Re: enough is enough, and it's time for a change.
Echoing what Carter said, and amplifying it here.
Our system, if we go forward with it, is going to be based on the fact that if someone asks for a particular dev or project to be investigated, the onus is on that person to present strong evidence of guilt before we proceed on anything. It is not up to a person to just sort of make an accusation, and then up to the dev to provide receipts or tags or whatever else it is they need to do in order to demonstrate their innocence.
I'll outline what I mean below by giving a completely fictitious sample for both sides.
Bad example
Joebob's game, Splatface, is full of copyrighted assets. I know it because I've heard his death sound in Race to the Finish when you crash your car, and because I'm pretty sure the pie-throwing sound is ripped out of generic sound library. If other devs have to pay for this library, why doesn't Joebob have to do it? I'm asking that you investigate Joebob's game Splatface because it's stealing sounds.
Likely reaction: Whoever launched this will probably get at least one warning. For one thing, there is no hard proof. For another thing, the claims are that two sounds are pirated; even if it's true, that's pretty small potatoes. As a third point, the proof provided is subjective. We are absolutely -NOT going to go to Joebob and say "Randomuser said you stole this sound, that sound and the other sound. Could you please verify? You have one week, or we're removing support for your game". In practice, it will actually be fairly difficult to mount a successful claim because it will require the one doing it to provide enough evidence that we're compelled to follow through on it.
Good example
Joebob's game, Splatface, contains at least two dozen copyrighted assets. Examining the metadata fortwenty-eight sounds found within the game's sound directory, and comparing them to Jimbob's Race to the Finish, yields identical results. Jimbob's game is known to have contained proprietary assets made in house and with community involvement, since he was soliciting help on the forum, which he received here (forum link to the "help wanted" thread in question). When asked about it, Jimbob said publicly that these sounds he created, and received help creating, were his property, and not for sale, and not to be used (post link in the Race to the Finish thread). As such, there is compelling evidence that Joebob used Jimbob's proprietary assets in express opposition to Jimbob's own wishes. Please investigate.
Likely reaction: The first thing we're going to do here is to analyze the claims made. It looks more credible, but that doesn't mean that it is. We've got a couple of members of the team who are good with sound design and seem to know the field, so it should not be difficult at all to determine the truthfulness of the claim. If it is found truthful, then Joebob will be asked to provide proof that he either 1. owns the assets in question or 2. has legal permission to use them, either because he purchased a license or because Jimbob and Joebob have some sort of pre-existing arrangement. Jimbob will be contacted at this time as well, as a precaution, in order to fact-check. In this way, we should quickly be able to assess the validity of Joebob's game. If he is guilty as charged, so to speak, we'll remove any links to his game and issue him a warning for illegal use of copyrighted assets (technically under rule 3). If he is not guilty, or if the proof is inconclusive, we will either close the investigation in the former case, or table it in the latter. we can always re-open it if new evidence comes to light.
I wouldn't necessarily mind leaving database entries in while removing the actual download links to certain projects, BTW. That way players still know the game exists and it's still got an entry, but they just can't grab a link straight from us. If they know the developer and that makes them go off-site to get the game, that's out of our control and we're fine with it.
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