Yeah I feel the same way. I read his comment thread but it didn't really add up and seemed written in an over the top way. Too me that means there is more to the store than this one side. We will never know the full account for sure.

From the linked tweet thread:

> But all of our Deadwood items are critical, journalistic, or transformative & HBO legal told me they're fine with them existing.

If this is actually true - and that's a big if - then the problem is that HBO doesn't think the work in question is infringing, but Shopify does. This is a huge problem with any kind of intermediary liability, because intermediaries do not have the capability to fairly adjudicate copyright cases. If you're selling, say, a review of copyrighted material, that's fair use. However, the problem with fair use is that it makes even the most basic copyright inquiry that much more complicated. Publishers and copyright owners don't want to have to consider fair use for every strikingly-similar infringement out there. They want platform owners to have to fix the problems they created, and they know that they will do so in the most half-assed way possible. That means fair use goes out the window - why risk six-figures-per-infringement judgements at all when we can just ignore it and refuse to host fair use content?

That being said there's still problems with the original tweet's argument here. There is a huge gulf between "we don't think this is infringing" and an actual licensing agreement. At best, HBO might be estopped from suing over past infringements, but they have nothing else to mitigate the risk of their store's existence and no promise that HBO doesn't change their mind tomorrow. Copyright owners like this kind of strategic ambiguity - licensing agreements have rather high transaction costs, and every one you sign means another exclusive license[0] you can't sell anymore. They don't want to have to go after every infringement either. They want to be able to grant and revoke their largesse at will.

[0] i.e. the lucrative ones. There are entire categories of licensing where nonexclusive licenses are basically worthless and nobody will accept such terms.

> If this is actually true - and that's a big if - then the problem is that HBO doesn't think the work in question is infringing, but Shopify does.

Let us take this on face value and assume this is the case.

If so, they should have given him notice and suspended the site, yet according to this thread, they kept allowing orders and taking money from his customers to the tune of $7000, but not transferring it to him. That's pretty shady and definitely does not absolve them of any potential liability.

Matt apparently authored books on The Sopranos and Mad Men. And according to him in the twitter thread, HBO helped setup interviews and such for the book. If it has access to HBO like that to write the book, if they didn't like him selling soap they would probably raise it with him directly. Not go to shopify.

Not sure if the “histrionics” is that over the top or any indicator that they have something to hide. Might simply be the style this person tweets, which can be understandable given how frustrating this situation seems to be. (People easily lose all their calm in such situations and I find the tweets mild tbh.) If anything, the explanation he provided about Shopify being afraid of being sued by textbook copyright holders and even Star Wars copyright holders might make sense.