COOKIE'S BUSTLE IS SAVED

THE WORLD'S WEIRDEST COPYRIGHT TROLL IS DEFEATED

https://gamehistory.org/cookies-bustle/

#cookiefreed

We've freed Cookie's Bustle from copyright hell. Here's how. | Video Game History Foundation

We've stopped a persistent copyright troll who was trying to impede our work. Here's everything we learned—and how we beat them.

Video Game History Foundation

@0xabad1dea That's a great article if you wanted to see a bunch of legalese with the phrase "Cookie's Bustle" in italics every other sentence.

I'm still not sure what a bustle has to do with a teddy bear named Cookie?

@spacehobo @0xabad1dea If you read the description of the game at the top you'd know that no matter what they name it it will never make sense. 😆
@nazokiyoubinbou @0xabad1dea Yeah, I definitely was intrigued by it, but realised that the title had hit semiotic collapse long before the first legal explanation!

@spacehobo @0xabad1dea If you really want to know pain and insanity, read the (warning: completely full of spoilers) synopsis on Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie's_Bustle

It sounds like someone got high and described everything they imagined and someone else wrote it down while also high and then they made it into a game anyway.

And I say this as someone who has watched some pretty crazy anime...

Cookie's Bustle - Wikipedia

@nazokiyoubinbou @0xabad1dea I think "WHY COOKIE BUSTLE?" is going to replace "WHY COOKIE ROCKET?" in my cache of "WTF" expressions.
@0xabad1dea That was a good read, and now I want to try this strange and charming game!
@catsalad @0xabad1dea Good luck getting hold of a copy. I spent the last hour trying to find out more about this game in Japanese. It doesn't even have a Japanese Wikipedia page, though there are blogs by old Japanese gamers about the game. One from just 4 years ago expressed shock that the price of a used copy had shot up to almost ¥8000, but recently one sold for ¥70,000 (about US $445), and used software dealer Surugaya offers ¥30,000 for used copies.

@0xabad1dea It sucks so freaking much that copyright laws are so extreme and so easily abused like this. Especially the DMCA which wasn't even really ever intended to do stuff like this.

As I read this the one thing I kept wondering is why this particular person was pushing so hard to try to claim this specific game. Doing these actions in general I get — eventually someone will give them a big payoff even if what they're doing is likely illegal in some cases. But it still costs them a bit to put in the things they put in. If they just do this en masse — throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks — I'd understand, but it feels like they really think this one will somehow lead to a big payoff. And I sure don't see how.

@nazokiyoubinbou Actually the DMCA doesn't even apply to software like this. Abandonware is legally exempt from the Digital Millienium Copyright Act as per https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/ even if that copyright would otherwise still be valid. Which makes this even more disgusting
Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies | U.S. Copyright Office

@temmie19 Well, they're claiming they own it, thus not "abandonware" by specific definitions (which I believe include that.)

But really, that doesn't matter. The DMCA is just being used by companies and amoral people to take stuff down generically. It doesn't have to actually be able to win in court. They just send a takedown and most places take things down without checking, no matter the harm that doing so causes. (Thus it's kind of a form of digital terrorism in a way.) Some even take punitive action against the accounts automatically even if the claim itself was without basis, and then those people have to go through the tedious processes to prove they didn't violate any rules. (But in most cases it would have been fair use even if the claimer actually legally owned it.)

@temmie19 In this case, they were even sending DMCA takedowns just on pages mentioning the game. I mean, that's not even "fair use." That's just... mentioning it... There is no legal room to claim a takedown in the first place in such cases. But the systems are largely automated now with no human even looking at them...

And yeah, people have abused this to take down sites or pages they didn't like too.

@nazokiyoubinbou If they don't actively serve the software in some format, it's legally considered abandonware by that same article.

But yes I agree it doesn't matter in the long run if people can just put out fake DMCA removal requests and try to sleazily get around it by going to people who would otherwise not know. The real issue is the automated systems.

@temmie19 @nazokiyoubinbou DMCA section 512, the section about takedown requests, does apply to software like this. The exemption you mention is for DMCA section 1201, which is about anti-circumvention
@0xabad1dea "cookie's bustle" sounds like some odd Victorian-themed women's fashion RPG.
@0xabad1dea Slimy, greedy scumbags are all too common! In another example Amigakit has obtained trademark registration for A1200, A600 and others in many countries…
@0xabad1dea well, THIS was a wild read. Amazing.
@0xabad1dea JUSTICE FOR COOKIE

@0xabad1dea

hell yeah. time to celebrate by busting out my Cookie's Bustle Big Box Pack-In Ham Slice