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50% Positive

Analyzed from 1807 words in the discussion.

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#copyright#minecraft#dmca#screenshots#luanti#game#microsoft#holders#claim#those

Discussion (58 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

vintermannabout 2 hours ago
> We received a similar notice from the same company in 2023 and successfully appealed against it. This company also filed a similar notice this year against an indie game with similar voxel art style by the name of Allumeria.

They'll backtrack and apologize - again.

At some point, the pathway for Microsoft to regain some of the goodwill associated with Minecraft is to fire the senior lawyer most responsible for sending out these notices.

ezoeabout 1 hour ago
Well, Microsoft is busy firing real game developers. No chance.

Unless corpo heads are prosecuted for copyright infringement(false DMCA claim IS copyright infringement) and jailed or sentenced to death, no change.

peri-cl33 minutes ago
I'm confused why the DMCA sender, Tracer AI, claims Vanuatu jurisdiction in the linked DMCA claim[0]. In separate recent claims, they have claimed US jurisdiction[1]. Is this possibly fraud?

[0] https://lumendatabase.org/notices/93778051

[1] https://lumendatabase.org/notices/80387573

mysterydipabout 2 hours ago
Could the sequence of events be:

1) open source project publishes source

2) AI scrapes source

3) AI generates code for proprietary game similar to that of the source

4) AI tool scans jar files and finds similar code, triggers copyright violation

astrobe_about 2 hours ago
It's very unlikely. The DMCA notification is from Microsoft, who owns Minecraft.

The sequence of events is:

1) US votes a law that is hilariously favourable to copyright holders

2) Copyright holders abuse it for a while with non-AI bots

3) Copyright holders abuse it with AI-bots

4) Copyright holders will continue to abuse it until the law is amended.

SXXabout 2 hours ago
Fun part is that US legislative branch did not have much say in creation of DMCA.

US executive branch back then was just lobbied by major copyright holders and they literally bypassed much of legislation process around congress by creating and signing international agreements instead.

By the time DMCA landed in congress there was very little that could be changed because US already had to honour intetnational agreements it's already created and signed.

Louis Rossman have a video on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0-j89LJysY

gpderettaabout 1 hour ago
Didn't the international agreements require ratification from legislative?
zdragnarabout 1 hour ago
Except, of course, Luanti holds copyright over their own assets and app. Copyright is not something you get when you file paperwork with the government, it is automatic for creative works.

DMCA is punitive to platforms who do not correctly adjudicate the law and self enforce, which is why they err on the side of the claimant rather than the accused (or the side more likely to defend their copyright in court).

So, the law doesn't really favor copyright holders, it favors extremely conservative and risk averse behavior from large platforms, regardless of who would actually win a dispute over copyright.

danarisabout 1 hour ago
It favours large copyright holders, with deep pockets and ranks of lawyers on retainer, over small copyright holders.
duskdozerabout 2 hours ago
Doubt it. Microsoft probably just sees "voxel game" and files the claim, because they don't lose anything if it fails.

From the article:

>Luanti’s Android app is currently not available on the due to a baseless DMCA notice filed on behalf of Microsoft by Tracer.AI, alleging that Luanti infringes Minecraft’s copyright.

>Luanti is a voxel game-creation platform where anyone can make, share, discover, and play blocky games.

em-beeabout 1 hour ago
(edit: oh, sorry, i thought you were doubting the quoted text, but you were actually using it as evidence to support your argument. my bad. if you delete your reply, maybe i can delete this comment too)

my old comment for reference:

you doubt what? the claim they are filing is that luanti violates the copyright. that's the point of filing a DMCA notice. that means they are alleging that luanti infringes minecraft’s copyright. what else could it be?

duskdozerabout 1 hour ago
I see the quotes are misleading. I doubt the parent's suggestion and was providing the article quotes as justification. I've edited it now.
danarisabout 1 hour ago
Yeah; notice that "on behalf of": Microsoft isn't even the one filing this, they've outsourced their enforcement and may not even have known about this before it blew up.
WarmWash15 minutes ago
If you look at the screenshots of the game in question, it's pretty obvious what is going on

https://www.luanti.org/en/#gallery

Even though those are mods, it's a bad look to be holding those up as reference game images.

puskaviabout 2 hours ago
It probably just looks at pictures
Joel_Mckay22 minutes ago
Most pirated game assets or code is usually naive contamination from market place re-sellers that don't have a legal right to the kit-bashing content.

Very common to find pitch shifted audio getting resold on Unity store or web, images/3D with intact watermarks/meta-data, and scraped shader code. If you are credulous enough to buy files from a shady online seller, the copyright/trademark liability almost always falls on the person that publishes the IP. You can do everything above board, and still get sued as other license holders may register the asset signature with anti-piracy/YT bots.

For example, you could buy BBC/NBC/Sony libraries off ebay/web for a few bucks, but they will 100% still sue you into bankruptcy if you ever publish content with their media IP.

"AI" vector search can produce similar results of existing scraped works, and almost every LLM knows Disney Mickey Mouse. How LLM are trained means isomorphic plagiarism will occur regardless of data granularity. Just like how mp3 were a lousy highly compressed version of CD audio, the output does not have to be a verbatim copy to trip copyright and trademark IP laws.

Isomorphic plagiarism becomes less obfuscated when compiled into standard executable code. However, some firms actually used human session chat admins for data labeling/edits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1iLPxwgV4E

People may still lose even if they are right. If you resell something you didn't actually make yourself or purchased royalty free perpetual rights from the authorized holder, than the liability still falls on you when content rights change.

This is why fun indie games sometimes disappear. Some may not like these rules, but most play by them to survive as a business. =3

clortabout 2 hours ago
Could be, but unfortunately (3) can generate the code but it is not copyrightable (Thaler v. Perlmutter)
sidewndr46about 2 hours ago
No, that isn't what that case ruled at all. It ruled that the program generating the code cannot be the author.
em-beeabout 1 hour ago
interesting interpretation. most other articles on the topic have a different interpretation. if the AI can not be the author, then who can? is writing the prompt enough to establish being the creator? i think we need a few more cases to get an answer to that.
matheusmoreiraabout 2 hours ago
It's just the usual corporate censorship via "good faith" DMCA notices that nobody but other corporations can afford to actually fight.
shevy-javaabout 1 hour ago
They created the perfect mafia system here. It is fascinating to see how easily democracies can be undermined.
whizzterabout 1 hour ago
Someone should copyright the American flag and popular advertised variants of blue/white/red and something alike and start DMCA'ing politicians, maybe that would wake them up to how bad the law is?
Hasnep26 minutes ago
That's not how you get copyright, the creator of a work automatically gets the copyright. You can sue someone for violating your copyright, but if you tried to claim copyright of the US flag your case would get thrown out immediately.
VWWHFSfQabout 1 hour ago
> Someone should copyright the American flag

You're someone

Aerroonabout 1 hour ago
How do the lawyers filing these bogus claims not end up in prison? How is it not fraud?
Hnrobert42about 2 hours ago
There is no cost to Tracer.ai for false positives.

There is a cost to them for false negatives, if only just lost revenue.

The beatings will persist until morale improves.

hnea3ekp5iabout 1 hour ago
Concise and useful, rare combo
sam_lowry_about 2 hours ago
One can still install Luanti from F-Droid.

It's great little tool to teach coding.

testing22321about 2 hours ago
If there are no consequences for filing a false DMCA takedown, what stops people or companies filing them all the time to take apps from Apple or Microsoft offline?
benjiro293 minutes ago
You will notice that DMCA claims are often against smaller parties. You rarely see those DMCA claiming companies go after somebody like Microsoft because those companies can fight back.

Its a system that mostly benefits large companies. Just about everybody else hates the system.

conartist6about 3 hours ago
Sue them for tortious interference
tyzoidabout 2 hours ago
I suspect the TOS say google can remove or deny apps for any reason. If in the EU, there might be a DMA claim though.
limagnoliaabout 2 hours ago
Sue Microsft, not Google. It was Microsoft who filed the DMCA notice, Microsft is the responsible party.
skywal_labout 2 hours ago
Can a TOS waive any rights? Surely there are some unalienable rights.
Borealidabout 2 hours ago
I, personally, don't feel that "making money by doing business in a particular market" should be a right it is illegal to waive.

If it were inalienable, things like regional distribution agreements would be void, since you could sign away your ability to sell in a certain country and then compete with your distributor anyway.

Let's keep some perspective here - there is no "inalienable right to sell apps to smartphone users via a private commercial storefront".

conartist6about 2 hours ago
The TOS isn't a defense against purposely trying to ruin someone else's business by lying
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shevy-javaabout 1 hour ago
These de-facto monopolies such as "Google Play", must be forced open by governments. It can not be that they continue to turn a blind eye to these vile, ruthless and - most importantly - extremely evil action by the giant that was formerly known as Google (now known as adMonster).
gumby271about 1 hour ago
What should be forced is allowing device owners to install software without the say of Google or Apple. This has been possible on Android for ages, but Google recently decided that they need to collect the ID of any dev that wants to build an apk, independent of distributing it through Google's own store.

Google and Apple can have whatever app storefronts they want, but they shouldn't have a say in what software I can run.

em-beeabout 1 hour ago
the DMCA would still apply. they could file a DMCA against f-droid too. while f-droid is more likely to fight back, if the DMCA is upheld, they would have to comply.

you are not wrong, and that's why apple is being forced to allow alternative app stores. forcing them to abandon checks is not what the majority would want. instead eventually there should be ab appstore choice just like the browser choice that was pushed for some time.

VCFundedGenYerabout 1 hour ago
Outsider here.

The screenshots are literally Minecraft screenshots. It's a clone, and not a subtle one either.

To call this "Baseless" is hilarious.

dzaima30 minutes ago
The things/concepts that those screenshots have that infiniminer (a voxel game made before minecraft) doesn't is... grass, trees, glass. I hate to bring it to you, but minecraft didn't invent those. And it certainly didn't invent the concept of a voxel world (not that it could even copyright that if it did).

Never mind that the things in those in-game screenshots aren't even in the play store app, they're separately downloadable things.

xboxnolifes33 minutes ago
Being block based doesn't mean it is using Minecraft assets. Minecraft does not own the idea of having a block based world, and there are quite a few popular (and many unpopular) block-based games. If you played Minecraft you should be able to tell that none of the assets are Minecraft assets.
WarmWash21 minutes ago
Unfortunately (or fortunately, juries are generally a good thing), it's a jury of randos that will be shown the screenshots and asked to make a determination.

https://www.luanti.org/en/#gallery

What percentage of the population would see those screenshots and say "Definitely Luanti" 0.00001%? 0.001%?

joey486DX443 minutes ago
> The screenshots are literally Minecraft screenshots.

They're not. It's a voxel game engine with an open source history dating back a year (October 2010) before Minecraft 1.0 was released (November 2011).

There are plenty of games for Luanti that have different textures and objectives.

It's all open source. Download it and try some of the different games.

Supermanchoabout 1 hour ago
Also outsider (like it matters).

> The screenshots are literally Minecraft screenshots.

Irrelevant to the DMCA claim.

> It's a clone, and not a subtle one either.

You are incorrect. Luanti is not a minecraft clone. It's more akin to Godot. I can import Minecraft assets into Godot, but it does not make Godot a copyright violator because of my actions.

> To call this "Baseless" is hilarious.

I would say it's justified.

Retr0idabout 1 hour ago
They are not any more Minecraft screenshots than Minecraft screenshots are Roblox screenshots.
nba456_44 minutes ago
Objectively, you're wrong.
danarisabout 1 hour ago
That's...straight-up false. Unless you have some source for this, you're just lying here.

Yes, it's inspired by Minecraft. The screenshots are of voxel-based survival crafter games you can build with their platform. The textures are not Minecraft textures. They are similar in style, sure, but that's not remotely the same thing. You can't copyright a general visual style, nor can you copyright a game genre.

To call this anything but "baseless" would be hilarious.

stronglikedan28 minutes ago
> Yes, it's inspired by Minecraft.

More likely that Minecraft was inspired by Luanti since Luanti was released first. (at least, formally released)

benjiro295 minutes ago
The problem with DMCA claims is that there are no consequences on misuse.

It places all the work on the affected parties to prove their innocence.

And suing the fake claim, is years of work and cost. This is why companies like Tracer.AI, ... get away with it. And how the system even gets misused to remove competitors or flat out blackmail.

Even worse is when we have hosting companies in Europe, who simply take American DMCA claims for granted because investigating them costs time and money.

The entire system is broken (by design?).