"This is not a joke, Funko just called my mom"

https://twitter.com/itchio/status/1866239798924763227

by haunter • 2 years ago

623 127 2 years ago

twitter.com

omoikane• 2 years ago

Related thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42363727 - Itch.io Taken Down by Funko (15 hours ago)

thot_experiment• 2 years ago

One of the most glaringly broken things about society is that abuse of power is not punished harshly enough. We need Finnish speeding ticket style systems across the board.

belfalas2• 2 years ago

One of the most glaringly broken things about society is that abuse of power is not punished harshly enough.

Maybe it's just me getting older but it seems like this has always been true across cultures and history. People like to believe that once they get power, they will act differently than the ones who came before. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, they end up being just like the people they replaced, if not worse.

Every once in a while you get an exception but that's why we remember those people - because they were the exception.

Spivak3• 2 years ago

It's why I think the lottocracy people might have a point. Rocketing people from zero to power keeps you from experiencing the traumas associated with attaining or being given success and keeps your ego to a minimum because you know you literally did nothing to deserve it.

braiamp• 2 years ago

That's a problem of the Rules for Rulers. You think once you rule you have power, but unless you are literally Goku, you don't have power if nobody follow your orders.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

People like to believe that once they get power, they will act differently than the ones who came before. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, they end up being just like the people they replaced, if not worse.

I just re-listened to "Machine"[0] by the Violent Femmes because I wanted to subject a work colleague to it because he mentioned Blister in the Sun.

"I took over the world in one weekend...

... but nothing changed! That would not be fair!"

The nihilistic fatalism is overwhelming.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEEiSQv_l4

Titan2189• 2 years ago

Finnish speeding ticket fine calculator

https://poliisi.fi/en/fine-counter

KerrAvon• 2 years ago

there's a reason the Claims Adjuster is a folk hero

notthemessiah2• 2 years ago

According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances. - Stafford Beer

If a system prioritizes copyright claims from the largest firms as casus belli against independent creators, and there are no attempts to reform such system and no recourse for independent creators, than we can only conclude such criminal negligence as intention, formalized within the priorities encoded within such a system.

I just saw this a few days ago with Youtube channel Esoterica, which had a 10-second public domain recording of Chopin which was falsely flagged as copyright infringement. Dr. James Justin Sledge of Esoterica, despite having fair use of the clip, ended up commissioning an artist with an original recording (complete with unique changes to the public domain work) to avoid any confusion, but still got a takedown from UMG's copyright AI. As with any law, if public domain fair use isn't enforced, and to contest it is prohibitively expensive (as legal battles are often wars of attrition), then the public domain is useless, and major firms such as UMG can just function as feudal lords demanding the proceeds of any tenant peasant's work. As economist Yanis Varoufakis says, capitalism has been subsumed by techno-feudalism.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

dghlsakjg3• 2 years ago

I suspect that BrandShield is about to discover how much a lost day of sales costs Itch.io, plus some punitive damages thrown in.

then they are about to discover that IP properties don't want to be associated with companies that get them involved in public lawsuits on the wrong side of their fandoms.

rvba2• 2 years ago

Since corporations are people (but this kind of people who cannot go to prison), those tickets are definitely a good direction.

Although I still think people inside the corporations should go to prison too, starting from CEOs.

chad1n• 2 years ago

At this point, imagemagick and ffmpeg will be taken down due to copyright since there are cloud servers who trademarked converting from a file type to another.

margalabargala3• 2 years ago

How long until malicious actors begin forming companies like that with the express intention of doing denial-of-service attacks?

freedomben• 2 years ago

Ironically, people doing this en masse would probably force some attention from those with power and might cause the scales to be a little more balanced. One can dream I guess.

jojobas• 2 years ago

Funny thing is it didn't have to be Funko or Brain Shield, anyone could have impersonated them in a takedown notice, it could have been a way more bogus notice too by the looks of it.

It's definitely the registrar who's at fault here.

miki123211• 2 years ago

You don't even need a company, just pretending that you represent one is enough.

The DMCA completely ignores how the digital world works; it was written in an age where interacting with the American legal system required you to have somebody physically located in the US.

Back then, you didn't need any technical safeguards against this kind of abuse. As long as such abuse was illegal, and there was police to arrest those committing the crimes, it was enough. In technical terms, the security was implemented on a completely different layer of the stack.

This is no longer the world we live in. There's nothing stopping somebody from e.g. Russia from pretending they're a relevant copyright agent, and forcing Youtube to remove anti-Putin videos.

samplatt• 2 years ago

Similar to Stross' Accelerando (a book released just after the Napster era), where russian mafia legal bots went around suing everyone for whatever reason they could get their hands on.

JasserInicide• 2 years ago

Bad actors ramping up DDoS attacks is why you see Cloudflare services on every website now

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

You mean patent trolls. That's been going on for decades.

ahoka• 2 years ago

DMCA takedown request to your hosting. Scam and fraud report to the domain registrar. Calling your mom.

What’s next? Telling Santa?

colechristensen• 2 years ago

Hopefully a very supportive set of lawyers from the EFF who see some low hanging fruit here.

ronsor• 2 years ago

What’s next? Telling Santa?

Only sudo does that.

ionwake3• 2 years ago

Santa goes against their business model and so has been asked to desist

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Santa doesn't exist. I have the lawsuit to prove it.

I sued my parents with the help of Brandshield because they lied to me, and the fact that my younger self was naive enough to believe a lie (provably! my parents have video evidence of my being excited after they told me he was coming to visit) damaging to my brand: If I could believe a lie, then my followers might believe that my cryptocurrency predictions could be based on false information.

(most of the above is fantasy that amused me to create)

SuperNinKenDo2• 2 years ago

Santa deniers be like "that was your parents who slapped Arius at the council of Nicea!" Do not believe their lies.

rvba2• 2 years ago

Well, if you want to go the dark route, look at what happened to that CEO in New York

aliasxneo2• 2 years ago

Tried digging a bit, but still quite lost. Who or what is Funko? The collectibles company?

stuaxo• 2 years ago

Yes.

margalabargala3• 2 years ago

Yes, the collectibles company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funko

pesus• 2 years ago

Kinda funny that they're doing this over "brand protection" when their entire "brand" is just regurgitating worse versions of existing brands' characters.

ethernot• 2 years ago

Yes expensive landfill merchant.

p1necone• 2 years ago

They fucking suck too, I miss when the collectibles shelf at game stores was filled with a bunch of cool looking action figures, now it's a wall of funko pops and maybe 10 non funko figures somewhere else.

geor9e2• 2 years ago

The first 500 results, without exception, when you google the word, is the collectibles company. What made you second guess your hunch?

Dig1t• 2 years ago

Maybe he was living in Antarctica for the last 24 years and thought it might be the defunct video game retailer, FuncoLand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FuncoLand

aliasxneo2• 2 years ago

Because the post said "Funko called my mom" and it sounded like someone's internet alias. I guess that was more believable than the company doing it, which speaks for itself.

AndroTux• 2 years ago

This is hilarious

AlienRobot• 2 years ago

Itch.io's mom? Like... the site??

What in the world?

nemomarx• 2 years ago

well the owners mom yeah

they apparently tried to get itch.io removed from their registrar earlier today

ASalazarMX• 2 years ago

Guess that's a warning for everyone that filled the "Registrant Mom's" field in their domain purchase.

ikurei• 2 years ago

Yes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42363727 - Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

/me registers Stifl.er

hatthew• 2 years ago

itch.io is over 10 years old, so my guess is that the owner was living with his parents when he registered the domain, and he never bothered updating the WHOIS when he presumably moved out in the intervening decade

mwinatschek• 2 years ago

Shit’s getting real when mom’s getting involved.

phendrenad2• 2 years ago

Well just call Mr. Funko's mom in return! phone rings from my bed in background That was fast guys!

megalottachoc• 2 years ago

Puts the meaning of takedown request in another light. :thumbs_up: :winking_emoji:

tonetegeatinst• 2 years ago

POV: some poor law student gets to try and help navigate how to best help itch.io

haunter• 2 years ago

Funko's statement:

At Funko, we hold a deep respect and appreciation for indie games, indie gamers, and indie developers. We’re fans of fans, and we love the creativity and passion that define the indie gaming community.
Recently, one of our brand protection partners identified a page on http://itch.io imitating the Funko Fusion development website. A takedown request was issued to address this specific page. Funko did not request a takedown of the @itchio platform, and we’re happy the site was back up by this morning.
We have reached out to @itchio to engage with them on this issue and we deeply appreciate the understanding of the gaming community as the details are determined. Thank you for sharing in our passion for creativity.

https://twitter.com/originalfunko/status/1866255848366039468

mort964• 2 years ago

That sounds like a clear lie, no? If your wish is for someone to take down a specific page, you don't report them to their domain registrar for fraud.

bill876• 2 years ago

They are saying "a partner did this, not us"

calibas• 2 years ago

Or call their mom...

kjs35• 2 years ago

Obvious, lit up in neon, lie. It's "we show our customers our value by giving them a report every month on all the 'takedowns' we've delivered", and it's a tiny little step to "we get more reliable takedowns by calling it 'fraud' than a simple 'copyright violation', even though that's a lie and we know it. If we could call it 'child molestation' or 'terrorist funding' and get away with it we'd do that too.".

Follow the money.

rjh29• 2 years ago

You report to everyone who could possibly take the page offline, as that's the metric that matters.

rahkiin• 2 years ago

If to that page, the request should gave gone to the owner of the site (through eg whois) and not to the owner of .io. Time for Funko to reconsider their use of BrandShield

notthemessiah2• 2 years ago

Brandshield has been deleting and rewriting their non-statement deflecting responsibility repeatedly while hiding all the comments calling out their cascade of BS. Here is their current statement blaming iwantmyname and link to the hidden replies:

We want to address recent reports surrounding a website takedown.
BrandShield serves as a trusted partner to many brands. Our AI-driven platform detects potential threats and provides analysis, and in this case, an abuse was identified from an @itchio subdomain.
We identified and reported the infringement, and requested a takedown of the URL in question – not of the entire http://itch.io domain. The temporary takedown of the website was a decision made by the service providers, not BrandShield.
BrandShield remains committed to supporting our clients by identifying potential digital threats and infringements. We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from escalating.

https://twitter.com/BrandShieldltd/status/186616148952818098...

Note: they are non specific about how the "abuse" was submitted to iwantmyname as "fraud and phishing", not "copyright infringement", so they are covering up their fuckup.

vintagedave• 2 years ago

Love that last part.

We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from escalating.

Clear blame.

kjs35• 2 years ago

BrandShield serves as a trusted partner

Obviously, that trust is wildly misplaced.

loudandskittish• 2 years ago

So... why are they harassing the dude's mother?

TehCorwiz• 2 years ago

Probably an old whois record.

hipadev232• 2 years ago

It's unlikely they are. It's probably brandshield AI-generated harassment calls saying they represent Funko.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

I would be hoping that they were trying to profusely apologise from any angle they could.

kjs35• 2 years ago

To put pressure on the mark to fold/shut up. Standard strongarm tactic. See: collections industry.

noisy_boy• 2 years ago

"It wasn't us, it was our partner"

hipadev232• 2 years ago

brandshield is the problem here.

ionwake3• 2 years ago

Lmao I just realised the company responsible for wrecking funkos brand are called brand shield

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Funko will become (even more) the problem if they continute their relationship with Brandshield.

SuperNinKenDo2• 2 years ago

If that were true, they wouldn't make such a partnership. Such companies exist merely to launder the bad reputation that accumulates from this kind of behaviour. It is right and proper that any company that engages firms like that should face reputational damage, if not for moral reasons, then to correct the incentive structures.

raxxorraxor• 2 years ago

This is a non-answer without content. They fucked up because their legal department used third parties they didn't have under control and who harass people that aren't involved in this in their stead.

Until they clean up their shit, the Funko copyright mafia should pay with PR goodwill until they apologized and reimbursed the damaged parties. Everyone profits if companies like AI brand protectors suffer for it as a side effect.

mulmen5• 2 years ago

In high school I got pulled over for speeding. The cop lectured me then told me he was calling my mom. I think his plan was to get me in trouble at home then send me off with a warning. I don’t think I laughed at the suggestion but I knew what was going to happen.

He attempted to lecture her about what her son was doing but her only response was something like “ok, why are you calling me?” I think she may have also admonished him for wasting her time on the morning of a workday. He came back red faced but I’m not sure it was anger or embarrassment. Either way I got a ticket.

I have a good mom.

greyface-• 2 years ago

How did the cop get your mom's phone number?

dymk2• 2 years ago

I'm imagining that the cop was his dad

mulmen5• 2 years ago

Small town. I think they went to high school together.

It was 2003 so he could have just used the phonebook.

DirkH• 2 years ago

I mean, there is a reading here where the cop - though self-righteous - was trying to avoid you getting a ticket which for some (if not most?) people is a worse outcome than having their time wasted

Either way, you have a good mom lol

mulmen5• 2 years ago

Yes it’s obvious what he was doing but let’s not pretend it was generous. He had his own idea of justice but it relied on everyone playing along. When he didn’t get his way I got the punishment he could control.

geor9e2• 2 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if "takedown requests" and "debt collection" services merged into the same companies. Both try to threaten and scare their targets. Both usually won't follow through on their threats when ignored. Both take a shotgun approach of targeting a lot of people, hoping at least a few give in.

HeavyStorm• 2 years ago

Why is no one talking about the registrar actually accepting, without verification, the takedown request? It seems much worse than Funko filing the request.

_7acn• 2 years ago

Exactly this! This is common. Corporations are afraid only and exclusively of lawsuits from other corporations or the government. They would literally prefer to do something unethical or even break the law (including constitutional law) as long as they avoid lawsuits from major players. The customer and the well-being of individuals do not matter

rsynnott• 2 years ago

They probably wouldn't have for a DMCA complaint, but for _fraud_, frivolous complaints are rarer, and the consequences of _not_ acting promptly are potentially more serious.

I suspect as the flow of 'AI'-powered 'brand management' spam grows, registrars will stop taking fraud complaints at all seriously, and the internet will get a little worse (because there certainly are legitimate cases).

tremon• 2 years ago

From the other linked thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033):

About 5 or 6 days ago, I 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 I had removed the page and disabled the account. Linode confirmed and closed the case. iwantmyname never responded. This evening, I 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.

for _fraud_, frivolous complaints are rarer

Yet, there is no liability shield for fraud allegations. The registrar is liable for all damages due to this downtime, which they wouldn't have been for a DMCA complaint.

quyleanh• 2 years ago

Sorry for off-topic, why people want to share twitter.com link when it's already changed to x.com? When I click to that links, it's redirected anyway... It's just wasted time and for nothing, isn't it?

floppiplopp• 2 years ago

Fucko, the garbage company.

"This is not a joke, Funko just called my mom"

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