this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
729 points (97.8% liked)

Games

32971 readers
1090 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] hono4kami@pawb.social 114 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

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

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 112 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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

[–] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 84 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] EpeeGnome@lemm.ee 7 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] hono4kami@pawb.social 30 points 2 weeks ago

yup. someone is lying here

[–] Kelly@lemmy.world 40 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] olosta@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 18 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] cows_are_underrated 14 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 8 points 2 weeks ago

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