From what I 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, 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.
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 I decided to "escalate" the issue myself on social media.
Will you be moving away from this registrar? It seems like it could very easily be abused again.
I also wonder if their "automatically disable" policy takes size/importance of site into account. Is this how they would treat all their domain owners, regardless of significance?
Prices went up, service went down. I’d recommend moving your domains when you can (Porkbun have been good, though I haven’t had any incidents like this).
Best of luck!
Not from iwantmyname, never heard of them, but of course now that I have, I couldn't do business with them in light of the situation.
I've used their services for ages and even got to briefly meet the founders once in Wellington who gave a talk on Erlang.
Ah well, while it sucks that the good times may be over, I'm glad the founders got their exit :)
I didn't really expect Funko or 10:10 Games to be like that, but then again I didn't expect anyone would like Funko enough to make a fan page about their dolls.
Other companies allow fans to do pretty much whatever you want with their IP as long as you don't turn it into (too much of) a business. Sega has even hired a fan for their remasters rather than DMCA his project into oblivion.
When companies do this, I interpret this as the company giving a clear message: "don't be a fan of our work or we may apply legal pressure".
DMCA passed in 1998. it was short lived.
Then things like this happen, and people think "ooh AI is bad, the bubble must burst" when this has nothing to do with that in the first place, and the real issue was that they sent a "fraud/phishing report" rather than a "trademark infringement" report.
Then I also wish that people who knew better, that this really has nothing to do with AI (like, this is obviously not autonomously making decisions any more than a regular program is), to stop blindly parroting and blaming it as a way to get more clicks, support and rage.
(After the previous AI bubble, no-one mentioned the dread term for about 20 years, instead using the safely ultra-broad umbrella term.)
Edit: And i'm happy to see that it's working again as of 2024-12-09 12:27 UTC+1
Though it was the indie/personal feel they had as a registrar, I might look for alternatives.
I appreciated the indie feel as well, but I can't blame someone for selling out to the tune of 7 figures when the opportunity arises.
I'm not.
I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits).
Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again).
I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich?
Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...
That haphazard branding and parroting is exactly why the bubble needs to burst. Bubbles bursting take out the gritters and rarely actually kills off all the innovation in the scene (it kills a lot, though. I'm not trying to dismiss that).
Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.
Did this account violate your ToS or the actual law? While I totally understand where are you coming from and I would probably be forced to do the same, I still tend to believe that closing a fan account is exactly the same thing that your registrar did to you.
For example, in my country, we are still dealing with the fallout from a decision made over a decade ago by the Tax Department. They used a poorly designed ML algorithm to screen applicants claiming social benefits for fraudulent activity. This led to several public inquiries and even contributed to the collapse of a government coalition. Tens of thousands of people are still suffering from being wrongly labeled as fraudulent, facing hefty fines and being forced to repay so-called fraudulent benefits.
(Layman here, obviously.)
Besides that, there are so many websites with copyright content that never changes the domains, is just the domain registration bad or why they just disabled the domain?
But yes, no doubt, that system is broken and the registrar should have known better.
If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not.
Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened.
AI does need to die. Not so much because LLMs are bad, but rather because, like "big data" and "blockchain" and many other buzzwordy tools before it, it is a solution looking for a problem.
I expect total ignorance from a typical domain registrar.
> If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not.
Take a look who is they registrar and then look their prices up.
> Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened
Yeah, they would totally ignore their customer just like that one did.
Unfortunately, providing proper support and protecting own customers in digital realm is an unsustainable business practice for most registrars.
While I agree, the people who hired them are equally culpable. You don't get to wash your hands of the mess just because someone else is doing your dirty work.
I've worked on a team in a household-name big tech company where our mission was almost exactly "make sure we're not blowing up our most important customers for no reason". It's not nearly as easy as it sounds: defining who's important is hard, and defining what should and shouldn't be allowed is hard, and then implementing that all correctly and avoiding drift over time is tricky too.
Godspeed!
We have arrived at peak hypocrisy.
Read the Wikipedia article and you’ll probably feel outraged.
The last thing I want is to be a 70 y/o still supporting a registrar. Especially considering the margins.
It's like having a dangerous dog that usually doesn't bite, but you really cannot know if it will change its mind one day. Do you just let such dog walk the streets without owner supervision?
Unless a project is going viral in the media, raking up in a significant amount of money via a paywall or is directly competing with a current game, the chances of it getting shut down are incredibly low.
It’s irresponsible to deploy AI if you don’t know what it will do, especially when there are actual stakes.
Maybe we’ll have less AI bullshit then.
i’m interested in any potential negatives.
Also, here is a blog post[2] warning about the improper use of algorithmic enforcement tools like the one that was used in this scandal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...
I would write up a complaint and send it to the incoming FTC Commissioner. Yes, I'm serious. From the signals Trump is sending if there is ever a time when Republicans may support some form of DMCA reform, it's now. He's on record talking about punishing Big Tech and supporting "Little Tech." You're Little Tech. Send copies of your letter to Funko and BrandShield. Also reach out or at least send a copy to Matt Stoller, the guy who publishes a very popular newsletter about monopoly, anti-trust and corporate abuse in America, he will be interested. Go for the throat.
1. Section 6.1 of https://www.cloudflare.com/domain-registration-agreement/
So, in case anyone is interested, their registrar is MarkMonitor Inc., with a pricing of "contact us". The only pricing info I could find [0] said that it's 20$/yr for a .com, but with a minimum spend of 10k$ (probably reached by using their other services, such as the stated purpose of monitoring of trademarks).
[0] >>18063232
Richer Sounds boss in £3.5m staff giveaway https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48269171
To replace Gandi email (that Gandi went from free to ramping up the pricing for when they were taken over), Cloudflare offer email forwarding so you can receive incoming mail from a custom domain to e.g. a gmail account, and for sending mail you can pair this with a custom SMTP service like https://www.smtp2go.com (1000 emails/month on the free tier).
Apart from that, DNS is something I barely touch for years sometimes so I don't find much difference between registrars beside their pricing and how much you can trust them.
Being able to point your Cloudflare nameserver records would be nice though, so worst case you'd need to move everything if another registrar had some services you were interested in? Would be curious to know more about how common this scenario comes up and why.
Seems to be a difficult time for hosters and also again a demonstration that copyright law is deeply flawed, even if using stolen assets is a rising problem.
there are very few parts of that contract in all caps, but that's one of them :/
Nationwide is another example of a successful cooperative as well (large UK bank, particularly in the mortgage space). They're customer and employee owned I believe, my wife and I got £200 last year as a profit share for being customers.
I'm a huge fan of the model, but it's difficult to get going. I think they're also more expensive to run as their operations tend to be a little more complex.
The legal system already acts that way when the issue is in its own wheelhouse: https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-us... The lawyers did not escape by just chuckling in amusement, throwing up their hands, and saying "AIs! Amimrite?"
The system is slow and the legal tests haven't happened yet but personally I see no reason to believe that the legal system isn't going to decide that "the AI" never does anything and that "the AI did it!" will provide absolutely zero cover for any action or liability. If anything it'll be negative as hooking an AI directly up to some action and then providing no human oversight will come to be ipso facto negligence.
I actually consider this one of the more subtle reasons this AI bubble is substantially overblown. The idea of this bubble is that AI will just replace humans wholesale, huzzah, cost savings galore! But if companies program things like, say, customer support with AIs, and can then just deploy their wildest fantasies straight into AIs with no concern about humans being in the loop and turning whistleblower or anything, like, making it literally impossible to contact humans, making it literally impossible to get solutions, and so forth, and if customers push these AIs to give false or dangerous solutions, or agree to certain bargains or whathaveyou, and the end result is you trade lots of expensive support calls for a company-ending class-action lawsuit, the utility of buying the AI services to replace your support staff sharply goes down. Not necessarily to zero. Doesn't have to go to zero. It just makes the idea that you're going to replace your support staff with a couple dozen graphics cards a much more incremental advantage rather than a multiplicative advantage, but the bubble is priced like it's hugely multiplicative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_e...
[0] >>42365837
If companies hide behind negligence/incompetence, then we need to make it costly for them to be negligent/incompetent.
The last time someone I knew had an issue, they had to get a senator to make waves to get anything resolved.
I'd expect them to remove that, they're not a host for fan pages.
My hosting party (Hetzner) forwarded the emails and / or put it in their own system, I removed the offending images / page, replied to the email, and done, right? Wrong, the email said I had to fill in a statement through some online form somewhere; I did that too late and got more and more threatening emails like "pack your shit we're evicting you in 24 hours". Nobody seemed to actually read my replies / explanation, probably because this is so routine for them.
And I get it, nobody can be arsed to read longwinded explanations and the like for routine operations. I hope AI assisted tooling will help the overworked support employees with making decisions in favor of giving people the benefit of the doubt and the help they need; for them it's routine, but for me it was the first time I got anything like that.
A business is supposed to be an ongoing, perpetual enterprise. Maybe it grows, maybe it stays the same, but it isn't something that should (in my opinion) be designed as a product, in itself, with a "sell by" date. If it gets brought up, then that's [maybe] good, but it shouldn't actually be in the business plan. It's just a random lifecycle event. We can plan to be ready for it, but it shouldn't be a corporate goal.
It's quite possible to do that. I worked for nearly 27 years, for a company that is over 100 years old. I think the world's oldest company is over 1,400 years old, and just got brought out, for the first time, about 10 years ago.
Unfortunately, domain registration is an industry with so many of its own problems that I'm not sure "vote with your wallet" would be an effective strategy for changing things here. I honestly wonder if domain registration might be the more fruitful target for legislation protecting customers if the goal is specifically to avoid situations like this one, but even as someone who's usually unabashedly in favor of consumer protection regulations, I can't say I have a high degree of confidence that any changes here would be done effectively.
Namecheap I find is less easier to use and sometimes higher cost over time. I also haven’t had reliable domain renewal service from them when I used them.
Granted this is all a few years back. I was at Cloudflare until this year when I switched to Porkbun and I’ve been very happy
Of course services like the registrar need protection here too. And certain false copyright claims probably need consequences as well. The legal industry servers no function here.
Also, it would be legally trivial to make the user accountable for the offense, not the whole of itch.io. Sure, there would be problems here as well, but there is not large barrier to not have a parasitic legal industry and have those responsible that actually commit the offense.
The problem of enforcement cannot be put on the back of the platform itself.
So I don't see the hypocrisy
I feel like there's also some missing layer of infrastructure here.
itch.io, like a lot of sites (HN being another), is meant to act as a host of user-generated content, over which the site takes a curatorial but not editorial stance. (I.e. the site has a Terms of Use; and has moderators that take things down / prevent things from being posted according to the Terms of Use; but otherwise is not favoring content according to the platform's own beliefs in the way that e.g. a newspaper would. None of the UGC posted "represents the views" of the platform, and there's no UGC that the platform would be particularly sad to see taken down.)
I feel like, for such arms-length-hosted UGC platforms, there should be a mechanism to indicate to these "brand protection" services (and phishing/fraud-detection services, etc) that takedown reports should be directed first-and-foremost at the platform itself. A mechanism to assert "this site doesn't have a vested interest in the content it hosts, and so is perfectly willing to comply with takedown requests pointed at specific content; so please don't try to take down the site itself."
There are UGC-hosting websites that brand-protection services already treat this way (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, etc) — but that's just institutional "human common sense" knowledge held about a few specific sites. I feel like this could be generalized, with a rule these takedown systems can follow, where if there's some indication (in a /.well-known/ entry, for example) that the site is a UGC-host and accepts its own platform-level abuse/takedown reports, then that should be attempted first, before trying to get the site itself taken down.
(Of course, such a rule necessarily cannot be a full short-circuit for the regular host-level takedown logic such systems follow; otherwise pirates, fraudsters, etc would just pretend their one-off phishing domains are UGC platforms. But you could have e.g. a default heuristic that if the takedown system discovers a platform-automated-takedown-request channel, then it'll try that channel and give it an hour to take effect before moving onto the host-level strategy; and if it can be detected from e.g. certificate transparency logs that the current ownership of the host is sufficiently long-lived, then additional leeway could be given, upgrading to a 24-72hr wait before host-takedown triggers.)
dynadot.com has been superior in my experience.
In other words, a pit bull.
The courts have told Nintendo numerous times that they are in the wrong in this behavior and outlook. They have no legal means to keep Dolphin off Steam and it is a matter of judicial record that emulators are not an infringement of your IP on their own. Nintendo doesn't care and openly discusses their intent to make you suffer through lawfare. A just system would smack them down with a vexatious litigant label, but our system gives businesses infinite benefit of the doubt.
And it's not like running a registrar is something what can even have a mission other than earning money.
It does, but they never mess with anyone with big enough pockets to get sued for it.
One exception: personal projects. "This is an NES emulator that is built in Rust, and it uses Rust because I wanted to learn Rust" is a perfectly good description of a project (but not a business).
I would honestly be surprised if that was the case, but if you really tried, then you tried.
You pick who you’d hope would continue the mission OR you try to sell to employees.
> And what if they do 180 a week later?
Then you picked wrong, but the risk of picking wrong is not a good reason to not try to pick correctly.
How have y'all not realized that's how all this works?
It's why DNS is an anti-feature. As long as registrar's exist, it'll be an active lever utilized for basic deplatforming. Until everyone can host their own stuff, and networking is de-hub-and-spoked, this type of behavior will continue.
Arguably, in this scenario, learning rust is the "business need" and the NES emulator is the tool :)
But yeah, exactly. A blockchain is, technically, just a content-addressable linked list. A Merkle tree is the same, as a tree. Git's core data structure is a DAG version of this. These things are useful. Yet nobody calls Git "blockchain technology", because what we all care about is Git's value as a version control tool.
There isn't really a precedent for a tld with as many domains under it as .io, it's a very strong possibility it will be kept around and given to a private entity or even to GB.
• itch.io users could launch the Godot Web Editor to quickly make prototypes or simple games right on itch
• Publish from the native Godot editor directly to itch.io
• Godot adopts itch.io as the official asset store for art packs etc.
• Introduce social features for devs and artists to collaborate with each other:
• A publisher could choose to add a “Fork” or similar button on their itch.io game page that downloads and opens the project source in Godot. • All "forks" published that way would include a link to the original game's page, and so on.
I think Godot+itch could/should become the Github of Games :)
Easiest? Perhaps. Nothing around law is particularly easy (except breaking it, of course!) :) So, not altering existing laws, or not making new ones, would absolutely be the easiest method to that desired outcome. Many things would be easier to do if they were simply done how they were described, in a manner in which they were excepted, under the terms which they were agreed to. However, can we expect that a lack of laws/codes/statutes could ever result in effective or consistent behavior? Sadly, no. At least, not based upon historical experience. Perhaps the disposition of man will change one day - who knows what the future holds, but God!
Negligence is a thing that is bred in indifference and grown through a lack of consequence. Law and reform is the sole remedy.
Consider this: It would be far, far safer and more profitable for owners, employees, and customers of restaurants if the restaurant kept their cooking areas clean and tidy. Yet, even with unannounced and routine health inspections, various licensing requirements, annual training & education certifications, and massive fines...in spite of all of that, absurdly high numbers owners can't meet the bare minimum. People still somehow die from unsanitary food every year!
The best we can do then to combat the disposition of disconnected employees, and the blasé, checked-out business owners is to crush their skull. It is a judicial vengeance, a constant protector for all the people who had been abused unfairly; the ones who were discounted as "unimportant nobodies". Law is what gives the common man a temporary illusion of equal treatment. And when that illusion is chipped and broken from time-to-time, well, at least we can put another head up on the spike outside our walls.
It's certainly not quick, or easy, or even preventative(!), but it is the kind of response that is owed to the victims of incompetence and indolence.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make at all with your comment. None of it seems to address anything that I said, and if anything, it almost sounds like you managed to infer the opposite of what I meant in most cases.
From the timeline of the incident given at the top of this thread by the maintainer of the site, it sounds a lot more like the registrar was lazy about investigating whether the report of fraud/phishing was valid than that the registrar was fully aware that the actual intent was to take an entire site offline due to an allegation of a singular user infringing copyright. It sounds like the issue with the registrar could happen just as easily even if we magically waved a wand away and eliminated copyright law; if someone made an allegation of fraud and phishing, it sounds like the registrar might act the exact same way it did in this incident and take the site offline. That's why I'm arguing that copyright law isn't the primary cause of what happened here, and why reforming it seems pretty orthogonal to stopping this specific thing from occurring regardless of its merits as a goal in general.
.yu for Yugoslavia ran from 1989 to 2010.
Wikipedia has comprehensive articles on both of those ccTLDs, if you're interested in learning more
A fantastic sentiment, I do exactly this as well
However, nothing compares to the George Lucas saga down in Marin County. Was worth it just for the read about Lucas' fight with the county. Nigh incomprehensible.
[1] Forbes Summary, 2012: https://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0507/companies-people-geo...
[2] NYTimes Summary, 2012: https://archive.is/7iSSE
[3] CNET Summary, 2015: https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordabl...
[4] Pacific Research Institute Summary, 2021: https://www.pacificresearch.org/george-lucas-reluctant-yimby...
> submitted a so-called precise development plan in 2009 [for a] 269,701-square-foot digital studio [2]
> Lucas’ company says it spent “tens of millions” on engineering and environmental reviews and fees since its master plan was approved in 1996. [1]
> The association and others sent a letter to Mr. Lucas requesting that he find a “far more appropriate location for the development.” The project, the letter said, would “pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community,” “dwarf the average Costco warehouse” and generate light pollution so that “our dark starry skies would be destroyed.” [2] In 2012, Lucasfilm announced that it had scrapped the 263,701-square-foot project. [3]
> "The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbours" [3] “We were offering to shut down at 11 p.m. and spend $70 million to restore creeks ravaged by erosion and farm debris. Nothing we offered to these people was ever going to be enough. And so we were facing death by delay.” [1]
> In 2012 Mr. Lucas said he would sell the land to a developer to bring “low income housing” here. [2] there was a predictable backlash from residents, who believed that affordable housing would bring crime into the area and lower property values [3] “It’s inciting class warfare,” said Carolyn Lenert, head of the North San Rafael Coalition of Residents. [2]
> That has created an atmosphere that one opponent, who asked not to be identified, saying she feared for her safety, described as “sheer terror” and likened to “Syria.” [2]
> Carl Fricke [...] said: “We got letters saying, ‘You guys are going to get what you deserve. You’re going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here.’ ” [2]
> After three years in stasis, working with the regulations that govern affordable housing grants, George Lucas now plan[ed] to foot the bill himself, to the tune of upward of $150 million (circa 2015). This not only allows the project to proceed without jumping through those hoops, it also means that the housing can be allocated to specific groups, such as seniors, nurses and teachers. [3]
> The plan called for 224 apartments, along with generous residential amenities and a new bus stop [4], situated over 52 acres just north of San Rafael. This consists of 120 two- and three-bedroom workforce residences, and 104 one- and two-bedroom residences for seniors. [3]
> neighboring property owners quickly threatened Lucas with a $70 million environmental lawsuit if the filmmaker didn’t pull back his housing plans. True to California planning tradition, the project remain[ed] in limbo five years later. [4]
[5] https://www.thethings.com/george-lucas-billion-net-worth-spe...
> Lucas and the residents continued to battle over the property for several years until Disney eventually bought the property as part of purchasing LucasFilm. [5]
And the final piece of the story, perhaps the worst:
[6] Daily Mail Summary, 2023: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063777/These-form...
[7] Google Maps View, Binford Rd, 2023: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1221805,-122.5651918,3a,75y,...
> A line of RVs, trucks, and trailers stretches for nearly 2 miles along Highway 101 in north Marin County
> More than half had lived in Marin County for over a decade, and a further 13% for at least five years.
> 'I've been here four and a half years. I was one of the first here. When I came in mid 2018 there were three motor homes. Now there's over 80.' Sherry and Lyness said they can't afford a normal home any longer, and low-income housing is in short supply.
Oh yeah, I fully agree with the enshittification sentiment.
Admittedly, a DNS registrar for me personally is something I'd just swap without much thought but I can think of a few services I use where I wouldn't be so loosely coupled from the product if those founders were to exit.
It's a bit paradoxical on my part I think and I do wish we had more lifestyle businesses that don't have to become massive.
Mind you, I would have put iwantmyname in that basket now that I think about it.
Doubtful. Registrars have almost no costs - any markup over the registry fees is almost pure profit.