What truth-finding purpose was there when P&F used the DMCA to cut Stardock off from a major revenue stream?
I just think it’s fundamentally a really weird position to take that it’s an ethical lapse for F+P to use legal means to defend themselves against the corporation that has openly stated they sued them in order to steal their authorship rights, yet to not view it as an ethical lapse to sue someone in order to steal their authorship rights.
“Which was acquired by Activision in 2005” That’s why none of that Toys for Bob money matters. It’s not P&F’s money, unlike Brad Wardell who owns Stardock and can use its money freely for anything he wants.
And again, Activision owns the rights through Toys For Bob. That money literally doesn’t matter when it comes to this legal fight. Please understand that. P&F have to fund it with their personal funds, which I assure you are quite a bit more limited.
rolls eyes infinitely I was replying to a completely different post there that was not about ‘who has the most money’ and you know it.
I already discussed my findings from the Atari documents. Definitely am opening to adjusting my position if you can find a document in there that grants such rights as to make even “minor infringement” acceptable in light of the DMCA process.
You know what they say about assumptions… they’re often wrong.
The literal major revenue stream that came from a game that was released during the middle of a legal battle over it’s legality! That REALLY CHANGES THING I hope you know!
I can really only judge you based on what you choose to spend your time focusing on.
For the record, the truth-finding purpose of the DMCA takedown is patent, because it required Stardock to put its money where its mouth is and indemnify Valve and GOG. This clarifies the relationship between the defendants in a way that will have direct impact on the outcome of any trial.
Okay, you’re just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, aren’t you?
Your post begins with the words " P&F are not the major executives behind a billion dollar franchise" so no, I did not realize it was a completely different post that was not about who has the most money. My comment on SC:O tanking Stardock was definitely from a post about the topic, so you might want to mark your topic changes a bit more clearly - if you reply to my post on a topic, I’m going to assume we are indeed still on that same topic…
I can think the DMCA was wrong AND that Stardock is a horrible company engaged in an absurd lawsuit against the original creators. Indeed, I do.
Interesting. I use a different method where, if I’m in doubt about some aspect of someone’s position, I ask them to elaborate or clarify. I’m curious why this method doesn’t work for you?
Interesting. Well, thank you for educating me about that. I didn’t realize it affected the lawsuit so significantly.
Tangentially, the fact that I’m spending time on the DMCA today should not be taken as indicative of where I usually spend my time. I speak up when either side appears wrong to me, and I end up talking about Stardock’s wrongs a lot more often. It just happens that, in this particular case, I disagree with P&F.
They aren’t, though. Activision is the one behind Skylanders. Toys for Bob are the studio they tapped to develop it. It’s a key difference.
But you were defending that ‘absurd lawsuit’ with that quote! He was denigrating the lawsuit and its associated actions and you made a vague defense saying he was wrong. You didn’t ask him to clarify, either. You told him ‘your assumption is wrong’.
Yes, we get it that you hate the DMCA but this is one of the rare correct and ethical uses it of. You absolutely should DMCA someone for trying to release something you’re having a legal battle with about it’s infringingness!
Because the last time I responded to your request to clarify (where you literally asked me to provide a source saying what the intent of the law was), I responded to that request to clarify by pointing out what the intent of the law was, citing it, and you got angry and told me not to tell you what the law said because you knew what it said, even though you clearly didn’t.
I mean, dude, I’m trying to be nice but your track record here is not awesome.
Again with the assumptions…
As to the material aspects: I asked you to cite a statement of intent from the people who passed the law, and instead you inferred intent from the legal mechanisms.
And on the assumptions go…
We don’t have to infer the intent of the DMCA because the DMCA literally states what its intention is: to amend the Copyright Act to provide limitations on liability of service providers relating to online material.
You proposed a novel (somewhat unclear) standard for how infringement should be treated. It’s cool that you think that US Copyright law should work differently than it does, but I think it’s only fair to recognize that the burden is on your to argue that the law should, for somewhat vaguely stated ethical reasons work the way you think it should, rather than the way it actually does.
Claiming P&F’s use of DMCA is abuse and not ethical or even immoral is a bit rich for the reason already pointed out ad nauseum: Stardock had zero to do with the game that P&F created; all they did was buy the Star Control trademark and nothing else. They/Brad then tried to claim ownership of material that they/he had no hand in creating, going so far as to trademark alien names etc. that Brad et al. never came up with by themselves, but which had been created by P&F.
The car analogy that @Thrag came up with earlier is pretty apt.
Okay, fair enough: The DMCA’s intent is to balance the rights of copyright holders and of service providers.
That says nothing about the question of taking down clearly-infringing works vs nebulous works. You still wrote quite a lot inferring it’s stance on that issue, though, and that’s the portion I disagree with you on.
You are implying that the distinction you are drawing above has some meaning under copyright law, and it doesn’t. If you want to argue that it does (or should) that’s fine, but it’s not really my burden to disprove that. The DMCA clearly sets out the requirements for a notice (and counter-notice) of infringement, and that’s the standard that any reasonable lawyer would advise their client to respect.
The legal, and yes ethical, implications of asking the service providers to make the judgement of what is clearly infringing and what is not are pretty vast. The current system exists so they don’t have to. Do you want a system that forces service providers to make that judgement? How should the liability be handled if they turn out to be wrong?