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I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you: From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funk

by leafo 2y ago

I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you: From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud and phishing" going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist. Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. Their website, if you care: https://www.brandshield.com/ https://www.brandshield.com/ About 5 or 6 days ago, I received these reports on our host (Linode) and from our registrar (iwantmyname). I expressed my disappointment in my responses to both of them but told them I had removed the page and disabled the account. Linode confirmed and closed the case. iwantmyname never responded. This evening, I got a downtime alert, and while debugging, I noticed that the domain status had been set to "serverHold" on iwantmyname's domain panel. We have no other abuse reports from iwantmyname other than this one. I'm assuming no one on their end "closed" the ticket, so it went into an automatic system to disable the domain after some number of days. I've been trying to get in touch with them via their abuse and support emails, but no response likely due to the time of day, so I decided to "escalate" the issue myself on social media.

rpastuszak 2y ago
Is it possible/worth to hold them financially accountable for this? (them being IWMN or BrandShield)
seanthemon 2y ago
man, this shit is ridiculous.. now we can't even make fan pages? Will you be moving away from this registrar? It seems like it could very easily be abused again.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  After this, everyone will be moving away from this registrar...
  - PostOnce 2y ago
    Not only that, I'm moving a domain to a local registrar so I can get legal redress here if I need to. Not from iwantmyname, never heard of them, but of course now that I have, I couldn't do business with them in light of the situation.
  - npteljes 2y ago
    You'd think, or hope, but GoDaddy and other actors proved over the years that this is not the case. I think that the kind of site most impacted by an event like this are social sites, where if people leave, they might take their networks with them. But a normal b2c service provider just needs to update their PR and prices and business will be back to usual.
  - TiredOfLife 2y ago
    And itch.io who removed that page.
    - crtasm 2y ago
      >a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. I'd expect them to remove that, they're not a host for fan pages.
      - SunlitCat 2y ago
        I never understood that urge of people to do "fan pages" (or fan anything, without the permission of the original creator) while at the same time blatantly ripping content.
        account42 2y ago
        Not everyone agrees that remixing and building on your cultural artifacts should require permission from third parties.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  Fan anything has always been at the mercy of the trademark owner.
  - seanthemon 2y ago
    there was a time where the internet wasn't a corpo hellscape.
    - throw_m239339 2y ago
      > there was a time where the internet wasn't a corpo hellscape. DMCA passed in 1998. it was short lived.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        Not that short-lived in practice, because it may have been passed but it was not enforced to oblivion like it is now.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      This kind of impersonation/defamation is one of the edge cases where its good to have a DMCA process. You want to quickly take down something like this and then deal with the slow legal stuff over time.
      - Kye 2y ago
        They have a DMCA process. As far as I know it only helps in a case like this if they sue Funko or the brand management service. Itch is a small indie operation funded by actual commerce, so might not be able to afford it.
        BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
        How much would be needed to afford it? Is it a fundraisable amount?
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  Some companies have always been terrible about this. Fan projects involving companies like Nintendo or Take Two Interactive (GTA) are like lawyer bait. Disney has hired lawyers to sue a daycare center that had (clearly unofficial) character art painted on the walls. It's dystopic, but it's the world we live in. I didn't really expect Funko or 10:10 Games to be like that, but then again I didn't expect anyone would like Funko enough to make a fan page about their dolls. Other companies allow fans to do pretty much whatever you want with their IP as long as you don't turn it into (too much of) a business. Sega has even hired a fan for their remasters rather than DMCA his project into oblivion. When companies do this, I interpret this as the company giving a clear message: "don't be a fan of our work or we may apply legal pressure".
  - CM30 2y ago
    Just gonna point out that the Nintendo going after fanworks bit is a tad blown out of proportion, especially online. They're definitely known for being way too heavy handed (especially compared to the likes of Sega), but they're not exactly going after every fan project they see on the internet. Large sites whose entire purpose is to host fan games and mods for the Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc series have been up for decades without any issues, and most mods and homebrew projects for consoles older than the Wii U or Switch are going fine. Unless a project is going viral in the media, raking up in a significant amount of money via a paywall or is directly competing with a current game, the chances of it getting shut down are incredibly low.
    - multimoon 2y ago
      Nintendo just finished killing both major switch emulators.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        Nintendo also is responsible for keeping Dolphin off of Steam. Dolphin wanted to get on steam for improved steam deck integration and Valve reached out to Nintendo who said, essentially : Lol fuck no we will ruin your life The courts have told Nintendo numerous times that they are in the wrong in this behavior and outlook. They have no legal means to keep Dolphin off Steam and it is a matter of judicial record that emulators are not an infringement of your IP on their own. Nintendo doesn't care and openly discusses their intent to make you suffer through lawfare. A just system would smack them down with a vexatious litigant label, but our system gives businesses infinite benefit of the doubt.
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
I noticed that iwantmyname has very little presence on social media: no bluesky account and a twitter account that posts once or twice a year. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem if they responded to emergencies like this promptly, but they clearly don't so it is. I also wonder if their "automatically disable" policy takes size/importance of site into account. Is this how they would treat all their domain owners, regardless of significance?
- clarionbell 2y ago
  The significant ones have lawyer writing them letters.
antihero 2y ago
Can you transfer the domain out?
- leafo 2y ago
  Unfortunately the domain has a hold placed on it by the registrar, so I believe transferring is disabled. I also wouldn't want to risk doing a transfer at an hour when their staff aren't available to help with the current issue.
  - antihero 2y ago
    Hopefully once they release the hold another registrar will be sought immediately.
duggan 2y ago
iwantmyname was bought out by a conglomerate, “Team Internet[1]”, a few years ago. Prices went up, service went down. I’d recommend moving your domains when you can (Porkbun have been good, though I haven’t had any incidents like this). Best of luck! 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Internet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Internet
- esskay 2y ago
  Another vote for porkbun here. By far one of the best registrars out there right now.
- spondyl 2y ago
  Oh damn, I didn't know this! I've used their services for ages and even got to briefly meet the founders once in Wellington who gave a talk on Erlang. Ah well, while it sucks that the good times may be over, I'm glad the founders got their exit :)
  - duggan 2y ago
    Yeah I was a fan, had every domain with them that I could! But once they were acquired their .org renewal prices just did not make sense any more, and they were missing some functionality that I thought was crucial and didn't seem inclined to add it (can't remember what it was now, maybe MFA). Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.
  - kaoD 2y ago
    > I'm glad the founders got their exit I'm not. I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits). Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again). I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich? Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...
RestartKernel 2y ago
This issue aside, thanks for doing what you do. I was kind of expecting Itch to get sold to some holdings or casino company at some point, as good things tend to go, but I've been happily surprised to see it mature independently throughout the years.
- Tepix 2y ago
  I agree itch.io is awesome! Edit: And i'm happy to see that it's working again as of 2024-12-09 12:27 UTC+1
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    And compared to that brandshield users should be branded by their business practices. Also the hoster as well. Seems to be a difficult time for hosters and also again a demonstration that copyright law is deeply flawed, even if using stolen assets is a rising problem.
    - saghm 2y ago
      I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me think that the situation would have been _less_ messed up if Brandshield had correctly asked for the offending copyrighted content to be taken down rather than falsely alleging something more severe. I understand that Brandshield probably has been incentivized to act this way due to copyright law, but I'd argue that even reasonable laws will sometimes cause bad actors to try to take advantage of things, and the easiest way to fight back against this isn't to try to change laws to avoid this but for non-malicious entities like the registrar not to allow their customers to get exploited by this sort of behavior. Unfortunately, domain registration is an industry with so many of its own problems that I'm not sure "vote with your wallet" would be an effective strategy for changing things here. I honestly wonder if domain registration might be the more fruitful target for legislation protecting customers if the goal is specifically to avoid situations like this one, but even as someone who's usually unabashedly in favor of consumer protection regulations, I can't say I have a high degree of confidence that any changes here would be done effectively.
mort96 2y ago
That's extremely disappointing from iwantmyname. While I haven't used it, it was always on my mind as a potential registrar when buying a domain. I think I'll have to reconsider.
CaptainFever 2y ago
I really wish BrandShield didn't use AI as a marketing term. It just looks like it's doing a generic ctrl-F on webpages? Then things like this happen, and people think "ooh AI is bad, the bubble must burst" when this has nothing to do with that in the first place, and the real issue was that they sent a "fraud/phishing report" rather than a "trademark infringement" report. Then I also wish that people who knew better, that this really has nothing to do with AI (like, this is obviously not autonomously making decisions any more than a regular program is), to stop blindly parroting and blaming it as a way to get more clicks, support and rage.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  I fear that ship has already sailed. I think the grifters and scammers have already abused the term enough that even decent uses of it are now tainted. I know that the two aren't strictly the same, but I would suggest using "Machine Learning" instead, which I think has more respectable connotations.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    AS IS TRADITION. (After the previous AI bubble, no-one mentioned the dread term for about 20 years, instead using the safely ultra-broad umbrella term.)
- rsynnott 2y ago
  I mean, whether this has anything to do with AI or not (I’d buy that they’re using LLMs to write abuse letters or similar) it fits very nicely into the general pattern of AI breaking the internet through an endless deluge of worthless misleading spam. So, perhaps call it honorary AI?
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  It's possible they were using LLMs (or even just traditional ML algorithms) to choose if a certain webpage was fraud/phishing instead of mere trademark infringement, though. In this case it makes sense that one would be angry that a sapient being didn't first check if the report was accurate before sending it off.
npteljes 2y ago
Brandshield is bad for overreacting, and iwantmyname is very bad for hosting such a crucial infrastructure, and having not responded to a paying customer with a good track record. I honestly don't think time of day matters, as long as the nature of the service is that it's provided and used 24/7, support staff should also be there 24/7.
hresvelgr 2y ago
It's surprising that this happened at all. Isn't it in most business's best interests to be aware of their most high-profile customers? If this was an automatic process, it's pretty disappointing that it even occurred. If I was running a SaaS, I'd probably want to mark my important accounts so an actual human has to investigate any raised alerts instead of being dealt with by a cron.
- cipheredStones 2y ago
  Something being in a business's best interests is very far from a guarantee that it'll happen. I've worked on a team in a household-name big tech company where our mission was almost exactly "make sure we're not blowing up our most important customers for no reason". It's not nearly as easy as it sounds: defining who's important is hard, and defining what should and shouldn't be allowed is hard, and then implementing that all correctly and avoiding drift over time is tricky too.
  - Scramblejams 2y ago
    Sounds like you could write a series of blog posts I’d like to read!
- paxys 2y ago
  Domain names themselves are a loss leader for registrars. They make money by upselling customers on hosting, email, certificates, analytics etc. So if you are just paying a couple dollars a year for a domain name and nothing else, your profile doesn't really matter. You are in the lowest tier of customers.
  - jeremyjh 2y ago
    It still matters who your customer is if your mistreatment of them drags your own brand name through the mud in a front page Hacker News story.
  - account42 2y ago
    > Domain names themselves are a loss leader for registrars. Doubtful. Registrars have almost no costs - any markup over the registry fees is almost pure profit.
breakingcups 2y ago
Filing false reports like this should count as fraud.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  I.e. as a crime rather than just a civic tort? I agree.
  - pdpi 2y ago
    As general rule, I find that sort of thing to be an over-reaction, but submitting a complaint for phishing instead of a plain old DMCA takedown does warrant it.
- terminalbraid 2y ago
  I'm in the outraged crowd and there should be pretty serious consequences, but it is important in the interest of justice to differentiate between fraud, negligence, and gross incompetence.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    As long as you have some automated AI bot sent all the reports. It’s never fraud, you couldn’t have known it would do that.
    - babuskov 2y ago
      Looks like AI is becoming a perfect excuse to do whatever you like. It's like having a dangerous dog that usually doesn't bite, but you really cannot know if it will change its mind one day. Do you just let such dog walk the streets without owner supervision?
      - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
        > It's like having a dangerous dog that usually doesn't bite, but you really cannot know if it will change its mind one day. In other words, a pit bull.
jaromiru 2y ago
Hey, perhaps you can mediate the impact by providing an alternate way to access the site (IP, alternative domain) and posting it somewhere people will see it (bsky, here, ...)? Realistically , this may take days to resolve.
egorfine 2y ago
> I had removed the page and disabled the account Did this account violate your ToS or the actual law? While I totally understand where are you coming from and I would probably be forced to do the same, I still tend to believe that closing a fan account is exactly the same thing that your registrar did to you.
- 0x073 2y ago
  It's not optimal, but he must choose between every published game there and one fanpage. Besides that, there are so many websites with copyright content that never changes the domains, is just the domain registration bad or why they just disabled the domain?
  - egorfine 2y ago
    It's not optimal, but the registrar had to choose between every registered domain there and one business. But yes, no doubt, that system is broken and the registrar should have known better.
    - 0x073 2y ago
      I don't know the company size, but as a paying customer I expect them better support and more time. If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not. Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened.
      - egorfine 2y ago
        > I expect them better support I expect total ignorance from a typical domain registrar. > If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not. Take a look who is they registrar and then look their prices up. > Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened Yeah, they would totally ignore their customer just like that one did. Unfortunately, providing proper support and protecting own customers in digital realm is an unsustainable business practice for most registrars.
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
(FYI, if you didn't already notice this, you're probably far too busy anyway, but still: https://bsky.app/profile/botherer.bsky.social/post/3lcuitcckys2i https://bsky.app/profile/botherer.bsky.social/post/3lcuitcck...)
TheEnbyperor 2y ago
I run a domain registrar. "serverHold" is not a status that iwantmyname could've set. If they had suspended the domain it'd have "clientHold" set. Server Hold means the registry (i.e. .io directly) has suspended the domain. Your best bet would be to contact the Internet Computer Bureau Ltd who run .io at admin@icb.co.uk, or the registry technical support provider Identity Digital at techsupport@identity.digital.
- kj4ips 2y ago
  I've heard a ton of stories about .io, IMO, they play fast and loose in a space where that isn't okay, and they get away with it mostly because they are a ccTLD. The last time someone I knew had an issue, they had to get a senator to make waves to get anything resolved.
  - 0x38B 2y ago
    I regret going with .io for my personal domain name. At the time I thought it was cool, but they've since raised prices and hearing things like this doesn't instill confidence...
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      And isn't .io on borrowed time, since the country will soon no longer exist?
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        Do they get rid of TLDs once the country they are assigned to goes away? I assumed they'd sell them to someone or something.
        unanimous 2y ago
        They might not have much of a choice but to shut down all .io domains. This video explains a little: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJ6AZsUlpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJ6AZsUlpc
paxys 2y ago
> Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. While I agree, the people who hired them are equally culpable. You don't get to wash your hands of the mess just because someone else is doing your dirty work.
Arch485 2y ago
I smell a class action lawsuit. That's a whole lot of lost revenue and time for you and itch.io's creators. Godspeed!
nstart 2y ago
For what it's worth, I know Namecheap gets a meh rep, but we've been on the receiving end of several phishing/copyright reports and have responded across the spectrum in terms of time span. We've responded immediately. We've responded with an hour or so to go. In all cases, Namecheap has somehow responded quickly and resolved the issue.
- rexreed 2y ago
  I coincidentally just this past week ran into a major issue with Namecheap on a fraudulent domain marketplace sale that they did not resolve properly or in a timely manner. They deserve their meh reputation. They were decent about a decade ago. Come renewal my domains up for sale are moving to Dynadot. Was considering porkbun but I sense they are heading the namecheap way.
  - Sindisil 2y ago
    > but I sense they are heading the namecheap way What makes you say that?
    - rexreed 2y ago
      Some of the comments and feedback I'm seeing in the reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/PorkBun/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PorkBun/. But then again I don't have any firsthand experience with these issues, so who knows. Are you having good experiences with Porkbun?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
safety1st 2y ago
So it sounds like this was DMCA abuse by Funko, aided and abetted by BrandShield, and it resulted in damages to you. Also sounds like iwantmyname just went along with it, they are probably conditioned to do so by the rules. I would write up a complaint and send it to the incoming FTC Commissioner. Yes, I'm serious. From the signals Trump is sending if there is ever a time when Republicans may support some form of DMCA reform, it's now. He's on record talking about punishing Big Tech and supporting "Little Tech." You're Little Tech. Send copies of your letter to Funko and BrandShield. Also reach out or at least send a copy to Matt Stoller, the guy who publishes a very popular newsletter about monopoly, anti-trust and corporate abuse in America, he will be interested. Go for the throat.
- Mindwipe 2y ago
  Given the OP and admin in the comments explicitly say that this wasn't a DMCA claim it would rather hurt any campaign to lie and say it was.
  - tremon 2y ago
    But the DMCA is the only legal mechanism for demanding swift action from a registrar/hosting party without the involvement of a judge, at least FAFAIK. So if this wasn't a DMCA takedown, then the registrar was acting completely of their own volition and should be liable for all fallout.
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      No, sadly it's not. These are private companies.. if you write to them and tell them to take a site down for "reasons" and they think the "reasons" are good enough, they'll do it.
vasco 2y ago
Hope you have money to fight them. I stuck to my guns on a wrongful one like this and while Digitalocean and Cloudflare both had my backs (surprisingly before I even asked, both of them got a lot of good will on that - they informed me they already checked and it was spurious!). Google didn't have my back though and immediately caved when they upgraded their sham copyright infringement claim to money laundering and fraud based on nothing - a fully static website with no backend calls. Good luck! I still have the sites exactly as they were just to spite them and will keep running them at a loss until I'm dead. Copyright infringement my ass. This abuse has got to stop sometime.
- latexr 2y ago
  > I still have the sites exactly as they were just to spite them and will keep running them at a loss until I'm dead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_episodes#Season_10_(2020) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_e...
  - araes 2y ago
    Many of the spite houses were entertaining (the Alameda and Tyler spite houses were probably some of the best). However, nothing compares to the George Lucas saga down in Marin County. Was worth it just for the read about Lucas' fight with the county. Nigh incomprehensible. [1] Forbes Summary, 2012: https://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0507/companies-people-george-lucas-movie-studio-billionaire-filmmaker/ https://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0507/companies-people-geo... [2] NYTimes Summary, 2012: https://archive.is/7iSSE https://archive.is/7iSSE [3] CNET Summary, 2015: https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordable-housing-in-one-of-the-richest-parts-of-america/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordabl... [4] Pacific Research Institute Summary, 2021: https://www.pacificresearch.org/george-lucas-reluctant-yimby/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/george-lucas-reluctant-yimby... > submitted a so-called precise development plan in 2009 [for a] 269,701-square-foot digital studio [2] > Lucas’ company says it spent “tens of millions” on engineering and environmental reviews and fees since its master plan was approved in 1996. [1] > The association and others sent a letter to Mr. Lucas requesting that he find a “far more appropriate location for the development.” The project, the letter said, would “pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community,” “dwarf the average Costco warehouse” and generate light pollution so that “our dark starry skies would be destroyed.” [2] In 2012, Lucasfilm announced that it had scrapped the 263,701-square-foot project. [3] > "The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbours" [3] “We were offering to shut down at 11 p.m. and spend $70 million to restore creeks ravaged by erosion and farm debris. Nothing we offered to these people was ever going to be enough. And so we were facing death by delay.” [1] > In 2012 Mr. Lucas said he would sell the land to a developer to bring “low income housing” here. [2] there was a predictable backlash from residents, who believed that affordable housing would bring crime into the area and lower property values [3] “It’s inciting class warfare,” said Carolyn Lenert, head of the North San Rafael Coalition of Residents. [2] > That has created an atmosphere that one opponent, who asked not to be identified, saying she feared for her safety, described as “sheer terror” and likened to “Syria.” [2] > Carl Fricke [...] said: “We got letters saying, ‘You guys are going to get what you deserve. You’re going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here.’ ” [2] > After three years in stasis, working with the regulations that govern affordable housing grants, George Lucas now plan[ed] to foot the bill himself, to the tune of upward of $150 million (circa 2015). This not only allows the project to proceed without jumping through those hoops, it also means that the housing can be allocated to specific groups, such as seniors, nurses and teachers. [3] > The plan called for 224 apartments, along with generous residential amenities and a new bus stop [4], situated over 52 acres just north of San Rafael. This consists of 120 two- and three-bedroom workforce residences, and 104 one- and two-bedroom residences for seniors. [3] > neighboring property owners quickly threatened Lucas with a $70 million environmental lawsuit if the filmmaker didn’t pull back his housing plans. True to California planning tradition, the project remain[ed] in limbo five years later. [4] [5] https://www.thethings.com/george-lucas-billion-net-worth-spending-charities/ https://www.thethings.com/george-lucas-billion-net-worth-spe... > Lucas and the residents continued to battle over the property for several years until Disney eventually bought the property as part of purchasing LucasFilm. [5] And the final piece of the story, perhaps the worst: [6] Daily Mail Summary, 2023: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063777/These-former-business-owners-workers-living-Highway-101-falling-hard-times.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063777/These-form... [7] Google Maps View, Binford Rd, 2023: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1221805,-122.5651918,3a,75y,18.54h,87.74t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slqQs-1b7vPjTCXrCMxtVxQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D2.262529930522959%26panoid%3DlqQs-1b7vPjTCXrCMxtVxQ%26yaw%3D18.539730087838127!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIwNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1221805,-122.5651918,3a,75y,... > A line of RVs, trucks, and trailers stretches for nearly 2 miles along Highway 101 in north Marin County > More than half had lived in Marin County for over a decade, and a further 13% for at least five years. > 'I've been here four and a half years. I was one of the first here. When I came in mid 2018 there were three motor homes. Now there's over 80.' Sherry and Lyness said they can't afford a normal home any longer, and low-income housing is in short supply.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thn-gap 2y ago
I wanted to take the time to thank you for the service you provide. itch.io is unvaluable to the indie community, and I'm perplexed when I see some devs complain about issues like this. Thabks for all your work.
JosefAlbers 2y ago
It's working again now.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I've had the same thing happening; I run a simple forum, and some years ago people were discussing a manga, posting images of fan translated pages. My hosting party (Hetzner) forwarded the emails and / or put it in their own system, I removed the offending images / page, replied to the email, and done, right? Wrong, the email said I had to fill in a statement through some online form somewhere; I did that too late and got more and more threatening emails like "pack your shit we're evicting you in 24 hours". Nobody seemed to actually read my replies / explanation, probably because this is so routine for them. And I get it, nobody can be arsed to read longwinded explanations and the like for routine operations. I hope AI assisted tooling will help the overworked support employees with making decisions in favor of giving people the benefit of the doubt and the help they need; for them it's routine, but for me it was the first time I got anything like that.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
You really need to get off both .io and this no-name registrar.
pessimizer 2y ago
[flagged]
- lxgr 2y ago
  > it's no one's fault and no one's to blame There's obviously somebody to blame. Somebody getting a legitimate domain taken down for hours should have consequences, if only to make mistakes more expensive for trigger-happy automated "IP protection" services (the only signal they'll probably understand). The question is just if itch.io has the funding and energy to actually pursue the matter legally, now that it's technically resolved. I couldn't blame them for just changing registrars instead.
tonygiorgio 2y ago
Unfortunately "serverHold" goes above registrars. I learned this the hard way. There's a variety of watchdogs that false flag things all the time, and a handful of tld's that will blindly obey these orders. I'm guessing io is one of these. You'll have to escalate it with them, though I was never successful. Good luck.
derefr 2y ago
> The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud and phishing" going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist. Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. I feel like there's also some missing layer of infrastructure here. itch.io, like a lot of sites (HN being another), is meant to act as a host of user-generated content, over which the site takes a curatorial but not editorial stance. (I.e. the site has a Terms of Use; and has moderators that take things down / prevent things from being posted according to the Terms of Use; but otherwise is not favoring content according to the platform's own beliefs in the way that e.g. a newspaper would. None of the UGC posted "represents the views" of the platform, and there's no UGC that the platform would be particularly sad to see taken down.) I feel like, for such arms-length-hosted UGC platforms, there should be a mechanism to indicate to these "brand protection" services (and phishing/fraud-detection services, etc) that takedown reports should be directed first-and-foremost at the platform itself. A mechanism to assert "this site doesn't have a vested interest in the content it hosts, and so is perfectly willing to comply with takedown requests pointed at specific content; so please don't try to take down the site itself." There are UGC-hosting websites that brand-protection services already treat this way (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, etc) — but that's just institutional "human common sense" knowledge held about a few specific sites. I feel like this could be generalized, with a rule these takedown systems can follow, where if there's some indication (in a /.well-known/ entry, for example) that the site is a UGC-host and accepts its own platform-level abuse/takedown reports, then that should be attempted first, before trying to get the site itself taken down. (Of course, such a rule necessarily cannot be a full short-circuit for the regular host-level takedown logic such systems follow; otherwise pirates, fraudsters, etc would just pretend their one-off phishing domains are UGC platforms. But you could have e.g. a default heuristic that if the takedown system discovers a platform-automated-takedown-request channel, then it'll try that channel and give it an hour to take effect before moving onto the host-level strategy; and if it can be detected from e.g. certificate transparency logs that the current ownership of the host is sufficiently long-lived, then additional leeway could be given, upgrading to a 24-72hr wait before host-takedown triggers.)
- 2y ago
codatory 2y ago
Smells like tortious interference to me... and likely some form of perjury. I'd probably stop talking to them now that service is restored and get in touch with legal representation.
meaydinli 2y ago
Behavior from "iwantmyname" doesn't sound like they deserve your business anymore.
nonplus 2y ago
I hope you come out of this in good shape. I try to get all my (digital) TTRPGs and indie games through your platform.
Suppafly 2y ago
I wish brandshield would pull this shit with someone that was large enough to sue them for fraud or tortious interference.
Razengan 2y ago
Lemme use this opportunity for having your attention to suggest some form of collaboration or even a merger with the Godot game engine: • itch.io users could launch the Godot Web Editor to quickly make prototypes or simple games right on itch • Publish from the native Godot editor directly to itch.io • Godot adopts itch.io as the official asset store for art packs etc. • Introduce social features for devs and artists to collaborate with each other: • A publisher could choose to add a “Fork” or similar button on their itch.io game page that downloads and opens the project source in Godot. • All "forks" published that way would include a link to the original game's page, and so on. I think Godot+itch could/should become the Github of Games :)
xinayder 2y ago
You should change registrars. Sort the situation and move to a better one.
jamessbutler322 2y ago
[flagged]
nguyenquocthao 2y ago
So Linode hosts your server, and iwantmyname provides your domain? If they want they can take down your server and your domain? Is there any server provider / domain provider who doesn't hold that kind of power?

by leafo 2y ago

rpastuszak 2y ago

Is it possible/worth to hold them financially accountable for this? (them being IWMN or BrandShield)

seanthemon 2y ago

man, this shit is ridiculous.. now we can't even make fan pages? Will you be moving away from this registrar? It seems like it could very easily be abused again.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
After this, everyone will be moving away from this registrar...
- PostOnce 2y ago
  Not only that, I'm moving a domain to a local registrar so I can get legal redress here if I need to. Not from iwantmyname, never heard of them, but of course now that I have, I couldn't do business with them in light of the situation.
- npteljes 2y ago
  You'd think, or hope, but GoDaddy and other actors proved over the years that this is not the case. I think that the kind of site most impacted by an event like this are social sites, where if people leave, they might take their networks with them. But a normal b2c service provider just needs to update their PR and prices and business will be back to usual.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  And itch.io who removed that page.
  - crtasm 2y ago
    >a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. I'd expect them to remove that, they're not a host for fan pages.
    - SunlitCat 2y ago
      I never understood that urge of people to do "fan pages" (or fan anything, without the permission of the original creator) while at the same time blatantly ripping content.
      - account42 2y ago
        Not everyone agrees that remixing and building on your cultural artifacts should require permission from third parties.
Hamuko 2y ago
Fan anything has always been at the mercy of the trademark owner.
- seanthemon 2y ago
  there was a time where the internet wasn't a corpo hellscape.
  - throw_m239339 2y ago
    > there was a time where the internet wasn't a corpo hellscape. DMCA passed in 1998. it was short lived.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Not that short-lived in practice, because it may have been passed but it was not enforced to oblivion like it is now.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    This kind of impersonation/defamation is one of the edge cases where its good to have a DMCA process. You want to quickly take down something like this and then deal with the slow legal stuff over time.
    - Kye 2y ago
      They have a DMCA process. As far as I know it only helps in a case like this if they sue Funko or the brand management service. Itch is a small indie operation funded by actual commerce, so might not be able to afford it.
      - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
        How much would be needed to afford it? Is it a fundraisable amount?
jeroenhd 2y ago
Some companies have always been terrible about this. Fan projects involving companies like Nintendo or Take Two Interactive (GTA) are like lawyer bait. Disney has hired lawyers to sue a daycare center that had (clearly unofficial) character art painted on the walls. It's dystopic, but it's the world we live in. I didn't really expect Funko or 10:10 Games to be like that, but then again I didn't expect anyone would like Funko enough to make a fan page about their dolls. Other companies allow fans to do pretty much whatever you want with their IP as long as you don't turn it into (too much of) a business. Sega has even hired a fan for their remasters rather than DMCA his project into oblivion. When companies do this, I interpret this as the company giving a clear message: "don't be a fan of our work or we may apply legal pressure".
- CM30 2y ago
  Just gonna point out that the Nintendo going after fanworks bit is a tad blown out of proportion, especially online. They're definitely known for being way too heavy handed (especially compared to the likes of Sega), but they're not exactly going after every fan project they see on the internet. Large sites whose entire purpose is to host fan games and mods for the Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc series have been up for decades without any issues, and most mods and homebrew projects for consoles older than the Wii U or Switch are going fine. Unless a project is going viral in the media, raking up in a significant amount of money via a paywall or is directly competing with a current game, the chances of it getting shut down are incredibly low.
  - multimoon 2y ago
    Nintendo just finished killing both major switch emulators.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Nintendo also is responsible for keeping Dolphin off of Steam. Dolphin wanted to get on steam for improved steam deck integration and Valve reached out to Nintendo who said, essentially : Lol fuck no we will ruin your life The courts have told Nintendo numerous times that they are in the wrong in this behavior and outlook. They have no legal means to keep Dolphin off Steam and it is a matter of judicial record that emulators are not an infringement of your IP on their own. Nintendo doesn't care and openly discusses their intent to make you suffer through lawfare. A just system would smack them down with a vexatious litigant label, but our system gives businesses infinite benefit of the doubt.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago

I noticed that iwantmyname has very little presence on social media: no bluesky account and a twitter account that posts once or twice a year. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem if they responded to emergencies like this promptly, but they clearly don't so it is. I also wonder if their "automatically disable" policy takes size/importance of site into account. Is this how they would treat all their domain owners, regardless of significance?

clarionbell 2y ago
The significant ones have lawyer writing them letters.

antihero 2y ago

Can you transfer the domain out?

leafo 2y ago
Unfortunately the domain has a hold placed on it by the registrar, so I believe transferring is disabled. I also wouldn't want to risk doing a transfer at an hour when their staff aren't available to help with the current issue.
- antihero 2y ago
  Hopefully once they release the hold another registrar will be sought immediately.

duggan 2y ago

iwantmyname was bought out by a conglomerate, “Team Internet[1]”, a few years ago. Prices went up, service went down. I’d recommend moving your domains when you can (Porkbun have been good, though I haven’t had any incidents like this). Best of luck! 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Internet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Internet

esskay 2y ago
Another vote for porkbun here. By far one of the best registrars out there right now.
spondyl 2y ago
Oh damn, I didn't know this! I've used their services for ages and even got to briefly meet the founders once in Wellington who gave a talk on Erlang. Ah well, while it sucks that the good times may be over, I'm glad the founders got their exit :)
- duggan 2y ago
  Yeah I was a fan, had every domain with them that I could! But once they were acquired their .org renewal prices just did not make sense any more, and they were missing some functionality that I thought was crucial and didn't seem inclined to add it (can't remember what it was now, maybe MFA). Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.
- kaoD 2y ago
  > I'm glad the founders got their exit I'm not. I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits). Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again). I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich? Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...

RestartKernel 2y ago

This issue aside, thanks for doing what you do. I was kind of expecting Itch to get sold to some holdings or casino company at some point, as good things tend to go, but I've been happily surprised to see it mature independently throughout the years.

Tepix 2y ago
I agree itch.io is awesome! Edit: And i'm happy to see that it's working again as of 2024-12-09 12:27 UTC+1
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  And compared to that brandshield users should be branded by their business practices. Also the hoster as well. Seems to be a difficult time for hosters and also again a demonstration that copyright law is deeply flawed, even if using stolen assets is a rising problem.
  - saghm 2y ago
    I don't disagree that copyright law is deeply flawed, but even with the current law, it seems like this situation could easily have been avoided. The issue is one malicious private company (Brandshield) taking advantage of the negligence of another private company (the registrar) by claiming that a site was being used for "fraud and phishing". If anything, the parent comment from the person running the site makes me think that the situation would have been _less_ messed up if Brandshield had correctly asked for the offending copyrighted content to be taken down rather than falsely alleging something more severe. I understand that Brandshield probably has been incentivized to act this way due to copyright law, but I'd argue that even reasonable laws will sometimes cause bad actors to try to take advantage of things, and the easiest way to fight back against this isn't to try to change laws to avoid this but for non-malicious entities like the registrar not to allow their customers to get exploited by this sort of behavior. Unfortunately, domain registration is an industry with so many of its own problems that I'm not sure "vote with your wallet" would be an effective strategy for changing things here. I honestly wonder if domain registration might be the more fruitful target for legislation protecting customers if the goal is specifically to avoid situations like this one, but even as someone who's usually unabashedly in favor of consumer protection regulations, I can't say I have a high degree of confidence that any changes here would be done effectively.

mort96 2y ago

That's extremely disappointing from iwantmyname. While I haven't used it, it was always on my mind as a potential registrar when buying a domain. I think I'll have to reconsider.

CaptainFever 2y ago

I really wish BrandShield didn't use AI as a marketing term. It just looks like it's doing a generic ctrl-F on webpages? Then things like this happen, and people think "ooh AI is bad, the bubble must burst" when this has nothing to do with that in the first place, and the real issue was that they sent a "fraud/phishing report" rather than a "trademark infringement" report. Then I also wish that people who knew better, that this really has nothing to do with AI (like, this is obviously not autonomously making decisions any more than a regular program is), to stop blindly parroting and blaming it as a way to get more clicks, support and rage.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
I fear that ship has already sailed. I think the grifters and scammers have already abused the term enough that even decent uses of it are now tainted. I know that the two aren't strictly the same, but I would suggest using "Machine Learning" instead, which I think has more respectable connotations.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  AS IS TRADITION. (After the previous AI bubble, no-one mentioned the dread term for about 20 years, instead using the safely ultra-broad umbrella term.)
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, whether this has anything to do with AI or not (I’d buy that they’re using LLMs to write abuse letters or similar) it fits very nicely into the general pattern of AI breaking the internet through an endless deluge of worthless misleading spam. So, perhaps call it honorary AI?
CaptainFever 2y ago
It's possible they were using LLMs (or even just traditional ML algorithms) to choose if a certain webpage was fraud/phishing instead of mere trademark infringement, though. In this case it makes sense that one would be angry that a sapient being didn't first check if the report was accurate before sending it off.

npteljes 2y ago

Brandshield is bad for overreacting, and iwantmyname is very bad for hosting such a crucial infrastructure, and having not responded to a paying customer with a good track record. I honestly don't think time of day matters, as long as the nature of the service is that it's provided and used 24/7, support staff should also be there 24/7.

hresvelgr 2y ago

It's surprising that this happened at all. Isn't it in most business's best interests to be aware of their most high-profile customers? If this was an automatic process, it's pretty disappointing that it even occurred. If I was running a SaaS, I'd probably want to mark my important accounts so an actual human has to investigate any raised alerts instead of being dealt with by a cron.

cipheredStones 2y ago
Something being in a business's best interests is very far from a guarantee that it'll happen. I've worked on a team in a household-name big tech company where our mission was almost exactly "make sure we're not blowing up our most important customers for no reason". It's not nearly as easy as it sounds: defining who's important is hard, and defining what should and shouldn't be allowed is hard, and then implementing that all correctly and avoiding drift over time is tricky too.
- Scramblejams 2y ago
  Sounds like you could write a series of blog posts I’d like to read!
paxys 2y ago
Domain names themselves are a loss leader for registrars. They make money by upselling customers on hosting, email, certificates, analytics etc. So if you are just paying a couple dollars a year for a domain name and nothing else, your profile doesn't really matter. You are in the lowest tier of customers.
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  It still matters who your customer is if your mistreatment of them drags your own brand name through the mud in a front page Hacker News story.
- account42 2y ago
  > Domain names themselves are a loss leader for registrars. Doubtful. Registrars have almost no costs - any markup over the registry fees is almost pure profit.

breakingcups 2y ago

Filing false reports like this should count as fraud.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
I.e. as a crime rather than just a civic tort? I agree.
- pdpi 2y ago
  As general rule, I find that sort of thing to be an over-reaction, but submitting a complaint for phishing instead of a plain old DMCA takedown does warrant it.
terminalbraid 2y ago
I'm in the outraged crowd and there should be pretty serious consequences, but it is important in the interest of justice to differentiate between fraud, negligence, and gross incompetence.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  As long as you have some automated AI bot sent all the reports. It’s never fraud, you couldn’t have known it would do that.
  - babuskov 2y ago
    Looks like AI is becoming a perfect excuse to do whatever you like. It's like having a dangerous dog that usually doesn't bite, but you really cannot know if it will change its mind one day. Do you just let such dog walk the streets without owner supervision?
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      > It's like having a dangerous dog that usually doesn't bite, but you really cannot know if it will change its mind one day. In other words, a pit bull.

jaromiru 2y ago

Hey, perhaps you can mediate the impact by providing an alternate way to access the site (IP, alternative domain) and posting it somewhere people will see it (bsky, here, ...)? Realistically , this may take days to resolve.

egorfine 2y ago

> I had removed the page and disabled the account Did this account violate your ToS or the actual law? While I totally understand where are you coming from and I would probably be forced to do the same, I still tend to believe that closing a fan account is exactly the same thing that your registrar did to you.

0x073 2y ago
It's not optimal, but he must choose between every published game there and one fanpage. Besides that, there are so many websites with copyright content that never changes the domains, is just the domain registration bad or why they just disabled the domain?
- egorfine 2y ago
  It's not optimal, but the registrar had to choose between every registered domain there and one business. But yes, no doubt, that system is broken and the registrar should have known better.
  - 0x073 2y ago
    I don't know the company size, but as a paying customer I expect them better support and more time. If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not. Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened.
    - egorfine 2y ago
      > I expect them better support I expect total ignorance from a typical domain registrar. > If they have a customer like steam would they just cut off the domain? Probably not. Take a look who is they registrar and then look their prices up. > Other domain registrations would just ignored this and nothing would happened Yeah, they would totally ignore their customer just like that one did. Unfortunately, providing proper support and protecting own customers in digital realm is an unsustainable business practice for most registrars.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago

(FYI, if you didn't already notice this, you're probably far too busy anyway, but still: https://bsky.app/profile/botherer.bsky.social/post/3lcuitcckys2i https://bsky.app/profile/botherer.bsky.social/post/3lcuitcck...)

TheEnbyperor 2y ago

I run a domain registrar. "serverHold" is not a status that iwantmyname could've set. If they had suspended the domain it'd have "clientHold" set. Server Hold means the registry (i.e. .io directly) has suspended the domain. Your best bet would be to contact the Internet Computer Bureau Ltd who run .io at admin@icb.co.uk, or the registry technical support provider Identity Digital at techsupport@identity.digital.

kj4ips 2y ago
I've heard a ton of stories about .io, IMO, they play fast and loose in a space where that isn't okay, and they get away with it mostly because they are a ccTLD. The last time someone I knew had an issue, they had to get a senator to make waves to get anything resolved.
- 0x38B 2y ago
  I regret going with .io for my personal domain name. At the time I thought it was cool, but they've since raised prices and hearing things like this doesn't instill confidence...
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    And isn't .io on borrowed time, since the country will soon no longer exist?
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      Do they get rid of TLDs once the country they are assigned to goes away? I assumed they'd sell them to someone or something.
      - unanimous 2y ago
        They might not have much of a choice but to shut down all .io domains. This video explains a little: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJ6AZsUlpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJ6AZsUlpc

paxys 2y ago

> Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. While I agree, the people who hired them are equally culpable. You don't get to wash your hands of the mess just because someone else is doing your dirty work.

Arch485 2y ago

I smell a class action lawsuit. That's a whole lot of lost revenue and time for you and itch.io's creators. Godspeed!

nstart 2y ago

For what it's worth, I know Namecheap gets a meh rep, but we've been on the receiving end of several phishing/copyright reports and have responded across the spectrum in terms of time span. We've responded immediately. We've responded with an hour or so to go. In all cases, Namecheap has somehow responded quickly and resolved the issue.

rexreed 2y ago
I coincidentally just this past week ran into a major issue with Namecheap on a fraudulent domain marketplace sale that they did not resolve properly or in a timely manner. They deserve their meh reputation. They were decent about a decade ago. Come renewal my domains up for sale are moving to Dynadot. Was considering porkbun but I sense they are heading the namecheap way.
- Sindisil 2y ago
  > but I sense they are heading the namecheap way What makes you say that?
  - rexreed 2y ago
    Some of the comments and feedback I'm seeing in the reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/PorkBun/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PorkBun/. But then again I don't have any firsthand experience with these issues, so who knows. Are you having good experiences with Porkbun?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

safety1st 2y ago

So it sounds like this was DMCA abuse by Funko, aided and abetted by BrandShield, and it resulted in damages to you. Also sounds like iwantmyname just went along with it, they are probably conditioned to do so by the rules. I would write up a complaint and send it to the incoming FTC Commissioner. Yes, I'm serious. From the signals Trump is sending if there is ever a time when Republicans may support some form of DMCA reform, it's now. He's on record talking about punishing Big Tech and supporting "Little Tech." You're Little Tech. Send copies of your letter to Funko and BrandShield. Also reach out or at least send a copy to Matt Stoller, the guy who publishes a very popular newsletter about monopoly, anti-trust and corporate abuse in America, he will be interested. Go for the throat.

Mindwipe 2y ago
Given the OP and admin in the comments explicitly say that this wasn't a DMCA claim it would rather hurt any campaign to lie and say it was.
- tremon 2y ago
  But the DMCA is the only legal mechanism for demanding swift action from a registrar/hosting party without the involvement of a judge, at least FAFAIK. So if this wasn't a DMCA takedown, then the registrar was acting completely of their own volition and should be liable for all fallout.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    No, sadly it's not. These are private companies.. if you write to them and tell them to take a site down for "reasons" and they think the "reasons" are good enough, they'll do it.

vasco 2y ago

Hope you have money to fight them. I stuck to my guns on a wrongful one like this and while Digitalocean and Cloudflare both had my backs (surprisingly before I even asked, both of them got a lot of good will on that - they informed me they already checked and it was spurious!). Google didn't have my back though and immediately caved when they upgraded their sham copyright infringement claim to money laundering and fraud based on nothing - a fully static website with no backend calls. Good luck! I still have the sites exactly as they were just to spite them and will keep running them at a loss until I'm dead. Copyright infringement my ass. This abuse has got to stop sometime.

latexr 2y ago
> I still have the sites exactly as they were just to spite them and will keep running them at a loss until I'm dead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_episodes#Season_10_(2020) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_e...
- araes 2y ago
  Many of the spite houses were entertaining (the Alameda and Tyler spite houses were probably some of the best). However, nothing compares to the George Lucas saga down in Marin County. Was worth it just for the read about Lucas' fight with the county. Nigh incomprehensible. [1] Forbes Summary, 2012: https://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0507/companies-people-george-lucas-movie-studio-billionaire-filmmaker/ https://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0507/companies-people-geo... [2] NYTimes Summary, 2012: https://archive.is/7iSSE https://archive.is/7iSSE [3] CNET Summary, 2015: https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordable-housing-in-one-of-the-richest-parts-of-america/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordabl... [4] Pacific Research Institute Summary, 2021: https://www.pacificresearch.org/george-lucas-reluctant-yimby/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/george-lucas-reluctant-yimby... > submitted a so-called precise development plan in 2009 [for a] 269,701-square-foot digital studio [2] > Lucas’ company says it spent “tens of millions” on engineering and environmental reviews and fees since its master plan was approved in 1996. [1] > The association and others sent a letter to Mr. Lucas requesting that he find a “far more appropriate location for the development.” The project, the letter said, would “pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community,” “dwarf the average Costco warehouse” and generate light pollution so that “our dark starry skies would be destroyed.” [2] In 2012, Lucasfilm announced that it had scrapped the 263,701-square-foot project. [3] > "The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbours" [3] “We were offering to shut down at 11 p.m. and spend $70 million to restore creeks ravaged by erosion and farm debris. Nothing we offered to these people was ever going to be enough. And so we were facing death by delay.” [1] > In 2012 Mr. Lucas said he would sell the land to a developer to bring “low income housing” here. [2] there was a predictable backlash from residents, who believed that affordable housing would bring crime into the area and lower property values [3] “It’s inciting class warfare,” said Carolyn Lenert, head of the North San Rafael Coalition of Residents. [2] > That has created an atmosphere that one opponent, who asked not to be identified, saying she feared for her safety, described as “sheer terror” and likened to “Syria.” [2] > Carl Fricke [...] said: “We got letters saying, ‘You guys are going to get what you deserve. You’re going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here.’ ” [2] > After three years in stasis, working with the regulations that govern affordable housing grants, George Lucas now plan[ed] to foot the bill himself, to the tune of upward of $150 million (circa 2015). This not only allows the project to proceed without jumping through those hoops, it also means that the housing can be allocated to specific groups, such as seniors, nurses and teachers. [3] > The plan called for 224 apartments, along with generous residential amenities and a new bus stop [4], situated over 52 acres just north of San Rafael. This consists of 120 two- and three-bedroom workforce residences, and 104 one- and two-bedroom residences for seniors. [3] > neighboring property owners quickly threatened Lucas with a $70 million environmental lawsuit if the filmmaker didn’t pull back his housing plans. True to California planning tradition, the project remain[ed] in limbo five years later. [4] [5] https://www.thethings.com/george-lucas-billion-net-worth-spending-charities/ https://www.thethings.com/george-lucas-billion-net-worth-spe... > Lucas and the residents continued to battle over the property for several years until Disney eventually bought the property as part of purchasing LucasFilm. [5] And the final piece of the story, perhaps the worst: [6] Daily Mail Summary, 2023: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063777/These-former-business-owners-workers-living-Highway-101-falling-hard-times.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063777/These-form... [7] Google Maps View, Binford Rd, 2023: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1221805,-122.5651918,3a,75y,18.54h,87.74t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slqQs-1b7vPjTCXrCMxtVxQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D2.262529930522959%26panoid%3DlqQs-1b7vPjTCXrCMxtVxQ%26yaw%3D18.539730087838127!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIwNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1221805,-122.5651918,3a,75y,... > A line of RVs, trucks, and trailers stretches for nearly 2 miles along Highway 101 in north Marin County > More than half had lived in Marin County for over a decade, and a further 13% for at least five years. > 'I've been here four and a half years. I was one of the first here. When I came in mid 2018 there were three motor homes. Now there's over 80.' Sherry and Lyness said they can't afford a normal home any longer, and low-income housing is in short supply.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thn-gap 2y ago

I wanted to take the time to thank you for the service you provide. itch.io is unvaluable to the indie community, and I'm perplexed when I see some devs complain about issues like this. Thabks for all your work.

JosefAlbers 2y ago

It's working again now.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I've had the same thing happening; I run a simple forum, and some years ago people were discussing a manga, posting images of fan translated pages. My hosting party (Hetzner) forwarded the emails and / or put it in their own system, I removed the offending images / page, replied to the email, and done, right? Wrong, the email said I had to fill in a statement through some online form somewhere; I did that too late and got more and more threatening emails like "pack your shit we're evicting you in 24 hours". Nobody seemed to actually read my replies / explanation, probably because this is so routine for them. And I get it, nobody can be arsed to read longwinded explanations and the like for routine operations. I hope AI assisted tooling will help the overworked support employees with making decisions in favor of giving people the benefit of the doubt and the help they need; for them it's routine, but for me it was the first time I got anything like that.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

You really need to get off both .io and this no-name registrar.

pessimizer 2y ago

[flagged]

lxgr 2y ago
> it's no one's fault and no one's to blame There's obviously somebody to blame. Somebody getting a legitimate domain taken down for hours should have consequences, if only to make mistakes more expensive for trigger-happy automated "IP protection" services (the only signal they'll probably understand). The question is just if itch.io has the funding and energy to actually pursue the matter legally, now that it's technically resolved. I couldn't blame them for just changing registrars instead.

tonygiorgio 2y ago

Unfortunately "serverHold" goes above registrars. I learned this the hard way. There's a variety of watchdogs that false flag things all the time, and a handful of tld's that will blindly obey these orders. I'm guessing io is one of these. You'll have to escalate it with them, though I was never successful. Good luck.

derefr 2y ago

> The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud and phishing" going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist. Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. I feel like there's also some missing layer of infrastructure here. itch.io, like a lot of sites (HN being another), is meant to act as a host of user-generated content, over which the site takes a curatorial but not editorial stance. (I.e. the site has a Terms of Use; and has moderators that take things down / prevent things from being posted according to the Terms of Use; but otherwise is not favoring content according to the platform's own beliefs in the way that e.g. a newspaper would. None of the UGC posted "represents the views" of the platform, and there's no UGC that the platform would be particularly sad to see taken down.) I feel like, for such arms-length-hosted UGC platforms, there should be a mechanism to indicate to these "brand protection" services (and phishing/fraud-detection services, etc) that takedown reports should be directed first-and-foremost at the platform itself. A mechanism to assert "this site doesn't have a vested interest in the content it hosts, and so is perfectly willing to comply with takedown requests pointed at specific content; so please don't try to take down the site itself." There are UGC-hosting websites that brand-protection services already treat this way (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, etc) — but that's just institutional "human common sense" knowledge held about a few specific sites. I feel like this could be generalized, with a rule these takedown systems can follow, where if there's some indication (in a /.well-known/ entry, for example) that the site is a UGC-host and accepts its own platform-level abuse/takedown reports, then that should be attempted first, before trying to get the site itself taken down. (Of course, such a rule necessarily cannot be a full short-circuit for the regular host-level takedown logic such systems follow; otherwise pirates, fraudsters, etc would just pretend their one-off phishing domains are UGC platforms. But you could have e.g. a default heuristic that if the takedown system discovers a platform-automated-takedown-request channel, then it'll try that channel and give it an hour to take effect before moving onto the host-level strategy; and if it can be detected from e.g. certificate transparency logs that the current ownership of the host is sufficiently long-lived, then additional leeway could be given, upgrading to a 24-72hr wait before host-takedown triggers.)

2y ago

codatory 2y ago

Smells like tortious interference to me... and likely some form of perjury. I'd probably stop talking to them now that service is restored and get in touch with legal representation.

meaydinli 2y ago

Behavior from "iwantmyname" doesn't sound like they deserve your business anymore.

nonplus 2y ago

I hope you come out of this in good shape. I try to get all my (digital) TTRPGs and indie games through your platform.

Suppafly 2y ago

I wish brandshield would pull this shit with someone that was large enough to sue them for fraud or tortious interference.

Razengan 2y ago

Lemme use this opportunity for having your attention to suggest some form of collaboration or even a merger with the Godot game engine: • itch.io users could launch the Godot Web Editor to quickly make prototypes or simple games right on itch • Publish from the native Godot editor directly to itch.io • Godot adopts itch.io as the official asset store for art packs etc. • Introduce social features for devs and artists to collaborate with each other: • A publisher could choose to add a “Fork” or similar button on their itch.io game page that downloads and opens the project source in Godot. • All "forks" published that way would include a link to the original game's page, and so on. I think Godot+itch could/should become the Github of Games :)

xinayder 2y ago

You should change registrars. Sort the situation and move to a better one.

jamessbutler322 2y ago

[flagged]

nguyenquocthao 2y ago

So Linode hosts your server, and iwantmyname provides your domain? If they want they can take down your server and your domain? Is there any server provider / domain provider who doesn't hold that kind of power?