An AI Generated Copyright Takedown Request Takes Out The Whole Area
Right here’s an amusing sequence of occasions to make you shake your head this morning, involving Funko bobbleheads and itch.io. It appears an itch.io consumer created a fan web page for an the Funko Fusion laptop recreation, with hyperlinks to the official web site and screenshots of the sport. In a standard world this could be thought-about innocent, maybe even useful for Funko since it could be free promoting for them.
We don’t dwell in a standard world anymore.
As an alternative, an AI powered piece of brand name safety software program referred to as BrandShield determined the fan web page was undoubtedly malicious copyright infringement and it “sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was “fraud and phishing””, as a substitute of the suitable DMCA/cease-and-desist discover. The itch.io founder, Leaf Corcoran, had no concept of the escalation, so when he reached out to his registrar and internet hosting firm that the offending fan web page had been taken down and the consumer blocked he thought that was it. 5 days after he took down the offending fan web page, your complete itch.io web site was instantly taken down.
It seems that the registrar claimed they by no means obtained the e-mail stating the one single fan web page had been eliminated, and for some purpose by no means bothered to ship any communications that they had been going to take down your complete itch.io area to the positioning’s proprietor. That is unusual for a number of causes, past the clearly poor excuses from the registrar. A cease-and-desist would lead to taking down the precise URL that was supposedly infringing on Funko’s copyrights, however as a result of the AI powered crapware tagged the offensive web page as “fraud and phishing”, it led to your complete area being taken offline.
Fortunately after reaching out to his registrar immediately, itch.io was restored. Leaf did point out that he had not solely reached out 5 days beforehand to substantiate the demise of the fan web page and that the registrar by no means bothered to ship an e mail warning him his web site was about to be offlined, however to no avail. A minimum of itch.io was reinstated because it was, wanting the one offensive web page that celebrated an individual’s love of Funko Fusion.
You’d suppose that was the tip of the ridiculousness, however you’d be fallacious. Funko was anxious in regards to the great amount of unhealthy press offlining an enormous web site which is visited incessantly by lots of people generated, and located a approach to match each ft of their mouth. They first posted to Twitter that Funko was an enormous supporter of indie video games and that “Funko did not request a takedown of the @itchio platform“. That is false on two accounts, the primary being that there was undoubtedly a takedown request despatched and secondly a takedown request wouldn’t offline a whole web site, solely a fraud and phishing notification would,
… and that’s when Funko texted Leaf Corcoran’s mom. Follow all the links at Slashdot to read more about this truly ridiculous series of events, all triggered by deranged AI brand protection software.
