This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
I mean, it sounds like a lawsuit to me.
A takedown request was issued on false grounds.
This takedown was then actioned without any due process.
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...
Fixed penalties just become the cost of doing business. Like actors, we need to start asking for percentage of gross.
I believe all of this is legal thanks to DMCA.
Domain names arent copyrightable. This falls into trademark laws.
Itch.io dev about this situation on Hacker News.
Leafo
I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you:
From what 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 and phishing" going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist. Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. Their website, if you care: https://www.brandshield.com/
About 5 or 6 days ago, received these reports on our host (Linode) and from our registrar (iwantmyname). I expressed my disappointment in my responses to both of them but told them had removed the page and disabled the account. Linode confirmed and closed the case. iwantmyname never responded. This evening, got a downtime alert, and while debugging, I noticed that the domain status had been set to "serverHold" on iwantmyname's domain panel. We have no other abuse reports from iwantmyname other than this one. I'm assuming no one on their end "closed" the ticket, so it went into an automatic system to disable the domain after some number of days.
I've been trying to get in touch with them via their abuse and support emails, but no response likely due to the time of day, so decided to "escalate" the issue myself on social media.
(OCR)
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 party, under penalty of perjury. This is absolute bullshit.
What the absolute fuck? itch.io is fucking massive, how did the registar just treat them like this? goddamn!
There's been an aggressive push against gaming recently. Check all the recent Steam news.
I haven't seen anything like that. What steam news specifically are you referring to?
They are probably referring to this: https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/millions-examples-extremist-and-antisemitic-content-found-steam-new and this: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/steam-is-an-unsafe-place-for-teens-and-young-adults-us-senator-warns-gabe-newell-of-more-intense-scrutiny-from-the-government-if-valve-doesnt-take-action-against-extremist-content/
It's it anti video games to point out something that is actually happening? Just because you love the company doesn't mean that any bad news is an attack against the industry. Valve doesn't want to moderate their forums, it was bound to happen.
I am a big GOG enjoyer myself, but when I need to use steam for anything, I have never encountered such content. Perhaps there is such content in private or otherwise not very visible spaces (such as user profiles), where they will not get reported, but that is true for any site with user content. I call BS on this being an issue.
Really? Because in my experience you have to wade through racist, homo- and transphobic, and misogynistic shit the second you foolishly open the discussions page on any game that features black or brown, LGBTQIA, and/or female characters.
As I said, I have never seen anything I would consider extremist myself. Though from your reply, I get the feeling the issue could be an unreasonably broad definition of extremist content on your side. That or I just happen to not visit games with such discussions.
"It's okay that it's a racist, sexist shithole full of threats of violence because I, personally have never seen that so it must not exist. Additionally, as I personally have never seen it, you must have a ridiculous view of what extremism might be... in spite of a US senate report that goes directly against my point."
For the people downvoting me: https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/02-revised-gaming-report-steam.pdf
