My worry is that without a lawsuit or other action, we'll keep seeing LLM slop companies taking down smaller websites for bogus reasons. This needs to be codified somehow that there were damages done to Itch's earnings (and more importantly the earnings of the independent creators on the platform who should start a class-action suit), and that what Funko's contracted LLM company did was wrong.
There's financial damages, loss of profit, emotional distress, reputation loss, and more. We need to take action against these companies for their wrongdoing. So either they need to willingly pay up and have that payment be known and public, or they need to be made to pay by the courts.
The expression is actually “hear, hear!” A shortening of “hear him, hear him”, an instruction saying “listen to what this guy’s saying. It’s good shit.”
Itch is by no means a small time player. Doing some very fast statistics off of the game price breakdowns available and the counts of games available vs. the number they rate as best sellers, if 20% of their best sellers make a sale each day and 7.5% of their non-best sellers make a sale each day, assuming an average price for the three pricing filters of (under $5, $2.5), ($5 to $15, $10), (over $15, $20), then Itch sells approximately $20k/day. Half a day is $10k. If those averages are actually much higher in their respective areas, as in just below the maximum then the daily total jumps to over $35k/day. There is wiggle room in my assumptions, but it is safe to say that Itch sees about $25k±7k/day.
As mentioned in other suits, there are nonmonetary damages as well which are harder to quantify without access to their analytics such as reputation damage, lost traffic, maintenance and repair from the forced outage at the domain level, etc. I could see a suit for $50k in actual damages and another $500k-$1M in punitive damages to send the message that this behavior is intolerable in general.
A law firm capable of handling such a suit would probably bill at a rate of $2000/hr, or more.
If your numbers are right, then they could afford to pay for 20 hours of work. That’s probably not enough to even file the suit. Again, this assumes your numbers are right but even if they were 10x this it may still not make sense to file a suit.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the math works out in their favor.
Except that most firms that charge $2000/hour take the fee from the settlement, not up front, when doing civil litigation. Really only criminal law is paid directly by the client, at least in the US.
Well let’s say $30k, treble damages to $90k. So up to 45 hours of billable time before losing money. I don’t know how much time a suit takes, but I’m pretty sure it’s more than that. I don’t know how likely it is for them to award legal fees, either.
Even if they work on contingency, they’d still have to be sure they’d win and turn a profit before they’d take the case.
That is where punitive damages come in. Most huge settlements are substantially punitive, which are damages awarded not on merit, but with the express intent of making the settlement hurt enough that the offender, and others in similar situations, think twice about taking similar actions.
Itch doesn’t appear interested in suing unfortunately. I want them to, not because I’m bloodthirsty, but to set precedent that this wreckless use of AI content moderation isn’t OK. I can imagine Disney and Nintendo following this.
Yes, “reckful” is a real word, although it is rarely used in modern English. It means being thoughtful, careful, or prudent, essentially the opposite of “reckless.” It comes from the same root as “reck,” which means to care or pay attention to.
Examples of Usage:
In older texts, “reckful” might describe someone who is cautious or considerate of consequences: “He was reckful in his approach, weighing every decision carefully.”
Why It’s Uncommon:
“Reckless” became the dominant term in English, and “reckful” fell out of common usage. Today, terms like “careful,” “prudent,” or “mindful” are more likely to be used in its place.
So while “reckful” is technically correct and would make sense in context, it might sound archaic or poetic to most modern English speakers.
They really should because the law has already decided that AI isn’t an independent entity, and is essentially just a computer program.
So whoever initiated the AI is ultimately responsible for its behavior, they can’t claim the AI malfunctioned because they chose not to bother having any human oversight, they knew that this was always a possibility and still they took responsibility for it.
Funko: Hey, chatgpt… Write an apology letter to the gaming community about getting itch.io shut down. Something like “Sorry, we fucked up. Please don’t hate us and continue to buy our stuff!” but make it sound like it came from an intern in HR.
Look, we know we sell little plastic figures—not games, not platforms, not anything remotely digital—but somehow, we’ve managed to trip over our own shoelaces and knock something precious to all of you right off the shelf. Yes, we’re talking about itch.io, and yes, we understand the gravity of what happened.
We’re not going to sugarcoat it: we messed up. We’re not entirely sure how the dominoes fell this way, but somehow, through a series of unfortunate events (and probably some poorly-thought-out legal maneuvers), our actions have impacted an entire community that thrives on creativity and passion. That was never our intention, and it’s not who we want to be.
The truth is, we’re sitting here staring at our little figures, wondering how something so small can lead to such a big screw-up. We know this affects you, and we’re genuinely sorry for the frustration, confusion, and anger we’ve caused.
We don’t expect forgiveness overnight, but please know we’re working hard to make this right. We’re talking to the people who actually know what they’re doing (because, let’s face it, we clearly don’t), and we’re committed to doing better moving forward.
We value this community more than you realize, even if we’ve done a poor job of showing it. Thank you for your patience, and we hope you’ll give us the chance to earn back your trust—not just with our figures, but with our actions.
Your assumptions are too honest. Try “non-apology” and see if it is closer.
edit: I took the above prompt but added “do not admit to any wrongdoing”, and got a more believable letter
Subject: A Message to Our Gaming Community
Dear Gamers,
We wanted to take a moment to address recent events and share our heartfelt thoughts with you. We understand that some of our actions may have had an impact on platforms you value deeply, and we recognize the passion and creativity that make this community so extraordinary.
While it’s not our place to dive into specifics, we want to assure you that your voices matter to us. As a company, we’re constantly learning and striving to support the vibrant ecosystems that make gaming so special.
To those who may feel disappointed or frustrated, we hear you. Your passion is why we do what we do, and we remain committed to delivering the experiences you love.
Thank you for sticking with us and for continuing to be part of this journey. We appreciate your feedback, your creativity, and your unwavering support as we work to do better.
Sincerely,
[Your Company]
An Intern in HR Who Definitely Wrote This Alone
While it’s not our place to dive into specifics, we want to assure you that your voices matter to us. As a company, we’re constantly learning and striving to support the vibrant ecosystems that make gaming so special.
I feel drunk on polymers. Looks like what crossbreed of game industry and Apple would write.
Sincerely,
[Your Company]
An Intern in HR Who Definitely Wrote This Alone
Holy hell, that’s actually a really good apology, and any company who would be willing to post it, even if written by LLM, would immediately gain at least some respect points from me
I’ve worked at hosting companies in the past. I don’t know the timeline, but I’ve never encountered a situation where one folded this fast and just take down a client’s site over a copyright claim.
And our clients, because of the nature of the internet being the internet, a small percentage were real scumbag folks, who while the content was objectionable and disgusting, it wasn’t illegal. Which means it stayed up.
If there was something highly illegal like csam or dark web stuff and it came from a federal agency, we’d take down the site immediately.
If it was a strong letter from a legal entity that we trusted, we would pass that to the client and recommend remediation. No takedown unless there was a court order.
If it was a weak letter from a random legal entity, we lol’ed and wait for the threat of a lawsuit/court order. This was surprisingly extremely common.
So wtf is this registrar doing to shit on their clients so fast without a court order?
Yeah, if Iwantmyname are so neglectful as to pull the entire plug on your website over a singlular copyright claim, then I'd move right the fuck along too. They're clearly not a trustworthy registrar.
To make things worse, Itch.io isn't exactly a small company either.
If this happened to someone smaller, with less outreach to fight back with than Itch, I can only imagine they'd have no recourse against this neglectful behaviour.
I mean, smaller company is also a smaller impact and much faster decisions. If it happened to one of my small clients, it would be resolved within 20 minutes. If it would happen to my largest client, it would take hours if everyone in the decision chain suddenly turned competent and people with access to various stuff would all be available, which they probably wouldn’t, so realistically we’re talking days (assuming the DNS provider doesn’t restore it beforehand).
Iwantmyname acted incompetently, but so did Brandshield, who decided to go straight to the nuclear option of a registrar takedown, rather than issuing a takedown request to Itch themselves
The DNS provider (who is not necessarily also a registrar, but it’s common that the registrar is also a provider) doesn’t have any option to disable individual pages. They can only disable a whole subdomain or domain.
The server provider technically could, but it’s much harder because the site is served on https, so they would most likely have to disable the whole server as well.
Not that the server provider was asked, it’s just to illustrate that no one but the service owner (itch.io) can meaningfully block a single page. Asking the infrastructure providers is a dick move.
Edit: So the server provider was asked as well, but they’re not as incompetent it seems. Also, instead of a copyright abuse, BrandShield falsely sent this as a fraud and phishing, which is another dick move.
So yeah, the DNS provider is incompetent, but BrandShield is the malicious actor here.
Well it’s obvious that the registrar is to blame. Anyone can send emails requesting the takedown. The registrar shouldn’t do it. Are Funko and Brandshield scummy? Yes, but they are not who took down itch, it was the registrar. Also Funko calling anyone’s mother is fucked up.
There is a minimum amount of time allowable for Investigations though. It’s not very long and there is a very good argument it should be longer, but the registrar didn’t even take the time to look into the case. Obviously they didn’t, because otherwise it wouldn’t have done anything.
That’s not even in their calculation for most of their customers. They aren’t going to eat a court case if they don’t have to and every refusal risks a court case. A customer has to be truly large to actually be defended by their ISP.
They wouldn’t get a court case over this. Firstly because registrars are not responsible for the content on their websites, And social media sites and other sites that allow users to post-content to them are themselves not directly responsible for the content users choose to post.
The appropriate action for a registrar is to contact the owner of the website in question, If it is getting close to the allotted time and they haven’t had a response then they take the website down. All allowable under the law without getting sued.
This registrar didn’t even bother trying to contact the site, they did not do a totally automatable and essentially free action, simply because they couldn’t be bothered.
What I find really weird is I have a website, or had a website years ago, that someone issued a DMCA takedown to it, but it was totally fraudulent. The registrar sent me an email to say they had received the takedown request, had reviewed it, found it to be invalid, and we’re taking no further action.
They didn’t send me this email until after they’d already decided to ignore the report. Start to finish the whole thing took about 3 days. That was for some tiny irrelevant website that no one except me and a few users would have even cared if it had been taken down. Why didn’t they do the same for a massive internationally well-known website?
You make a good point.
Even disregarding how well known Itch is, their registrar acted woefully incompetently by not even attempting to contact Itch.io about the takedown request (which is what Brandshield should have done in the first place)
I’m very interested in what the offending page looked like. itch.io in the first reports seemed to suggest it was a false positive, without outright saying so. Both Funko and BrandShield are quiet about it, but between the lines you can infer they think the AI tool’s report was legitimate.
It closely copies the branding of Funko Fusion by 10:10 Games.
The title and account have been pulled.
Both match leafo’s description:
[…] 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.
[…] I had removed the page and disabled the account.
I’m just going to post this comment to this thread as well, since this is newer. Classic shifting of blame and no one taking responsibility for scummy actions.
Fun fact: Funko’s current CEO is the ex-president of Wizards of the Coast!
Why is this relevant? Well, under her leadership, WotC sent pinkerton agents to someone’s home to threaten them because they got some Magic the Gathering cards early. She said things like Dungeons & Dragons players were under-monetised, pushing to make the Table Top game more like a microtransaction-filled video game, and helped with the OGL scandal.
The OGL, for anyone unfamiliar, was an Open Gaming License WotC had for years with D&D 3rd party creators. It allowed certain things to be created using D&D mechanics and lore by anyone that followed its guidelines and allowances. A couple years ago, WotC tried to change that so they would make more money off of people trying to create things for D&D - to profit off of indie creators passionate about the game. There was a huge backlash, and they eventually went back on this decision.
All this to say, you can see what kind of leader the current Funko CEO is, and what’s happening with itch isn’t surprising to me.
If you had a business that boiled down to “corporate mercenary” don’t you think it would be incredibly convenient to have a reputation as a villainous bulldog?
There are very few companies who get to pretend they don’t give a flying shit about people. This is one who will thrive on that reputation. Pinkertons and whatever Blackwater is now.
Unfortunately, the swing to the right and the rise of shit like “Blue Lives Matter” has changed this in some places. When I was in the western part of Virginia for school, there was a local car dealership called “Pinkerton” and I saw their dealership license plate frames and emblem on a LOT of cars in the area. Many of those cars also had the Gadsden vanity plates and a bunch of blue lives matter, trump, etc. stickers on them.
I think Blackwater renamed to avoid tarnishing whoever was hiring them, not because they themselves disliked their reputation. If their employment wasn’t at the mercy of elected officials who have to care about optics, I bet they’d still be parading around their old name with pride.
It’s been decades and the first name that pops into my head when someone says ‘PMC’ is still ‘Blackwater’. Do you have any idea how much war crime they’ll need to do to get back that level of brand recognition?
We need to compile a list of shitty executives for boycotting purposes. No more “this company did a bad thing”. No. We need exactly this, with “this is David Davidson, who led the enshittification of ABC, Inc”
It needs to be a document, a wiki, of exactly the shitty things those people did so that businesses will have monetary reasons to want to avoid shitty executives.
Let’s help those poor, poor companies from being victimized by those awful greedy people. The poor things.
Funko: We would like to apologise for being caught in the act, we will strive to better hide our asshole tactics next time, the person responsible for us getting caught has been reprimanded with 2 weeks paid time off.
$100 says they wouldn’t have said shit even if this was a smaller platform than itch and people didn’t basically put them on blast. Funko is just trying damage control now that their customers are calling foul. I seriously hope people stop buying these things as a punishment to this company using shitty AI and not actually apologizing, but I know thats wishful thinking.
It’s really just “this thing happened” and nothing else, as if they’re reporting on events where they’re just innocent bystanders. Instead of saying what they did, it’s “hey, we didn’t do [detail]”.
Is it a legal liability thing to avoid using specific words? It's hard to imagine it being bad PR to "properly" apologize (at least compared to releasing a non-apology apology statement).
Yes, theoretically Itch could sue them for lost revenue. Brandshield should be very afraid of Funko getting sued since getting your client sued can’t look good
I would imagine that admitting fault is a bad look when it comes to fighting the lawsuit that inevitably comes after. Hard to claim you’re not liable when you’ve made a statement saying it’s your fault.
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
I think Iwantmyname may be the worst player in this story.
Everyone else kind of did what they were expected to do:
Itch provides a platform for user generated content and took down some questionable content when asked.
Funko is an IP based toy company and asked a tech company to protect their IP online
BrandShield is a fucking cancer of a service that acted aggressively to protect its client’s interests
But:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
DMCA used to be used very very rarely because it carries(carried?) significant penalties for using it like a club. Now it’s just being used like a club and it’s quite obvious there’s no penalty.
I don’t believe that it was a malicious misuse. Most likely some fuckwit moron at Funko or Brandshield didn’t understand the difference between the hosting platform and the registrar and sent the takedown request to the wrong place out of negligence.
Sure, I don’t disagree, that’s not what I’m saying. All three offending parties could/should be held responsible, depending on how the takedown request was delivered.
Using AI driven software is willful negligence. Software can’t take responsibility so the human operating it needs to take responsibility for the consequences of it. They took down the entire thing they need to face consequences. The hosting provider should also face consequences for overly broad responses to take down requests.
Not necessarily. Neural nets are excellent at fuzzy matching tasks and make for great filters – but nothing more. If you hook one up to a crawler you get a fairly effective way of identifying websites that match certain criteria. You can then have people review those matches to see if infringement happened. It’s basically a glorified search tool.
Of course if you skip the review step you’re doing the equivalent of running a Google search for your brand name and DMCAing all of the search results. That would be negligent.
There is no indication that Funko/BrandShield did that, however. They say that infringing content was found and we have strong indications that a now-deleted Itch project did contain official screenshots of Funko Fusion so the infringement threshold might have been met. Their takedown request was apparently made in good faith.
Now, why the entire domain was taken down, that is the question. It might be a miscommunication or they might’ve mailed the hosting provider directly. I can imagine everything from human error to faulty processes as the root cause here. What I don’t believe is that they made a high-level decision to nuke Itch.
Who needs to face the consequences depends on who screwed up here. For now we’ll have to make do with both Funko and BrandShield taking a PR hit.
They didnt issue a DMCA takedown request, which has a legally prescribed back and forth for removing copyrighted, or assumed copyrighted material.
They instead told the registar itch.io was committing phishing/fraud crimes. The registar clearly knee jerked on being told the domain was engaged in illegal acts, but it was Funko and their vendor Brandshield that lied about that in the first place.
Yes, I didn’t know about the fraud allegation when I posted. That definitely shouldn’t have happened. Funko should’ve known better than to pull shit like that and it’ll be interesting to see if Itch sues over this.
Now, why the entire domain was taken down, that is the question.
They emailed their registrar. Registrar deals only with domains. It’s like telling asassin to deal with person and then act surprised after person was killed.
Except you wouldn’t ever dare build any kind of automated system for fear of this exact situation. Remove the fear part and financially you wouldn’t NOT build this system.
Exactly, they know how often their AI fails and they understand the damages you incur from fake phishing accusations. They combined the two, and used exploits to make the registrar panic.
lemmy.world
Najnowsze