Itch.io dev about this situation on Hacker News.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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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.
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)
I mean, it sounds like a lawsuit to me.
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A takedown request was issued on false grounds.
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This takedown was then actioned without any due process.
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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.
Funko? That irrelevant, ugly, shitty, cheap, tacky, terrible brand from the 2010's that lacks any relevance in 2024?
Yeah, I know 'em.
What the absolute fuck? itch.io is fucking massive, how did the registar just treat them like this? goddamn!
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.