Shadowing Practice: PirateSoftware is right, this needs to stop - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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If you're a prolific enough gamer,
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If you're a prolific enough gamer,
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you might have noticed that itch.io was down a few days ago.
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The reason is utter chaos.
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Throughout my years, I've seen a lot of different ways that a website can go down.
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I've never seen one quite as weird,
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dumb, and just worth talking about as this one.
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Quickly, from their words, itch.io has been taken down by original Funko
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because they used some trash AI-powered brand protection software
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that created some bogus phishing report to our registrar who ignored our responses and just disabled the domain.
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This isn't that simple.
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This is hilarious.
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They even called his mom.
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Yes, the HIO founder and owner's mom got called because they were so upset about the social media.
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This is chaos and we have a lot to talk about.
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Thankfully, by the time you're watching this video,
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itch.io is again back online, which is very good.
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The indie game scene needs itch.
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If it fails, a lot of indie game dev goes along with it.
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We need itch.io to survive.
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These types of things are, to be frank, pathetic.
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Also credit to Pirate Software for putting this on my radar.
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Absolute chaos.
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We need to break this down layer by layer.
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Obviously, the immediate effect, HIO was taken down.
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The takedown happened because of I want my name,
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which is a DNS provider.
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I have to Excalibur draw this because there's a lot of layers
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and I want to make sure that we get it right.
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so if you know anything about software you know it is built on layers
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if you have something like a dns provider this has to be built on something this is built on registrars
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and i can't standard shit
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so on top of the registrars we have a dns provider the dns provider is something
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that you now use as the like service owner.
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So when you are the owner of something like ping.gg,
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hio, whatever, you have built on top of the DNS provider by buying the domain through them,
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they are buying things through the registrar.
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In this case, the service is a shop for buying games.
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So the service has a layer on top,
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which is users distributing software.
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So now if you're a game dev,
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you're shipping things on itch.io
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so I should label these all itch.io is this layer you have a game dev
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that is this layer we have I want my name is the dns layer and then you have a whole different layer,
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which is users buying the software.
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This is the layer I don't want to talk about the gamer.
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What's interesting when you're in scenarios like this is how the liability chain works.
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Let's say you're a separate party, in this case, Funko.
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And you have identified that somebody is distributing software that violates your trademark.
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You are Funko, and you've identified that at this layer,
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a game dev is doing something that is illegal.
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In an ideal world, Funko would go straight to that game dev doing that and tell them,
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hey, if you don't stop,
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we're going to go after you.
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Because this isn't itch.io violating anything.
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This certainly isn't I want my name violating anything.
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This is a game dev supposedly using Funko stuff in an unlicensed way that Funko is now going after them for.
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But Funko didn't do that.
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You'd think, okay, the next best thing,
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they're going to go to itch.
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Nope.
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Because Funko is not the one doing it.
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Funny enough, what happened here is there's a middleman.
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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.
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To give an example for us,
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because I dealt with this recently with Upload Thing,
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by the way, if you're not familiar,
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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,
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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,
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and in this case, an abuse is identified from an HIO subdomain.
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We identified and reported the infringement and requested a takedown of the URL in question,
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not of the entire HIO domain.
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The temporary takedown of the website was a decision made by the service providers,
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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.
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We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from escalating.
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Nonsense.
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Brands showed these to realize that a subdomain is probably owned by the original domain.
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And it should probably go to the service provider of the original domain to figure out what is wrong there.
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And calling itch.io's mom, like that is horrifying.
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Like I get that you want to get some press stuff
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and you want to like cool it down and the HIO guy probably wasn't responding to your bullshit Funko Pop requests,
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but going after his mom is just insane.
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I would have loved to just blame Brand Shield and say Funko Pop's not the problem,
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but this alone means all of these companies fucking suck and should be mocked relentlessly for what they've done.
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They also moved off of I want my name after this because what the fuck?
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Here's what Pirate had to say.
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Instead of filing a DMCA claim to itch.io,
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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,
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the company Brand Shield is a brand protection company that files infringement claims on behalf of their customers.
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In this case, they filed an infringement request with Itch's registrar for a user-generated page that contained Funko Pop branding.
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This led to a complete takedown of the website for the better half of this morning.
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Sorry, I thought it was a whole day.
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It was only half a day, I guess.
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This is the equivalent to Twitch being taken down because a single user was streaming a copyrighted movie.
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Yep, exactly.
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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,
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you can also contact us to address your concerns.
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There you go.
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Technically speaking, since neither Brand Shield nor Funko are customers of HIO,
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they're not expected to comply with HIO's terms.
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but you should check them quick to figure out what the right method is for reporting.
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But since this isn't a human doing a correct method of reporting,
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this is a crappy rogue AI tool sending threatening emails around.
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Disgusting.
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This is what happens when you let AI go without a human in the middle.
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Absolute fundamental failure.
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And Brand Shield should at the very least check how popular a domain is before sending one of these bullshit accusations.
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Ideally, they would shut down.
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This is bullshit.
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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.
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Recently, one of our brand protection partners identified a page on Itch,
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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,
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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.
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That's all I got on this one.
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don't break copyright laws and if you do or you see someone doing it report it the right way please
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until next time peace nerds
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your English speaking skills by analyzing a captivating YouTube video that discusses a unique incident involving a website's downtime. As you listen to the transcript, you will engage with various expressions and phrases that help convey surprise and humor, which can enhance your conversational abilities. This exercise not only focuses on vocabulary but also highlights the art of storytelling in English, offering you a chance to improve your fluency and comprehension.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- prolific gamer - someone who plays video games frequently and in large amounts.
- utter chaos - complete confusion or disorder.
- bogus - false or fake; not genuine.
- domain - part of a network address that identifies it as belonging to a specific organization or individual.
- cloud-based - software that runs on the internet instead of on a local computer.
- DDoS protection - a security measure that helps defend against disruption from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
- deploy - to set up software or applications for use.
- shadowing technique - a language learning approach where you listen to audio and repeat immediately, mimicking the speaker’s pronunciation and rhythm.
Practice Tips
To effectively practice your English using this video's content, try the following:
- Watch the video multiple times: Start by watching it with subtitles, then without, to enhance your understanding and listening skills.
- Focus on tone and speed: The speaker has a lively tone that conveys excitement and humor. As you practice, pay attention to their rhythm and intonation, which is essential for effective shadow speech.
- Use the shadowing technique: Play short sections of the video and pause after each sentence. Repeat what you hear, imitating the speaker's tone and speed to improve your English speaking practice.
- Record yourself: Use your phone or computer to record your shadowing practice. Listening to your recordings will help you identify areas where you can improve your articulation and pronunciation.
- Engage in follow-up discussion: After practicing, find someone to discuss the content with, using the new vocabulary you've learned. This interaction reinforces your learning and boosts your confidence in using English in conversation.
By immersing yourself in this engaging content and applying these practice tips, you'll be on your way to enhancing your English speaking skills effectively. Let’s learn English with YouTube and make the most of this engaging video format!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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