It's like they didn't do their job.The only thing more frustrating than Mauer's flagrant and ongoing abuse of the DMCA is the way the games media is reporting on this story. Destructoid's article was beyond embarrassing and only served to empower and embolden Alex.
That and they are hoping to just remove this clearly mentally unhealthy person completely which is fair enough.I'm guessing hiring someone to make a new soundtrack is easier and cheaper and faster than a legal battle.
Wow. Glad I bought it first.
They are most likely going to patch your copy like Michael Jackson was patched out of Plants Vs Zombies for everyone.
Alex was subcontracted by their lead composer, from what I understand, and my guess is that maybe things are just too messy due to the possibly collaborative nature of music and it's easiest to just make a clean break.
I can't believe people had any sympathy for her in the first place.
I'm sure people at first sided with her because stories of the struggling creative being screwed by a game publisher happen quite often.
It's pretty unusual that someone would deliberately burn their career in an act of self immolation in the hope of blackmailing some indies she had worked for.
Edit: Just read through SirTapTap's timeline; Fuck she's some piece of work alright.
It gets worse. Admitted to court today (and added to my timeline) is...is...hell, just read it yourself. Text message conversation of her admitting to a coworker that her whole intent was to bankrupt Don Thacker with legal fees and try to turn his lawyer against him. That was from February. She's been doing this for 6 months with clear intent of malice. It's sickening.
It's also why I've been so mad at bad/softball reporting on this and why I published the timeline. Her factual actions are so maddening the story entirely speaks for itself.
Yikes.It gets worse. Admitted to court today (and added to my timeline) is...is...hell, just read it yourself. Text message conversation of her admitting to a coworker that her whole intent was to bankrupt Don Thacker with legal fees and try to turn his lawyer against him. That was from February. She's been doing this for 6 months with clear intent of malice. It's sickening.
It's also why I've been so mad at bad/softball reporting on this and why I published the timeline. Her factual actions are so maddening the story entirely speaks for itself.
Googled her name to catch up on the story and uh... Ended up on a Twitter account with her name that appears to be a woman holding a knife to their own throat. I don't know if it's really her account or someone being an absolute asshole, but... It seems like she needs help.
It gets worse. Admitted to court today (and added to my timeline) is...is...hell, just read it yourself. Text message conversation of her admitting to a coworker that her whole intent was to bankrupt Don Thacker with legal fees and try to turn his lawyer against him. That was from February. She's been doing this for 6 months with clear intent of malice. It's sickening.
It's also why I've been so mad at bad/softball reporting on this and why I published the timeline. Her factual actions are so maddening the story entirely speaks for itself.
It's so weird when people think they can game the law. Like they've figured out the "one weird trick", when people make their entire careers about studying and practicing it.
And just think about this: Even if her claims were true (which virtually all signs point to the opposite), she's now destroying her career over less than $9,000. Heck, even if she was mistaken or lying about it, she could've made a GoFundMe, "Hey, I'm a struggling indie musician, not paid what I was due, medical bills" yadda yadda, probably made up the difference, or better.
It gets worse. Admitted to court today (and added to my timeline) is...is...hell, just read it yourself. Text message conversation of her admitting to a coworker that her whole intent was to bankrupt Don Thacker with legal fees and try to turn his lawyer against him. That was from February. She's been doing this for 6 months with clear intent of malice. It's sickening.
It's also why I've been so mad at bad/softball reporting on this and why I published the timeline. Her factual actions are so maddening the story entirely speaks for itself.
Well, Holmes did via a Destructoid post...and got hammered in the comments section for it, hence the updates: https://www.destructoid.com/blogs/J...aken-off-steam-due-to-dmca-claim-449177.phtml
The notes before the story are longer than the story itself. What a black eye on Destructoid.
By the way, I saw your video on Mauer reapplying all the DMCAs from earlier this month. Major props to you for actually explicitly making clear that this fiasco is not a transgender thing, it is a "this person is a real asshole" thing. Also props for condemning any kind bigotry or transphobia.He's now admitting what's pretty obvious if you look into the case: Her intent is solely to cause harm.
Destructoid screwed up REAL bad, and IMO they should have pulled the article *entirely*, but they do seem to be learning. Holmes is admitting a lot more fault than any of the other article authors too so respect to him for that (but minus some respect from the start, since the dtoid article was also by far the worst to start with...call it even?)
UPDATE (7/19, 9:44am): After the publication of this story, several people pointed us to a message from Imagos Softworks lawyer, Leonard French, claiming that Mauer had sent him death threats. We reached out to Mauer about this and she confirmed that it was true. She said that she had been receiving her own set of threats in the wake of claims by French and other YouTubers, which she reported to the police. The police told me it was ok for these people to make death threats to me because of freedom of speech, she said in a private Twitter message. So my immediate response was to issue death threats to the people who started the defamation crusade against me.
Googled her name to catch up on the story and uh... Ended up on a Twitter account with her name that appears to be a woman holding a knife to their own throat. I don't know if it's really her account or someone being an absolute asshole, but... It seems like she needs help.
Is "intense friendship" a euphemism for something else?He's now admitting what's pretty obvious if you look into the case: Her intent is solely to cause harm.
While reading sir tap tap time-line I thought to myself "she really really needs to seek help", then I got to the part while she (apparently) passed a psychological evaluation so... She's just an awful person?
The penalty for a false DMCA takedown is technically perjury, but the burden of proof is so high that nobody has actually been prosecuted for that. Basically, the DMCA recipient needs to prove that the issuer acted in bad faith when they filed a DMCA takedown, in other words that the issuer knew that the thing they were taking down wasn't a violation of copyright. This case might actually have the evidence of bad faith DMCA filing, since there is evidence that Alex Mauer acted deliberately to DMCA streamer channels in an effort to make them criticize Imagos, which can be argued is in bad faith.There needs to be hefty fine levied on abusers of the DMCA takedown system. That would curb this behavior me thinks.
No, really that kind of evaluation is to determine whether somebody poses an actual threat to them self or others, which may render them eligible for involuntary commitment. The US has extremely high standards for involuntary commitment to mental institutions, for obvious historical reasons. I guess whoever evaluated her determined that she wasn't going to act out violently and they couldn't hold her involuntarily.
The penalty for a false DMCA takedown is technically perjury, but the burden of proof is so high that nobody has actually been prosecuted for that. Basically, the DMCA recipient needs to prove that the issuer acted in bad faith when they filed a DMCA takedown, in other words that the issuer knew that the thing they were taking down wasn't a violation of copyright. This case might actually have the evidence of bad faith DMCA filing, since there is evidence that Alex Mauer acted deliberately to DMCA streamer channels in an effort to make them criticize Imagos, which can be argued is in bad faith.
The update to the Kotaku article is just sad.
Just read the timeline. Sir TapTap, thank you for such a detailed, lucid account of this situation. Wow. I had no idea how far this rabbit hole went.
Kinda makes pointing out "Mauer has also attracted a great deal of harassment" in the original version seem a bit ridiculous given the context.
Sometimes people talk about game journalism like it should be subject to softer, more lax standards than other journalism, and I hope those people are paying attention to this situation. Anyone in the industry has a responsibility to put in the work and actually get the story right.
No, really that kind of evaluation is to determine whether somebody poses an actual threat to them self or others, which may render them eligible for involuntary commitment. The US has extremely high standards for involuntary commitment to mental institutions, for obvious historical reasons. I guess whoever evaluated her determined that she wasn't going to act out violently and they couldn't hold her involuntarily.
The penalty for a false DMCA takedown is technically perjury, but the burden of proof is so high that nobody has actually been prosecuted for that. Basically, the DMCA recipient needs to prove that the issuer acted in bad faith when they filed a DMCA takedown, in other words that the issuer knew that the thing they were taking down wasn't a violation of copyright. This case might actually have the evidence of bad faith DMCA filing, since there is evidence that Alex Mauer acted deliberately to DMCA streamer channels in an effort to make them criticize Imagos, which can be argued is in bad faith.
If she's wrong in this, I'm guessing she may be sued back for monetary damages. She's dug herself a hole. She won't be receiving more contracts anyway after this.
By the way, I saw your video on Mauer reapplying all the DMCAs from earlier this month. Major props to you for actually explicitly making clear that this fiasco is not a transgender thing, it is a "this person is a real asshole" thing. Also props for condemning any kind bigotry or transphobia.
I feel like a lot of the major voices covering this topic are not making clear that this whole case has nothing to do with Mauer being a trans woman and everything to do with YouTube enabling one asshole's vendetta against an innocent party, which further punishes other innocents. There's a lot of toxic bullshit building up around the fact of the former unfortunately.
Glad to inform, though I certainly can't say I enjoyed writing the article. Over 2 hours of my time on a sunday and I felt like I was going to vomit even just halfway through. The text messages entered to court yesterday brought that feeling right back.
It's absurd how big it all is and I've been personally involved since the June events started. Couldn't really ignore if I wanted to (I would like to) considering she's directly harassed me repeatedly and, thanks to Youtube's counter notification process (and more generally, the DMCA itself), she quite probably has my physical address.
At least I got a shoutout in Ars...never thought that'd happen due to an article on what is basically a criminal matter.
It showcases a couple things: The horribly slow pace of civil law, the even worse general circumstances around the DMCA (one of very, very few "guilty until proven innocent" aspects of common US law), and the divide in how we treat "digital" and "physical" matters.
Make no mistake, if Alex did even one tenth of the crap she's done online in a physical space instead, she'd be arrested for criminal harassment. Which should still be done--if anything she's caused even more harm online than she could practically cause in a physical space. But it's still considered "less real" in both social and legal spaces.
The worst thing is if criminal charges are never pressed, she can just go through game by game, harassing them one by one as restraining orders only cover one company/game at a time. After RCRU she could go after Potatoman Seeks The Troof, then Penny Arcade Game 3 Rainslick precipice of extremely long name, then countless others she's worked on.
She's learned how abuse the DMCA to maximal effect and, as she's not a large company and is willing to/has already destroyed her reputation, the traditional consequences of DMCA abuse are of no concern to her. She has no money to pay damages and no remaining career to protect.
She apparently got their Youtube channel terminated just now.
They tweeted earlier that the game is back up for sale on Steam, but I haven't checked.
It sure has been terminated. Damn.She apparently got their Youtube channel terminated just now.
Eh, let's look at where the case goes without jumping to conclusions. Did the developers have the right to her music? If so, she's insane indeed. If they didn't then she is perfectly okay to pursue DMCA takedowns.
Devs should just take out her music in return. Patch it out.
That or devs should just show the damn receipt for the rights to her songs so this can be settled once and for all.
Right now? It has always been.DMCA is a joke right now
It gets worse. Admitted to court today (and added to my timeline) is...is...hell, just read it yourself. Text message conversation of her admitting to a coworker that her whole intent was to bankrupt Don Thacker with legal fees and try to turn his lawyer against him. That was from February. She's been doing this for 6 months with clear intent of malice. It's sickening.
It's also why I've been so mad at bad/softball reporting on this and why I published the timeline. Her factual actions are so maddening the story entirely speaks for itself.