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Databases Piracy The Courts Games

SEGA Lawyers Demand 'Immediate Suspension' of Steam Database Over Alleged Piracy (torrentfreak.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The popular and entirely legal Steam Database has found itself in a precarious position following two erroneous DMCA notices from SEGA. Steam Database's host is being asked to suspend the platform due to a claimed lack of response to the first notice. This prompted the site to take down entirely legal content in an effort to address the problem. [...]

TorrentFreak was able to review the notice sent by SEGA to SteamDB's host and it pulls no punches. SEGA doubles down by stating that SteamDB is illegally distributing the game Yakuza: Like a Dragon, noting that it has tried to inform SteamDB but was "not able" to resolve the issue. Worryingly, it then implies that legal action might be taken against SteamDB for non-compliance, adding that the host should "immediately suspend" SteamDB due to the alleged ongoing infringement. Which, of course, is not taking place.

This puts SteamDB's host in a tough position. Failure to act against an allegedly infringing customer can put the host at risk in terms of liability but disabling a customer's website can cause a whole new set of problems, especially when that customer has not infringed anyone's rights. In an effort to sort the problem out, SteamDB's host asked for additional input from the operators of SteamDB but nevertheless warned that if that information was not received, it may still block the SteamDB server within 24 hours, as demanded in the SEGA takedown notice. In order to defuse the situation, SteamDB took down the allegedly-infringing page which as far as SEGA goes (and at least in theory) should solve the disconnection threat problem. However, the entire situation has proven counterproductive for SEGA too.
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SEGA Lawyers Demand 'Immediate Suspension' of Steam Database Over Alleged Piracy More

SEGA Lawyers Demand 'Immediate Suspension' of Steam Database Over Alleged Piracy

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  • MEH - It is DMCA as planned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpyeron ( 456009 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @05:43PM (#61218766) Homepage

    Big exempt, small stomped on.

  • It's been resolved already (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @05:48PM (#61218774)
    From https://steamdb.info/app/12351... [steamdb.info]

    After initially being taken down by a DMCA, this page is now back up as the DMCA has been retracted.

    SEGA statement:

    Earlier this week, one of our games was incorrectly flagged on SteamDB. We utilize anti-piracy software to protect our games at a large scale, but sometimes it makes mistakes. SEGA will continue to fine-tune these systems to avoid this in the future and we appreciate SteamDB cooperating with us to resolve the issue quickly.

    • Re:It's been resolved already (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @05:56PM (#61218788) Homepage Journal

      It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.

      • Re:It's been resolved already (Score:5, Informative)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:08PM (#61218814)

        It's illegal to send DMCA notices you know to be false, and US courts seem to have interpreted "knowingly" fairly generously. Problem is, you've got to take them to court, and that happens infrequently enough they don't seem to care much.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kwalker ( 1383 )

          [citation needed] From all the DMCA news I've ever seen over the last 23 years, "knowingly" has been interpreted extremely narrowly. As far as I've ever heard or been able to search online, no one has ever been censured by a Court for a bogus DMCA take-down. Prove me wrong please.

          • FYI: You two seem to be agreeing on the important parts of this statement, and just disagree on whether that counts as "narrow" or "generous."

            • '"narrow" or "generous"' depends entirely on whether it's describing the size of the cock you're giving or being forced to take.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          Only one part of the DMCA [aclu.org]-compliant takedown notice has to be averred under penalty of perjury:

          A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed.

          The assertion of believed infringement in particular is not under penalty of perjury, only that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner.

          • Requiring that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner makes sense. Otherwise any joker could take down content for shits and giggles.

            What would be needed on top of that are penalties for bogus takedown notices. AFAIK courts sometimes require the plaintiff to pay defendant's legal costs for frivolous lawsuits, but that seems to happen rarely and I'm not sure if it would apply in this situation.

        • No it's only illegal to send a notice for an item you aren't empowered to control the copyright on. As long as you are actually the copyright owner if the item you claim there is nothing illegal about sending a notice to the wrong person. That was an _intentional_ distinction in the law.

          You could be subject to civil damages with a false complaint, but the cost of recovering these damages would likely exceed anything but the most rare situation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )
          because there is no award specifically written into it like there is in the FDCPA. If a collector violates the FDCPA they can be liable for $1000 per infraction. Its easy to rack up $12k in damages with proper evidence and a $100 pro se filing fee. Thats how you self regulate abuses. When you make laws like this, you put teeth in there to keep the trolls in check. Unfortunately all the Democrats that rammed this through back then were beholden to the $5000 per plate dinner fundraisers in Hollywood. So natu

          • Re:It's been resolved already (Score:4, Informative)

            by Rhipf ( 525263 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @10:24AM (#61220720)

            Unfortunately all the Democrats that rammed this through back then were beholden to the $5000 per plate dinner fundraisers in Hollywood.

            I'm not sure why you think the Democrats "rammed this through back then" since it was passed by on a bipartisan basis.

            Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2281 by Howard Coble (R-NC) on July 29, 1997
            Committee consideration by House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property); House Commerce Committee(Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection)
            Passed the House on August 4, 1998 (voice vote)
            Passed the Senate on September 17, 1998 (unanimous consent)
            Reported by the joint conference committee on October 8, 1998; agreed to by the Senate on October 8, 1998 (consent) and by the House on October 12, 1998 (voice vote)
            Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            In fact the only Democrat that really had any control over the passing of the DMCA was President Clinton. Both the House and Senate were controlled by the Republicans at the time. I know it is fun to blame everything on the Democrats selling out to Hollywood but in this case it looks more like the Republicans "cock-gobbled to the RIAA and MPAA".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          It's illegal to send DMCA notices you know to be false, and US courts seem to have interpreted "knowingly" fairly generously.

          But, Your Honor, I didn't send that false take-down notice, it's all the automated flagging software's fault!

        • Often limited to arbitration in a venue of the companies choice. Extremely difficult and expensive to bring actions against technology companies. They employ as many lawyers as they do scientists.

        • And most of the time the DMCA recipient doesn't take the sender to court because the sender is a giant corporation and the recipient is a small company. Suppose you made an indie game with your team of 4 people. Your sales are moderate for a game from such a small group. Then SEGA comes along and issues a DMCA. After some back and forth, the DMCA is retracted and you're good to continue selling your game.

          At this point, do you sue SEGA? You're a small company with minimal revenue. Spending the time and money

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review

        Since it has been shown a few billion times that intentionally and knowingly sending false DMCA takedown requests are not illegal, I say instead we should avail ourselves of it.

        A few takedown requests to all of Segas datacenters and backbone providers every couple of days from now on should do the trick.
        Serves Sega right for illegally hosting the pirated programs "ASDF" and video "XXYYZ"

        Then just setup a botnet to send them weekly or even daily from different sources.
        Add in all the other companies using aut

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        instead of illegal just put teeth in there that the improperly punished can sue and get, as a matter of case law, an automatic $10,000 in damages, or more should a tort claim be brought forth. Bullies only respect you when you kick them in the balls and steal their wallet.
      • I still do not understand why existing slander and libel laws do not apply. SEGA has deep pockets...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ytene ( 4376651 )
          They almost certainly do apply.

          The problem is that SEGA are going to have much deeper pockets than SteamDB and will pull every trick in the book - and then some - to distract, delay, change venue, counter-claim - and as a result the cost of litigation for SteamDB would quickly spiral to many times the amount of money they could expect to recover in damages.

          That would be the law working as designed, not necessarily as sold to the general public.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alexo ( 9335 )

        When laws are written by lobbyists for lobbyists, what do you expect?

      • SEGA is not sending these notices. They contract a brand protection firm. The likes of BrandShield Ltd., BrandVerity Inc., Corporation Service Company, Custodian Solutions, EnablonS.A., etc. Those use Web crawling and analysis software - usually developed in-house - and they act as the copyright holderâ(TM)s legal representatives. The notices are automated and are sent out by a truckload every day. Nobody is checking them for accuracy. All this tells me the chances of a significant penalty for an erron

      • It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.

        It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement. Regards Bestbushcraft [bestbushcraft.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Now SEGA needs to issue an actual apology and a promise of human review before sending nastygrams. After all, software is not allowed to issue legal documents, only a human can do that, and that human is responsible for it. If done for employment, that human's employer shares responsibility.

  • Why is someone negligently firing off DMCAs and causing harm is not liable for such actions?

    • Strategic ignorance is a fantastic business strategy that has been tested in court many times. It doesn't seem like lawyers are capable of building an argument that requires businesses to have some sort of liability over their products and services.

      • Simply build an abstraction on top of your business rules and suddenly it's to technologically dense for a company or executive to be responsible and aware of how they make money.

      • Hmmm, can I patent "Strategic Ignorance" as a business process, and then sue anyone using this defence for infringement?

    • Technically speaking, there is liability in the law for doing this. Practically speaking, though, this would mean small companies taking on a giant, multi-national company over an issue that's "been resolved." They just don't have the resources to do this so the big companies know they can issue bad DMCAs with impunity.

  • Already Resolved (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:05PM (#61218806) Journal

    SEGA statement:
    Earlier this week, one of our games was incorrectly flagged on SteamDB. We utilize anti-piracy software to protect our games at a large scale, but sometimes it makes mistakes. SEGA will continue to fine-tune these systems to avoid this in the future and we appreciate SteamDB cooperating with us to resolve the issue quickly.

    AKA, "We dont really care"

    • SEGA statement: Earlier this week, one of our games was incorrectly flagged on SteamDB. We utilize anti-piracy software to protect our games at a large scale, but sometimes it makes mistakes. SEGA will continue to fine-tune these systems to avoid this in the future and we appreciate SteamDB cooperating with us to resolve the issue quickly.

      AKA, "We dont really care"

      SEGA was just letting off a little Steam -- so to speak ...

    • sega likes fan projects unlike Nintendo that likes to dmca them

    • Or "Don't blame us, the computer did a dumb thing. We only programmed it."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        In the UK at least that is not a legal defence

        I refer you to Ferguson vs, British Gas

        https://www.bailii.org/ew/case... [bailii.org]

        The judges where quite clear that writing shitty code that harasses others in not a legal defence - write better code that does not harass others.

    • And they never will care, so long as there are no consequences. This is a classic example of why the DMCA needs reform such that:

      1) Automatic and mass takedowns are forbidden in all cases. One takedown per notice, physically delivered by certified mail, bonded courier, or process server.

      2) All of those takedown notices are filed and sworn by a single, identifiable, and responsible individual. No one filing these should be able to hide behind the corportte veil.

      And last, but definitely not least:

      3) The "un

  • We need penaltys (Score:3)

    by redback ( 15527 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:06PM (#61218810)

    This shit will keep happening until there is a penalty for sending a false DMCA notice.

    • There is a penalty, unfortunately the courts seem unwilling to ever use it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alexo ( 9335 )

        The only penalty is for falsely claiming to represent the rightsholder.
        There is no penalty for falsely claiming an infringement.

    • Require that a DMCA has to be submitted by a lawyer (member of the bar in the jurisdiction in which the DMCA is issued) and that the submitter must have reasonable belief that the grounds of the complaint are true. (The current requirement is only that the issuer believes that they own the copyright).

      That would (?) mean that egregious takedowns like this could result in the lawyer being sanctioned. It would also stop machine issued takedowns lacking human oversight. It should also deal with obvious fair us

      • There is a process. Legal Council. One side call the other and says 'how much to make this matter go away?'. Both legal councils profit from a settlement, and legal is just a cost of business. STEAM should ensure every takedown notice gets a call from their legal council, getting the responsible contact person, making these nusiance shakedowns expensive.
        • If it were Steam, I'm sure they would throw their lawyers right back at it, as you suggest. However, SteamDB is unaffiliated with Steam Corp. It's a separate third-party site which scrapes Steam data for historical information preservation.

  • If piracy is a crime, then Steam was libeled by being accused of it, as was their hosting company for facilitating the crime.

    Shouldn't they be able to recover the damages to their reputations, as well as punitive damages, for this libel?

    • While I'd love to see SteamDB fight back on this, lawyers cost money. Cases cost money. Kind of hard to justify a lawsuit when the chance of recovery is slim and could take years. I mean, the FTC fought a 4 year anti-trust battle against Qualcomm before giving up. And that was the federal government!

      I do wish the DMCA has some kind of punitive measure for these shady and broke-ass DMCA notices.

  • then cui bono?

    Congress can fix this before the risky midterms, will they?

  • Helpful if TFA said what SteamDB was.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by 278MorkandMindy ( 922498 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:30PM (#61218892)

    But hey, editing is not Slashdot's strong point.

  • No accountability (Score:3)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:48PM (#61218940) Homepage

    No accountability for the big guy: Send an invalid takedown notice by mistake? No problem, the user can file a counter-claim an continue their day; no harm done.

    Double down on the mistake? That poor account will lose their content, and any ad revenues. But don't worry, the big lawyer does not even get a slap on the wrist.

    Too much trouble to prepare those random takedown notices? We will provide you with a service to streamline the process.

    Big guy wins, or does not lose.
    Small guy loses, and never wins.

    Well balanced, as it should be...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'd replace ALL pages for SEGA games with that same page they used for the Yakuza game, and state that "out of an abundance of caution, we've removed all SEGA game pages so that we don't end up with our entire site taken down by SEGA robotic DMCA requests."
  • a while ago. The problem is they hire law firms to shut down pirates and those law firms aren't the best (probably cheap ones) so they tend to fire off lawsuits at random. The went around harassing people reviewing old Genesis games (a bunch who did videos on the Shining Force series, which was oddly specific). Eventually Sega proper got wind of it and told the law firm to knock it off. I suspect that's what's going on.

  • Figures ... (Score:3)

    by garry_g ( 106621 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @02:00AM (#61219750)

    As long as the DMCA does not penalize incorrect/fake takedown notices, there is no incentive for copyright holders or enforcers (real or claimed) to double-check their accusations.

    Should be easy to fix, though lobbying will not let that happen:
    * a claimer gets N "wrong claims", in total or per service (e.g. to YouTube, Steam, whoever)
    * once those claims have happened, any automatic action by additional claims are disabled and have to be manually acted upon by the service, assuring that they are both the owner/enforcer of the copyright, as well as that it applies to the specific case
    * after another X wrongful claims, any further wrongful claim automatically causes damage payments to the wrongfully affected poster, as well as to the service (they have the trouble of manual work to block & release the media)

    "N" and "X" may or may not be generously scaled, and allowing automatic claims with blocks might be re-instated after a certain period of no further wrongful claims.

    I think this would be pretty fair, considering that if a private person would cause another damage by wrongful claims, they are typically responsible for the effects of their actions ...

  • Steam is not enough!

    A universe that doesn't allow cokeheads to steal money in an artificial scarcity scam, using the works of badly-paid creators, isn't acceptable!

    You need to lock down and suspend The Entire Universe!
    Except the SEGA it /all/ revolves around. :P

  • Didnt sega used to make sonic the hedgehog?
    That brand just got replaced by the image of a patent troll.

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