Bethesda is sending DMCA notices to a Ukrainian fighting the war in the frontlines to take down a classic (Fallout 1/2) engine emulator which doesn't use game files, ROMs, game code, textures, or music (you have to own the game to use it).
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/s/HU33zupBaw
check post at origin
EDIT: Bethesda stepped in and rescinded the DMCA. Was made by Tracer without Bethesda’s knowledge. Bethesda was not the bad guy. Original comment below.
Should just ignore it. What’s Bethesda going to do about it?
Honestly I wouldn’t even be surprised if this is AI overzealously abusing DMCA, which is hyper-omega-turbo-common nowadays. It came from Tracer, not Bethesda, so this is the most likely explanation. The ONLY thing they could ding the guy on is MAYBE trademark infringement, but then he can just change the name from fo2 to something else and no problems. I don’t see why he cant just do that.
I also don’t see why him serving is important to the story for any reason other than sympathy points. Whether he was serving in a war or not is irrelevant to how erronious the DMCA abuse is. The abuse is just as bad either way.
They could try invading Ukraine. All my Russian acquaintances assure me it’s quick and easy.
In and out, three days max.
To be fair - It would have worked - VDV streaming out of Hostomel airport toward Kyiv was a recipe for success.
Thank dog it was Biden’s term though, the US intelligence that Ukraine should that airport at all costs saved them.
They could ask Ford for tips on raising their own crack squad of private enforcers, to send over there!
Ford or Hasbro. The secret is the same:
The Pinkertons.
Makes me think of a recent Davie504 video where he said he got a copyright notice for playing “the sound of silence” when what actually happened was he joked he was going to and then played a muted video of him playing the bass. Actual insanity.
Military behind lines can be pretty important because of delays in them receiving notices and their ability to do anything about it. Pretty much every legal notice gets a timeframe before things occur. Usually something like a month is sufficient, but for someone in military service, who have arguably the best excuse to not be able to do regular things for a whole month, the usual polite way to go about things is to wait for them to return home, and historically, courts have thrown out cases for people who didn’t do that, because it wasn’t a reasonable amount of notice.
No idea about the legalities of this particular case, but it is extra rude, getting a court date and losing by default for not showing up when you didn’t show up because another part of government mandated you be on a battlefield.
What’s the DMCA got to do with Ukraine? The US legal code doesn’t have worldwide jurisdiction, despite what they may think.
Have you seen the trade deals the us is trying to push on countries?
“Deal” is about as honest as the current US monarch.
With Ukraine nothing, with google play where this emulator is published obviously a lot, also bigger services even local often comply with DMCA requests even if they aren’t required to honor them or take any action by law.
Probably should update the post with the Bethesda apology
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfallout/comments/1vq5k38/comment/p4a86lz/
As per usual: fuck Bethesda.
As per the reddit post it’s Tracer, a copyright enforcement company working on behalf of Zenimax and Bethesda, not Bethesda directly. I would be surprised if this was intentional because there is nothing but bad PR to gain. It’s probably just a false positive.
It’s always annoying how “it’s just a contractor/company working on their behalf” is used as an excuse.
No, this is on Bethesda.
They hired this copyright troll and they’re responsible for fraudulent DMCA requests sent on their behalf.
They have enough money to either vet their contractors, or do the job themselves.
This is not an excuse. I was adding nuance to the claim made in the title. I also don’t disagree that Bethesda is ultimately responsible for the contractors it hires, and if Tracer made an erroneous DMCA request, Bethesda should take responsibility for correcting it. However, given Bethesda’s previous treatment of similar projects like Daggerfall Unity and OpenMW, I think a simple error is a more plausible explanation than the company being a copyright troll or an intentional action by Bethesda.
Absolutely this. I wish I could say I thought higher of Bethesda than employing copyright trolls, but unfortunately I guess I’m not surprised.
This, no amount of contractual deniability can absolve from responsibility for subcontractors action.
oh stop your outrage, saying that it was a contractor is just context, not an excuse.
“It’s just a false positive” while a regular person has their life fucked up. Whether it’s first party or another company hired to do the job, these giant companies don’t deserve any grace when they abuse DMCA.
Bethesda pro Russia kinda tracks.
Bethesda or microsoft?
Neither, this time it was one of those stupid third parties they hire to try and search for infringing content.
What if devs would publisch their stuff via torrent?
Even if the traffic of the torrent protocol is peer-to-peer, there have to be central nodes managing all that unfortunately. This is why DMCA notices are also successful with torrent providers. Without anyone providing that central node, no torrent works.
One of the major weaknesses of bittorrent.
Edit: the solution is called DHT and I was a morron totally forgetting about that.
Perhaps some sort of Distributed Hash Table?
DHT was created like 20 years ago just for this purpose, they work just fine.
Fck, my bad, you are absolutely right. Fixed my comment.