9 ms·

This issue aside, thanks for doing what you do. I was kind of expecting Itch to get sold to some holdings or casino company at some point, as good things tend t

This issue aside, thanks for doing what you do. I was kind of expecting Itch to get sold to some holdings or casino company at some point, as good things tend to go, but I've been happily surprised to see it mature independently throughout the years.

Tepix 2y ago
I agree itch.io is awesome! Edit: And i'm happy to see that it's working again as of 2024-12-09 12:27 UTC+1
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  And compared to that brandshield users should be branded by their business practices. Also the hoster as well. 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.
  - saghm 2y ago
    I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me think that the situation would have been _less_ messed up if Brandshield had correctly asked for the offending copyrighted content to be taken down rather than falsely alleging something more severe. I understand that Brandshield probably has been incentivized to act this way due to copyright law, but I'd argue that even reasonable laws will sometimes cause bad actors to try to take advantage of things, and the easiest way to fight back against this isn't to try to change laws to avoid this but for non-malicious entities like the registrar not to allow their customers to get exploited by this sort of behavior. 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.
    - raxxorraxor 2y ago
      A bad law is bad if it leads to injustice even beyond its original scope. We have seen numerous problems with DMCA abuse and copyright strikes in other forms. We have patent trolling and this abuse artificially feds a whole industry of dubious lawyers. I think this is not even a small problem and all these factors combined does make it a bad law, even if it would still protect innovation like it once was to meant to do, which is questionable as well. 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.
      - salawat 2y ago
        The platform will always be preferentially targeted because the larger you are the more you have to lose, the more likely it is you actualy have assets to go after if you don't deal with the alleged noncompliance. 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.
        ikiris 2y ago
        How do you expect people to find things without an authoritative lookup database?
      - saghm 2y ago
        I'm not sure how you came away from my comment with the idea that I disagree that the DMCA is a bad law. My argument isn't that that the law is good, but that I don't think it's anywhere close to the primary cause of this incident, and that there's much lower hanging fruit that could stop stuff like this. I'm also not sure why the _registrar_ needs protection in the case we're talking about; no part of this happened because the registrar needed protection, but the main cause of pain was that the registrar completely trusted a false third-party report that alleged _fraud_, not copyright issues. 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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Tepix 2y ago

I agree itch.io is awesome! Edit: And i'm happy to see that it's working again as of 2024-12-09 12:27 UTC+1

raxxorraxor 2y ago
And compared to that brandshield users should be branded by their business practices. Also the hoster as well. 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.
- saghm 2y ago
  I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me think that the situation would have been _less_ messed up if Brandshield had correctly asked for the offending copyrighted content to be taken down rather than falsely alleging something more severe. I understand that Brandshield probably has been incentivized to act this way due to copyright law, but I'd argue that even reasonable laws will sometimes cause bad actors to try to take advantage of things, and the easiest way to fight back against this isn't to try to change laws to avoid this but for non-malicious entities like the registrar not to allow their customers to get exploited by this sort of behavior. 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.
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    A bad law is bad if it leads to injustice even beyond its original scope. We have seen numerous problems with DMCA abuse and copyright strikes in other forms. We have patent trolling and this abuse artificially feds a whole industry of dubious lawyers. I think this is not even a small problem and all these factors combined does make it a bad law, even if it would still protect innovation like it once was to meant to do, which is questionable as well. 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.
    - salawat 2y ago
      The platform will always be preferentially targeted because the larger you are the more you have to lose, the more likely it is you actualy have assets to go after if you don't deal with the alleged noncompliance. 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.
      - ikiris 2y ago
        How do you expect people to find things without an authoritative lookup database?
    - saghm 2y ago
      I'm not sure how you came away from my comment with the idea that I disagree that the DMCA is a bad law. My argument isn't that that the law is good, but that I don't think it's anywhere close to the primary cause of this incident, and that there's much lower hanging fruit that could stop stuff like this. I'm also not sure why the _registrar_ needs protection in the case we're talking about; no part of this happened because the registrar needed protection, but the main cause of pain was that the registrar completely trusted a false third-party report that alleged _fraud_, not copyright issues. 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.

deleted 2y ago

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