365 points
*

I’m just going to post this comment to this thread as well, since this is newer. Classic shifting of blame and no one taking responsibility for scummy actions.

Fun fact: Funko’s current CEO is the ex-president of Wizards of the Coast!

Why is this relevant? Well, under her leadership, WotC sent pinkerton agents to someone’s home to threaten them because they got some Magic the Gathering cards early. She said things like Dungeons & Dragons players were under-monetised, pushing to make the Table Top game more like a microtransaction-filled video game, and helped with the OGL scandal.

The OGL, for anyone unfamiliar, was an Open Gaming License WotC had for years with D&D 3rd party creators. It allowed certain things to be created using D&D mechanics and lore by anyone that followed its guidelines and allowances. A couple years ago, WotC tried to change that so they would make more money off of people trying to create things for D&D - to profit off of indie creators passionate about the game. There was a huge backlash, and they eventually went back on this decision.

All this to say, you can see what kind of leader the current Funko CEO is, and what’s happening with itch isn’t surprising to me.

permalink
report
reply
82 points

Fucking Pinkertons? That’s a company who can use a visit from Luigi.

permalink
report
parent
reply
71 points

Literally the company that RDR2 portrays as the bad guys, that sued the makers of the game and lost because they objectively ARE the bad guys.

permalink
report
parent
reply
47 points
*

They have also had over a century to rename themselves and haven’t, which means they want the reputation the name has.

permalink
report
parent
reply
75 points

That’s quite telling, thanks for sharing.

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points

Name the CEO. Image too, or wiki link.

Let’s stop letting scummy people hide behind brands and companies.

permalink
report
parent
reply
32 points
4 points
*

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Hell yeah! Thank you. I would have but was on spotty mobile

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

We need to compile a list of shitty executives for boycotting purposes. No more “this company did a bad thing”. No. We need exactly this, with “this is David Davidson, who led the enshittification of ABC, Inc”

It needs to be a document, a wiki, of exactly the shitty things those people did so that businesses will have monetary reasons to want to avoid shitty executives.

Let’s help those poor, poor companies from being victimized by those awful greedy people. The poor things.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Peter Molyneux is going to require an entire volume bound in leather at this right

permalink
report
parent
reply
238 points

They requested a takedown before talking to the website owners? That’s such a hostile move

permalink
report
reply
196 points

DMCA used to be used very very rarely because it carries(carried?) significant penalties for using it like a club. Now it’s just being used like a club and it’s quite obvious there’s no penalty.

permalink
report
parent
reply
41 points
*

I don’t believe that it was a malicious misuse. Most likely some fuckwit moron at Funko or Brandshield didn’t understand the difference between the hosting platform and the registrar and sent the takedown request to the wrong place out of negligence.

It wasn’t even a DMCA request.

permalink
report
parent
reply
80 points

Using AI driven software is willful negligence. Software can’t take responsibility so the human operating it needs to take responsibility for the consequences of it. They took down the entire thing they need to face consequences. The hosting provider should also face consequences for overly broad responses to take down requests.

permalink
report
parent
reply
73 points

Doesn’t matter, compensation is in order.

If a company uses tools that act poorly, or does not invest in training staff appropriately, it is a decision they make to optimize their business.

When they fail, they should have to learn what the costs of those mistakes are. A tweet is not enough.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

Except you wouldn’t ever dare build any kind of automated system for fear of this exact situation. Remove the fear part and financially you wouldn’t NOT build this system.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Yeah i jumped to the conclusion, read the article and kept the additional incorrect info in my premise.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

nobody is this stupid

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
233 points

So Funko issued a non-apology blaming Brandshield.

Brandshield issued a non-apology blaming the registrar (Iwantmyname), and saying their AI tool definitely had nothing to do with it

And Iwantmyname hasn’t even put out a statement.

Fucked all around, yet it seems nobody will be facing consequence for this except Itch.io who got their website nuked out of nowhere.

Though if I were Itch, I’d get a new registrar ASAP.

permalink
report
reply
108 points
*

I’d do a new registrar either way.

I’ve worked at hosting companies in the past. I don’t know the timeline, but I’ve never encountered a situation where one folded this fast and just take down a client’s site over a copyright claim.

And our clients, because of the nature of the internet being the internet, a small percentage were real scumbag folks, who while the content was objectionable and disgusting, it wasn’t illegal. Which means it stayed up.

  • If there was something highly illegal like csam or dark web stuff and it came from a federal agency, we’d take down the site immediately.

  • If it was a strong letter from a legal entity that we trusted, we would pass that to the client and recommend remediation. No takedown unless there was a court order.

  • If it was a weak letter from a random legal entity, we lol’ed and wait for the threat of a lawsuit/court order. This was surprisingly extremely common.

So wtf is this registrar doing to shit on their clients so fast without a court order?

permalink
report
parent
reply
67 points

Yeah, if Iwantmyname are so neglectful as to pull the entire plug on your website over a singlular copyright claim, then I’d move right the fuck along too. They’re clearly not a trustworthy registrar.

To make things worse, Itch.io isn’t exactly a small company either. If this happened to someone smaller, with less outreach to fight back with than Itch, I can only imagine they’d have no recourse against this neglectful behaviour.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

I mean, smaller company is also a smaller impact and much faster decisions. If it happened to one of my small clients, it would be resolved within 20 minutes. If it would happen to my largest client, it would take hours if everyone in the decision chain suddenly turned competent and people with access to various stuff would all be available, which they probably wouldn’t, so realistically we’re talking days (assuming the DNS provider doesn’t restore it beforehand).

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

How long ago? because Records companies just won a lawsuit seeking damages from ISPs for not doing copyright actions.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I worked there in 2017-2020.

You have a link to the details?

Legal threats are a dime a dozen and I can see what type of action was made that gave the record companies a win.

permalink
report
parent
reply
38 points

They committed fraud with a false take down and are hoping they don’t get the shit sewed out out them by pointing the finger.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

Someone might knit them a legal team.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Or… vacuum mold them one, out of vinyl.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I hope so. Maybe make it a class-action with all the independent creators and studios who had damages from this.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Welp, better rope my self for my typo.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Well it’s obvious that the registrar is to blame. Anyone can send emails requesting the takedown. The registrar shouldn’t do it. Are Funko and Brandshield scummy? Yes, but they are not who took down itch, it was the registrar. Also Funko calling anyone’s mother is fucked up.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

The West and the US in particular keep inching closer to the ISPs having legal responsibility for not shutting stuff down in copyright cases.(link)

ISPs increasingly do not have a choice. They can nuke a customer or risk going to court and losing money.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

There is a minimum amount of time allowable for Investigations though. It’s not very long and there is a very good argument it should be longer, but the registrar didn’t even take the time to look into the case. Obviously they didn’t, because otherwise it wouldn’t have done anything.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

tbf if all of this is true the registrar did do the most harm

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Don’t be fair to them either.

Iwantmyname acted incompetently, but so did Brandshield, who decided to go straight to the nuclear option of a registrar takedown, rather than issuing a takedown request to Itch themselves

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points
*

The DNS provider (who is not necessarily also a registrar, but it’s common that the registrar is also a provider) doesn’t have any option to disable individual pages. They can only disable a whole subdomain or domain.

The server provider technically could, but it’s much harder because the site is served on https, so they would most likely have to disable the whole server as well.

Not that the server provider was asked, it’s just to illustrate that no one but the service owner (itch.io) can meaningfully block a single page. Asking the infrastructure providers is a dick move.

Edit: So the server provider was asked as well, but they’re not as incompetent it seems. Also, instead of a copyright abuse, BrandShield falsely sent this as a fraud and phishing, which is another dick move.

So yeah, the DNS provider is incompetent, but BrandShield is the malicious actor here.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Ah, thanks.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

What I find really weird is I have a website, or had a website years ago, that someone issued a DMCA takedown to it, but it was totally fraudulent. The registrar sent me an email to say they had received the takedown request, had reviewed it, found it to be invalid, and we’re taking no further action.

They didn’t send me this email until after they’d already decided to ignore the report. Start to finish the whole thing took about 3 days. That was for some tiny irrelevant website that no one except me and a few users would have even cared if it had been taken down. Why didn’t they do the same for a massive internationally well-known website?

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

You make a good point. Even disregarding how well known Itch is, their registrar acted woefully incompetently by not even attempting to contact Itch.io about the takedown request (which is what Brandshield should have done in the first place)

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

When no actual people are named no one has to take any responsibility.

Just keep saying nebulous ideas like a company be the problem and then everyone walks away.

Start blaming the people involved

permalink
report
parent
reply
113 points
*

There are lots of finger-pointing here. Funko said the takedown was done by their partner, BrandShield. BrandShield said it was a URL-specific (or is it subdomain?) takedown, not the whole domain. The registrar, Iwantmyname, responded said takedown by taking down the WHOLE domain.

I think Funko shouldn’t have trusted AI to do legal-related stuff. BrandShield is a stupid idea born from the AI-hype. It’s stupid and shouldn’t have existed. Iwantmyname is just as incompetent if not more–they haven’t even released any public statement about this. Their customer support are also slow to response apparently.

Itch.io should move domain registrar. Funko should stop using BrandShield, it only damages their brand more.

Also what’s up with Funko calling someone’s mom lol. that’s stupid


I also think that this is why AI won’t replace our jobs. I’ve seen many instances where technologies replaces jobs, but this ain’t it

permalink
report
reply
108 points

Also: brand shield says they only wanted the url gone but you don’t get that when talking to the registrar. Registrar are all or nothing, so clearly they knew they were doing this

permalink
report
parent
reply
80 points

I think this is a very important point. Why would you talk to a registrar of the domain to get a specific page offline. This doesn’t make sense.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

The question is are they really that incompetent, or are they really that malicious? Add in mislabeling the report as fraud instead of infringement, I lean towards them being malicious, but I guess that could also be gross incompetence. Either way, Brandshield looks terrible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
30 points

yup. someone is lying here

permalink
report
parent
reply
37 points

I think Iwantmyname may be the worst player in this story.

Everyone else kind of did what they were expected to do:

  1. Itch provides a platform for user generated content and took down some questionable content when asked.
  2. Funko is an IP based toy company and asked a tech company to protect their IP online
  3. BrandShield is a fucking cancer of a service that acted aggressively to protect its client’s interests

But:

  1. Iwantmyname is meant to provide a domain name registration service, it’s a cutthroat industry where often times customer service is viewed as an unnecessary cost, but itch was their client and they should have been helping itch respond to the notice in a manner that allowed it to continue to exist. Instead they were willing to shut it down without any real dialog.

The rest might be decent business partners if you are looking for their kind of service but Iwantmyname isn’t to be trusted.

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

While the registrar should have made more to understand the situation before acting, it’s important to keep in mind that according to itch.io, the request was not a DMCA takedown but an accusation of “fraud and fishing”. There’s probably a very large legal exposure for a registrar to let criminal website use their service if they are made aware of it, so reducing their liability is probably their highest priority.

BrandShield is inexcusable for using such a claim as a first step.

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

Agree, though I would not use the word “decent” about BrandShield or Funko. Being harmfully lazy and immoral legally and according to contract is still harmfully lazy and immoral.

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

URL-specific and they go to the registrar? What can they do, they don’t manage the hosting

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

The Idea to use AI to detect possible copyright infringements isnt even that bad. Its gets bad when you trust the AI to be able to tell things apart. If the alerts from the AI aren’t reviewed by humans it is doomed to fail.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Well put, they can’t just palm it off on the third party. You hired them and green lit the action.

permalink
report
parent
reply
86 points

I notice it doesn’t include the word “sorry”.

permalink
report
reply
40 points

It’s really just “this thing happened” and nothing else, as if they’re reporting on events where they’re just innocent bystanders. Instead of saying what they did, it’s “hey, we didn’t do [detail]”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Is it a legal liability thing to avoid using specific words? It’s hard to imagine it being bad PR to “properly” apologize (at least compared to releasing a non-apology apology statement).

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

Yes, theoretically Itch could sue them for lost revenue. Brandshield should be very afraid of Funko getting sued since getting your client sued can’t look good

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

I would imagine that admitting fault is a bad look when it comes to fighting the lawsuit that inevitably comes after. Hard to claim you’re not liable when you’ve made a statement saying it’s your fault.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

In USA yes. In Canada we made a law about exempting “sorry” specifically, not even joking lol.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Games

!games@lemmy.world

Create post

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

Community stats

  • 9.3K

    Monthly active users

  • 4.6K

    Posts

  • 97K

    Comments