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Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy
- ecf 5y agoToday I learned that 2021 Sega is still in business. Sad to see them devalue themselves and simply become another patent troll.
- cestith 5y agoThis 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 5y ago> 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoThat 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 5y agoLet'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 5y agoIt 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.
- hn8788 5y agoSega was the top ranked publisher of 2020. They aren't a patent troll at all. https://www.pcgamer.com/sega-is-metacritics-top-ranked-publisher-of-2020/ https://www.pcgamer.com/sega-is-metacritics-top-ranked-publi...
- blackearl 5y agoSega has had a lot of top tier games in recent years.
- cwkoss 5y agoWhich ones? I see a bunch of remasters of old games, but few top tier titles in the past 5 years.
- b0rbb 5y agoThe entirety of the Yakuza series is absolutely fantastic, especially the latest entry (Yakuza: Like a Dragon).
- aidenn0 5y agoI tried to look it up on SteamDB, but it wasn't there...
- filoleg 5y agoIt 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/ https://steamdb.info/app/1235140/
- blackearl 5y agoPersona 5 has sold millions of copies. Yakuza 6, Judgement, and Yakuza Like a Dragon all did well. I'm not really interested in Football Manager but I know it's incredibly popular
- o_p 5y agoSega is probably the most friendly videogame company regarding copyright, specially to fan games.
- anthk 5y agoExcept for "Streets of Rage remake"
- doublerabbit 5y ago> 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.
- darig 5y agoA 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.
- burnished 5y agoAny examples of this happening?
- darig 5y agoOnline Policy Group v. Diebold, Incorporated.
- thayne 5y agoReally? 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.
- jaywalk 5y agoI 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.
- bhaak 5y agoAren'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?
- krageon 5y agoHire 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.
- harles 5y agoSteamDB 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 5y agoI 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.
- ziddoap 5y agoOr 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.
- 5y ago
- ihuman 5y agohttps://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1376796965942464515 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 5y agoI 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-requests.html https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/05/fraudulent-dmca-takedown-...
- yummybear 5y agoA multi-year long, expensive lawsuit over a hobby project isn’t what anyone signed up for though.
- xPaw 5y agoYou are on point.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoTake 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 5y agoI wonder if the ACLU or EFF would like to get involved.
- midjji 5y agoThey 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.
- funnymania 5y agoPlayers 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 5y agoRecently 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 5y agoAdd 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.
- SahAssar 5y agoSounds like they have a Scunthorpe problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- canadianfella 5y agoImprobable?
- qalmakka 5y agoI 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.
- plussed_reader 5y agoHow 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.
- nitrogen 5y agoRepresentatives 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.
- trylfthsk 5y agoHow 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?
- professorsnep 5y agoSpeaking 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.
- hnick 5y agoA 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.
- olliej 5y agoUntil 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 5y agoAs 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.
- curryst 5y ago"On penalty of perjury" basically always means nothing. Since being wrong isn't a crime, they have to demonstrate that you knew you were lying, which is either going to be impossible, or a long drawn out investigation. It is ironic that if you're wrong about content being infringing and get it taken down, there's no punishment unless you intentionally lie. If you're infringing, but thought your use was fair use, you've still committed a crime. I do wonder how some of these satisfy the "good faith" clause, though. This isn't one of those cases (I think Sega is wrong, but I can see how they meet good faith here). Some of the other cases have involved filing DMCA complaints against Wikipedia for completely unrelated articles. Once or twice I've seen companies files DMCA complaints against themselves. I can't see how that could possibly be in good faith; they clearly haven't even looked at the content, which should preclude any claim of "good faith". You can't make a good faith argument if you have no idea what you're even arguing.
- aranelsurion 5y agoSince access to justice scales with money, it's no surprise that one company's poorly-made bot can potentially destroy an individual's work of love, they're more-or-less equals. I can hardly imagine anything more unjust than using devices of justice to create unjustice. This is only enabled because of the power imbalances between flesh-and-bone humans and corporate entities, unless that is addressed we'll be seeing more and more ridiculous SLAPP suits, DMCAs, power grabs and other stuff that would fit in a cyberpunk novel.