[HN Gopher] Sega Lawyers Demand "Immediate Suspension" of Steam ...
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Sega Lawyers Demand "Immediate Suspension" of Steam Database over
Alleged Piracy
Author : turbohz
Score : 191 points
Date : 2021-03-30 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| trylfthsk wrote:
| How effective is the DMCA in being a force for good? I continue
| to see stories where it seems they combine all the fun of a jury
| summons with the customer service of google.
|
| To me, this SEGA claim seems to border on a perjury violation for
| false DMCA claims (IANAL). But in practice, the victim has
| neither the ability nor funding to utilize the legal mechanisms
| for discouraging this behavior. To say nothing of the second
| issue which is Megacorporations having no obligations to
| communicate with the proles. And a third issue naturally
| consequent elsewhere: the hamfisted DMCA enforcement from the
| major media platforms.
|
| I'm sure this horse has been beaten to a pulp at this point, but
| are there any good breakdowns of the merits in DMCA
| repeal/reform/status quo?
| hnick wrote:
| A friend was selling some DRM-free PDFs and found one on a site
| with user uploaded content, one simple form later and zero
| lawyers it was gone. I think that's a positive, what is missing
| is a) a simple way to fight back against a bigger opponent,
| which should be a simple counter claim, but often isn't because
| b) many hosts don't really follow the DMCA to the letter and
| ignore safe harbour because they're worried about the profiting
| clauses that nullify safe harbour.
| professorsnep wrote:
| Speaking totally anecdotally here, but one of the big benefits
| I see in the DMCA system is the ability for individuals to have
| an easy, free way to deal with any copyright infringement. I
| have a few friends who create art as a hobby, and they have
| been able to deal with people or companies who illegally re-
| upload their art for monetary benefit (such as merchandise).
|
| Obviously the system isn't perfect (and there are absolutely
| better solutions), but it does have its merits.
| bhaak wrote:
| Aren't they reacting wrong to the DMCA complaint?
|
| Shouldn't Cloudflare have some form where SteamDB could state "we
| don't infringe on your copyright" and then it's up to SEGA to
| take this to court?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Shouldn't Cloudflare have some form where SteamDB could state
| "we don't infringe on your copyright" and then it's up to SEGA
| to take this to court?
|
| Not really.
|
| I mean, yes, the DMCA provides an additional safe harbor for
| putting stuff back up in response to a counternotice, but most
| providers have structured their relationship with users such
| that they are certain to have no liability for a takedown-and-
| keepdown in the first place, so they have very little incentive
| to have a counternotice process.
|
| The difference between safe harbor requirements and real legal
| requirements is that whether there is any force behind the
| former depends entirely on whether you have any preexisting
| liability for the safe harbor to protect you from.
| krageon wrote:
| Hire some lawyers, have them send a letter back that says "no"
| surrounded by a lot of words and wait. It'll either resolve
| itself or they'll win in court, either way is okay.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Don't you think there's something inherently wrong with a
| system where someone can either afford to stand up to a
| (possible) bully or they can't? Absent the intervention of
| public outrage the side willing/able to withstand more legal
| fees "wins" these fact patterns the vast majority of the
| time. To me, that doesn't seem like a system designed to
| achieve the intended outcome in the spirit of the law.
| harles wrote:
| SteamDB is a hobby project by two guys - I doubt they want
| the cost of a lawyer or headache of a legal defense. They may
| also get suspended by CloudFlare in the meantime.
| mountainb wrote:
| I think a response would take about 30 minutes billed time
| to tell them that it's fair use. If Sega decided to drop
| their DMCA claim, I don't think the cost would exceed 2
| hours billed time even if they decided to write back or
| schedule a conference call about it or whatever. Depending
| on the nature of the claim, Sega's real disposition, and
| what was on the page, a counternotice might have sufficed
| to clear it up without ever contacting Sega.
|
| Note that what they did really is fair use -- there are
| lots of situations in which people think that fair use
| extends farther than it really does.
|
| Hiring a lawyer to fight a DMCA claim is not the same as
| hiring one to defend you in a lawsuit or a criminal matter.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Hiring a lawyer to fight a DMCA claim is not the same
| as hiring one to defend you in a lawsuit or a criminal
| matter.
|
| It's still expensive. Two hours of time can cost you into
| the thousands of dollars; more if you are unlucky enough
| to get a scumbag of a lawyer.
|
| And there's nothing resembling a guarantee that the
| letter alone will work. Fair use is a positive defense,
| which means that you're admitting that you are infringing
| on their copyright, only you believe that you're within
| the allowed limitations.
|
| Large corporations can and do easily push the discussion
| into the court system, since the court is the only entity
| who can ultimately judge whether something is fair use or
| not. Suddenly you're up to much more than a couple of
| hours with your lawyer, only to have the corporation drop
| the suit at a late hour and leave you with nothing - no
| judgement in your favor, no recompense for your costs.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Or they can skip the hiring a lawyer step, because it's a
| hobby project, and post something to Twitter and hope it
| gains momentum. Like it has.
| trulyme wrote:
| Or they can kick Sega off and just avoid any trouble.
| It's Sega's loss mostly anyway.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| On the other hand, raising a stink on Twitter seems to
| accomplish the same goal, and is free. As much as I
| dislike the pathology of modern social media, it does
| seem to be an effective tool for individuals to defend
| against businesses, big or small.
| funnymania wrote:
| Players of PSO2 (an MMO game) will tell you that SEGA is
| notoriously improbable to get a hold of, and they don't respond
| much beyond automated messaging to issues re: bans.
|
| A couple friends were banned erroneously via an automated purge
| of around 10k+ players. Their customer service was stone silent.
|
| Randomly with no communication, one of their accounts was back
| online after a couple months.
|
| It's worth mentioning that these were premium members, paying
| around $15 a month, with 1000s of hours spent playing. No
| apologies. No refund for their time banned.
|
| I don't have a good feeling of their methodologies and business
| practices. It's a part of the reason why I stopped playing.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Recently had the same experience with Activision, turned out I
| was shadowbanned because my name contained the word "Erotica".
| No phone support, email or chat, I ended up finding a solution
| in a single thread on Battlenet forums.
|
| Battle.net allows names that are banned by Activision, and when
| logging into COD it was automatically imported, banning my
| account.
| klipklop wrote:
| Add Oculus to the list of terrible support. It took ~100 days
| to resolve an issue with them disabling my account. It is
| pretty hard to talk to a human without having to wait a week.
|
| Never buy any hardware directly from them. If you have any
| issues with an order it's a nightmare. Still out ~$435 as
| well.
| qalmakka wrote:
| I think that until the USA gets rid of legal lobbying from
| interest groups (aka, legalized corruption), this kinds of things
| will keep happening. Having to pull content down without any
| order from a judge is nonsense. These companies would be more
| careful if they had to go through some legal process instead of
| just ordering their lawyers to send empty threads to people that
| can't financially afford the economic burden of a long and
| expensive litigation.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| People should have the right to legal representation no matter
| the circumstances. Judges also need to be biased towards the
| less powerful party for obvious reasons. Some huge corporation
| wasting an individual's time with clearly bogus lawsuits should
| be heavily punished.
|
| I completely agree with you on lobbying.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with
| their elected congress critters? Individual email? A chosen
| spokesperson to 'lobby' their interest?
|
| If an individual company chooses one employee(say someone with
| a legal background) to interact with an elected official is
| that person a lobbyist or an employee?
|
| I'm not sure what you're suggesting.
| Accujack wrote:
| >How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with
| their elected congress critters?
|
| Setting aside the reasons this situation exists and the
| problems it's creating, I believe the usual methods are mail,
| e-mail, and phone calls.
|
| Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.
|
| Everyone who knew about the DMCA before it went into effect
| hated it, but the monied interests pushed it through.
| Corruption in action.
| mdpopescu wrote:
| > Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.
|
| It's America. I think the Matrix quote "guns; lots of guns"
| is more appropriate :)
| qalmakka wrote:
| The main issue is that when the industry lobbies the
| politicians, in the USA, it tends to mean that they are
| writing them big fat checks as "political donations". This is
| corruption plain and simple, and a huge stain on the
| integrity of American politics. This kind of crap also does
| pass elsewhere, but at least when the industry lobbies
| politicians in other places it tends not to be so open and
| blatant.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Representatives were supposed to scale with the population so
| that one rep could reasonably represent all of the people in
| their district.
|
| There are _tons_ of ways to restructure the US legislative
| system that would ameliorate the current problems -- uncap
| the number of reps, allow individuals to override a
| fractional vote of their rep, split representation into
| technocratic branches and let everyone vote for a different
| rep on each domain, let people vote for committee membership,
| switch to approval voting or proportional representation,
| introduce term limits for reps and their staff, etc.
| myko wrote:
| This totally makes sense. The US House is about 1000 (or
| more) members short.
| syshum wrote:
| The Wyoming Rule (i.e no District should be larger than
| the the least populous State AKA Wyoming) would put the
| US House at about 850-860 Representatives
|
| I think this would be the best approach
| merpnderp wrote:
| Keeping organized advocacy from financially supporting
| representatives they approve us would mean what? Only the rich
| can be elected? Only the already popular can run? Only those
| the media and our tech overlords approve of can run? Would we
| even know of AOC if your rules were passed?
|
| I absolutely agree with your point that the laws need to be
| passed so that corporations can't threaten abusive litigation
| over this kind of crap. But muzzling organized advocacy isn't
| the answer.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Efforts to contact SEGA have proven fruitless but hopefully the
| company will eventually notice its mistake and withdraw its
| demands for SteamDB to be taken offline.
|
| Highly unlikely, good luck with that.
| ihuman wrote:
| https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1376796965942464515
|
| > We've got in touch with someone at SEGA of America and it is
| being looked into.
|
| > Thanks for your support everyonee, it is truly amazing to see
| that my hobby (!) project is useful to so many people
| hedora wrote:
| I hope they consider taking Sega to court over this. Sega's
| behavior is clearly in violation of the law, and a precedent
| needs to be set. Perhaps the EFF or a similar organization
| would be willing to represent them.
|
| https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/05/fraudulent-dmca-takedown-...
| yummybear wrote:
| A multi-year long, expensive lawsuit over a hobby project
| isn't what anyone signed up for though.
| xPaw wrote:
| You are on point.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Take their lawyers to court. They're the ones that need to
| experience a chilling effect for acting in bad faith by
| signing off on fraudulent claims.
| bozzcl wrote:
| I wonder if the ACLU or EFF would like to get involved.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Sega should be taking their lawyers to court. The amount of
| tarnish to their brand they have garnered from gross
| incompetence is surely breach of contract somehow.
| midjji wrote:
| They would crush any small company in the prelude, even if
| they didn't intend to. I dont really think that copyright
| can be fixed, but at the very least we would need new laws
| to the effect of if you get sued for wrongful dmca, you pay
| the oppositions legal fees in addition to lost income and
| you risk losing the ability to make takedowns if the claim
| was in bad faith or negligent.
| hedora wrote:
| Small claims court is also an option. This is a hobby
| site, after all. It's also a clear cut case. How many
| takedown notices have they sent? What percentage got
| kicked back historically? Non-zero? Then they knew they
| were sending fraudulant claims. If not, they still knew
| this claim was fraudulent after the site responded and
| they kept filing takedowns anyway.
|
| Did they address these issues by carefully vetting things
| they signed under penalty of purgery? Clearly not. The
| facts speak for themselves. Case closed, I think. I'm not
| sure you really even need a lawyer (though one would
| help).
| ziddoap wrote:
| If it were as easy and clear-cut as you make it out to
| be, we wouldn't be seeing these cases pop up all the
| time, I don't think.
|
| There is obviously additional factors at play. Money, for
| one, but plenty of others as well.
| olliej wrote:
| Until there is a financial penalty for fraudulent or "mistaken"
| DMCA claims there is no reason for companies to make even the
| most basic effort at due diligence.
|
| The DMCA should be repealed, but won't be, so instead should be
| updated to make erroneous claims have a financial penalty.
| Nothing major at first, but ratcheting upwards for every false
| claim. Oh, and all legal expenses for the victim party of course.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As long as 'on penalty of perjury' has absolutely no meaning this
| will continue forever. There can be no balance without
| consequences for false takedown requests.
| darig wrote:
| A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury. If SteamDB were
| to counter-sue Sega, Sega could be punished for perjury, forced
| to pay SteamDB's lawyers fees, and potentially lose their
| copyright on the content they claimed was violated.
| thayne wrote:
| Really? If the risks for making a false DMCA takedown request
| were that high, I would expect to see less false takedown
| notices, and less aggressive bots. Or maybe the aggressors are
| just assuming that the victims don't have the resources to
| fight a megacorp in court? If it's the latter it seems like an
| organization like EFF should step in to fund such a fight.
| darig wrote:
| The risks for cops killing innocent people include charges
| for murder, and yet here we are. Lawyers unwilling to
| prosecute. Judges in bed with the defense.
|
| Really.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I believe for all of the above to apply, it would have to be
| proven that the request was knowingly malicious, as in they
| had full knowledge that the page did not infringe but decided
| to send a takedown notice anyway. That's highly unlikely, and
| good luck proving it anyway.
|
| However, they are still liable and can absolutely be sued
| civilly for an improper takedown notice. But the penalty
| probably wouldn't extend beyond a monetary payment.
| Aeolun wrote:
| At what point does neglicent become knowingly malicious?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| More generally: we need a legal framework that makes
| people deploying automation responsible for what the
| automation does to the same extent as they would be if
| they hired people to do the same work. "It's a false
| positive in an automated system" should never be
| acceptable justification for invalid legal action, nor
| should it be used as extenuating circumstances. Either
| you're prepared to pay for the mistakes of your
| algorithm, or you should not be deploying the algorithm
| at all.
| rectang wrote:
| If you knew that your algorithm produced false positives
| and you deployed it anyway, then you had fraudulent
| intent for the subset of automatically generated takedown
| notices which were false positives.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's a nice theoretical definition of "fraudulent
| intent" but you're not going to get a court to agree with
| it, I don't think.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Really? You run something knowing that it's going to file
| invalid claims; how is that not intent to commit fraud?
| jaywalk wrote:
| You put out a product knowing that it can fail in X (very
| long) time or Y (highly unlikely) scenario. Does that
| mean you intentionally put out a faulty product?
|
| "This process is inherently subjective, so creating
| perfect software while properly protecting our copyrights
| would be impossible. We determined that the false
| positive rate would be quite low, and had no intention of
| pursuing action against any invalid claims."
| rectang wrote:
| Say that the false positive rate is 3 in 4, so that 75%
| of takedown notices are invalid. Do we have fraudulent
| intent? I dare you to tell me that we don't.
|
| OK, we've established that delegating to an algorithm
| doesn't provide an impenetrable shield. Now it's just a
| question of how irresponsible you have to be for the
| court to go against you.
|
| Now, is there any difference between the injured parties
| who are affected by your false positives when that rate
| is 1% versus 75%? For the subset of assessments affecting
| the injured party, your false positive rate is
| effectively 100%. Why should they bear your burden?
|
| An algorithm can be used to identify _prospects_ for
| takedown notices. If you choose not to vet those
| prospects, then any mistakes are on you. If you can drive
| down the false-positive rate low enough, you might choose
| to accept the costs every time you falsely accuse someone
| and turn the algorithm loose anyway. But if you can 't
| absorb the costs of the algorithm's mistakes, don't rely
| on the algorithm.
| Bjartr wrote:
| IANAL, but I think it's when, in a follow-up lawsuit,
| they find emails or other such evidence showing the
| takedown submitting party did so with knowledge that it
| was a false notice ahead of time. If you can't find
| something like that, then it stays negligence.
| luckylion wrote:
| So the approach is to write a bot, do zero human checks and
| then say "well, see, yes, we sent this complaint, but we
| didn't actually send it ourselves, the bot did, so we
| didn't know that it was wrong, because we've decided to
| never check these things before sending them out"?
|
| It's weird, when you can write a program to do something in
| your name and as your agent, and then claim "it totally
| wasn't me, lol".
| jaywalk wrote:
| Well the law was basically written by the big media
| companies, so we're lucky that there's any recourse at
| all.
| cwkoss wrote:
| They were informed by the victims that they made an error
| and proceeded anyways.
|
| Their inability to route that information to the right
| person should not be a valid defense or else incompetence
| becomes a business advantage.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > Their inability to route that information to the right
| person should not be a valid defense or else incompetence
| becomes a business advantage.
|
| I don't mean to sound trite but hasn't it pretty much
| been proven to be already?
|
| Look at things like the Equifax situation. A competent
| team performing security reviews and fixing and
| maintaining things would cost money. Repeat for N data
| breaches. And that's just software security -- it doesn't
| consider even more serious cases like those of
| infrastructure failures (bridge collapses, levee
| failures, dams breaking etc.) that have more important
| consequences.
|
| I agree with what I believe was the main point you were
| making which is that SEGA should not be excused here. I
| just think businesses have come to view competence as
| being expensive and so it's optional, and that this seems
| to be somewhat okay with people until it directly affects
| them.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yeah, SEGA is inevitably going to argue that the left
| hand didn't know what the right hand had received from
| the victims.
|
| In a just court, that argument would be thrown out. But
| courts aren't always just, unfortunately.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury
|
| No, it's not.
|
| (There's a couple of points in a DMCA notice that are certified
| under penalty of perjury, but they aren't the 9bes that are
| likely to be be false on a false one in the first place.)
| cptskippy wrote:
| There has never been any blowback from false DMCA claims.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That is not true. This old (2010) article mentions two such
| cases: https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/intellectual-
| property/con...
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Site seems to be broken, gives me an _Access Denied_. Here
| 's Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/sea
| rch?q=cache:AVUICl...
| cptskippy wrote:
| Cunningham's Law ftw.
| vkou wrote:
| > A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury.
|
| Has anybody in the history of the DMCA ever been successfully
| convicted of perjury for misusing it?
|
| The difference between theory and practice is that in theory,
| they are the same thing.
| darig wrote:
| Automattic Inc. v. Steiner
| burnished wrote:
| Any examples of this happening?
| darig wrote:
| Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Incorporated.
| Forbo wrote:
| Not sure why your comment was dead, I vouched for it.
| Here's a Wikipedia reference to back you up: https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebold....
| darig wrote:
| The echo chamber rejects the truth.
| BruiseLee wrote:
| As long as the lawyers that filed this DMCA takedown really
| represent Sega and Sega owns the copyright that they claim is
| infringed, then there is no perjury. It is irrelevant if the
| notice is otherwise frivolous.
| ecf wrote:
| Today I learned that 2021 Sega is still in business. Sad to see
| them devalue themselves and simply become another patent troll.
| hn8788 wrote:
| Sega was the top ranked publisher of 2020. They aren't a patent
| troll at all.
|
| https://www.pcgamer.com/sega-is-metacritics-top-ranked-publi...
| blackearl wrote:
| Sega has had a lot of top tier games in recent years.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Which ones? I see a bunch of remasters of old games, but few
| top tier titles in the past 5 years.
| b0rbb wrote:
| The entirety of the Yakuza series is absolutely fantastic,
| especially the latest entry (Yakuza: Like a Dragon).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I tried to look it up on SteamDB, but it wasn't there...
| filoleg wrote:
| It is on SteamDB, right here[0]. It says in giant text
| "This page was taken down because SEGA is claiming we
| distribute their game here (we don't)."
|
| However, if you search for the game in the SteamDB search
| bar (just enter "Yakuza", don't even need the full name),
| it will show up just fine, with a picture and all, you
| just won't be able to see the full page. That's how I
| found that link, so I have no idea how you missed it.
|
| 0. https://steamdb.info/app/1235140/
| o_p wrote:
| Sega is probably the most friendly videogame company regarding
| copyright, specially to fan games.
| anthk wrote:
| Except for "Streets of Rage remake"
| cestith wrote:
| This has nothing to do with patents. They're not trolling,
| which is generally registering something and sitting on it
| waiting to sue. Sega is a practicing entity with a copyright on
| a game that's actively being sold.
|
| Someone's made a mistake in this DMCA complaint and Sega's
| being difficult to reach to resolve it. It's nothing like
| patent trolling.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| > it's nothing like patent trolling
|
| Sega has army of lawyers and probably massive budget for
| court fees vs a small 2 people run shop who are actually not
| infringing anything and don't have any of those resources.
| You get where this is going?
| burnished wrote:
| I thought your stereotypical patent troll wasn't a firm
| with access to top notch legal resources, just some people
| slinging enough shit that eventually it stuck? This would
| be pretty firmly different, right?
| rhino369 wrote:
| That depends who you ask, but there are two types of
| trolls. The first, as you describe, basically extort
| small settlements out of companies using garbage patents
| --the classic example being the guys who sued small
| businesses for using a fax machine.
|
| The second are non-practicing entities that buy at least
| half-way decent portfolios for cheap and then sue big
| businesses for big settlements or big jury verdicts.
| Their lawyers can be very good.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| Let's not redefine "patent trolling" as bad thing big bad
| company does. This was clearly a mistake borne from the
| outsourcing of brand protection onto a firm that clearly is
| not the greatest at their job.
|
| Thankfully, somebody in SEGA has responded and it should be
| soon resolved.
| cestith wrote:
| It has nothing to do with patents. It's not a non-
| practicing entity making a claim against big targets hoping
| for a windfall. It's probably not even intentional from
| Sega themselves - people make mistakes, even lawyers.
|
| Yes, it involves legal paperwork and the claim is empty. So
| why not call it a MAGA election suit? It has two things in
| common with those.
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