City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-communism-1850125125

by genedan • 3 years ago

161 123 3 years ago

speeder• 3 years ago

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

devmor• 3 years ago

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.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

false dilemmas are seen to intentionally omit the possibility of additional options and approaches

throwaway1777• 3 years ago

I thought the reason was section 230 not dmca.

Oxidation5• 3 years ago

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.

Adraghast2• 3 years ago

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

dragonwriter5• 3 years ago

Lets remember that the DMCA is what allows providers like youtube to host content without being liable to the copyright infringement of its users.

It arguably doesn’t actually allow sites very specifically like Youtube to do that, which is why YouTube has a separate and more draconian arrangement with major rights holders, created in response to previous litigation and litigation threats, and is also currently being sued by a variety of rights holders in a suit which hasn’t been easily been barred by the DMCA safe harbor.

Oxidation5• 3 years ago

DMCA mechanics just not works, seems like anybody can claim anything, the service provider is just forced to remove the content and in general not ask or nor the considering if the claims are real.

It works extremely well, if you consider who the beneficiaries are (who also happened to write it).

Ekaros• 3 years ago

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.

noxvilleza2• 3 years ago

The safe-harbor part isn't bad. What's bad is that people can file an obviously bogus DMCA takedown request with zero repercussions.

Companies that host content do basically nothing to actually verify that the takedown request is even from a real person (nevermind the original copyright holder).

A better system would be one that allows the uploader to take the takedown issuer to court, and if the takedown request was clearly malicious and bogus then the takedown issuer would get a penalty. This approach would still allow a legitimate takedown request, but not be forced the issuer into taking a contested case to court.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

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.

cld84833• 3 years ago

If the default most common way of complying with a law is shitty behavior, then the law itself is shitty. Good laws don't incentivize bad behavior.

Zak• 3 years ago

The broken part of the notice/takedown/counter-notice process is that a takedown requires prompt action, but a counter-notice requires a waiting period. Removing the waiting period and relying on damages to make the copyright holder whole seems like a more fair process.

I think the anticircumvention part of the DMCA is what's really shitty, but that's a tangent.

fivre• 3 years ago

Yes. In general, DMCA was written by rightsholder lawyers early in the internet's lifetime to maximize their power and minimize their responsibilities or damages if they abuse it. The prevalence of systems like Youtube's contentID allowing (often real, but also often flimsily alleged) rightsholders to nigh-unilaterally capture all value on the barest suggestion of unlicensed use is abysmal and calls for a compulsory license system more akin to radio, but rightsholders don't want that because compulsory licenses don't let them negotiate megaprofit deals on their own terms.

The anti-circumvention provsions are also a trash fire. DRM regimes are some hot consumer-hostile bullshit that have no (legal) alternative because the law is behind them and heavily weighted towards the needs and wants of major IP holders. Modern US copyright law is designed primarily to maximize profits and enforcement mechanisms for entrenched interests with little regard for anything that isn't, idk, Beyonce tier of actually needing that much licensing cruft.

There's some joke somewhere about ours being the first few generations to systematically deny ourselves access to our own culture because biglaw is more than happy to cut off its cultural nose to spite its face so long as the money train keeps flowing for the few elites that really benefit from the current system. We have a walled garden that will likely never fall because life is peachy if you're inside the garden already, and anyone outside can't compete with the financial and lobbying muscle of those inside it without operating in legal gray areas at best.

foverzar3• 3 years ago

If that's how companies generally operate under the legislation, then yes, it's the legislation that is shitty.

Them's the rules. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

slowmovintarget• 3 years ago

It's a crappy law. It was bought and paid for by the recording industry, which should tell you something.

thomastjeffery3• 3 years ago

It's a run-time error.

Law is not objective ideology sitting in context-free space. Law is ideology applied, and that very application made explicit. A law defines the very context it exists in.

So we can't just objectively ignore the failure of a law being applied, because a better application of that law must be defined in that law.

Even if a law defines a reasonable ideological mapping (expected behavior), it still needs to define a reasonable application of that mapping.

If, in practice, we see a law being abused, then the solution must be to change that law such that it isn't abusable anymore.

DMCA is an extreme failure, not in defining expected behavior per se, but in defining the domain for implementing behavior. The way DMCA is put into practice circumvents the very ideological behaviors it defined as its expectations, in nearly every case it is applied to.

A version of DMCA that "isn't shitty" would be incapable of such overt and widespread abuse. Clearly the version we have does not meet that criteria.

yellowapple3• 3 years ago

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?

If the law enables said shitty automatic responses, then yes, the law is indeed shitty.

wellthisisgreat• 3 years ago

It baffles me that there are no legal repercussions for abuse of DMCA / IP / copyright instruments.

People who do this without grounds should be punished/fines for abusing the system proportionate to what they claim.

yeahbutiguess5• 3 years ago

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.

Someone1234• 3 years ago

So if you're rich and have the time there may be consequences, but ultimately since anyone can file a false DMCA notice, there's really no assurance that you will ever get your own lawyer's fees back let alone damages (even if they were awarded).

Perjury is a pretty terrible mechanism, frankly. The whole law was and is poorly conceived.

cesaref• 3 years ago

I'm not so sure. It's a fact that he was involved in the development of this new feature, and it's his opinion that he originated the idea. Whether he did or not is for a court to decide, but he's not committing perjury by believing this.

Now if he knows he didn't originate the idea and has brought vexatious proceedings, then sure, this may be perjury, but we are some way off knowing this, and i don't think we'll be in a position to determine this either way.

thfuran3• 3 years ago

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.

Steltek• 3 years ago

There are but it requires the victim to have the time, energy, and of course, money to pursue it. It also needs to not be some "DMCA Lite" contractual mechanism like Youtube's shitty ContentID system. Only real bad faith DMCA requests need apply.

    Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—

    (1) that material or activity is infringing, or
    (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

    17 U.S.C.A. § 512

derefr3• 3 years ago

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 facts of that infringement, whether or not in the context of a DMCA takedown claim.

Which, I mean, obviously; that's already the law, without the DMCA having to say anything additionally about it. If someone threatens legal action against you unless you do X, and you do X, and it costs you money, and then you find out it was a lie and they had no basis for their legal action — then you can totally sue them for damages, and you'll probably win. The DMCA just provides a very explicit basis for evaluating that particular situation without referring to any other bodies of potentially-conflicting case-law, so as to turn that "probably" into a "definitely."

brarsanmol2• 3 years ago

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...

mountainb• 3 years ago

You can file for a declaratory judgment and ask for attorney's fees under the fee-shifting provision of the copyright act. Generally, most of the quasi-DMCA programs also observe the counter-notice process, which gives the plaintiff ten business days to file a lawsuit, but then cancels the informal copyright complaint if the time period ends without that lawsuit being filed.

In this case, sending a counter-notice (free), filing for a declaratory judgment and asking for an injunction to prevent additional malicious filings would probably be the most direct pathway to relief.

Filing bar complaints isn't likely to work all that well, because it doesn't really map to the typical things that state bar associations really look to pursue. The vast majority of bar complaints result in nothing, and most of the ones that are deemed valid result in mandatory CLE rather than more substantive penalties.

Overtonwindow• 3 years ago

Maybe a case for EFF?

kyleyeats• 3 years ago

The fan is a lawyer too. What a nightmare.

lagniappe• 3 years ago

I'm curious what the legal precedent on this. If intellectual property, concepts, lore, can be protected, does this person have a claim here even though they didn't write the code? Is there a statutory norm for percentages in cases like these?

This has to be terrible for small dev shops to face, I'd imagine enough litigating and good projects just fold up shop unable to afford their own defense cost.

ww520• 3 years ago

In general ideas are not copyrightable. Expression of ideas are copyrightable.

Anyone can sue you for whatever reason. The court can throw the case out but it’s a nuisance to you.

fakedang• 3 years ago

Ironically, it seems that fan would fit perfectly as a bureaucrat in a Soviet Republic.

6510• 3 years ago

If his realistic game mode is as good as his real world game mode they should hire him.

itronitron• 3 years ago

This is like a reboot of "Mazes and Monsters" [0] forty years later.

0. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/

1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/mediaviewer/rm188310835...

DonHopkins• 3 years ago

Maybe he'll be defenestrated instead of disbarred.

CodeWriter23• 3 years ago

I hope instead of accepting a settlement when lawyer boy starts to cry uncle they take it all the way to the end and bankrupt and disbar him.

Rebelgecko2• 3 years ago

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

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

Youtube takedowns aren't DMCA requests. There is no legal penalty for perjury. It's just a good old fashioned mob shakedown. In this case neither party is even subject to US law so even more irrelevant.

roughly• 3 years ago

FTA:

Matters have now escalated to the point where the game itself has been taken off Steam due to a DMCA request, and the player is “now claiming that they own the rights to the [realistic] game mode”

kube-system3• 3 years ago

YouTube has an internal system for handing requests apart of DMCA but videos may also be taken down from YouTube via a DMCA request per law. “Takedown” is a word often used interchangeably for a video taken down via either method.

Rebelgecko2• 3 years ago

What about Steam takedowns?

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

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

lazyasciiart4• 3 years ago

A bar association can remediate pretty quickly if it chooses to.

swatcoder• 3 years ago

This is awful.

But it’s also why many “old media” producers and companies in the entertainment and music industry have careful policies around refusing to receive or acknowledge ideas and content from outside the organization.

It’s much harder for some fan-writer to pursue spurious legal credit for some plot idea or script content when you maintain an official policy to bin unsolicited submissions and to never acknowledge work shared in public.

That’s tricky for “new media” companies since consumers now expect direct engagement with publishers, especially for “indie” artists, but the old system was designed to guard against stuff like this.

tumult• 3 years ago

These are apparently false DMCA letters. Attribution or payments aren’t really relevant. According to the article, the person filing the claims has no ownership of the copyright. Even if they were being ripped off (which it doesn’t seem like they are) that wouldn’t give them ownership of the copyright.

Eisenstein3• 3 years ago

The person is claiming rights to a version of the game not yet released because they wrote a game guide about how to do it and the game creators agreed to credit him in the new IP. This has led to him filing the DMCA requests and initiating a claim against the new product. The DMCA requests appear to be retaliatory. That's my understanding from the minimal information provided in the article.

Note however we are getting one side of this story -- the developers. I have no idea what is going on and it is surprising how many times things swing around when both parties are heard (the Doom Eternal soundtrack issues come to mind)[0].

[0] https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...

sidewndr46• 3 years ago

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.

klondike_• 3 years ago

I think they're talking about the bad precident it sets.

RockRobotRock2• 3 years ago

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

s1artibartfast• 3 years ago

What does the total income of valve have to do with it. Lost profit is still harm.

eska• 3 years ago

I don’t think they’re trying to say that he’s bankrupting Valve, but that he will be bankrupted by the damages he will have to pay..

yeahbutiguess5• 3 years ago

Valve could, hypothetically, be the target of a suit for damages if they do not comply with the DMCA counter claim. Odds are good that valve will just do everything it can to be by the book and get out of the way.

cratermoon2• 3 years ago

"DMCA mechanics just not works"

fsloth• 3 years ago

It sounds the fan has no basis for their claim, but due to their background they are able to craft professional claims. I guess the lesson is always expect someone try to screw you via legal pathway (if you read about history of any field this seems to be a quite recurring pattern - if you have a business, you better lawyer up sooner than later).

thomastjeffery3• 3 years ago

My perspective: the fan is not "going rogue".

This story is copyright itself brought to its objective conclusion.

Everything here, the petty IP ownership claim, the expectation to have that ownership literally applied, the reactionary griefing, etc. is all baked in to what copyright is at its very foundations. This person is simply playing out the function of copyright as an ideology in their interactions with the game company and its business presence.

They feel they have the right to monopolize the product of their intellectual work, because copyright says so. They feel they can interrupt the sales of the game because copyright says so.

And most important, they feel that they should do these things, because the very existence of copyright, and it's foundational social purpose, tell them it's in their best interest, and their "best interest" is tantamount.

This isn't just a story about copyright, it's copyright itself told as a story, just with real people as subjects.

So let's stop pretending. This is ugly, frivolous, unhelpful, and damaging. This is copyright law. This is an exposition of the social malware that copyright is, was, and ever will be.

lazyasciiart4• 3 years ago

No, it isn’t. The fact that you can make a false claim in copyright law and cause damage is not an indictment of the system of copyright.

stonogo3• 3 years ago

What evidence do you have that the claim is false?

joshka• 3 years ago

Many people disagree with your statement. The ability to cause something to be removed from sale without due process (e.g. a court weighing in on whether there is a legitimate argument that a finding of infringement has occurred) is abhorrent IMHO. Yes, there is a legal process to reverse this, but the default should never be to act first.

yellowapple3• 3 years ago

The fact that copyright law has evolved into a guilty-until-proven-innocent system so easily abused is, however, an indictment of the system of copyright.

noahtallen• 3 years ago

But the reason the above commenter has a point is because it’s unclear if the claim is false. I know nothing about the game, but the article claims this 3rd party spent so much effort creating a new way of playing the game that the game studio meant to implement those changes and even mention this 3rd party in the credits.

So the commenter is right: this person (apparently) created a work (IP) and thinks they have a right to monopolize that work.

The fact that IP law exists in the first place gives this person ground to stand on and do a lot of damage, because the claim has some amount of truth. There is probably not enough truth to his IP claim that this will work for him, but there is enough truth that he’d be mentioned in the credits.

raxxorraxor2• 3 years ago

Of course it is an indictment, because such a system needs to be enforcable without doing damage. Although some of that may extend to our system of justice and its huge monetary barriers as well.

Aside from this, false DMCA claims are even used as a vehicle for harassment. Of course that is broken as well...

Havoc• 3 years ago

Bit like a patent troll except unstable jumped up lawyer fan edition...

City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

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