[HN Gopher] NY Times issues DMCA takedowns of Wordle clones
___________________________________________________________________
NY Times issues DMCA takedowns of Wordle clones
Author : igitur
Score : 56 points
Date : 2024-03-06 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| SKCarr wrote:
| Another example:
| https://twitter.com/QuantumYakar/status/1765421908483538971
| jamestimmins wrote:
| Can anyone speak to how/why they have this ability?
|
| Isn't Wordle effectively just a game UX pattern? How is that
| copyrightable?
| abhorrence wrote:
| The only thing I can imagine here is that many of the games
| have "dle" or "le" suffixes and sometimes even describe
| themselves as "Wordle, but...". It seems more likely that it's
| NYT's lawyers hoping to bully the "competition".
| cma wrote:
| NYT does have a trademark on Wordle, but that shouldn't be
| covered by the DMCA.
| ronsor wrote:
| You are not allowed to use the DMCA for trademark disputes
| martinky24 wrote:
| IANAL. So long as you own a legitimate copyright, you can send
| a DMCA takedown about whatever you want. That doesn't mean it's
| 100% legally robust.
| op00to wrote:
| Sending a fraudulent DMCA notice can open the sender to
| fines, penalties, and legal costs and damages.
| hn_acker wrote:
| In theory. But the DMCA is significantly skewed in favor of
| copyright holders (and senders of DMCA notifications on
| copyright holders' behalves). The only "penalty of perjury"
| part for senders is claiming to be the copyright holder or
| someone authorized by the copyright holder to send the
| takedown notice (17 U.S.C. SS 512(c)(3)(A)(vi)) [1]:
|
| > (vi)A statement that the information in the notification
| is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the
| complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the
| owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
|
| As for justifying the claim of infringement, the sender
| only needs to claim good faith (512(c)(3)(A)(v)) [1]:
|
| > (v)A statement that the complaining party has a good
| faith belief that use of the material in the manner
| complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its
| agent, or the law.
|
| The person whose upload was taken down can file a counter
| notification, but must dispute the takedown under penalty
| of perjury (512(g)(3)(C)) [1]:
|
| > (C)A statement under penalty of perjury that the
| subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was
| removed or disabled as a result of mistake or
| misidentification of the material to be removed or
| disabled.
|
| In Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (2015), the Ninth Circuit
| decided that the copyright holder (or at least the sender
| of the DMCA notification) must consider whether the user's
| uploaded material is fair use before filing the notice, but
| the user's burden to disprove the copyright holder's claim
| of good faith remains exactly the same as before the Lenz
| case. From the case text [2]:
|
| > To be clear, if a copyright holder ignores or neglects
| our unequivocal holding that it must consider fair use
| before sending a takedown notification, it is liable for
| damages under SS 512(f). If, however, a copyright holder
| forms a subjective good faith belief the allegedly
| infringing material does not constitute fair use, we are in
| no position to dispute the copyright holder's belief even
| if we would have reached the opposite conclusion.
|
| Or as the Harvard Law Review put it [3]:
|
| > In short, the fair use determination does not have to be
| correct or reasonable; it just has to have happened. The
| court in Rossi held that the jury therefore had to
| determine if Universal's actions sufficiently approximated
| a fair use analysis (even if not labeled as such) on which
| it could have formed a subjective good faith belief
| regarding fair use.
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
|
| [2] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2015/09
| /14/1...
|
| [3] https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-129/lenz-v-
| universal-...
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The game mechanics are not copyrightable (possibly patentable).
|
| Obviously, borrowing art or design could be a copyright
| problem, but I have to suspect they're just blindly searching
| for "wordle" and sending takedowns to anything they see.
| pwahs wrote:
| Can confirm, my version here also got a notice:
| https://github.com/pwahs/fillominordle
|
| Full notice is here:
| https://enterprise.githubsupport.com/attachments/token/cx6V4...
| logicalfails wrote:
| I bet some NYT is planning some changes to Wordle use/tracking so
| they have to clamp down on the competition. They will likely
| requiring NYT login just to play, or adding additional ads to
| page
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Or pay to play aka a NYT Games sub.
| ametrau wrote:
| That's fair enough imo. They do own the rights.
| milesvp wrote:
| The game is mastermind with letters. Even mastermind probably
| has prior art. Also, hard to say that there is a right to stop
| clones given rules aren't copyrightable.
| livrem wrote:
| Yes, Mastermind is a variant of an old folk game called Bulls
| and Cows.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Archived: https://archive.is/D03zW
|
| The relevant part seems to be the mention of "React Wordle" as
| well as:
|
| > The Times owns U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0002342355 in Wordle
| as an electronic file and computer file for a videogame. The
| Times's Wordle copyright includes the unique elements of its
| immensely popular game, such as the 5x6 grid, green tiles to
| indicate correct guesses, yellow tiles to indicate the correct
| letter but the wrong place within the word, and the keyboard
| directly beneath the grid.
| eps wrote:
| It's worded to imply that second sentence is linked to the
| first, but based on other comments here (about game design not
| being copyrightable) it looks like an attempt to mislead.
| templeosenjoyer wrote:
| Gross. Reminder that NYT ripped off the 'connecting walls' of
| Only Connect, though their version--Connections--is low quality
| in comparison. PuzzGrid[1] does it better, for anyone who plays
| Connections.
|
| [1] https://puzzgrid.com/
| MrKey wrote:
| I got the same. Did make a clone and localised it, and then
| forgot about it. Apparently, every cloned project was in the
| notice list. Deleted and forgot.
|
| Treating it as a case study how to protect the rights. One might
| say that it is against freedom etc., but in my opinion this makes
| intellectual capital a value. E.g. I now believe it is worth to
| invest in innovations and so on. (It does not mean I will do it
| as I lack the will and resources.) When I was younger I didn't
| know how to protect my code and capitalise it, therefore this
| case resonates with me in such way.
| squigz wrote:
| This is pathetic. The AI lawsuit sort of makes sense, but this
| just makes them seem like assholes. Oh well... I'm sure this will
| stop people from writing and hosting the code they want to.
|
| And, I mean, it's really too bad it's archived...
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240306172335/https://github.co...
| usmansme wrote:
| I got the same email today for a fork of `thesam73/wordle`
|
| I still have mixed feelings about this one. Because if let's say
| someone is learning web dev and thinks of building such clone and
| open sources it on GitHub, isn't that stopping people from
| learning?
|
| Edit: Seems like the author does not want to fight NYT and hence
| disabled the repo. I think that's ok and I'll do the same (they
| also want all forks to be gone)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240306171920/https://github.co...
| nubinetwork wrote:
| I'm getting Tetris Corp vibes...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related/not-related: Did Spotify retain any trademark over
| _Heardle_ , their music-based intro game that appeared shortly
| after the Wordle boom (and then they shut down abruptly)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-06 23:02 UTC)