As a naive and new adult entering the world, I would have assumed that all you need to do is report this to your police/government, and they'll start a case, preliminarily determine that "Yeah, some sort of fraud happened" and then proceed to start a court case against the accused party so that a jury/judge can determine it's validity.
The fact that lawyers and the "lawyer system", in conjunction with prosecutorial offices and the police, has made this expensive and pretty impossible for 99% of people and companies is a huge problem. It basically nullifies the whole point of government as protector of people's rights and enforcer of laws.
It's very unlikely that anything criminal has happened here, so government is irrelevant. I'm not even sure we're seeing any malevolence, just rank incompetence.
Maybe not "criminal", sure. But even us thinking "oh it's a civil matter, not criminal one" is something conjured up by the lawyers in conjunction with government. It's such a convenient excuse, basically making it so that you as the injured party need to prove something at your own expense - expense that is directly funneled to the lawyer class.
At the very least what happened here is lying in a commercial context. Arguably something that should be illegal, and sometimes is illegal under the banner of "fraud". Again, the definition of fraud is not obvious (despite them arguing it is super explicit in the laws) and we have to rely on the lawyer priesthood to determine what the "sacred texts" say about it. Maybe even rolling some conjured up lawyer-dice and seeing what the Oracle at the Court says about it after they convene a little "ritual" known as a court meeting or deposition.
> invalid DMCA takedowns do open you up to lawsuits
Invalid takedowns don’t open you up to anything. The only risk to takedowns is misrepresenting the purported owner but that’s not the case here and the risk would be from Funko not Itch.
Much of the reason for DMCA abuse is that beyond the notice being assumed legitimate there is basically no risk to the complaining party until they dispute a counter-notification.
Not that this is relevant in this case, as it was not a DMCA takedown. A takedown notice would have been addressed to Itch.
This stuff would be civil jurisdiction in most countries. The Internet adds an extra layer of problems: the registrar, complainant etc may be in different countries, making it practically very hard to get anything done.
The fact that lawyers and the "lawyer system", in conjunction with prosecutorial offices and the police, has made this expensive and pretty impossible for 99% of people and companies is a huge problem. It basically nullifies the whole point of government as protector of people's rights and enforcer of laws.