the site responded and they kept filing takedowns anyway. Did they address these issues by carefully vetting things…

If it were as easy and clear-cut as you make it out to be, we wouldn't be seeing these cases pop up all the time, I don't think.

There is obviously additional factors at play. Money, for one, but plenty of others as well.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#56

Post by cwkoss »

blackearl wrote: post #9
ecf wrote: post #2

Today I learned that 2021 Sega is still in business. Sad to see them devalue themselves and simply become another patent troll.

Sega has had a lot of top tier games in recent years.

Which ones? I see a bunch of remasters of old games, but few top tier titles in the past 5 years.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#57

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jaywalk wrote: post #47
rectang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you knew that your algorithm produced false positives and you deployed it anyway, then you had fraudulent intent for the subset of automatically generated takedown notices which were false positives.

That's a nice theoretical definition of "fraudulent intent" but you're not going to get a court to agree with it, I don't think.

Really? You run something knowing that it's going to file invalid claims; how is that not intent to commit fraud?

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#58

Post by matheusmoreira »

qalmakka wrote: post #29

I think that until the USA gets rid of legal lobbying from interest groups (aka, legalized corruption), this kinds of things will keep happening. Having to pull content down without any order from a judge is nonsense. These companies would be more careful if they had to go through some legal process instead of just ordering their lawyers to send empty threads to people that can't financially afford the economic burde…

People should have the right to legal representation no matter the circumstances. Judges also need to be biased towards the less powerful party for obvious reasons. Some huge corporation wasting an individual's time with clearly bogus lawsuits should be heavily punished.

I completely agree with you on lobbying.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#59

Post by myko »

nitrogen wrote: post #52
plussed_reader wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters? Individual email? A chosen spokesperson to 'lobby' their interest? If an individual company chooses one employee(say someone with a legal background) to interact with an elected official is that person a lobbyist or an employee? I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

Representatives were supposed to scale with the population so that one rep could reasonably represent all of the people in their district. There are tons of ways to restructure the US legislative system that would ameliorate the current problems -- uncap the number of reps, allow individuals to override a fractional vote of their rep, split representation into technocratic branches and let everyone vote for a differe…

This totally makes sense. The US House is about 1000 (or more) members short.

Re: Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy

#60

Post by xPaw »

yummybear wrote: post #32
hedora wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they consider taking Sega to court over this. Sega’s behavior is clearly in violation of the law, and a precedent needs to be set. Perhaps the EFF or a similar organization would be willing to represent them. https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/05/fraudulent-dmca-takedown-...

A multi-year long, expensive lawsuit over a hobby project isn’t what anyone signed up for though.

You are on point.
Post reply on HN