I 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.
Players 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.<p>A couple friends were banned erroneously via an automated purge of around 10k+ players. Their customer service was stone silent.<p>Randomly with no communication, one of their accounts was back online after a couple months.<p>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.<p>I don't have a good feeling of their methodologies and business practices. It's a part of the reason why I stopped playing.
<a href="https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1376796965942464515" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1376796965942464515</a><p>> We've got in touch with someone at SEGA of America and it is being looked into.<p>> Thanks for your support everyonee, it is truly amazing to see that my hobby (!) project is useful to so many people
Aren't they reacting wrong to the DMCA complaint?<p>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?
Until 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.<p>The DMCA should be repealed, but won't be, so instead should be updated to make erroneous claims have a financial penalty.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.
Since 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.<p>I can hardly imagine anything more unjust than using devices of justice to create unjustice.<p>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.
As 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.
How 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.<p>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.<p>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?
> 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.<p>Highly unlikely, good luck with that.
A 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.