It won’t stop us from knowing it.
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Tag: Takedown
Jim Sterling Warns Legal Action After DMCA
Shovelware developer Gilson Pontes abusing copyright takedown against criticism.
Continue reading “Jim Sterling Warns Legal Action After DMCA”
In Plain English: Youtube Hauls Copyright Troll Into Court
Youtube is finally taking the fight to copyright trolls and this week filed a lawsuit against an individual for allegedly abusing the DMCA takedown system in order to extort and harass Youtube creators into paying him money.
The defendant is Christopher Brady, an individual residing in Omaha, Nebraska. According to a complaint filed in the District of Nebraska, Youtube alleges that Brady has sent dozens of DMCA takedown notices making false claims of copyright infringement. The DMCA takedowns were part of a campaign to harass and extort money from the creators, with Brady threatening to send additional fraudulent notices in order to cause the termination of his victim’s Youtube accounts unless they paid him off. Brady is also accused of misusing the personal information that his victims supplied to him during the counter notification process.
Youtube’s attorneys went as far as bringing attention to the DMCA’s built-in risk of abuse:
“Further abuse can arise because of the DMCA’s counter notification process. Under the DMCA, users who believe that their content was removed because of an improper takedown notice may ask YouTube to restore the content pending resolution of the question of infringement. To trigger the counter notification process, a user must supply their name, address and phone number to YouTube, provide details of the allegedly wrongful takedown notice, and consent to be sued by the original complainant. In accordance with the DMCA, YouTube forwards a copy of complete and valid counter notifications to the original complainant. Instead of using the personal information in a counter notification for purposes of resolving an infringement dispute, abusive complainants may use it for purposes of harassment.”
Brady is accused of targeting multiple Youtube accounts although the lawsuit notes two in particular that Brady allegedly proceeded to send ransom letters to, promising that he would rescind the strikes if money was sent via Paypal or bitcoin in the sum of over $100. Both Youtubers publicized their experiences which brought the extortion attempt to Youtube’s attention.
But the story gets worse. It always gets worse.
Further on, Youtube alleges that Brady attempted to extort a Youtuber going by the handle Cxlvxn. When Cxlvxn submitted a counter notification, his house was swatted.
“Cxlvxn submitted a counter notification on July 4th, 2019. On July 10th, he announced via Twitter that he had been the victim of a swatting scheme that day. “Swatting” is the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address. Given the timing of (i) Defendant Brady’s online dispute with Cxlvxn, (ii) Brady’s false copyright claims against Cxlvxn; (iii) Brady’s receipt of Cxlvxn’s true home address via Cxlvxn’s counter-notification; and (iv) the reported swatting incident, it appears Brady used the personal information gained through his abuse of the DMCA process to engage in swatting.”
All in all, Youtube alleges that Brady submitted more than two dozen false DMCA claims, which were signed under penalty of perjury, using at least fifteen fake identities all of which were traced back to him. The false claims have caused Youtube a substantial sum in investigating to detect and halt his behavior, and the very real possibility that Brady will continue his abusive conduct into the future.
Youtube is requesting compensatory damages for violation of 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), attorneys’ fees, injunctive relief barring Brady and his associates from filing false DMCA strikes, and anything else the court may deem appropriate. When parties file at DMCA takedown, they affirm that they do so under penalty of perjury for false claims and may be held liable for damages incurred by their false claim.
As always, the docket related to the case has been uploaded to the MMO Fallout Google Drive. All allegations laid forth in the lawsuit above are mere allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. More information to come as the case progresses.
IPE: MMO Fallout Hit With DMCA Takedown
Hello folks,
I initially grappled with whether to publish this piece, and just decided to go with it. It came to my attention over the weekend that MMO Fallout, specifically our domain host, has been hit with a DMCA takedown notice. The notice was sent to us in regards to an In Plain English article that was published last year, and it appears that someone is unhappy enough with our coverage and publicization of the events that they’ve decided to claim that our usage of their name in coverage and the court dockets infringes on copyright and trademarks.
Now MMO Fallout knows its legal rights and will not be voluntarily taking down this article. I have nearly full confidence in our hosting provider that they will see the takedown for what it is and will ignore it. That said, I fully understand that it is in their best interest under US Copyright law to act now and make me defend myself later, so I decided to publish this notice as a warning that, on the off chance this website suddenly goes dark over the next few days, you know what happened.
With that, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Star Control: Origins Gets Yanked From Store Shelves After DMCA Takedown
While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been used more times than we can count to pull videos and music off of the internet, it’s very rare that the process is used to take down an entire video game. That said, Paul Reiche III and Robert Frederick Ford have decided to end the year with a copyright strike, and Star Control: Origins is the victim.
As noted by developer Stardock, as of this publishing Star Control: Origins is unavailable for purchase on Steam and Good Old Games. The takedown came from the above mentioned Reiche and Ford, over claims that Star Control: Origins violates their copyright ownership over Star Control and Star Control II. Stardock purchased assets related to Star Control from Atari in 2013 after the publisher filed for bankruptcy, including trademark and publishing rights for the trilogy. Creators Ford and Reiche have disputed Stardock’s ownership, which has lead to an ongoing lawsuit between the three parties.
In their announcement on Star Control’s Steam page, Stardock detailed the facts behind the takedown:
“Unfortunately, rather than relying on the legal system to resolve this, they have chosen to bypass it by issuing vague DMCA take-down notices to Steam and GOG (who, btw, Reiche and Ford are suing using GoFundMe money). Steam and GOG both have a policy of taking down content that receive DMCA notices regardless of the merits of the claims. To my knowledge, never in the history of our industry has anyone attempted to use the DMCA system to take down a shipping game before. For example, when PubG sued Fortnite for copyright infringement, they didn’t try to take Fortnite down with a DMCA notice.”
Star Control: Origins released on PC just three months ago in September. This is not the first time Stardock has received a DMCA takedown from Reiche and Ford, as the pair had filed a copyright notice to cease distribution of the original Star Control trilogy, a strike that was later reversed. Ownership of the Star Control trademark is viewable here.
Star Control: Origins is still available on Good Old Games as of this article being published. This is likely to change.
Source: Steam
This Is What A Valve Takedown Notice Looks Like
The Takedown of Orion: Answering The Call of Duty
Orion developer David James is threatening a counter-suit after a DMCA takedown notice from Activision resulted in Orion being removed from sale on Steam during one of the larger sales of the year. The takedown notice alleges that Orion stole assets from Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
James has uploaded his own comparisons of the weapons in Orion to the weapons in Call of Duty, but the truth seems to go a bit deeper. Community members have been creating their own comparisons that show a more damning story.
The allegations against Orion would be more surprising if this were the first time that the developer had been accused of content theft, and it isn’t. Spiral Game Studios has been the focus of numerous scandals in the course of its existence. Their previous title, Orion: Dino Beatdown was alleged to use stolen assets from several games. In his responses, James conduct readily slips into immature schoolyard banter (emphasis mine).
We need everyones help and support to rectify this immediately as this erroneous claim has already costed what is a very small team a significant amount of money and we need it remedied ASAP so we can get back to work on real content, something that Activision should take note of.
What Activision is claiming isn’t a valid or legal use of DMCA. If they were alleging that we had actually RIPPED the Black Ops 3 weapons FROM their game and used them exactly – their shipped meshes, their shipped textures – that is a DMCA case. And the fact that they made an artist feel this way when it’s ALL they do is absolute crap.
On a side note: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act criminalizes production of technology that circumvents digital rights management. Title II of the DMCA provides limited liability for content hosts if they respond to a takedown notice and remove said offending material within a certain period of time. James is incorrect in his statement that DMCA is not valid in this case.
Alternately, you can check out Orion’s original character: Bloba Fett (not his actual name). And yes, the name of the video is Every Man’s Sky, a polar opposite of that game No Man’s Sky. You may have even noticed the name of the developer, Trek Industries.
When it comes to copyright, the law is very lenient when it comes to ‘real’ things. You can’t sue for making similar looking trees, for instance. In regards to inventions that don’t have any real world counterpart, the law is more strict. The Orion gun, shown below, appears to be cobbled together out of several Black Ops 3 weapons.
The case appears to be open and shut, however we will have to see how Trek Industries responds and whether or not Activision decides to push this into a full lawsuit.
(Source: Steam)
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