{"slug": "luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice", "title": "Luanti removed from Google Play due to baseless AI copyright notice", "summary": "Luanti's Android app was removed from the Google Play Store after a DMCA notice filed by Tracer.AI on behalf of Microsoft alleged copyright infringement of Minecraft, a claim the Luanti project calls baseless. The notice cites US Reg. #TX 8-192-097, the registration for Minecraft Java Edition 1.9, but does not specify which assets are infringed. Luanti, an open-source voxel game-creation platform, previously faced an identical notice in 2023 and successfully appealed.", "body_md": "Luanti’s Android app is currently not available on the\n[Google Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.minetest.minetest)\ndue to a baseless\n[DMCA notice](https://lumendatabase.org/notices/93778051) filed on behalf of\nMicrosoft by Tracer.AI, alleging that Luanti infringes Minecraft’s copyright. The\nLuanti app does not contain any proprietary code or assets, from Minecraft or\notherwise.\n\nWe received an identical notice from the same company in 2023 and successfully\nappealed against it. This company also filed a similar notice this year against\nan indie game with similar voxel art style by the name of\n[Allumeria](https://allumeria.com/).\n\n## Table of Contents\n\n[What is Luanti?](#what-is-luanti)[What is the DMCA notice?](#what-is-the-dmca-notice)[Which assets?](#which-assets)[Cubes are for everyone](#cubes-are-for-everyone)[What is Tracer.AI?](#what-is-tracerai)[This is not the first time this has happened](#this-is-not-the-first-time-this-has-happened)[This can’t keep happening](#this-cant-keep-happening)[What next?](#what-next)\n\n## What is Luanti?\n\n[Luanti](https://www.luanti.org) is a voxel game-creation platform where anyone\ncan make, share, discover, and play blocky games. It does not ship with any\ngames or game assets by default. Instead, players can browse\n[a catalog of games](https://content.luanti.org/packages/?type=game) created by\nthe community, or simply join multiplayer servers.\n\nWe 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.\n\nWhile Luanti is popular as an open-source alternative to Minecraft (as its roots\nare in blocky sandbox games), it also lowers barriers to bringing creative ideas\nto life. The freedom and customization Luanti affords has made it an excellent\ntool in [education](https://www.luanti.org/education/), finding its way into\nmany schools across Europe.\n\n## What is the DMCA notice?\n\nThe [Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)\nis United States law which lays out a notice-and-takedown process which\nplatforms like Google Play follow to avoid liability for damages resulting from\ncopyright-infringing packages which they distribute. These platforms are not\nresponsible for the actions of their users, but they are responsible for taking\ncorrective action when user-generated content is reported.\n\nThe DMCA notice we received through Google claims that:\n\nThese 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\n\n“US Reg. #TX 8-192-097” is\n[the registration of Minecraft Java Edition 1.9 with the US Copyright Office](https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/voyager_28402120).\n\nIt does not provide any information aside from this and does not outline which assets Luanti allegedly uses.\n\n## Which assets?\n\n### Engine\n\nLuanti is a game-creation platform and does not ship with any games, let alone game assets. In fact, here are all the textures Luanti comes with:\n\nLuanti also includes further assets, particularly fonts. These are properly\nattributed in the [license file](https://github.com/luanti-org/luanti/blob/master/LICENSE.txt).\n\nThe GitHub repository does include the\n[Development Test game](https://content.luanti.org/packages/Luanti/devtest/),\nwhich is also available on ContentDB but is not included in Luanti releases\nanymore. Being a testing ground for the engine, the textures are largely\nutilitarian in nature.\n\n### Minetest Game\n\nLuanti *previously* shipped with\n[Minetest Game](https://content.luanti.org/packages/Luanti/minetest_game/),\na crafting survival game intentionally kept bare-bones to provide a base for\nmodding. [As of December 2023](https://blog.luanti.org/2023/12/04/5.8.0-released/),\nit is no longer bundled with Luanti, and can be downloaded from within the\nLuanti client like any other game. All of Minetest Game’s assets are original\nand properly licensed 1.\n\n### Third-party content\n\nPlayers can download content from ContentDB, our in-app game catalog. Except for Minetest Game and Development Test, all these games, mods, and texture packs are third-party, just like most apps on Google Play.\n\nPackages uploaded on ContentDB are reviewed manually by volunteer staff before they are approved. We proactively check for copyright issues, including checking for commercial assets. Independent of this incident, we have been looking into automated asset flagging using conventional perceptual hashing algorithms. This would help human moderators detect copyrighted assets, and we will always require a final human decision without relying on erroneous AI.\n\nIt is in everyone’s best interests that content on ContentDB is legal and free,\nas it allows the community to safely use and build on top of it for their own\nprojects. If you are a rightsholder who believes your rights are being infringed\nby content hosted on ContentDB, then the correct action is to submit a\n[DMCA notice](https://content.luanti.org/copyright_dmca/) against the particular\ngame on ContentDB.\n\n## Cubes are for everyone\n\nThe concept of a game featuring 3D cubes or voxels is not something anyone can\nown 2. Minecraft was originally inspired by the 2009 game\n\n[Infiniminer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infiniminer)which uses similar voxel graphics, and later examples like Hytale show that block games make up an entire genre that Minecraft is simply a part of. Mojang and its parent company Microsoft have all rights to enforce their copyright for assets such as Minecraft’s textures, but cannot use the DMCA as a means to intimidate and monopolize an entire genre of games.\n\nLuanti was originally created by celeron55 in 2010 under the name “Minetest”,\ninspired by the newly-released Minecraft Alpha to make a sandbox in a voxel grid\nthat ran better on low-end hardware. Work began in 2011 on a modding API using\nthe [Lua](https://lua.org) programming language, allowing players to create\ntheir own content. Minetest has continued to work to support a larger variety of\nuser creativity ever since. In 2024,\n[the rename from Minetest to Luanti](https://blog.luanti.org/2024/10/13/Introducing-Our-New-Name/)\nset this direction in stone.\n\n## What is Tracer.AI?\n\nQuoting their website:\n\nTracer is a next-generation brand protection platform that empowers brands to take control of their brand presence online. Our AI agents streamline workflows and enhance operational efficiency, making it easier to monitor digital channels, take down detections, and analyze vast amounts of data to provide better business intelligence insights. Bring speed, accuracy, and efficiency to your brand protection strategy, without draining your team’s resources.\n\nTracer’s AI brand protection technology detects and removes infringements to your brand across thousands of digital platforms, faster and more accurately than ever before.\n\nFrom this, we can gather that Tracer uses AI agents for automated infringement\ndetection. In a\n[2024 blog post](https://www.tracer.ai/tracer-blog/achieving-precision-and-speed-in-brand-protection-with-tracers-human-in-the-loop-ai),\nthe company boasts “85% faster takedowns”, “100% more reviews\nmonth-over-month” along with “review times that are six times faster than\ntraditional methods”. It claims this has resulted in “44% more takedowns\nmonth-over-month”.\n\n## This is not the first time this has happened\n\nLuanti’s Android app received an identical notice from the same company in\nMarch 2023. As the notice was incorrect, we submitted a counter-notice and the app\nwas eventually reinstated… after 46 days 3.\n\n[Section 512(g)(2)(c)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512)of the DMCA requires that providers “[replace] the removed material and [cease] disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice”. Google’s failure to adhere to the deadlines specified by the DMCA raises questions regarding its approach toward handling DMCA counter-notices.\n\nIn February of this year, an indie game called\n[Allumeria](https://allumeria.com/) also received a DMCA takedown from Tracer.AI\non behalf of Microsoft, resulting in the game’s temporary removal from the Steam\nstore. The notice\n[was eventually dropped by Microsoft](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/i-genuinely-do-not-know-what-to-do-says-developer-of-minecraft-like-allumeria-after-microsoft-issues-a-dmca-takedown-forcing-it-off-steam/) after public noise.\n\n## This can’t keep happening\n\nIf a company can repeatedly submit the same DMCA notice with no explanation or evidence, taking projects down for months at a time, the system is broken. It prevents users from discovering or updating Luanti, and risks users settling for shady or ad-ridden forks instead.\n\nIf we were a small company relying on income from the app, this would be especially devastating. We, like most open-source communities, lack the resources to continually fight unfounded DMCA notices.\n\n## What next?\n\nWe have submitted a counter-notice and the app should be restored soon, hopefully sooner than 46 days. But with counter-notices not being respected in the set timeframe, a more public approach is required.\n\nWe call on Microsoft, Mojang, and Tracer.AI to stop relying on AI tools to send inaccurate and vague DMCA notices. Detection must be verified by a human and, more importantly, substantiated with tangible proof.\n\nWe call on Google to improve how they verify notices, allow users to respond to notices without taking apps down for extended periods of time, and properly comply with copyright law.\n\nWhile we hope Google reinstates the Luanti app in a timely manner, we would like\nto mention that the Luanti Android app is also available on\n[F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.minetest.minetest/), an app store\nfor Android whose official repository contains only verified free software.\nIn addition, APK downloads are available\n[on our own website](https://www.luanti.org/en/downloads/). Unfortunately,\nboth distribution mechanisms are [increasingly under threat](https://keepandroidopen.org/).\n\nWe ask our community and readers to share this post far and wide, to help raise awareness and ensure this doesn’t happen again, for us or anyone else.\n\n-\n17 U.S. Code § 102(b)\n\n[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102)[↩](#fnref:copyrightideas) -\nWe submitted the counter notice on 25 March 2023 and the app was reinstated on 10 May 2023.\n\n[↩](#fnref:timeline2023)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice", "canonical_source": "https://blog.luanti.org/2026/08/27/luanti-dmca-tracer-ai/", "published_at": "2026-08-28 06:33:57+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-28 06:48:08.511911+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["Luanti", "Google Play Store", "Microsoft", "Tracer.AI", "Minecraft", "Allumeria"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/luanti-removed-from-google-play-due-to-baseless-ai-copyright-notice.jsonld"}}