Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

1197 points by spiralganglion 6 months ago | 463 comments
  • leafo 6 months 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/

    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.

    • vasco 6 months 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 6 months 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/List_of_Curb_Your_Enthusiasm_e...

        • araes 6 months 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-geo...

          [2] NYTimes Summary, 2012: https://archive.is/7iSSE

          [3] CNET Summary, 2015: https://www.cnet.com/culture/george-lucas-to-build-affordabl...

          [4] Pacific Research Institute Summary, 2021: 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-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-form...

          [7] Google Maps View, Binford Rd, 2023: 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.

        • joseda-hg 6 months ago
          If they are fully static couldn't they probably be run at close to 0 cost from you?
          • vasco 6 months ago
            Yes I'm not the pope, it's a cheap server. Still doesn't make any money.
          • pabs3 6 months ago
            What are the sites called? Would like to get them saved to archive.org :)
          • RestartKernel 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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.

              • 6 months ago
              • TheEnbyperor 6 months 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.
                • leafo 6 months ago
                  Interesting, this morning I got a response from a staff member of the parent company that owns iwantmyname saying they didn't get my response with regards to the abuse notification they sent and that's why they took the domain down.
                  • nicolas_17 6 months ago
                    Are you sure you got a serverLock and not a clientLock?
                  • kj4ips 6 months 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 6 months 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...
                    • apitman 6 months ago
                      What registrar do you run?
                  • duggan 6 months 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

                    • betteryet 6 months ago
                      Same thing with Gandi, which is a shame. Domain renewal price silently went up 3x or so last year after getting acquired.
                      • colejohnson66 6 months ago
                        Check out Porkbun.

                        https://porkbun.com/

                        • franciscop 6 months ago
                          Yup, I've been migrating out of Gandi because of this, I was okay with up to ~50% over the base price but I'm seeing 100%~200% overcharge. I did have to let go of one domain though since Cloudflare doesn't support .jp yet
                          • robin_reala 6 months ago
                            In the same way that “Don’t be evil” has disappeared, Gandi’s “No bullshit!” is no longer a thing.
                            • kmlx 6 months ago
                              does anyone here use cloudflare as a registrar?

                              i’m interested in any potential negatives.

                              • funkdude 6 months ago
                                Gandi's prices rose, which sucks, but they were great when I had a dispute with AFNIC over a blocked domain. They won brownie points with that.
                                • bambax 6 months ago
                                  Yes it's despicable. I'm moving my domains from Gandi one at a time and the cost is 4 times less!!
                                • spondyl 6 months 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 :)

                                  • kaoD 6 months 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...

                                    • duggan 6 months 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.

                                    • thomasfromcdnjs 6 months ago
                                      aw I've always loved iwantmyname, I haven't noticed any issues other than the price increases.

                                      Though it was the indie/personal feel they had as a registrar, I might look for alternatives.

                                      • donohoe 6 months ago
                                        +1 for Porkbun
                                        • internet101010 6 months ago
                                          After so many people in this thread recommended them I decided to make the switch from hover. Their renewal rates have gotten wild.
                                        • raverbashing 6 months ago
                                          Pro-tip: raise your prices before you need to sell your service to cover expenses
                                        • FunnyLookinHat 6 months ago
                                          Came here to recommend Porkbun - I've had great experience with them and so have all of the friends and family I've recommended.
                                          • esskay 6 months ago
                                            Another vote for porkbun here. By far one of the best registrars out there right now.
                                          • CaptainFever 6 months 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.

                                            • pdpi 6 months ago
                                              I find that businesses that bill themselves as ${TOOL}-users instead of ${PROBLEM}-solvers are, as a general rule, problematic. I couldn't possibly care any less whether a product is built on AI or a clever switch statement or a bazillion little gnomes doing the work by hand. I care that it solves a problem.

                                              AI does need to die. Not so much because LLMs are bad, but rather because, like "big data" and "blockchain" and many other buzzwordy tools before it, it is a solution looking for a problem.

                                              • 7thaccount 6 months ago
                                                The AI hype is annoying in my field as well. AI can have its uses, but we already figured out where to use it in my field ages ago. That doesn't stop people from hyping nothing though.
                                                • CobrastanJorji 6 months ago
                                                  Yes. If your business solves a real customer problem and uses "blockchain" to do it, that's great, but you should describe yourself as a tool to solve the problem. If you mention blockchain on the homepage of your product at all, it should be treated with suspicious. It's a sign that you're speaking to investors and fools and not to savvy customers.

                                                  One exception: personal projects. "This is an NES emulator that is built in Rust, and it uses Rust because I wanted to learn Rust" is a perfectly good description of a project (but not a business).

                                                • johnnyanmac 6 months ago
                                                  > and people think "ooh AI is bad, the bubble must burst" when this has nothing to do with that in the first place

                                                  That haphazard branding and parroting is exactly why the bubble needs to burst. Bubbles bursting take out the gritters and rarely actually kills off all the innovation in the scene (it kills a lot, though. I'm not trying to dismiss that).

                                                  • kombookcha 6 months ago
                                                    Exactly this, if you give a hoot about actual useful applications for AI, there is a great need to clear out all the grifters and scammers attracted by the initial hype cycle.
                                                  • CaptainFever 6 months 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.
                                                    • acka 6 months ago
                                                      More than the hypothetical risk of Earth being consumed by a paperclip-making machine, I believe the real and present danger in the use of ML and AI technology lies in humans making irresponsible decisions about where and how to apply these technologies.

                                                      For example, in my country, we are still dealing with the fallout from a decision made over a decade ago by the Tax Department. They used a poorly designed ML algorithm to screen applicants claiming social benefits for fraudulent activity. This led to several public inquiries and even contributed to the collapse of a government coalition. Tens of thousands of people are still suffering from being wrongly labeled as fraudulent, facing hefty fines and being forced to repay so-called fraudulent benefits.

                                                    • jandrese 6 months ago
                                                      When AI is being used as a cover for the bad/questionable behavior the company was already doing then there is no bubble to burst. The performance of the "AI" doesn't matter, only that it throws up a smoke shield in front of the company when people call to complain about the abuse.
                                                      • oneeyedpigeon 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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?
                                                        • oneeyedpigeon 6 months 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 6 months ago
                                                            The significant ones have lawyer writing them letters.
                                                          • npteljes 6 months 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.
                                                            • paxys 6 months 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.

                                                              • breakingcups 6 months ago
                                                                Filing false reports like this should count as fraud.
                                                                • terminalbraid 6 months 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.
                                                                  • ndsipa_pomu 6 months ago
                                                                    Whilst I agree in principle that deliberate disruption of other people's websites/serivces should be more harshly punished, I don't think it's particularly practical. There's so many ways that modern companies can obfuscate the reasoning behind what they do, so I've come to the conclusion that if they're causing harm to someone else, then they should be punished/made to pay no matter their excuse.

                                                                    If companies hide behind negligence/incompetence, then we need to make it costly for them to be negligent/incompetent.

                                                                    • joquarky 6 months ago
                                                                      Discerning intent is a waste of time and resources in cases like this.
                                                                      • Gigachad 6 months 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.
                                                                      • concerndc1tizen 6 months ago
                                                                        I.e. as a crime rather than just a civic tort? I agree.
                                                                        • pdpi 6 months 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.
                                                                        • kevingadd 6 months ago
                                                                          It does but there's no actual way to get legal recourse for false DMCA notices or anything similar. The legal system is stacked for the abusers to have their way and the victims to have no recourse, regardless of how egregious the abuse is.
                                                                          • 6 months ago
                                                                            • Suppafly 6 months ago
                                                                              >Filing false reports like this should count as fraud.

                                                                              It does, but they never mess with anyone with big enough pockets to get sued for it.

                                                                              • RobotToaster 6 months ago
                                                                                Isn't it already classed as perjury?
                                                                                • plorkyeran 6 months ago
                                                                                  No, the perjury aspect of a DMCA takedown (which isn't even applicable here as that's not what they did) is if you don't actually represent the person that you claim to be filing a takedown on behalf of.
                                                                              • Cthulhu_ 6 months 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.

                                                                                • hresvelgr 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months ago
                                                                                      Sounds like you could write a series of blog posts I’d like to read!
                                                                                    • paxys 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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.

                                                                                      • Razengan 6 months 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 :)

                                                                                        • egorfine 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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.

                                                                                              • TiredOfLife 6 months ago
                                                                                                It's not optimal, but the domain registrar must choose between every domain they have and one that is causing trouble.
                                                                                            • codatory 6 months 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.
                                                                                              • rpastuszak 6 months ago
                                                                                                Is it possible/worth to hold them financially accountable for this? (them being IWMN or BrandShield)
                                                                                                • andrewmcwatters 6 months ago
                                                                                                  You really need to get off both .io and this no-name registrar.
                                                                                                  • thn-gap 6 months 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.
                                                                                                    • Arch485 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months ago
                                                                                                            > but I sense they are heading the namecheap way

                                                                                                            What makes you say that?

                                                                                                        • xinayder 6 months ago
                                                                                                          You should change registrars. Sort the situation and move to a better one.
                                                                                                          • oneeyedpigeon 6 months 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/3lcuitcck...)
                                                                                                            • jaromiru 6 months 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.
                                                                                                              • safety1st 6 months 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 6 months 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 6 months 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.
                                                                                                                • tonygiorgio 6 months 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.
                                                                                                                  • antihero 6 months ago
                                                                                                                    Can you transfer the domain out?
                                                                                                                    • leafo 6 months 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 6 months ago
                                                                                                                        Hopefully once they release the hold another registrar will be sought immediately.
                                                                                                                    • nonplus 6 months 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.
                                                                                                                      • meaydinli 6 months ago
                                                                                                                        Behavior from "iwantmyname" doesn't sound like they deserve your business anymore.
                                                                                                                        • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                          • derefr 6 months 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.)

                                                                                                                          • nguyenquocthao 6 months 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?
                                                                                                                            • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                              • JosefAlbers 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                It's working again now.
                                                                                                                                • seanthemon 6 months 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.

                                                                                                                                  • jeroenhd 6 months 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".

                                                                                                                                    • willis936 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                      It's just so surprisingly tone deaf when things like this are done by companies that exist purely within the goodwill of their customers. Nothing that funko brings to the table has inherent value. If they have any world outlook other than to love their customers as much as they can, then they will fail in a time measured in quarters.
                                                                                                                                      • CM30 6 months 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.

                                                                                                                                      • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                        After this, everyone will be moving away from this registrar...
                                                                                                                                        • npteljes 6 months 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.
                                                                                                                                          • PostOnce 6 months 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.

                                                                                                                                            • TiredOfLife 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                              And itch.io who removed that page.
                                                                                                                                            • Hamuko 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                              Fan anything has always been at the mercy of the trademark owner.
                                                                                                                                              • seanthemon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                there was a time where the internet wasn't a corpo hellscape.
                                                                                                                                            • Suppafly 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                              I wish brandshield would pull this shit with someone that was large enough to sue them for fraud or tortious interference.
                                                                                                                                              • mort96 6 months 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.
                                                                                                                                                • pessimizer 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                  [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                  • lxgr 6 months 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.

                                                                                                                                                  • jamessbutler322 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                    [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                  • KingOfCoders 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                    "Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain"

                                                                                                                                                    One registrar off the list of registrars you wanna use.

                                                                                                                                                    • jamil7 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                      They used to be really good, independent registrar from New Zealand but I think got acquired sometime a few years ago and went down hill.
                                                                                                                                                      • BrandiATMuhkuh 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                        Yes that's true. Just yesterday I bought a new domain through them.

                                                                                                                                                        I'm surprised about their slowness. Again, 2 days ago I sent a request via their web-form and less than 24h later it was resolved.

                                                                                                                                                        Disclosure: I know the founder (Lenz).

                                                                                                                                                        • MortyWaves 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                          Is Lenz happy with how he operates his company?
                                                                                                                                                        • conradfr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                          The same thing happened to Gandi.
                                                                                                                                                          • Algent 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                            It's crazy how downhill Gandi went in 2 years. Went from decently priced French registar to basically asking for 70€ a year for a mailbox and lately asked me for over 40€ to renew a dot dev domain. I ended up transferring all my domains due to this.
                                                                                                                                                            • officialchicken 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                              Gandi went sour when the original French company was forced to open a separate company for the US several years before being sold. IIRC it was related EU privacy but they publicly stated it was about credit card processing.
                                                                                                                                                        • sureglymop 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                          A similar thing has happened to me before. There is a company with the same name as my surname with a trademark for it.

                                                                                                                                                          When I registered a domain with my surname in it, the registrar had an automatic process in place that checked for this trademark and took away access of the domain. So far so good. The problem was that the registrar and its support then ghosted me and also never refunded me for the money already paid to lease the domain for a year. Overall it was a bad experienced with bad communication that made me switch registrar (note: this was a different registrar than mentioned here).

                                                                                                                                                          I think one of the problems is that as more and more individual consumers buy domains, certain legal processes and automation are not ready for that. A good registrar should anticipate that an individual private consumer may not have the legal experience or knowledge to deal with just being hit with something they were never explicitly warned of.

                                                                                                                                                          • lolinder 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                            > When I registered a domain with my surname in it, the registrar had an automatic process in place that checked for this trademark and took away access of the domain. So far so good.

                                                                                                                                                            I don't think this is good.

                                                                                                                                                            Trademarks are country-specific, not global like domains. Further, within a country trademarks are only valid within the scope of certain classes, which means:

                                                                                                                                                            * There will often be more than one trademark holder of even non-surname trademarks.

                                                                                                                                                            * You can't trademark a surname to prevent its use generally, you can only restrict its use in a narrow sphere.

                                                                                                                                                            I understand why domain registrars automatically overenforce their country's trademark laws (they can't deal with the legal complications that will result from them not doing so), but it's very much not good that someone like you can get to a domain for your surname first and be told you can't have it in case the trademark holder (for which class???) might want it.

                                                                                                                                                            • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                              > Trademarks are country-specific, not global like domains.

                                                                                                                                                              Domains are also subject to local law! For ccTLDs, it's usually that of the country in question; for gTLD, to my knowledge the US has effective jurisdiction (through ICANN) over at least some of the popular gTLDs such as .com and .net.

                                                                                                                                                              "Local law" in this case doesn't just include actual laws on the books, but also the risk and cost of getting sued by either a trademark holder or a non-trademark-infringing domain owner.

                                                                                                                                                              This is exactly the type of issue that people usually don't consider when picking a TLD, vanity or otherwise.

                                                                                                                                                            • hobofan 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                              > I think one of the problems is that as more and more individual consumers buy domains

                                                                                                                                                              Huh, I was always under the assumption that the percentage of domains bought by individual consumers is shrinking. As in, in the early days of the internet until ~2010 where commercialization was only slowly picking up (or only concentrated to a few domains), the majority of domains were personal websites and blogs.

                                                                                                                                                              • ivanmontillam 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                > Huh, I was always under the assumption that the percentage of domains bought by individual consumers is shrinking.

                                                                                                                                                                Yes, but a segment of the domain market still buys their name domains and defends them on the Internet.

                                                                                                                                                                I bought my fname+lname domain a few years ago, but I'm not planning to surrender it to a random conglomerate.

                                                                                                                                                                > As in, in the early days of the internet until ~2010 where commercialization was only slowly picking up (or only concentrated to a few domains), the majority of domains were personal websites and blogs.

                                                                                                                                                                A deep part of me hopes this part of the market never dies, for the good health of the Internet's sovereignity.

                                                                                                                                                                • djsnoopy 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                  The percentage share of personal domains doesn’t tell you everything. More and more consumers probably are buying personal domains just by the nature of it getting cheaper and easier to host and there being more people on the internet year over year. Could be proven wrong though because I don’t know how to get the numbers.
                                                                                                                                                                • moralestapia 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                  Trademarks are country specific while domain names are not. Would be interesting to know what happens if they took this to trial (in which country though).
                                                                                                                                                                  • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                    Of course domain registrations are also subject to national law. .io in particular is (currently) under UK jurisdiction.
                                                                                                                                                                    • moralestapia 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                      Hmm ... you're right, I could have worded that differently to help people like you understand the point being made.

                                                                                                                                                                      s/domain names are not/DNS is not/

                                                                                                                                                                  • will5421 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                    Which registrar was this? I’d like to avoid them.
                                                                                                                                                                    • Modified3019 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                      “iwantmyname”, from leafo’s post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033
                                                                                                                                                                      • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                        I find it curious that this (purely factual and correct) comment got downvoted/flagged into oblivion.
                                                                                                                                                                        • Modified3019 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                          Now that it’s morning, I realize that the comment I was replying to wasn’t asking about itch.io’s registrar, but was actually a reply to a post by sureglymop.

                                                                                                                                                                          Basically I didn’t notice the very slight indentation on my phone. Whoops.

                                                                                                                                                                          I don’t know who sureglymop‘s registrar is. I’d encourage them to name and shame, refusing to refund is unacceptable.

                                                                                                                                                                          • roryokane 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                            How would you know whether Modified3019’s comment is factual and correct? sureglymop wrote “note: this was a different registrar than mentioned here”, and they haven’t written any other comments in the thread that might identify the registrar.
                                                                                                                                                                            • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                              Update: Turns out GP simply replied to the wrong thread, so it was just a typical case of "downvoting takes less effort than pointing out a mistake", I suppose.
                                                                                                                                                                        • rf15 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                          Brand Shield and other AI slopware needs to be sued to death for all the damage they cause, including their customer's reputation and bottom line
                                                                                                                                                                          • paxys 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                            Even if the suit is 100% justified (which it is in this case), and you can show damages, the problem will usually be of jurisdiction.

                                                                                                                                                                            Funko Pop is an American Company.

                                                                                                                                                                            BrandShield, the "Brand Protection Software" they used, is based out of Israel.

                                                                                                                                                                            iwantmyname, the registrar, is from New Zealand.

                                                                                                                                                                            They got bought out by Team Internet, which is British.

                                                                                                                                                                            And who knows where all of them are actually registered.

                                                                                                                                                                            They are all going to point the finger at each other for the problem. Who do you sue, and where?

                                                                                                                                                                            • latexr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                              The chain of culpability, in my view as an outsider, goes iwantmyname > BrandShield > Funko Pop.

                                                                                                                                                                              Funko Pop hired BrandShield, but from what I understand they did so exactly because the latter does all the work without you having to intervene. Kind of like you hiring a lawyer and them using ChatGPT to present the case, full of errors and non-existent sources. The lawyer might have been acting on your behalf, but they didn’t really do so according to your intentions and their fuck up isn’t your fault. On first view I’d say BrandShield is a culprit here, but can’t be so sure about Funko Pop yet.

                                                                                                                                                                              On the other hand, iwantmyname is absolutely at fault. They took down a client’s website without asking or recourse, then sat on their asses. That’s who you sue, because they’re the ones who ultimately had the power and made the decision that affected itch.io. If iwantmyname wants to sue BrandShield and/or Funk Pop or whatever else in turn, none of your concern. The one’s who hurt the business were iwantmyname by not doing due diligence or contacting the client but just automatically bending over.

                                                                                                                                                                              Now if they should be sued in Britain or New Zealand, that’s for the lawyers to know.

                                                                                                                                                                              In fact, all of this is for the lawyers to figure out. I’m not one. I’m merely expressing what makes logical sense to me, which could be incredibly wrong.

                                                                                                                                                                              • YetAnotherNick 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                If you hire the bad lawyer and loose the case, the lawyer won't serve your penalty. If Funko authorizes anyone to represent them, they are responsible.
                                                                                                                                                                              • Etherlord87 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                You sue the registrar, because you have the contract with the registrar.
                                                                                                                                                                                • toast0 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                  You also sue the others, because they interfered with your contract with the registrar.
                                                                                                                                                                                • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                  You don't necessarily have to sue them in their place of registration if they're doing business elsewhere. "Defending trademark rights" probably counts as that.
                                                                                                                                                                                • kvdveer 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                  Of course the problem is that legally speaking, they don't cause any damage - service providers they target cause the damage. BS have no true authority over these service providers, just the threat of some legal claim. The service providers comply voluntarily as they don't want to spend time checking if the claim is valid.
                                                                                                                                                                                  • PostOnce 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                    I don't think this is the kind of advice a good lawyer would give.

                                                                                                                                                                                    BrandShield, Funko, and iwantmyname all caused serious financial harm through, at a minimum, tortious negligence.

                                                                                                                                                                                    I'm not a lawyer, but even a yokel like me knows there's more to this legally than a shrug and "the software did it".

                                                                                                                                                                                    • jcranmer 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                      IANAL either, but my guess is that itch.io has precisely 0 plausible legal recourse here.

                                                                                                                                                                                      The strongest case would be something along the lines of breach of contract via the domain registrar, but your standard internet contract has a term in it that amounts to "we get the right to fuck you", so I assume that applies here, so no breach of contract actually exists. This also kills every claim that's dependent on breach of contract, so tortious interference is also dead.

                                                                                                                                                                                      Fraud will fail because itch.io itself isn't being defrauded at the very least. Business disparagement, and anything else along the lines of defamation, is going to fail because you need something like actual malice--specific knowledge of falsity--there, and that's essentially impossible to prove, not without somebody admitting that they knew all along everything was false.

                                                                                                                                                                                      Tortious interference is dead for several reasons. First, you need an underlying tort, which, as detailed above, probably doesn't exist. Next, you need specific knowledge of the contract being broken. Finally, you need intentionality here: it's not "I did something that caused the contract to be broken", it's "I did something to cause the contract to be broken." Outside of somebody jumping up and down shouting "I'm tortiously interfering with your contracts," it's basically impossible to prove tortious interference.

                                                                                                                                                                                      • RichEO 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                        It’s clear that you’re not a lawyer, because if you were you’d know that there’s no established duty of care between BrandShield and web masters.
                                                                                                                                                                                      • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                        Eh, dunno about that. They made what would appear to be a false complaint; hard to really consider what was going on here ‘fraud and phishing’!

                                                                                                                                                                                        That the magic robot perhaps did it for them matters not at all, in terms of whose fault it is, though a proliferation of magic robots does make junk services like this more of a problem, in that they can flood the internet with nonsense more effectively.

                                                                                                                                                                                        • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                          Then there needs to be some cost associated with sending a completely false claim.

                                                                                                                                                                                          Doesn’t need to be huge – just enough to cover their cost and thereby make it uneconomical to outsource the work these companies are charging their customers for to their targets.

                                                                                                                                                                                        • raxxorraxor 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                          Yes, but also you need to bring your legislators to heel. It is entirely their fault.

                                                                                                                                                                                          That you have grifters like brandshield is a symptom. Although you should never employ their lawyers for anything either of course. Make the taint stick to them.

                                                                                                                                                                                          • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                          • bpye 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                            The registrar in question is iwantmyname, so I guess you can add them to your "do not use" list.
                                                                                                                                                                                            • paxys 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                              I feel like it's better to have a "do use" list for something as important as a domain name registrar.

                                                                                                                                                                                              - Namecheap

                                                                                                                                                                                              - Cloudflare

                                                                                                                                                                                              - Route 53 (if on AWS)

                                                                                                                                                                                              Any others?

                                                                                                                                                                                              • koito17 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                Personally use Porkbun since Namecheap's API is poorly-documented and they attempted a KYC audit for purchasing a $100 domain.

                                                                                                                                                                                                I am fine with the identity verification, but their ticketing system seems to have sent all of my e-mail to their spam box, because they would never respond. I attempted opening tickets explaining the e-mail situation, but they wouldn't listen. In the end, I gave up and let them deactivate the account.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Moved to Porkbun, purchased the exact same domain (no KYC required!), and have been a happy user of their API for about two years now. They also have much more lax requirements for API usage compared to Namecheap. Porkbun also supports WebAuthn and logging in with a security key. It's overall a much nicer service than Namecheap.

                                                                                                                                                                                                • yorer 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                  That kyc thingy is icann requirement, its how domain registration works. Icann require every accredited registrar to verify registrant details so registrar would randomly ask for id, passport etc. That include porkbun, they're bound to their contract with icann as an accredited registrar too. They probably won't ask today but maybe tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, or never.
                                                                                                                                                                                                  • antihero 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                    Do porkbun have a terraform provider?

                                                                                                                                                                                                    E: https://registry.terraform.io/providers/cullenmcdermott/pork...

                                                                                                                                                                                                    Not sure if it works though

                                                                                                                                                                                                    • adhamsalama 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                      I bought a domain on Namecheap instead of Porkbun for the exact same reason!
                                                                                                                                                                                                    • kallistisoft 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                      I've been using IONOS (formerly 1und1) for the last 20 years for all of my DNS and hosting needs and couldn't be happier. Their uptime, non-obtrusive policies, and customer support have all been top notch. Can't recommend enough.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      As an example; I had a dedicated server that I was leasing that I wanted to upgrade, the sales tech noticed that the plan I was currently on had been retired/replaced and credited my account with difference of what I had payed vs the new payment tier which amounted to six months of billing on the upgraded server. You can't really put a price on that kind of honesty!

                                                                                                                                                                                                      • MortyWaves 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                        Their extremely weird and annoying adverts in the UK have ensured I will never use any of their services.
                                                                                                                                                                                                        • supermatt 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                          I read this as you having to contact them in order for them to credit you for overcharging you for a retired product when the replacement equivalent was priced lower.

                                                                                                                                                                                                          Why didn't they proactively inform you that your service was retired and there was an alternative available?

                                                                                                                                                                                                          It sounds like this must have been going on for a while to be worth 6 months of service in difference alone.

                                                                                                                                                                                                          I left 1and1 close on 2 decades ago. If you consider this a story of good service, then I would suggest you try some other provider.

                                                                                                                                                                                                          • terminalbraid 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                            IONOS requires you to make a phone call to talk to their retention reps before you can cancel anything
                                                                                                                                                                                                            • antifa 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                              1and1 would call my house trying to sell me shit.
                                                                                                                                                                                                            • soulofmischief 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                              Namecheap is terrible and cannot be trusted, you can google tons of horror stories.

                                                                                                                                                                                                              Without a doubt, Porkbun is one of the best. Their staff is knowledgeable, helpful and efficient. Highly recommend them.

                                                                                                                                                                                                              • JimDabell 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                Namecheap is definitely on my “never use under any circumstances” list for reasons I outlined in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18091287

                                                                                                                                                                                                                The full thread is worth reading for more feedback on a range of registrars, particularly Namecheap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086522

                                                                                                                                                                                                                I strongly encourage people to only recommend domain registrars if they have verified that customer support won’t completely fuck you over when something goes wrong. Recommending registrars when you’ve only experienced the happy path is doing a disservice to the people you are trying to help out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                • forgotpwd16 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Namecheap gave me a quick response and help when requested support regarding a DNSSEC issue. So not everyone has bad customer experience when they needing it.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • doublerabbit 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I use namecheap too.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Apart from their UI being, huh, I've had no problems.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • xoa 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                    easyDNS still seems good for those who want a more old style "full fat" registrar like gandi was? I know some folks I respect who have long used it alongside Route 53. Though they don't appear to support hardware tokens which is a major black mark in my book in 2024.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    As well as Gandi, DNSimple was another higher service one I really liked that went crazy on pricing. Agreed the registrar scene nowadays seems like a quite small "do use" list vs a couple of "don't use" :(.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • mech422 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I've been using easyDNS for 5(10?) years... Never had a problem with them and highly recommend them. I do 'hobby stuff' - nothing fancy, but it always just works. One time I called to ask if they support wildcard sub-domains (www..example.com or whatever..example.com) and actually had a real engineer pick up the phone :-) (btw - it did work, very well actually :-) )

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The backup mail spool is nice too...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      all in all - not the cheapest - but worth the piece of mind in my book :-D

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • teitoklien 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Route 53 is outrageously expensive for domains, one should only use it, if they need AWS’s DNS product.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • nucleardog 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        For .com as of Aug 2024, Verisign says they charge $10.26 wholesale, and ICAANN charges $0.18/domain for a total of $10.46/yr wholesale.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Route53's .com is $14/yr. So the three year price is $42.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Three year prices from a few registrars (there's so many pricing games the "per year" price is nonsense in most cases):

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Cloudflare: $31.32 (-0.06)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            GoDaddy: $46.93 (+15.55)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Namecheap: $41.24 (+9.86)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Namesilo: $51.87 (+20.49)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Porkbun: $29.61 (-1.77)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Route53: $42 (+10.46)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Spaceship: $28.98 (-2.40)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        All diffs given against the $31.38/3yr wholesale price from Verisign+ICAAN.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Not sure how that qualifies as "outrageously expensive".

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        You can make your own trade-offs, but for something that's literally the foundation of my online identity, business, etc I'm willing to pay $3.50/yr over wholesale for a company with a reputation, support, and generally aligned incentives.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        You may choose to instead tie your online identity and business to someone charging less than cost to save half the price of a big mac a year. But I will find it hard to dig up much sympathy when we all find out _how_ they're planning to make money doing that.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • pfoof 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          You can use any registrar with R53, so it's more like: if you really need to have domain registration written in Terraform and the other registrar doesn't provide it
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • bpye 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Porkbun seem popular, I do use them for a couple domains. I haven't heard of anything egregious.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • spiffotron 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I use porkbun for all my domains, I’ve never had any issues and they don’t seem to gouge you on price for the smallest things.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • kuon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I use infomaniak from switzerland. Mainly because I can physically go to their office and discuss in person if there is a problem.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • cachedthing0 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I used infomaniak once, I'm sure you spended quite some time at their office.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • Luker88 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Any recommendations for people looking for a strictly European registrar?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • astrange 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Hover is fine. Never had a domain shut down though.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I have one on dynadot because Hover doesn't support the TLD, and the website sure is a lot more awkward.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • freedomben 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another happy Hover user. Been using them many years. Not the cheapest, but a reasonable markup and works well, and hasn't shown signs of enshittification. Knock on wood.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • latexr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I’ve been using Hover since they advertised on 5by5 a decade and a half ago, and never had a single issue. They never bother me nor do I need to remember they exist. I only hear from them when they need ICANN contact confirmation or to remind me a domain is expiring.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • TurtleStacker 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  INWX
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • zeeZ 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I'm very happy with INWX, but their API is a bit lacking when it comes to limiting the potential blast radius.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    It's either full access to everything or, thanks to their support for creating a special account on request, only full access to DNS management.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • cybrox 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Been with INWX for >10y, never had an issue.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • sebmellen 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        INWX is really great and they also support just about every TLD.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • thequux 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I've used Register4Less for over a decade and I've been thrilled with them. They're slightly more expensive than the cheapest options (by a buck or two), but this is more than made up for by the fact that they're the only registrar I've ever used who have proactively reached out about minor issues. Every time I've needed to email them, I've gotten a response from somebody who can fix the problem within minutes.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • norman784 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Can you elaborate on Cloudflare?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I currently have some domains there (moved a few years ago from Godaddy), so is there something I need to worry about?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • beAbU 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Cloudflare is on the GP's "do use" list, not the "do not use" list.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I think the HN consensus is that Cloudflare is a reasonably safe bet.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • framapotari 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                This is a "do use" list, so recommended services.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • orphea 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Namecheap is on my personal "never use; fuck them" list. I moved my domains to Cloudflare, and I am happy since then.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Porkbun is great.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • pfoof 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I use Namecheap and sadly still Gandi for old domains.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The only issue I experience with Namecheap are included redirects which have something like 90% uptime.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Route53 domains is seriously not needed for anything - just add zone in AWS and point your registrar to new NS.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • weberer 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    >Route53 domains is seriously not needed for anything

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    If you're already hosting on AWS, then you'd only have one potentially hostile company to deal with instead of 2.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • KingOfCoders 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Namecheap has horrendous billing UI with their products, also not PDF so makes it hard for freelancers when you have many domains and your accounts want an PDF. Easiest is a registrar that mails you invoices in PDF.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • teitoklien 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      their billing works just fine, i pay with it all the time.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      They support credit/debit cards, bitcoin, and Paypal. I went with Namecheap especially because of their seamless payment method, Used to struggle at times paying for my domains with Gandi, etc.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Namecheap payment system works just fine.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • Ylpertnodi 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I'd prefer a 'do not' list, because 'experience quoted'. Any one of the names you mention could be bought/ new CEO etc tomorrow and start the turdification (tm) slide.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • midasz 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I'm with Namecheap and they're decent but one big minus is how inaccessible their API is, would put them on the bottom of the "do use" list.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • RobKohr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I have used dreamhost forever and have had a lot of domains through them for over 20 years. Never had a hitch and excellent customer service.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • itscrush 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Namecheap's been out a while, I'd drop them from your list too. Porkbun's in for now.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • spariev 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I use pananames.com, they for sure won't do things like OP described
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • poincaredisk 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  OVH is pretty good
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • nicoloren 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Yes, never add a problem here (in France).
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • bb010g 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I've had great experiences with NameSilo.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • smitelli 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Another happy customer of NameSilo here. A handful of .com, .net, and a .org domain registered with them, and I've never been personally irritated by anything they've done.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • f33d5173 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The upper two have had several known issues with them. I haven't heard anything about the latter one, but that doesn't mean they're free of issues.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • gcr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Namesilo?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • tucnak 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Gandi?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • trissi1996 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            They hiked prices massively so I wanted to transfer away, it was a massive shitshow.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Auth-codes given on the website were expired and they took 2 weeks to give me the correct ones near the end of the registry period.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Support was extremely unresponsive. As this this was a side project I couldn't spent time on every day my domain went into quarantine for a short time. They answered 2 days before the end of the rental period, when requesting the auth codes ~2.5 weeks before.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Will never use them again after this experience.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Porkbun is my new home for most stuff and domains.lt for .lt which porkbun doesn't offer yet sadly.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • eps 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Bought by a private equity company.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Went back on their contract obligations already, hiked prices, etc. Will be milked to death.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Best to consider them dead.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • supermatt 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                god no - gandi absolutely suck now for both service and price. I moved all my domains to netim.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • jarofgreen 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  They were sold to another company a year or two ago and now some people are a bit wary
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • weinzierl 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  easyDNS (not to be confused with DNSEasy or DNS Made Easy). Very happy customer for many years and there are not many companies I can say that about.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  If you are in Germany donaindiscount24.com is good option too.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • TZubiri 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  What's wrong with aws lmao
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • bigstrat2003 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Nothing. He said that they are one you should use.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • seanthemon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I've been using namecheap for over a decade and have had zero issues with them.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • drusepth 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  We actually had almost the exact same thing happen to Notebook.ai last month:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  - automated notice of trademark infringement from some posted user content, accusing us of "fraud and phishing" (filed by a third party on behalf of Meta)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  - that user content was immediately deleted upon receiving the notice

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  - exactly a week later, our host (Heroku) banned our account with a generic no-reason "Your account has been banned."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Total downtime of about 24 hours until it was resolved; luckily, Heroku's support simply unbanned the account whenever I reached out to ask why we were banned. Migrating to another host wouldn't have taken much longer, but would have been a pain.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Goes to show layering a couple automated processes together can have pretty devastating false-positives. I'm glad there was a human in the loop at Heroku I could reach to get things sorted out relatively quickly; also glad to see Itch.io is back up and got it sorted out relatively quickly as well.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • Animats 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Hm. So Funko sells merchandise related to the Jurassic World franchise.[1] But, according to Licensing International, Mattel licenses the toy rights to that franchise from Universal Products and Experiences, the merchandise arm of Universal Pictures. [2] Also, Funko sells Disney Princess dolls.[3] Mattel announced a multi-year licensing deal with Disney to license the doll rights for Disney Princess dolls. “The courage and compassion found throughout our Disney Princess and Frozen stories and characters continue to inspire fans around the globe,” said Stephanie Young, President of Disney Consumer Products, Games and Publishing. “By furthering our longstanding relationship with Mattel, we look forward to expanding the worlds of Disney Princess and Frozen, introducing an innovative new era of these beloved franchises through captivating products and play opportunities.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Might be useful to send letters to Disney's and Mattel's legal departments. Mattel paid a lot of money for that Disney license. Disney is very protective of those licenses. Mattel lost the Disney license to Hasbro for a few years due to overproduction of low quality dolls. I'm surprised to see Funko selling low-quality Disney dolls. They degrade a Disney brand.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [1] https://funko.com/pop-tyrannosaurus-rex-fossil/80225.html

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [2] https://licensinginternational.org/news/mattel-and-universal...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [3] https://funko.com/fandoms/animation-cartoons/disney-princess...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [4] https://corporate.mattel.com/news/mattel-and-disney-announce...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • Freak_NL 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Why on earth would you send letters? These are all huge corporations with sizeable legal departments. They either know or they should, and most importantly, are paid to handle this. Moreover, you're not likely to be heard or understood by the first line of customer care there, even if this was something they weren't aware of (quite unlikely) but wished they were. It's a waste of time, and something even the biggest altruist would find hard to defend as a sensible effort.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Besides, Disney is perfectly capable of degrading their own brand.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • OrangeMusic 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I think OP's plan wasn't to help Disney, but to hurt Funko?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        But I agree this is most probably futile :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • therealcamino 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I think Funko's products are classified as collectibles, not dolls. I am sure they have licenses from Disney.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • dawnerd 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Disney and Universal license and even sell Funko in their parks. But what you did discover is why some are bobble heads.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • Jdfmiller 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I sent a request to the registrar, and they emailed with this response. They're claiming it wasn't their fault.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          --------

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Your request has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            9 Dec 2024, 10:57 UTC
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Hello and thank you for your message.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The domain name was already reinstated earlier today after the registrant finally responded to our notice and took appropriate action to resolve the issue
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • KerrAvon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The registrant is itch.io. Sounds like victim blaming.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • nicoloren 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I've experienced the same thing: a YouTube channel deleted without any explanation (the email from Google mentioned spam, even though I filmed all the videos myself), Facebook preventing me from sharing posts from a website (without any explanation), and of course, domain names that get deindexed from Google without any reason (no message in Google Search Console).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I believe we've reached a point where any activity on the web can vanish overnight due to an AI or an algorithm making decisions based on obscure criteria.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • subarctic 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I mean at least those are walled garden platforms where this sort of thing we've come to expect. An independent website as big as itch.io going down because of a bogus complaint is a big surprise
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • Aachen 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                That's what I thought. Last week, two of my domains were frozen by the TLD owner without notice, and they'd take them offline altogether in 7 days if I didn't supply some paperwork to my registrar

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I've had these domains for ten years, now all of a sudden this is super urgent and if I'm on holiday that'd be a real shame I guess

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                So I contact the registrar and a link to the relevant legislation was sufficient to send them a perfectly agreeably censored version of my identity document (removing just irrelevant information they can't use or verify anyway), but apparently all they do is forward it to support@afnic.fr and not actually mark the domain holder as verified. So AFNIC, predictably, rejects it because GDPR doesn't exist in France

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I saw no other choice but to send everything into AFNIC's email inbox / support system, which famously never get leaked and they assured me was "highly" secured when I asked to at least remove it after verification

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                With just 7 days' notice and half of that going to the distraction of a registrar, there's also no way to figure out what's even going on or have any sort of conversation. They hold all the cards and you jump when they say hop

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I'm considering my options for any TLDs owned by AFNIC... evidently .io isn't better, but how to know who is

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • CM30 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            It should be illegal for any company to rely on AI or automation to handle legal risks, especially without any human driven support to fall back on. The fact we're handling over things this serious to unreliable and poorly configured systems feels like absolute insanity to me.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Also, why is the domain registrar even being contacted here? I thought the general idea was that you'd first contact the site owner and wait for a response, and if there's no response in a certain amount of time, then you might contact the registrar or something. No one should be going over the heads of website owners and creators for matters like this, especially not as their first resort.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            In a logical world, they'd contact Itch.io and Itch.io would take down the page (which they did), and that would be it. No need to involve the registrar at all in a case like this one.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • lxgr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I don't think it needs to be illegal – it should be enough to just hold companies responsible for the consequences, just like they are for using any other kind of technical system without appropriate supervision.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • CobrastanJorji 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Question to lawyers: is there a colorable lawsuit against Funko and/or Brand Shield if itch.io can demonstrate quantifiable lost revenue for those N days of being offline?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • lmm 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Given that this was apparently a false (and recklessly so, though that's going to be the hard part) report of fraud/phishing and not a DMCA takedown, yeah that sounds like tortious interference.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • haunter 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Slight off topic but interesting that the post has similar interaction stats (replies and reposts/quotes) between Twitter and Bluesky except the likes which are 3x higher on the former https://files.catbox.moe/82x7ue.jpeg
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • huhtenberg 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    BlueSky seems to be far less like-oriented. They aren't just a good metric of engagement there. People read and move on. If it might be helpful to others, they will repost, and that's it.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Besides, with 26K followers on BlueSky vs 173K on Twitter, I'd say the engagement on the former is significantly higher any way.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • robin_reala 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Luckily with Bluesky you can link to a post and everyone can see the replies.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • Retr0id 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        For now! The bluesky URL contains "itch.io" (their handle), and under atproto, DNS name resolution is actually an integral part of handle resolution. It will start 404ing if/when relevant caches expire.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        This one uses the "DID", not the handle, and will not 404: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oy37ivqnriw6nx3lrbcht2u3/po... (cc dang)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Open issue regarding making bsky URLs less fragile while also not looking ugly: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/1221

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • peckemys 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I think GP comment meant that when you link to a Twitter thread, logged-out users will only see the single post without any replies. On Bluesky, you can see the whole thread.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Interesting - most Bluesky accounts, especially those related to gaming, are reporting higher engagement stats on Bluesky, at least relatively if not absolutely.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • blitzar 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • Etheryte 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Well of course, your bot is having a wonderful time interacting with other bots. A whole bunch of resources wasted while making everything worse for real humans.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Oh, they've made it to bluesky now as well, unfortunately.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              (Though, if you use a moderation service which flags/hides accounts with AI generated imagery, that's close to 100% effective for catching crypto scam stuff. Apparently, your average crypto scammer just can't resist a bit of AI-generated banner.)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • MortyWaves 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Thanks for making the internet shittier
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • smitelli 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Odd flex but OK.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I don’t think it’s that surprising; Bluesky is quite big amongst the audience who cares about this sort of thing, and the author isn’t a bluetick so will have visibility relatively suppressed on Twitter.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • gcr 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I heard about this incident from a link shared from Bluesky first, which is significant because most of my social circle tends to use twitter
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • leonard-somero 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I am Leonard Somero, I run verysoftwares.itch.io. I have over 300 followers and a game with 20k+ plays that has been repeatedly featured on the front page.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  This certainly changed my morning routine! I am glad to hear that the reason wasn't me deleting my Twitter from my page. My first panic reaction was thinking it was me who's caused it, due to some kind of ad revenue conflict.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Ever seen the movie Summer Wars? I felt like the protagonist for a moment there, but glad it turns out it was just some 2020s AI nonsense.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Either way, there's surely an engineer somewhere who's very busy right now.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • Shank 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    > Ever seen the movie Summer Wars? I felt like the protagonist for a moment there, but glad it turns out it was just some 2020s AI nonsense.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Love Machine was a rouge AI in Summer Wars, though.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • gessha 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Rouge or rogue :D
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • juped 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Everyone involved in this is terrible except itch.io; it's a shame litigation, the available method for redressing this, is often avoided due to the high expense.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • zo1 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      As a naive and new adult entering the world, I would have assumed that all you need to do is report this to your police/government, and they'll start a case, preliminarily determine that "Yeah, some sort of fraud happened" and then proceed to start a court case against the accused party so that a jury/judge can determine it's validity.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The fact that lawyers and the "lawyer system", in conjunction with prosecutorial offices and the police, has made this expensive and pretty impossible for 99% of people and companies is a huge problem. It basically nullifies the whole point of government as protector of people's rights and enforcer of laws.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It's very unlikely that anything criminal has happened here, so government is irrelevant. I'm not even sure we're seeing any malevolence, just rank incompetence.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • zo1 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Maybe not "criminal", sure. But even us thinking "oh it's a civil matter, not criminal one" is something conjured up by the lawyers in conjunction with government. It's such a convenient excuse, basically making it so that you as the injured party need to prove something at your own expense - expense that is directly funneled to the lawyer class.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          At the very least what happened here is lying in a commercial context. Arguably something that should be illegal, and sometimes is illegal under the banner of "fraud". Again, the definition of fraud is not obvious (despite them arguing it is super explicit in the laws) and we have to rely on the lawyer priesthood to determine what the "sacred texts" say about it. Maybe even rolling some conjured up lawyer-dice and seeing what the Oracle at the Court says about it after they convene a little "ritual" known as a court meeting or deposition.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • soulofmischief 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Negligence at scale is malevolence.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • runevault 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Not Criminal but invalid DMCA takedowns do open you up to lawsuits. I'm curious if both sides (aka the registrar and Funko) are liable or only Funko.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • pjc50 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              This stuff would be civil jurisdiction in most countries. The Internet adds an extra layer of problems: the registrar, complainant etc may be in different countries, making it practically very hard to get anything done.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • Sophira 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                It feels like Linode did a good job, too.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • TiredOfLife 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  itch.io removed the fanpage (that didn't break any rules) that caused the takedown.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • teddyh 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Like I frequently¹ advise²:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Don’t look to large, well-known registrars. I would suggest that you look for local registrars in your area. The TLD registry for your country/area usually has a list of the authorized registrars, so you can simply search that for entities with a local address.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Disclaimer: I work at such a small registrar, but you are not in our target market.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32095499>

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  2. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507784>

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • remram 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    How do you monitor for when they inevitably get acquired?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • teddyh 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      That’s a very SV view on things; i.e. that small companies inevitably get acquired. Most small companies don’t actually get acquired, and are not looking to be acquired.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The simple answer is: Choose a registrar without significant external investors.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • timvdalen 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I got a "cease and desist" type email from one of these (Tracer AI) last week. Really annoying, but I guess spam is a prime LLM use case...
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Spam is, when it comes to it, basically the only proven LLM usecase at this point. Everything else is all a bit 'jam tomorrow', "doesn't really work now, but it'll be magic soon, we promise!", but it has very much revolutionised the spam industry.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • disjunct 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Funko as a brand exists entirely on derivative content, albeit licensed. Seems like exactly the sort of brand that would trip auto-DMCA software.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • YurgenJurgensen 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It also works out pretty well for them, as they’re basically /the/ symbol of soulless commercialism, sanding down everything distinctive about characters and producing a cuboid of concentrated Brand. Anyone who voluntarily looks at that and decides they want to be a part of it is already on board with the corporate hellscape, so nothing they do could possibly harm their reputation among their customers.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • ivanjermakov 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Since when it is registrar responsibility to take down domains based on third-party reports? I would think to do it registrar needs at least a warrant from officials, and not without a notice of domain owner.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • 6bb32646d83d 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          One of my .xyz domain was taken down because one it somehow ended up on a single spam list as Phishing (it was not hosting any phishing, and all the code is actually open source).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I never was able to get it cleared. It's crazy the power that those spam list can have and they care very little about false positives

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • slippy 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            How many other domains were knocked off by this AI reporting? Seems to me that if you make claims that have business repercussions, you need to be suable for fraud and face civil and possible criminal complaints.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Criminal seems like a stretch (at least for this sort of damaging-a-business stuff), but making false claims can absolutely have all sorts of civil consequences.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • cherryteastain 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              How are all these "DMCA Ignored" domain registrars? Do they actually send all DMCA requests to /dev/null? Sounds like using one of those would have "fixed" the problem here.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • qingcharles 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I used to host my TV torrent tracker with one of these that would ignore literally everything. Was expensive, but was factored into the costs.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • ailurooo 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ugh this kind of stuff just makes me wish DNS was less centralized, even though it's already incredibly uncentralized.. of course it's just all registrars just being a weak point.. as always
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • TZubiri 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  It is as decentralized as you can get. Dns is the entire foundation of decentralization, any more and you get into schizo hyperprivacy protocols.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • viraptor 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    It's federated, not decentralized. For decentralized you need something like https://ens.domains/
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • TZubiri 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Are there any well established definitions for these terms as separate?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • remram 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The network is decentralized, but each domain still has a single registrar, making the service you (domain owner) receive very centralized. If that one registrar misbehaves or is unresponsive, you're out of luck.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • TZubiri 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        You can switch registrars if you want.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • jstanley 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        So, it's not as decentralised as you can get, you just personally don't like decentralisation?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • TZubiri 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          *Without descending into a madness that decentralizes your very thought process and identity
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • josefritzishere 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      It may ultimately be lost revenue and lawsuits that protect us from the tidal wave of AI garbage.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • TophWells 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It's back up now!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • ChrisArchitect 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Some followup/developments (Dec 9th):

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Itch.io: "This is not a joke, Funko just called my mom"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371481

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • HelloNurse 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Congratulation for the return of the site!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • StuntPope 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                easyDNS here. Our ears were burning as multiple people have mentioned us in this thread.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                If you want to get with a registrar who is actually clueful about takedowns, we can help you out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • Beijinger 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  There are some recommendations of registrars here in the chat. Let me recommend two:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  1. internet.bs No Bullshit Domains. I am using them since 10 years, and I am very happy. Email is comparatively expensive, but you can buy this separately from infomaniak.com for 18 EURO a year.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  2. If you need country TLDs, this may be a good option: inwx.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • tekknik 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        who exactly is taking bluesky seriously? what’s their moderation policy?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • przmk 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          What does that have to do with the official itch account posting there? How would your seemingly personal beef with Bluesky impact the credibility of that?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • mrdoe 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • Duralias 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            It is the same info, you don't need to be logged in to see it (including comments) and can directly verify that it is someone with control over the domain who controls the account.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I think that sounds like a good source.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I mean, with Bluesky you can see the replies; with Twitter if you're not logged in you either get _just_ the post, or you get an error message, depending on phase of the moon. For this sort of thing, Bluesky's clearly more user-friendly.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • HelloUsername 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • jerrre 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • kobalsky 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  > Isn't insane that many of the comments are linking the CEO of Funko,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I'd say that it's normal on this site. You are misintepreting the intentions of commenters. No one is doxxing the CEO of a public company by posting a link to their profile.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  People should be telling them they screwed up when their corporate behemots run over a small village and they don't notice. Any good CEO can capitalize on that.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Of course, any threats etc. are appalling and personal stuff should be totally left out of this. On the other hand, we should be able to call out the CEO of a company when they behave like this, regardless of what has happened to other CEOs.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • tgv 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      > Am I the crazy one for seeing that in relation with the recent Health Care CEO events?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Crazy? Idk. Overreacting, perhaps. Surely the risk of someone planning an assassination over a bit of internet outage is negible. It isn't even clear who the culprit is.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • Dansvidania 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I am pretty disturbed by the same as well.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I am hoping it's all internet machismo. Not that it makes is any better..

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • CaptainFever 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Same. It's a normalization of murder as a way to seek redress.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            You've seen death threats on Bluesky aimed at the CEO over this?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • seabass-labrax 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I feel that it's been coming for a while though - the first time I noticed this sentiment was when a businessman drowned after his luxury yacht sank in in a storm[1], and there were comments on social media celebrating the event. Whatever you think of the individual or millionaires in general, I wouldn't wish that fate on my worst enemy.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/04/mike-lynch-d...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • SuperHeavy256 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Yes, I feel the same way. Internet machismo is a fairly appropriate term for it.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • malermeister 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • steve_taylor 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  It's not insane at all. Funko unalived itch.io and its entire ecosystem.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • jojobas 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    >unalived

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Go to the nearest mirror and take a good look at yourself.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • jamessbutler322 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • edent 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [flagged]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    • javawizard 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      You probably want to read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I've never heard of itch.io before but from what I can tell:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      - Itch.io is a platform where people unaffiliated with itch.io can create pages and sell video games

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      - An itch.io user created a game that used Funko's brand without authorization

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      - Itch.io (correctly) removed that page when they were made aware of that by their registrar and server host, then responded to both letting them know they'd taken care of it

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      - The server host (Linode) said that was great and closed the issue. The registrar (iwantmyname) did not respond, then a few days later yanked the domain.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      This is exactly the sort of thing the DMCA exists for (assuming itch.io is located in the United States) and it's exactly why the safe harbor provisions exist.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      It's like if someone posted a copyright-infringing picture to Facebook and Facebook's registrar responded by taking down the entirety of facebook.com.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      So no, this is not on itch.io's shoulders, this is on iwantmyname's (for disabling itch.io's domain even after being made aware of the circumstances) and Brand Shield (for not submitting a complaint to itch.io first and waiting to see if they'd take down the infringing user's content before escalating to itch.io's ISP and server host).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • edent 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I have read that.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Itch Corp might be in the USA - but their registrar is in New Zealand. That seems like a poor strategic choice for both customer service reasons and legal compatibility reasons.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I never said this was Itch's fault. But I do wonder how many takedown requests iwantmyname received, and whether that caused them to drop their customer. E.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22tagged+marvel%22+site%3Aitch.io...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      • N-Krause 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It seems like the owner of the domain received notice from the registrar 6 days ago and immediately took action by removing the content referenced in the trademark claim and notifying the registrar.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        But they got no response and instead the domain went down today.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        • oneeyedpigeon 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Going directly to the registrar in response to an issue on a handful of pages is akin to getting the wrong change, saying nothing to the person on the checkout, then seeking out the store manager to get them fired.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • steve_taylor 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            It's like going straight to the police, who then charge the employee. The employee is convicted and can't get a job because of the criminal record.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            > I'm not trying to be a corporate bootlicker

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Perhaps it comes naturally ;)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            No, but seriously, you may be giving them a bit too much benefit of the doubt.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            There's a little more context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Note the "fraud and phishing" complaint. Like, I don't see _any_ way to get to that from what's going on, and of course registrars (correctly) take such complaints far more seriously than DMCA complaints (which shouldn't really be going to the registrar in the first instance, of course).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I wouldn't particularly blame the registrar here, though now that 'AI' spamware is doing this, registrars will presumably have to take fraud complaints a lot less seriously, and the internet will get a little bit worse. But certainly this isn't itch.io's fault; the blame lies squarely with the spamware, and with Funko for using such spamware in the first place.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • edent 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              If the page said "Enter your Funko details to unlock…" or "Give us your credit card details to buy exclusive…"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Then I think it would be pretty reasonable to ask for it to be taken down.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              But none of us know what was on that page or whether it was an overreaction.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • rsynnott 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                > But none of us know what was on that page

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I mean... we do? It is described here; top post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                To be clear, there is no issue with them making a DMCA takedown. This should be made to the operator (ie itch.io). They _did not do this_. Instead they complained to the registrar of phishing/fraud. Registrars, not unreasonably, take complaints of fraud seriously, and many will nuke first and answer questions later. However, clearly, no fraud was involved.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                (I'm not sure if you're being wilfully obtuse, or if you suffer from the ol' Hackernews "reading the linked material is forbidden" problem, but I just don't see how you can defend the false complaint of fraud.)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            • SuperHeavy256 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I appreciate you trying to be an unbiased voice of reason in this time.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • Citizen_Lame 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Corporate bootlicker alert!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              • totetsu 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Is it possible for itch.io to follow the advice of putting user generated content onto a seperate domain from their main one?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                • gsck 6 months ago
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The entire site is user generated content