City-Builder Taken Off Steam After Fan Goes Rogue

[swatcoder]

This is awful.

But it’s also why many “old media” producers and companies in the entertainment and music industry have careful policies around refusing to receive or acknowledge ideas and content from outside the organization.

It’s much harder for some fan-writer to pursue spurious legal credit for some plot idea or script content when you maintain an official policy to bin unsolicited submissions and to never acknowledge work shared in public.

That’s tricky for “new media” companies since consumers now expect direct engagement with publishers, especially for “indie” artists, but the old system was designed to guard against stuff like this.

[tumult]

These are apparently false DMCA letters. Attribution or payments aren’t really relevant. According to the article, the person filing the claims has no ownership of the copyright. Even if they were being ripped off (which it doesn’t seem like they are) that wouldn’t give them ownership of the copyright.

[thomastjeffery]

My perspective: the fan is not "going rogue".

This story is copyright itself brought to its objective conclusion.

Everything here, the petty IP ownership claim, the expectation to have that ownership literally applied, the reactionary griefing, etc. is all baked in to what copyright is at its very foundations. This person is simply playing out the function of copyright as an ideology in their interactions with the game company and its business presence.

They feel they have the right to monopolize the product of their intellectual work, because copyright says so. They feel they can interrupt the sales of the game because copyright says so.

And most important, they feel that they should do these things, because the very existence of copyright, and it's foundational social purpose, tell them it's in their best interest, and their "best interest" is tantamount.

This isn't just a story about copyright, it's copyright itself told as a story, just with real people as subjects.

So let's stop pretending. This is ugly, frivolous, unhelpful, and damaging. This is copyright law. This is an exposition of the social malware that copyright is, was, and ever will be.

[lazyasciiart]

No, it isn’t. The fact that you can make a false claim in copyright law and cause damage is not an indictment of the system of copyright.

[speeder]

DMCA is such an epically shitty law. Only worse is that other countries are happily copying the law too.

[anigbrowl]

Is the DMCA such a shitty law (questions about copyright in general aside), or are companies in shitty in just automatically responding to any DMCA allegation while refusing to invest anything in transparency/process/even-handedness? Basically if you are hit with a copyright or any other sort of terms of service violation, you are stuck spending time and energy trying to communicate with a black box.

Platformists say that this is necessary because transparency will allow bad actors to game the system, but their solution to this to make society into an oppressive panopticon; the cure is worse than the disease. Further, the ignore the degree to which the lack of transparency is already weaponized by bad faith actors.

[Oxidation]

> DMCA mechanics just not works, seems like anybody can claim anything, the service provider is just forced to remove the content and in general not ask or nor the considering if the claims are real.

It works extremely well, if you consider who the beneficiaries are (who also happened to write it).

[Ekaros]

To me it isn't that horrible process.

You are own a small forum or site. You get DMCA takedown, you take content down and are safe. Send notification to uploader. They disagree. You can put stuff back up. You are not liable for damages after this. And really shouldn't be expected to fight.

Now it is up to the two other parties to fight it out. This is where the system fails, because whole process is long and expensive. But so is any other legal action. Maybe consider fixing that reality first.

[devmor]

Lets remember that the DMCA is what allows providers like youtube to host content without being liable to the copyright infringement of its users. The takedown provision sucks, but its an essential law for the open internet to even exist.

[Rebelgecko]

If this attorney is filing BS DMCA claims, hopefully they'll give a gentle heads-up to his local bar association

[anigbrowl]

Institutional remedies which require years of process for abuses that can be carried out in seconds or minutes are fundamentally inadequate.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Youtube takedowns aren't DMCA requests. There is no legal penalty for perjury. It's just a good old fashioned mob shakedown. In this case neither party is even subject to US law so even more irrelevant.

[CodeWriter23]

I hope instead of accepting a settlement when lawyer boy starts to cry uncle they take it all the way to the end and bankrupt and disbar him.

[fsloth]

It sounds the fan has no basis for their claim, but due to their background they are able to craft professional claims. I guess the lesson is always expect someone try to screw you via legal pathway (if you read about history of any field this seems to be a quite recurring pattern - if you have a business, you better lawyer up sooner than later).

[wellthisisgreat]

It baffles me that there are no legal repercussions for abuse of DMCA / IP / copyright instruments.

People who do this without grounds should be punished/fines for abusing the system proportionate to what they claim.

[Steltek]

There are but it requires the victim to have the time, energy, and of course, money to pursue it. It also needs to not be some "DMCA Lite" contractual mechanism like Youtube's shitty ContentID system. Only real bad faith DMCA requests need apply.

    Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—

    (1) that material or activity is infringing, or
    (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

    17 U.S.C.A. § 512

[mountainb]

You can file for a declaratory judgment and ask for attorney's fees under the fee-shifting provision of the copyright act. Generally, most of the quasi-DMCA programs also observe the counter-notice process, which gives the plaintiff ten business days to file a lawsuit, but then cancels the informal copyright complaint if the time period ends without that lawsuit being filed.

In this case, sending a counter-notice (free), filing for a declaratory judgment and asking for an injunction to prevent additional malicious filings would probably be the most direct pathway to relief.

Filing bar complaints isn't likely to work all that well, because it doesn't really map to the typical things that state bar associations really look to pursue. The vast majority of bar complaints result in nothing, and most of the ones that are deemed valid result in mandatory CLE rather than more substantive penalties.

[yeahbutiguess]

I mean, there is. It's perjury.

And the target of a false claim can sue the party who made the claim for damages and attorney's fees.

[sidewndr46]

I don't think these developers have much of a grip on reality. They stated that Valve could suffer financial harm if the game stays off Steam. I don't think they realize how much money Valve makes.

[s1artibartfast]

What does the total income of valve have to do with it. Lost profit is still harm.

[klondike_]

I think they're talking about the bad precident it sets.

[RockRobotRock]

Of course they have to say things like that to attract attention to their cause. I doubt they're that naive.

[yeahbutiguess]

Valve could, hypothetically, be the target of a suit for damages if they do not comply with the DMCA counter claim. Odds are good that valve will just do everything it can to be by the book and get out of the way.

[eska]

I don’t think they’re trying to say that he’s bankrupting Valve, but that he will be bankrupted by the damages he will have to pay..

[fakedang]

Ironically, it seems that fan would fit perfectly as a bureaucrat in a Soviet Republic.

[itronitron]

This is like a reboot of "Mazes and Monsters" [0] forty years later.

0. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/

1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/mediaviewer/rm188310835...

[6510]

If his realistic game mode is as good as his real world game mode they should hire him.

[DonHopkins]

Maybe he'll be defenestrated instead of disbarred.

[kyleyeats]

The fan is a lawyer too. What a nightmare.

[lagniappe]

I'm curious what the legal precedent on this. If intellectual property, concepts, lore, can be protected, does this person have a claim here even though they didn't write the code? Is there a statutory norm for percentages in cases like these?

This has to be terrible for small dev shops to face, I'd imagine enough litigating and good projects just fold up shop unable to afford their own defense cost.

[ww520]

In general ideas are not copyrightable. Expression of ideas are copyrightable.

Anyone can sue you for whatever reason. The court can throw the case out but it’s a nuisance to you.

[Overtonwindow]

Maybe a case for EFF?

[Havoc]

Bit like a patent troll except unstable jumped up lawyer fan edition...

[cratermoon]

"DMCA mechanics just not works"