Itch.io Down Thanks to Funko Pop's "AI"

Digital gaming storefront Itch.io announced on Bluesky that the cause of an outage early Monday morning was the pop culture collectable company Funko filing a complaint with their domain registrar. The filing came from an "AI Powered" Brand Protection Softare by Funko.. From the spost:

I kid you not, @itch.io has been taken down by Funko of "Funko Pop" because they use some trash "AI Powered" Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain

The site appears to be back online at this time. after several hours of downtime. Itch.io is one of the largest online storefronts for independent games including thousands of tabletop roleplaying games.

 

[Umbran]

Novels would 100% exist, I find it very odd that you suggest otherwise. People have been writing novels and making little to no money off them for absolutely centuries.

And how many pre-20th century novels and novelists can you name without Google to help you?

The novel, as an element of shared culture, dies without intellectual property protection, because nobody has a motive to promote the thing. My promotional spend would go to other people's sales. Without promotion, no work becomes prominent enough to become shared among many readers. The engine that takes the ideas of a few writers and turns them into widely read works runs on money.

Heck, without IP protection, you won't even know who wrote it - because as soon as it is out, there's no reason to not steal it an attribute it to other creators.

In fact I would suggest the vast majority of novels - particularly good ones! - are written with surprisingly little expectation of actual monetary recompense. Again, this has been true for centuries.

Well, there's expectation, and there's hope. In the modern world, what new author doesn't dream of making it big?

But, without profit incentive, what you'd get is probably more like what self-publishing looks like now.

Giant budget movie blockbusters wouldn't exist, sure, but smaller films absolutely would

Why would they? When they'd be instantly stolen, and attributed to other creators?

Also the whole "everyone would pirate it" thing has long been proven not to be true. Games release without DRM and make plenty of money, even though people could go pirate them. People are willing to pay for art they like.

You don't understand - the issue isn't the actions of individual consumers. Piracy by individuals is small potatoes.

The issue would be the actions of other corporations, who would no longer be prevented from reselling each other's content. Sony makes a picture? The next day it is on sale at Amazon and available from Netflix, with no payment going to Sony, because they just aren't required to do so. It becomes largely impossible for Sony to make back what it invested in the picture, so it stops making them.

What we'd actually see, I'd suggest, is something more like Patreon/patron systems, where art is created by people supported by patrons large and small.

But, you realize that with no IP protections, it becomes pretty much impossible for you to tell if you are actually patron to the original creator? Mirroring content that is delivered electronically can be automated. You point a botnet at the original creator, and mirror their delivered content in realtime, and you have seventeen sources with the same content that all look like and claim to be the original. Good luck!

 

[Bohandas]

Giant budget movie blockbusters wouldn't exist, sure, but smaller films absolutely would, and I'm not sure giant blockbusters dying would be in any way, shape, or form a bad thing for art or humanity.

Agreed.

Ironically I think that a lot of the same people who make arguments like this - that we need IP protections to get bug budget movies, and the pop music industry, and stufd like that - are the same people who criticize AI for being soulless. I don't think they're really concerned about artistic expression at all; I think what they're really concerned with is money.

And how many pre-20th century novels and novelists can you name without Google to help you?

Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), the Bronte Sisters (Wuthering Heights and a bunch of other stuff), Edgar Allen Poe (The Take of Arthur Gordon Pym), Jonathan Swift(???) (Gulliver's Travels), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Cervantes (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha), Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol, plus a bunch of other stuff), Alexander Dumas (The Corsican Brothers), the other Alexander Dumas (not sure what he wrote), Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables), the Marquis de Sade (The 120 Days of Sodom), Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (Venus In Furs/The Legacy of Cain), Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), Lewis Caroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), and the guy who wrote Journey to the West whose name I don't recall (Journey to the West). I also don't recall who wrote Gargantua or who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress (edit: Bunyan?). (edit: or who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac). (edit: and who wrote Pride and Prejudice? was that also one of the Bronte sisters?) (edit: also Le Morte d'Arthur) (edit: also Orlando Furioso)

If we count other novel length narrative works that aren't novels there's also Homer (The Illiad and the Odyssey), Virgil (the Aneid), and Dante (The Divine Comedy). And I forget who wrote Paradise Lost (edit: Moore???). (edit: and Aesop (Aesop's Fables) and the Grimm bros (Grimm's Fairy Tales))

 

[Doc_Klueless]

I often wonder if the people who say that IP doesn’t need protections actually have any IP to protect.

 

[Umbran]

Mary Shelly (Frankenstein),...

If we count other novel length narrative works that aren't novels there's also Homer (The Illiad and the Odyssey), Virgil (the Aneid), and Dante (The Divine Comedy). And I forget who wrote Paradise Lost (edit: Moore???). (edit: and Aesop (Aesop's Fables) and the Grimm bros (Grimm's Fairy Tales))

So maybe two dozen (some of whom you admit you cannot name) out of centuries, even millennia, if you insist on going back to the Greeks, in which folks were writing novels?

That's not a lot. In my own library I have hundreds of novels from scores of authors from just within the past few decades of my own life - and that's all genre stuff. No standard mysteries, westerns, romance...

In all, I don't see there's a solid argument there that the past, with lower expectations of financial success, were somehow better for literature.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

novels don't require a large monetary investment

In the sense that most novelists -- even ones you know by name -- have to work at least one other job while producing works?

That doesn't seem like an argument in your favor.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In all, I don't see there's a solid argument there that the past, with lower expectations of financial success, were somehow better for literature.

Perhaps, but there's also no particular argument to the contrary. It's not like the average quality of published novels has increased in the 21st century - it would be far easier to argue the contrary. Nor are the most literary, most true, most humane novels necessarily particularly successful, particularly without a major prize win boosting them. Seems like the most reliable way to make money from novels is to churn out 6/10 genre works, but just have them reliably be 6/10 (i.e. just on the better side of average, but without being particularly challenging, insightful, compassionate, moving in any way but the dramatic or erotic, or the like).

 

[Dire Bare]

If society for some reason abandoned copyright, trademark, and intellectual property rights . . . which isn't going to happen . . . but if it did . . . it would be a big change for sure! It would change the type of media we'd get as consumers and it would certainly change the ability of artists to make a full-time living off their work.

But overall, would it be a negative change? I'm not convinced it would be.

We would certainly be getting less published novels to enjoy, but we'd still get literary works. We'd get less multi-million blockbuster movies and video games, maybe even no more at all! But we'd still get movies and video games. Same with comics, role-playing games, and other types of artistic media. The pace and scope of media being released for our enjoyment and consumption would slow . . . but it would not stop. And there is so much wonderful stuff on the market that is existing right now, you could never consume it all!

It would be even harder for artists, at least artists who aren't crafting physical things, to make a full-time living. So? It's already hard now . . . should an artist expect to be able to do their art full time without a "day job"? Sometimes I think I'd rather a future where we had less full-time artists and more part-time artists, where almost everyone was creating art in their free time to share with others . . . but not necessarily to earn a buck.

Ah well, just spitballin' here . . . I expect corporate driven increases in copyright and IP protection before I leave the mortal plane . . . I don't think I'll ever see it lessen or go away.

 

[Bohandas]

So maybe two dozen (some of whom you admit you cannot name) out of centuries, even millennia, if you insist on going back to the Greeks, in which folks were writing novels?

That's not a lot. In my own library I have hundreds of novels from scores of authors from just within the past few decades of my own life - and that's all genre stuff. No standard mysteries, westerns, romance...

In all, I don't see there's a solid argument there that the past, with lower expectations of financial success, were somehow better for literature.

So what you're trying to say is that that explosion in the number of works is due to IP protections and not the fact that most people* in the time period you specified were either illiterate or nearly so (and even the folks who weren't had to write most things by hand with a dip pen). It's the 1800's where public education really starts to be a thing** and correspondingly it's also the 1800's where most of the people and books on my list are from^‡

*With the exception of the small handful of people who were either clergymen, noblemen, or wealthy
* *At least in the west. I'm not as familiar with the history of the east. Although speaking of the east I do now recall that I neglected to include The Water Margin in my list. * * *
** *(As well as also some edge cases like The Pillow Book (technically an autobiography) and the Book of Lieh Tzu (a book of fables and parables illustrating taoist philosophy))
^‡Also correspondingly, there were many great works of literature from before that point that didn't get put on my list because they are not novels. Generally they concerned matters of religion^‡‡ or statecraft^{‡‡‡
‡‡}Such as the aforementioned Lieh Tzu, as well as the Bible, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, the Ramayana, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Works And Days, the Mahabharata, the Zohar, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic Gospels, the Talmud, the Rig Veda, the Enuma Elish, the Tripitaka, the Eddas, The (Book of) Chuang Tzu, the Key of Solomon, the Popul Vuh, etc etc etc
^‡‡‡Such as Macchiavelli's "The Prince" and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" (edit: IIRC Sun Bin and Macchiavelli both also wrote books titled "The Art of War")



Edit: Is there any way to stop this forum from turning my footnote indicators into [censored] formatting without putting spaces between them?

Sometimes I think I'd rather a future where we had less full-time artists and more part-time artists, where almost everyone was creating art in their free time to share with others . . . but not necessarily to earn a buck.

Only sometimes?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Agreed.

Ironically I think that a lot of the same people who make arguments like this - that we need IP protections to get bug budget movies, and the pop music industry, and stufd like that - are the same people who criticize AI for being soulless. I don't think they're really concerned about artistic expression at all; I think what they're really concerned with is money.



Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), the Bronte Sisters (Wuthering Heights and a bunch of other stuff), Edgar Allen Poe (The Take of Arthur Gordon Pym), Jonathan Swift(???) (Gulliver's Travels), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Cervantes (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha), Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol, plus a bunch of other stuff), Alexander Dumas (The Corsican Brothers), the other Alexander Dumas (not sure what he wrote), Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables), the Marquis de Sade (The 120 Days of Sodom), Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (Venus In Furs/The Legacy of Cain), Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), Lewis Caroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), and the guy who wrote Journey to the West whose name I don't recall (Journey to the West). I also don't recall who wrote Gargantua or who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress (edit: Bunyan?). (edit: or who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac). (edit: and who wrote Pride and Prejudice? was that also one of the Bronte sisters?) (edit: also Le Morte d'Arthur) (edit: also Orlando Furioso)

If we count other novel length narrative works that aren't novels there's also Homer (The Illiad and the Odyssey), Virgil (the Aneid), and Dante (The Divine Comedy). And I forget who wrote Paradise Lost (edit: Moore???). (edit: and Aesop (Aesop's Fables) and the Grimm bros (Grimm's Fairy Tales))

Just an FYI, since author's rights and publishing rights (aka "copyright") emerged around the time of the early 18th century, almost all the examples you have here were produced under some form of copyright regime. It's also very clear that many of those authors motivation was making money (Dickens, Twain and Bram Stoker are very obvious examples).

 

[Umbran]

So what you're trying to say is ...

Do not presume to tell me what I am trying to say, please and thank you.

It's the 1800's where public education really starts to be a thing** and correspondingly it's also the 1800's where most of the people and books on my list are from^‡

Let us not pretend that the literacy rate is independent of economic concerns.

By 1870, the literacy rate in the US was about 80%. This was the Industrial Revolution, which was driven by selling more things to more people. It led to higher population capacities, which led to higher population densities, which led to there being 1) cheap books to use in teaching and 2) high enough population densities to make public education feasible.

We are still left with the explosion of the novel tied to rise in selling stuff to people, which is weakened if you cannot protect the intellectual work behind the stuff.