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City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

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Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#51

Post by Symbiote »

thfuran wrote: post #37
yeahbutiguess wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there is. It's perjury. And the target of a false claim can sue the party who made the claim for damages and attorney's fees.

Strictly speaking, I think the only bit that's perjury would be falsely claiming to be the copyright holder (which probably applies in this case, though I suppose the argument could be made that they were just wrong, not lying), which still leaves plenty of room for falsely claiming that something infringes a copyright.

To file a DMCA complaint you must be the copyright holder, or authorized to act on their behalf.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#52

Post by derefr »

cratermoon wrote: post #29
derefr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also needs to not be some "DMCA Lite" contractual mechanism like Youtube's shitty ContentID system. Why not? By my reading of the section you quoted, it stands independently from its parent sections; anyone who makes a legal claim of copyright infringement, or pursues action under the principle that such a claim exists, would seemingly be liable for damages if they're "knowingly materially misrepresenting" the f…

> you can totally sue them for damages, and you'll probably win Yeah, you can totally sue Disney or Warner Bros if they file a false infringement claim against you. You'll definitely not win unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to go up against their phalanxes of corporate lawyers. The DMCA doesn't take into account unequal parties.

In theory that is a problem; in practice, the companies making knowingly false ContentID claims are 99% of the time small actors. Just like patent trolls are 99% of the time small actors.

Mind you, I say knowingly false. Big companies unknowingly make false claims all the time, because they don't know what-all they actually own — but you can't sue them for that anyway, since there's no mens rea there.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#53

Post by Ekaros »

speeder wrote: post #2

DMCA is such an epically shitty law. Only worse is that other countries are happily copying the law too.

To me it isn't that horrible process.

You are own a small forum or site. You get DMCA takedown, you take content down and are safe. Send notification to uploader. They disagree. You can put stuff back up. You are not liable for damages after this. And really shouldn't be expected to fight.

Now it is up to the two other parties to fight it out. This is where the system fails, because whole process is long and expensive. But so is any other legal action. Maybe consider fixing that reality first.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#55

Post by catiopatio »

SideQuark wrote: post #40
Oxidation wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal requirement to act instantly on the automatic presumption of the claimants being both right and acting in good faith with no evidence required isn't required to avoid liability. They could have required some higher standard of proof of ownership and as long as they followed the process, YouTube would have the same protection. The system is specifically designed to be gamed by claimants.

It works the other way: it let's a site post user content without the user having to prove legal clearance for the content. Without this, there would be no sites allowing users to post nearly anything. In exchange for this freedom, the sites have to agree to some resolution format for when a copyright complaint is triggered. So the system is not designed to be gamed by claimants. It's designed to give legal protectio…

The DMCA was passed in 1998.

You do realize we had a fully functioning internet filled with user-generated content before 1998, right?

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#56

Post by RockRobotRock »

Adraghast wrote: post #46
devmor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets remember that the DMCA is what allows providers like youtube to host content without being liable to the copyright infringement of its users. The takedown provision sucks, but its an essential law for the open internet to even exist.

Considering the open internet existed before DMCA did, I suspect “essential” is an exaggeration.

Internet wasn't that fast, consumers weren't informed, legislators weren't informed.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#57

Post by anigbrowl »

speeder wrote: post #2

DMCA is such an epically shitty law. Only worse is that other countries are happily copying the law too.

Is the DMCA such a shitty law (questions about copyright in general aside), or are companies in shitty in just automatically responding to any DMCA allegation while refusing to invest anything in transparency/process/even-handedness? Basically if you are hit with a copyright or any other sort of terms of service violation, you are stuck spending time and energy trying to communicate with a black box.

Platformists say that this is necessary because transparency will allow bad actors to game the system, but their solution to this to make society into an oppressive panopticon; the cure is worse than the disease. Further, the ignore the degree to which the lack of transparency is already weaponized by bad faith actors.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#58

Post by RockRobotRock »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #22

I don't think these developers have much of a grip on reality. They stated that Valve could suffer financial harm if the game stays off Steam. I don't think they realize how much money Valve makes.

Of course they have to say things like that to attract attention to their cause. I doubt they're that naive.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#59

Post by anigbrowl »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #13

If this attorney is filing BS DMCA claims, hopefully they'll give a gentle heads-up to his local bar association

Institutional remedies which require years of process for abuses that can be carried out in seconds or minutes are fundamentally inadequate.

Re: City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

#60

Post by cld8483 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #26
brarsanmol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! It isn't very hard to get someone punished for abusing the system if you have the resources. YouTube did it a few years ago [1] to a popular creator in the Minecraft community who was threatening creator's with Community Guideline Strikes in order to extort them for money. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/man-agrees-to-pa...

The more I hear about 'popular creators' or 'influencers' the more it seems like a popular career for people with character flaws that can't be easily hidden in face-to-face business environments.

I checked about half a dozen articles about this incident and none of them say the extortionist (Christopher Brady) was any sort of 'creator' or influencer. I can't find any reference to his name anywhere that describes him as any sort of content creator. I believe that claim is mistaken.
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