Shadowing Practice: PirateSoftware is right, this needs to stop - Learn English Speaking with Video

If you're a prolific enough gamer,

you might have noticed that itch.io was down a few days ago.

The reason is utter chaos.

Throughout my years, I've seen a lot of different ways that a website can go down.

I've never seen one quite as weird,

dumb, and just worth talking about as this one.

Quickly, from their words, itch.io has been taken down by original Funko

because they used some trash AI-powered brand protection software

that created some bogus phishing report to our registrar who ignored our responses and just disabled the domain.

This isn't that simple.

This is hilarious.

They even called his mom.

Yes, the HIO founder and owner's mom got called because they were so upset about the social media.

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Thankfully, by the time you're watching this video,

itch.io is again back online, which is very good.

The indie game scene needs itch.

If it fails, a lot of indie game dev goes along with it.

We need itch.io to survive.

These types of things are, to be frank, pathetic.

Also credit to Pirate Software for putting this on my radar.

Absolute chaos.

We need to break this down layer by layer.

Obviously, the immediate effect, HIO was taken down.

The takedown happened because of I want my name,

which is a DNS provider.

I have to Excalibur draw this because there's a lot of layers

and I want to make sure that we get it right.

so if you know anything about software you know it is built on layers

if you have something like a dns provider this has to be built on something this is built on registrars

and i can't standard shit

so on top of the registrars we have a dns provider the dns provider is something

that you now use as the like service owner.

So when you are the owner of something like ping.gg,

hio, whatever, you have built on top of the DNS provider by buying the domain through them,

they are buying things through the registrar.

In this case, the service is a shop for buying games.

So the service has a layer on top,

which is users distributing software.

So now if you're a game dev,

you're shipping things on itch.io

so I should label these all itch.io is this layer you have a game dev

that is this layer we have I want my name is the dns layer and then you have a whole different layer,

which is users buying the software.

This is the layer I don't want to talk about the gamer.

What's interesting when you're in scenarios like this is how the liability chain works.

Let's say you're a separate party, in this case, Funko.

And you have identified that somebody is distributing software that violates your trademark.

You are Funko, and you've identified that at this layer,

a game dev is doing something that is illegal.

In an ideal world, Funko would go straight to that game dev doing that and tell them,

hey, if you don't stop,

we're going to go after you.

Because this isn't itch.io violating anything.

This certainly isn't I want my name violating anything.

This is a game dev supposedly using Funko stuff in an unlicensed way that Funko is now going after them for.

But Funko didn't do that.

You'd think, okay, the next best thing,

they're going to go to itch.

Nope.

Because Funko is not the one doing it.

Funny enough, what happened here is there's a middleman.

100

Funko contracts to Brand Shield to protect their brand.

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And Brand Shield has their special way of doing this.

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Brand Shield decided that it's easier to not go to the game dev who's causing the problem,

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certainly not to go to the service owner,

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but instead shortcutting all the way to the DNS provider and also in that process,

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threatening them saying, hey, by the way,

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if you don't comply with our demands,

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we're going to go to the registrars that you work with and tell them,

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by the way, you shouldn't work with this company.

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They're distributing things that are illegal.

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And this is where the problem happens.

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The thing that sucks here is a user on this layer,

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somebody who is distributing things on your service,

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is capable of causing something much lower in your chain,

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in this case, your DNS.

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Without you being involved at all,

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it's possible for somebody distributing software on your service to cause the things you're building on top of to get fucky.

117

To give an example for us,

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because I dealt with this recently with Upload Thing,

119

by the way, if you're not familiar,

120

we built the best way to manage file uploads in your full stack applications.

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Upload Thing allows users to upload files.

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We had a similar problem.

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Instead of registrars, I will call,

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I'll put ISPs on the bottom, so internet service providers.

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Then we have our hosting providers.

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In this case, it's Cloudflare.

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Then we have service owner, that's us, upload thing.

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Service customers, which in this case would be a full stack dev.

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And you have web app users.

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I'll say this is users of service or users of,

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I don't even know what to call this, actual end user.

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Cool.

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So it's fun here now.

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Let's say somebody builds a clone of Google Drive using Upload Thing.

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If you built an Upload Thing clone for Google Drive,

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now you have users.

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Let's say one of those users uploads spyware.

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Now we have hosted on UTFSIO slash f slash spyware.exe.

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Some end user uploads this file.

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Now this file exists on Cloudflare's infrastructure.

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This is key, and this is really dangerous,

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not because this domain is associated with Cloudflare,

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but because this file is being served from one of their IP addresses.

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So because a user all the way up the stack here has uploaded some spyware,

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this isn't the full stack dev's problem.

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This isn't even our problem with uploading.

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This becomes Cloudflare's problem because an ISP now will hit up Cloudflare and say,

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hey, we're going to block your IP addresses because they're being used to serve malware.

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And then we get a scary letter from Cloudflare saying,

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hey, upload thing builders, there is spyware being served from your service.

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You need to get rid of this ASAP ASAP because if we don't,

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then Cloudflare's IP addresses get blocked by ISPs.

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Now we have to go up the chain yet again.

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So Cloudflare goes to us and says, hey, what the fuck?

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Fix this.

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Now we have to go up the chain once more and say,

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hey, we just deleted this file.

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Fuck you.

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Our options now are we can ban this user

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if we think they are aware of the malicious actions and not doing anything,

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or they themselves are the malicious actor.

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Or they now have to go up and they come back to us and say,

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no, that wasn't us.

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We had a malicious user.

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We're sorry.

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We'll do better filtering for it.

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And they have to go ban their individual user.

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So somebody all the way up the chain as a bad actor here can result in an ISP banning Cloudflare's IP addresses.

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That's why these chains suck and why they have to be addressed as aggressively as they do.

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But ideally, this would have happened much higher up the chain,

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which is something we're now working on.

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We're going to be restricting your ability to host files that are runnable and executable.

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You won't be able to host bash scripts or CMD files or EXEs on free tiers ever again.

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That's over now.

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We've learned our lesson.

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In the future, we'll be doing more scanning and things like that as well,

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working on introducing all of that.

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The fact that these things affect us in these hierarchies sucks

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because now a user of a customer of our service can cause Cloudflare problems.

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Thankfully, this was a notification system where we were told this was happening,

181

where in this case, Brand Shield didn't give anyone any opportunity here.

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They went to I want my name and said,

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if you don't ban this DNS and ban this domain right now,

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we are no longer going to allow you to work with ISPs.

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We will force legal action.

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We will go to these ISPs.

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You're screwed.

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Get rid of this domain.

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And out of panic, and also I would argue incompetence,

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I want my name caved and removed one of the most popular domains on the internet.

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One of the most popular IO domains for sure,

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because they suck at their jobs.

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But so does Brand Shield,

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because Brand Shield should have had any system to notice,

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oh, itch.io is a service for distributing other people's software.

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They are the ones we should be hitting up.

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But they didn't do that.

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They went straight to I want my name and got itch.io banned from the internet for like over 24 hours.

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And here's what Brand Shield had to say.

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You might notice they have replies off and also a lot of community notes on this.

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We want to address recent reports surrounding a website takedown.

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Brand Shield serves a trusted partner to many brands.

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Our AI-driven platform detects potential threats and provides analysis,

204

and in this case, an abuse is identified from an HIO subdomain.

205

We identified and reported the infringement and requested a takedown of the URL in question,

206

not of the entire HIO domain.

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The temporary takedown of the website was a decision made by the service providers,

208

not BrandShield, because you didn't report it to the right provider.

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You reported it to the DNS provider, not to HIO.

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BrandShield remains committed to supporting our clients by identifying potential digital threats and infringements.

211

We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from escalating.

212

Nonsense.

213

Brands showed these to realize that a subdomain is probably owned by the original domain.

214

And it should probably go to the service provider of the original domain to figure out what is wrong there.

215

And calling itch.io's mom, like that is horrifying.

216

Like I get that you want to get some press stuff

217

and you want to like cool it down and the HIO guy probably wasn't responding to your bullshit Funko Pop requests,

218

but going after his mom is just insane.

219

I would have loved to just blame Brand Shield and say Funko Pop's not the problem,

220

but this alone means all of these companies fucking suck and should be mocked relentlessly for what they've done.

221

They also moved off of I want my name after this because what the fuck?

222

Here's what Pirate had to say.

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Instead of filing a DMCA claim to itch.io,

224

you sent a takedown request to their registrar.

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Are you incompetent or are you just lying about your intentions?

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For those that don't understand why this would set me off,

227

the company Brand Shield is a brand protection company that files infringement claims on behalf of their customers.

228

In this case, they filed an infringement request with Itch's registrar for a user-generated page that contained Funko Pop branding.

229

This led to a complete takedown of the website for the better half of this morning.

230

Sorry, I thought it was a whole day.

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It was only half a day, I guess.

232

This is the equivalent to Twitch being taken down because a single user was streaming a copyrighted movie.

233

Yep, exactly.

234

And a good link from, funny enough, Twitch staff.

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HIO's terms of service.

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Look at that.

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They have a whole section here for the DMCA.

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If you believe one of our publishers has violated your copyright,

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please let us know about your complaint with the required information so we can address the complaint.

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If you think a complaint was filed in error,

241

you can also contact us to address your concerns.

242

There you go.

243

Technically speaking, since neither Brand Shield nor Funko are customers of HIO,

244

they're not expected to comply with HIO's terms.

245

but you should check them quick to figure out what the right method is for reporting.

246

But since this isn't a human doing a correct method of reporting,

247

this is a crappy rogue AI tool sending threatening emails around.

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Disgusting.

249

This is what happens when you let AI go without a human in the middle.

250

Absolute fundamental failure.

251

And Brand Shield should at the very least check how popular a domain is before sending one of these bullshit accusations.

252

Ideally, they would shut down.

253

This is bullshit.

254

But like, yeah, God.

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As Pirate said, Itch has a very easy process for handling DMCA claims and these processes were ignored.

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It's clear that Brand Shield didn't do any research before firing the gun and they shouldn't be taking actions as such.

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Brand Protection Company should know better.

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The Registrar should know better and Funko Pop should know better.

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To follow this up, Brand Shield has tried to blame the victim here.

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Yes, they are continuing to try and blame people for doing things right effectively.

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It's kind of insane.

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It's like this should be the end of their business.

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And I would be genuinely somewhat disappointed if people continue to sign up for their service after this.

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Because I'd hope when you Google search them, this comes up first.

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At Funko, we hold a deep respect and appreciation for indie games,

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indie gamers, and indie devs.

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We're fans of fans, and we love the creativity and passion that define the gaming community.

268

Recently, one of our brand protection partners identified a page on Itch,

269

imitating the Funko Fusion development website.

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A takedown request was issued to address a specific page.

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Fungo did not request a takedown of the Itch platform,

272

and we're happy to see the sites back up this morning.

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He reached out to them to engage with them on this issue,

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and we deeply appreciate the understanding of the gaming community as the details are determined.

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Yeah, as the top reply says,

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it's a lot of words to not say that they're sorry.

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And on top of that,

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not admitting that their brand partner,

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Brand Shield, didn't contact Itch.

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They skipped multiple steps and went all the way down the chain.

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I would argue there could be a lawsuit here for irresponsible behavior on a brand with intention to damage.

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It's pretty absurd.

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Yeah.

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This also should have been a DMCA request.

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If it was actually phishing,

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like they were trying to look like Funko Fusion when they weren't,

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a fraud of phishing report might make sense.

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But again, that should go to HIO, not to their registrar.

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And I can't give any benefit of the doubt to Funko over any of these steps because of how they've behaved.

290

That's all I got on this one.

291

don't break copyright laws and if you do or you see someone doing it report it the right way please

292

until next time peace nerds

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78 zinnen

Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau C1 is gebaseerd op de video “PirateSoftware is right, this needs to stop”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: brand, Funko, user, itch, Shield. Deze video bevat 292 zinnen en 2843 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 15:13. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 187 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. Slechts 79% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is pittig.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
itch zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɪt͡ʃ/	jeuk
upload werkwoord	/ˈʌpˌloʊd/	uploaden
registrar zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɹɛd͡ʒ.ɪsˌtɹɑɹ/	griffier, trouwambtenaar
distribute werkwoord	/dɪˈstɹɪbjuːt/	verdelen
deploy werkwoord	/dɪˈplɔɪ/	uitrollen
stack zelfstandig naamwoord	/stæk/	stapel
spyware zelfstandig naamwoord		spyware
infringement zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɪnˈfɹɪnd͡ʒmənt/	inbreuk, schending
violate werkwoord	/ˈvaɪəˌleɪt/	schenden
phishing zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɪʃɪŋ/	phishing
malicious bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/məˈlɪʃəs/	boos, kwaad
clone zelfstandig naamwoord	/kloʊn/	kloon
thankfully bijwoord		gelukkig
threaten werkwoord	/ˈθɹɛt.n̩/	bedreigen, dreigen
sponsor zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈspɒn.səː/	sponsor

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
figure out werkwoord		uitvogelen, er achter komen
set up werkwoord	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	bereiden, voorbereiden
check out werkwoord		onderzoeken
go down werkwoord		afdalen
shut down werkwoord		afsluiten, uitzetten

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

This certainly isn't I want my name violating anything.
Then we have service owner, that's us, upload thing.
Let's say one of those users uploads spyware.
This isn't even our problem with uploading.
We'll do better filtering for it.

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	I've seen · I've never seen · has been taken
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	has been taken · was taken · is built
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	online, which is · somebody who is

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 72 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, we're, don't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De klanken “sh” en “zh”: phishing /ˈfɪʃɪŋ/, malicious /məˈlɪʃəs/, shortcut /ˈʃɔːtkʌt/, accusation /ˌæk.jʊˈzeɪ.ʃ(ə)n/, cache /kæʃ/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.li/, effortlessly /ˈɛf.ɚt.ləs.li/, executable /ˈɛksəkjutəbl/, incompetence /ɪnˈkɒm.pə.təns/, relentlessly /ɹɪˈlɛntləsli/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: upload /ˈʌpˌloʊd/, surround /səˈɹaʊnd/, rogue /ˈɹoʊɡ/, absurd /əbˈsɜːd/, behave /bɪˈheɪv/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: stack /stæk/, malware /ˈmæl.wɛəɹ/, middleman [ˈmɪdɫ̩ˌmæn], accusation /ˌæk.jʊˈzeɪ.ʃ(ə)n/, cache /kæʃ/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: gamer /ˈɡeɪ̯mə/, rogue /ˈɹoʊɡ/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als itch, upload, registrar.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

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