Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown

Fucking Pinkertons? That's a company who can use a visit from Luigi.

That's quite telling, thanks for sharing.

Name the CEO. Image too, or wiki link.

Let's stop letting scummy people hide behind brands and companies.

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.

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'd do a new registrar either way.

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?

They committed fraud with a false take down and are hoping they don't get the shit sewed out out them by pointing the finger.

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.

tbf if all of this is true the registrar did do the most harm

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?

When no actual people are named no one has to take any responsibility.

Just keep saying nebulous ideas like a company be the problem and then everyone walks away.

Start blaming the people involved

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

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:

4. 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.

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

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.

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

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).

Lawsuit liability.

Why do a decent thing when you have money on your side

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.

Corpo-speak in general is absolutely frustrating to read.

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.

You can taste celophane in their words

Translation: "we didn't think this predatory behavior would affect our bottom line, and we deeply regret that it has."

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.

$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.

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.

Enlightenment me but I think it's because of legal reasons? Can an apology be used as pleading guilty?

I have two of them, from Mr. Robot, for decoration - just like I have other statues for the same purpose. I took them out of the box though, I don't get why anyone would do that.

Consoom

Jk, I would buy them if I found them cute but I don't

2025: the REAL year of Luigi.

Notice there's no "sorry" in the translation

I think it was done by human and they use AI as an excuse

Where exactly was corporate council in all of this. Who on earth signed off on, "automatically taking potentially ligacious actions"?

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

Oh, I'm here for it.

It looks like this is the one:

https://funkofusion.itch.io/funko-fusion

1. It closely copies the branding of Funko Fusion by 10:10 Games.
2. 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

They really like to show off how much power they have and how self defense is, indeed, justified.

They do and undo like there's no consequences whatsoever.

They always talk about how giving coverage leads to copycats. Typically that has meant me getting pissed at the over coverage of mass shootings, but now I'm sitting here waiting like... Okay? Any day now? Maybe not.

Where's Rache Bartmoss when you need em?

Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?

Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D

For a single isolated offence, Brandshield's first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it's about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.

So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.

No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.

Edit: while under the shower I realized that Brandshield's posts do contain some kind of news: Brandshield does not deny having used fraud & phishing as reason for the takedown request, thereby confirming that they did. Before we just had itch.io's retelling of the events, which might have been a misrepresentation by itch.io or due to a cock-up by the registrar, but because of the lack of denial by brandshield, we now have confirmation that it did happen like itch.io said.

The problem here is that's a weird response for them to go straight to the registrar.

If somebody posts copyrighted content on YouTube the offended party goes to YouTube don't ask the registrar to do anything. Contacting the registrar is the last resort not the first step.

Nintendo people: First time?

Ive had companies call my mom over stuff because the last known contact information they found for me was from when I was still living with my parents. Literally years after I moved out.

The "A.I" excuse stuff reads like bullshit. The mom call might just be old information.