Statement is from xcancel.com/OriginalFunko/…/1866255848366039468#m
They requested a takedown before talking to the website owners? That’s such a hostile move
Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown
Submitted 5 months ago by donuts@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/66498284-1d6f-482b-b52d-514b7be4cd47.png
Comments
FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
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.
rtxn@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
hono4kami@pawb.social 5 months ago
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.
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 5 months ago
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 5 months ago
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.
hono4kami@pawb.social 5 months ago
yup. someone is lying here
Kelly@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
olosta@lemmy.world 5 months 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 5 months 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 5 months ago
URL-specific and they go to the registrar? What can they do, they don’t manage the hosting
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 5 months 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 5 months ago
Well put, they can’t just palm it off on the third party. You hired them and green lit the action.
executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
I notice it doesn’t include the word “sorry”.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 5 months ago
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]”.
obinice@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fuck Funko and fuck their shitty CEO.
Not worth thinking about any further. I wish itch.io the best in their lawsuit.
Glide@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Why is it so hard just to say “this was not out intention, we recognize it was bad, and we are sorry.”
There’s a lot of words here for a non-apology.
catloaf@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Lawsuit liability.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Why do a decent thing when you have money on your side
Snapz@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fuck all the corpo fucks involved here with their plausible deniability attempt. If you truly felt any remorse, you’d talk about how you’ll disengage this AI chum service, or demand that requests are extremely precise or hyper targeted at specific direct issues. This story of blanket action helps the big company with monkey and always hurts the little guy that gets swept up in their ravenous wake.
Also, educate the next month of your online presence you boosting the brand you wronged with your reach. But you won’t do shit, you aren’t remorseful.
Adalast@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Personally I want to see the criminal shield removed for corporations. All C-Level executives become personally liable for any illegal actions, malfeasance, slander/liable, or injurious action perpetrated or instigated by the company with the ONLY defense being proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt (not just reasonable doubt) that an actor within or without the company caused the action with the express intent of harming the C-Level executives, either specific or generally.
Fuck corporate personhood. Fuck people making a LLC and doing whatever the fuck they want under the guise of the company then the company declares bankruptcy while they run off like a cartoon character with bags of money. Leadership liability and culpability should be the norm, not the exception.
ricdeh@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Aren’t C-Suite already liable for illegal actions? I know for sure that it’s that way in Germany, and I cannot imagine it to be different in the U.S.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 months ago
Fuck Funko Pops.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
It so so pisses me off when these companies say shit like “thank you for sharing in our passion for creativity”
It’s basically saying “thank you for agreeing with us”, which I don’t.
At this point you just know that any company saying something like that is abusive, doesn’t give a shit and just want to pretend to be respectable.
Snowpix@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Corpo-speak in general is absolutely frustrating to read.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 months ago
The best thing about rising open the corporate world is the increased salary. Well the worst thing is the fact that idiots start talking to you like that in person.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
We know we’ve caused itch and the game developers financial losses, but be assured that we have contacted them to offer our biggest, most sincere apologies.
Fuck them. Time to sue.
uis@lemm.ee 5 months ago
You can taste celophane in their words
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You can taste AI in their words.
Vespair@lemm.ee 5 months ago
“Funko did not request a takedown of the @itchio platform.”
Man, I fucking hate corpo-speak like this.
Yes, you didn’t personally make the request against itchio… But you hired this company to enforce “brand protection” and that’s what they did. So you did actually request the takedown, but you just did so by authorizing another party to make such requests on your behalf.
This is like a military General saying “hey I didn’t commit any warcrimes, I just gave the orders to my men to commit warcrimes!”
GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Translation: “we didn’t think this predatory behavior would affect our bottom line, and we deeply regret that it has.”
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
We HoLd A dEeP ReSpEcT…
Yeah hiring AI slop to take down websites with zero humanity oversight screams “respect.”
echodot@feddit.uk 5 months ago
It wouldn’t be so bad if the AI engaged with a human at some point to confirm the action was both warranted and proportionate. Nope, apparently it’s allowed to just do whatever the hell it wants, with literally zero oversight.
InputZero@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Corporations are trying to set the precedent that they can not be held responsible for what their AI does. If it required an employee action to follow through then there’s a point of liability. Zero oversight isn’t a bug of AI, it’s a feature. It puts more distance between the people at the top and any liability or consequences they might face.
‘Why I could not have known this software was wrong 90% of the time, I’m not a computer scientist. It’s beside the point that all those mistakes AI from the company we contracted were in our favor. Regardless that’s in the past, the new generation of Artificial Intelligence will correct those mistakes and will detect 10% more fraud. It’s wonderful that we finally have a tool to combat the rampant fraud and bad actors that has taken over this country.’
dinckelman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
A corpo bully pointing fingers at some AI slop they use, how convenient
dumbass@leminal.space 5 months ago
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.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 5 months ago
$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.
Speculater@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I for one promise to never buy another Funko product. I never have, but I never will either.
RonnieB@lemmy.world 5 months ago
[deleted]0xD@infosec.pub 5 months ago
I have two of them, from Mr. Robot, for decoration. I took them out of the box though, I don’t get why anyone would do that.
oVerde@lemmy.world 5 months ago
These of Mr. Robot are hard as fuck to find ):
embed_me@programming.dev 5 months ago
Consoom
kazerniel@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I “love” how they very carefully avoid making any apology whatsoever.
Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Enlightenment me but I think it’s because of legal reasons? Can an apology be used as pleading guilty?
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
IANAL but I do believe in some places not only is an apology and admission of guilt but it can also be used against you
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Corporate doing corporate shit. And then asking why people hate corporations and their CEOs.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
People used to think so highly of CEOs, that they must be doing something right if they got to where they are. They must be smarter and have all the answers.
Now people are realizing CEOs are just rich scumbags.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Yep, I’m sure most of them just bought their positions there to have power over society.
SolarPunker@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
All the support to Itch.io’s mom
pyre@lemmy.world 5 months ago
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 5 months ago
[deleted]HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 5 months ago
2025: the REAL year of Luigi.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Translation
OhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitTheAIReallyFuckedUpPleaseDontSueUsOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShit
hono4kami@pawb.social 5 months ago
Notice there’s no “sorry” in the translation
uis@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I think it was done by human and they use AI as an excuse
hono4kami@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
>AI >looks inside >underpaid workers from underdeveloped countries
echodot@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Where exactly was corporate council in all of this. Who on earth signed off on, “automatically taking potentially ligacious actions”?
Maggoty@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sorry, we fired the entire legal department and now we use the latest IBM AI model named Hal 9000.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It would be a real shame if abuse@dtnt.com (the domain registrar of brandshield.com) were to get a bunch of reports about scams and CSAM found on the website.
Adalast@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh, I’m here for it.
JTskulk@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Brand protection partners is a mulch friendlier way to say bloodsucking lawyers.
phx@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Some are useful. It’s not uncommon for scammers to throw up copies of legitimate sites, but hosting malware etc. Having tried to deal with Google, GoDaddy-et-al I can attest that their fucks given about such things is minimal but one of these companies can get offending sites taken down pretty quick.
The problem is when they don’t do due-diligence (and don’t face reasonable consequences for failing in said diligence) and then shit like this happens
oVerde@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If only we had a few more Luigi, these corpo-shit would think twice
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee 5 months ago
They always talk about how giving coverage leads to copycats. Typically that has meant me getting pissed at the overvcoverage of mass shootings, but now I’m sitting here waiting like… Okay? Any day now? Maybe not.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 months ago
Hey, so if BrandShield is being honest, what’s Itch’s registrar? What do they have to say? 🍿 This keeps getting deeper.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 months ago
You just know that their “AI driven platform” is a call to google for the brand names they’re “protecting” followed by takedown requests issued to the registered email followed by one to the registrar for every domain found.
We need a new internet because this one is fucked.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
The fact that a legit website could be taken down just by a big corporation claim, without any further third party or gubernamental investigation. Is indeed frightening.
tengkuizdihar@programming.dev 5 months ago
Didn’t they contacted the owners mom about this? Fucking disgusting practices.
zerofk@lemm.ee 5 months ago
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.
HonorableScythe@lemm.ee 5 months ago
That buck just keeps on passing around, huh?
HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
How much you want to bet that response was AI generated?
Seriously, the way it explains things and the repetition reek of ChatGPT
caseofthematts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m just going to post this comment to this thread as well, since this is newer.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fucking Pinkertons? That’s a company who can use a visit from Luigi.
moody@lemmings.world 5 months ago
Literally the company that RDR2 portrays as the bad guys, that sued the makers of the game and lost because they objectively ARE the bad guys.
donuts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s quite telling, thanks for sharing.
oxideseven@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Name the CEO. Image too, or wiki link.
Let’s stop letting scummy people hide behind brands and companies.
tb_@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Might as well add those details to your comment.
Image
Cynthia Williams
investor.funko.com/governance/…/default.aspx?Item…
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Peter Molyneux is going to require an entire volume bound in leather at this right