@Steam/Valve It's about time......(fake/false DMCA reports)

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

It's about time to track down and ban the companies/peoples from steam who are giving false/fake DMCA reports to temporary "shutdown" specific games from the store page.
This is getting out of hands.

Such filthy behaviour and actions should not be tolerated!

[andoblock]

UIG should be banned from Steam for making crappy games and also issusing DMCA to other farm sim games.

[SFC Gunny]

Specifically, Steam needs to address the publisher United Independent Entertainment, a company which consistently produces games with overwhelming negative ratings by Steam users.

This company recently submitted two DMCAs, one against Farmer's Dynasty and another against Farm Manager 2018, both of those games have been pulled from the Steam store. Additionally, United Independent Entertainment utilized a third company to submit DMCA claims to Google against these same small developers, resulting in Facebook and similar social media pages being pulled. The company UIE utilized has over 73000 DMCA claims to Google.

Steam - you are part of the problem. Clean up your act. Are you going to continue to allow sub-standard gaming companies to dominate and bully the market place, or are you going to promote and encourage the development of quality games?

[sfnhltb]

I think the problem generally is that DMCA was intended to be "This is definitively our copyrighted material, take it down immediately". Using it for a regular infringement of copyright claim, i.e. "This is a different game to ours, but it is too similar to ours" should still go through the courts as in the past.

The problem is that (based on Google's analysis), 57% of DMCA claims are used to harass competitors (as in this case), a large proportion being definitively fraudulent, but the court system could not cope with the hundreds of millions of perjury cases, so in practise there are essentially no penalties for abusing the DMCA this way - unless you pick the wrong target who is willing to risk lots of money in court, but given how easily claims can be made from "paper companies" with no assets, even being successful in court tends to have no benefit.

And the problem for organisations that are served DMCA takedown notices is that if they do not act on them in a timely fashion they lose safe harbor protections and become liable themselves, unless they receive a counternotification, so given Google, Valve, and generally almost all OSPs are not in a position to rapidly confirm the copyright status with 100% certainty for a large portion of the material they host/link to, you just end up with this situation where DMCA can be used in this way, and it is hard to see how it is going to change unless the law does.

[Darren]

Originally posted by sfnhltb:

I think the problem generally is that DMCA was intended to be "This is definitively our copyrighted material, take it down immediately". Using it for a regular infringement of copyright claim, i.e. "This is a different game to ours, but it is too similar to ours" should still go through the courts as in the past.

The problem is that (based on Google's analysis), 57% of DMCA claims are used to harass competitors (as in this case), a large proportion being definitively fraudulent, but the court system could not cope with the hundreds of millions of perjury cases, so in practise there are essentially no penalties for abusing the DMCA this way - unless you pick the wrong target who is willing to risk lots of money in court, but given how easily claims can be made from "paper companies" with no assets, even being successful in court tends to have no benefit.

And the problem for organisations that are served DMCA takedown notices is that if they do not act on them in a timely fashion they lose safe harbor protections and become liable themselves, unless they receive a counternotification, so given Google, Valve, and generally almost all OSPs are not in a position to rapidly confirm the copyright status with 100% certainty for a large portion of the material they host/link to, you just end up with this situation where DMCA can be used in this way, and it is hard to see how it is going to change unless the law does.

There is no such thing as a paper company with no assets making a DMCA. They have to have the copyright at least for whatever it is they are attempting to sue you over. That is an asset and in lieu of anything else they would be forced to go bankrupt and liquidate that asset to the highest bidder (with the money being used to pay the court judgement).

[andoblock]

Gabe it is time you banned UIG from the Steam platform.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

A legit way to stop this BS with fake/false DMCA reports would require to change the law in a way that the person/company would need to send first the required things to show that he really owns (whatever) before the DMCA report goes into action.

But i think this is unlikely to happen due the idiocracy in politics&companies especially US, money justify everything even a piece of BS.

[Richard Upton Pickman]

They will only act if there is enough reporting on such a problem. They believe that feeding numbers to an AI and automated reports are enough to fix this and in general try to avoid interaction with devs/publishers.

So get the communities of these games to email valve and maybe even try to get it to websites like kotaku or whatever gaming reporter you think will help. That seems to be the only thing that works with valve now.

[Hoxer]

(x-posted from Farm Manager 2018 forum)

Well this is a sh!tstorm. UIG manages retail sales for Farmers Dynasty, so filing a DMCA against Farmers Dynasty seems pretty contra intuitive. Who knows - maybe they sabotage steam sales to force people to buy at playersdynasty.com. Sounds pretty unlikely to me though.

I honestly just think UIG picks up and publishes the titles that no one else wants to publish. They're not the developer.

[rincewind]

Originally posted by Richard Upton Pickman:

They will only act if there is enough reporting on such a problem. They believe that feeding numbers to an AI and automated reports are enough to fix this and in general try to avoid interaction with devs/publishers.

So get the communities of these games to email valve and maybe even try to get it to websites like kotaku or whatever gaming reporter you think will help. That seems to be the only thing that works with valve now.

If the game will bring enough money, Valve will probably bring the games back.
If they're not worthy enough, no dice. Valve will not bother with them.

[Start_Running]

System is what it is. When there is a claim, Valve has to remove the game from the store until such time as the legal dispoute is resolved.. As for tracking down fake/false claims. That's not something Valve can do either.


You can't sue someone on behalf of what they did to someone else. That's not how law works.
The defendants in each of these cases have the option of filing counter suit..

[Gruesome Puglet]

United Independent Entertainment is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company that has never developed any valuable product so they will troll other publishers and developers with DMCA to the moon.

If we want to fight them then we shouldn't stop in here having some pointless discussion that no one either from Valve nor UIG will ever be interested in reading.

Let's set up a dedicated website and post there about their practices, let's spread the word all over the social media. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Just destroy their reputation...

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Gruesome Puglet:

United Independent Entertainment is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company that has never developed any valuable product so they will troll other publishers and developers with DMCA to the moon.

If we want to fight them then we shouldn't stop in here having some pointless discussion that no one either from Valve nor UIG will ever be interested in reading.

Let's set up a dedicated website and post there about their practices, let's spread the word all over the social media. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Just destroy their reputation...

And that will stop nothing because they're not actually doing anything illegal. What you need to look at is how many of their DMCA cklaims have been upheld.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Gruesome Puglet:

United Independent Entertainment is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company that has never developed any valuable product so they will troll other publishers and developers with DMCA to the moon.

If we want to fight them then we shouldn't stop in here having some pointless discussion that no one either from Valve nor UIG will ever be interested in reading.

Let's set up a dedicated website and post there about their practices, let's spread the word all over the social media. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Just destroy their reputation...

From what you have said, they already have a bad reputation on their own, so why go through that much effort?

If you are willing to go that far, then make a site to fix the laws in reguards to DMCAs, so Valve would not be legaly required to remove the content when a DMCA is filed, since right now they have no say in the matter and have to comply with all DMCAs.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Gruesome Puglet:

United Independent Entertainment is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company that has never developed any valuable product so they will troll other publishers and developers with DMCA to the moon.

If we want to fight them then we shouldn't stop in here having some pointless discussion that no one either from Valve nor UIG will ever be interested in reading.

Let's set up a dedicated website and post there about their practices, let's spread the word all over the social media. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Just destroy their reputation...

And that will stop nothing because they're not actually doing anything illegal. What you need to look at is how many of their DMCA cklaims have been upheld.

I guess it depends on the country, in some countries this would go as "Unfair Commercial Practices" if i remind correctly but i'm not sure.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

@Spawn of Totoro but valve could make a sign by not accepting certain companies/person on steam if they abused DMCA report heavly. (in case this should be legit law wise)
Yes it wouldn't change the situation with the DMCA itself, but it could make a start by not letting doing those whatever they want just to sabotage temporary competition,cause thats what it is on the end (even if it's not covered by the law)

Some gamingsites could make a article about this why actually valve would do something like this, and this would get attention world wide on the long term.
And could lead to pressure to change the DMCA in a way which could prevent abusing DMCA reports.


And yeah i know Valve got no responsibility or reason to even really care about it (except maybe money)
But if valve would come in action and do something with the community about this, this would be a plus PR wise and good on the long term aswell for Valve. (In case the heads of Valve care about this)

Valve as supporter would really mean something since Valve is Valve, and it's big in the buisness on it's own.