They did it at their general direction, but almost certainly not at their explicit instructions.
These takedown factories use ‘how much shit we got taken down’ as a metric, regardless of what it actually was, and LOVE spamming out thousands and thousands of reports at providers until providers do what they want and take shit down.
My personal favorite one was a bunch of morons who didn’t understand how IPFS gateways worked, and would send literal, actual, we-counted thousands of reports over pirated ebooks that were “hosted” on the gateway.
Except, of course, this isn’t how any of this works and while we did push back and argue over months and months about this, not every provider is willing to invest the time it takes to fight these shits.
Also, if you want super giggles, you should look up the standard text that Web Sheriff sends, which claims all sorts of human right volations and human slavery offenses when someone infringes a trademark for their customers. Absolutely unhinged, and there’s dozens and dozens of these companies filling up your average provider’s inbox every day knowing full well that just being annoying ENOUGH will get them a +1 in the takedown metrics.
It’s really got nothing to do with what Funko might actually really be after, and everything about how they can bill Funko more while just using automated scrapers, automated webforms, and people in the Philipines or similar making pennies to just reply to providers with pretty much the same script until the hosting provider gives up fighting and does what they want just so they’ll go away.
When you hire someone to act on your behalf, all of their actions are your fault. They are you.
I’m not saying this shouldn’t be a huge warning sign not to hire this company to everyone else. I’m saying the only possible way to not be the bad guy would have been a statement “we terminated our arrangement immediately and will pay all of the costs of our mistake”.
100% agree: I’m just saying that the guy at Funko might not have been aware of what these farms do, at least the first time because the sales powerpoints and what they actually do aren’t even in the same universe.
The next time though? Fuck 'em, they’re complicit.
You don’t get a pass on this time until you fix this time by publicly terminating your relationship and paying all the costs you created, including lost business.
By authorizing them as a legal representative, their actions are your actions. Recovering from them is your issue, not the victim’s.
They did it on Funko’s behalf, at their direction.
It’s perfectly fine to also blame the partner, but Funko ultimately bears 100% of the responsibility for the actions they instigated.
They did it at their general direction, but almost certainly not at their explicit instructions.
These takedown factories use ‘how much shit we got taken down’ as a metric, regardless of what it actually was, and LOVE spamming out thousands and thousands of reports at providers until providers do what they want and take shit down.
My personal favorite one was a bunch of morons who didn’t understand how IPFS gateways worked, and would send literal, actual, we-counted thousands of reports over pirated ebooks that were “hosted” on the gateway.
Except, of course, this isn’t how any of this works and while we did push back and argue over months and months about this, not every provider is willing to invest the time it takes to fight these shits.
Also, if you want super giggles, you should look up the standard text that Web Sheriff sends, which claims all sorts of human right volations and human slavery offenses when someone infringes a trademark for their customers. Absolutely unhinged, and there’s dozens and dozens of these companies filling up your average provider’s inbox every day knowing full well that just being annoying ENOUGH will get them a +1 in the takedown metrics.
It’s really got nothing to do with what Funko might actually really be after, and everything about how they can bill Funko more while just using automated scrapers, automated webforms, and people in the Philipines or similar making pennies to just reply to providers with pretty much the same script until the hosting provider gives up fighting and does what they want just so they’ll go away.
When you hire someone to act on your behalf, all of their actions are your fault. They are you.
I’m not saying this shouldn’t be a huge warning sign not to hire this company to everyone else. I’m saying the only possible way to not be the bad guy would have been a statement “we terminated our arrangement immediately and will pay all of the costs of our mistake”.
100% agree: I’m just saying that the guy at Funko might not have been aware of what these farms do, at least the first time because the sales powerpoints and what they actually do aren’t even in the same universe.
The next time though? Fuck 'em, they’re complicit.
You don’t get a pass on this time until you fix this time by publicly terminating your relationship and paying all the costs you created, including lost business.
By authorizing them as a legal representative, their actions are your actions. Recovering from them is your issue, not the victim’s.
This, and further exacerbated by this post where they take no accountability.