Game Mods Get Hit With DMCA Notice From Six Strikes Policy

Oh joy, the “Six Strikes” policy is in full effect and anyone with half-a-brain knew that the thing was going to cause a major disturbance on the interwebs because...well, it's the interwebs. Anyway, a gamer was hit with a “strike” and a DMCA takedown notice for a Guild Wars 2 mod.

We reported a while back that the Six Strikes policy would be put into effect by a number of ISPs, including AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to name a few. The policy recently went into effect and already lawyers and copyright holders have been laying the smack down on average internet goers for copyright infringement.

According to Techdirt, DtecNet is sending out strikes for any and everything that even remotely seems like it crosses their digital line of imaginary copyrighted content. In fact, the DMCA notice they sent out was on behalf of NBC Universal and had nothing to do with ArenaNet or NCSoft's Guild Wars brand.

Here's part of the letter they sent to David Sutherland, who has a Mediafire account for distributing Guild Wars mods...

Dear MediaFire User:
MediaFire has received notification under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that your usage of a file is allegedly infringing on the file creator's copyright protection.

As a result of this notice, pursuant to Section 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA, we have suspended access to the file.

The reason for suspension was:

ATE: 22 February 2013Dear Sir/Madam:Please be advised that NBC Universal and/or its subsidiary and affiliated companies(collectively, NBC Universal) are the owners of intellectual property rights in numeroustelevision shows and motion pictures. NBC Universal diligently enforces such intellectualproperty rights.mediafire.com is and has been infringing NBC Universal's intellectual property rights innumerous properties including, but not limited to, the title(s) listed at the bottom ofthis letter. By way of example, we are providing with this letter a non-exhaustive listof unauthorized copies of NBC Universal properties hosted on mediafire.com, along with theURL corresponding to each listed infringing file. NBC Universal demands that mediafire.comimmediately remove or otherwise disable access to the video files identified in thisletter, and cease and desist from any further infringement of NBC Universal properties.The undersigned has a good faith belief that mediafire.com's use of NBC Universal propertyas referenced herein infringes NBC Universal's rights and is not authorized by NBCUniversal, its agent or the law. The information contained in this notification isaccurate. Under penalty of perjury, the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of NBCUniversal with respect to this matter.Please be advised that this letter is not a complete statement of the facts or law as itmay pertain to this matter, or of NBC Universal's positions, rights or remedies, legal orequitable, all of which are specifically reserved.

The Six Strikes policy is basically setup so that after receiving six DMCA strikes, a user is penalized by their ISP, either with throttled net speeds or a potential ban? I'm not sure of the specifics but it seems like the whole point is to scare people from file-sharing anything at all.

The new policing of the internet just got a whole lot uglier, especially for modders or anyone who plans to share any file on any file-sharing service.

As we mentioned in the previous article, the Six Strikes policy isn't just limited to torrents and it's not just limited to copyrighted TV and movie material.

Any and everyone can get hit from this Six Strikes policy because...well, this isn't capitalism, land of the free, home of the brave or a free market, this is the Corporate States of America and if you aren't a rich douche bag, you're out of luck.