// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Luanti removed from Google Play due to baseless AI copyright notice
Luanti’s Android app is currently not available on the
Google Play Store
due to a baseless
DMCA notice filed on behalf of
Microsoft by Tracer.AI, alleging that Luanti infringes Minecraft’s copyright. The
Luanti app does not contain any proprietary code or assets, from Minecraft or
otherwise.
We received a similar notice from the same company in 2023 and successfully
appealed against it. This company also filed a similar notice this year against
an indie game with similar voxel art style by the name of
Allumeria.
Luanti is a voxel game-creation platform where anyone
can make, share, discover, and play blocky games. It does not ship with any
games or game assets by default. Instead, players can browse
a catalog of games created by
the community, or simply join multiplayer servers.
We are a non-profit project developed by a community of passionate
individuals expressing their creativity. Luanti is open source, which means
anyone can view the source code, modify it, learn from it, redistribute it, and
even sell games made with it on platforms like Steam.
While Luanti is popular as an open-source alternative to Minecraft (as its roots
are in blocky sandbox games), it also lowers barriers to bringing creative ideas
to life. The freedom and customization Luanti affords has made it an excellent
tool in education, finding its way into
many schools across Europe.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
is United States law which lays out a notice-and-takedown process which
platforms like Google Play follow to avoid liability for damages resulting from
copyright-infringing packages which they distribute. These platforms are not
responsible for the actions of their users, but they are responsible for taking
corrective action when user-generated content is reported.
The DMCA notice we received through Google claims that:
These products use copyrighted assets as outlined directly from the Minecraft
game (available at www.minecraft.net) without authorization and should be
removed. Specifically, US Reg. #TX 8-192-097
“US Reg. #TX 8-192-097” is
the registration of Minecraft Java Edition 1.9 with the US Copyright Office.
It does not provide any information aside from this and does not outline which
assets Luanti allegedly uses.