Can You Actually Unring A Bell?

14Feb/08Off

Can You Actually Unring A Bell?

I've just received this charming note from Brock Pierce's lawyer regarding the Debonneville v. Pierce lawsuit.

It has come to our attention that you have made postings on the website www.brokentoys.org that violate the United States District Court's Order sealing the Complaint in that case.

To avoid further harm resulting to our client from the violation of the Court's sealing Order, we hereby demand that by no later than the close of business tomorrow (February 15, 2008) you: (1) take down your January 30, 2008 article discussing the allegations in the sealed document and (2) send our office all copies of the Complaint in your possession, custody or control.

Well, I certainly would not want to violate the spirit or letter of such a nice notice, even if their information on where I live is somewhat out of date and no other attempt was made to contact me before this. So, of course, late tomorrow afternoon, I'll edit this post and remove the offending information. That should make everyone happy, right? It *is* what they asked for!

Just in the interest of openness, my response:

Although it is my understanding that I am under no legal obligation to comply with the court order you provided, I will comply fully with your first request and take down the blog article referenced by close of business on 2/15/08.

As I have no copies of the document you refer to, I cannot comply with the second request you have made.

I welcome your client's renewed dedication to legal documentation and remind him that there are several outstanding end user licensing agreements attached to games I have assisted in operating in the past, regarding the explicitly forbidden trade of virtual items and characters in said games that he and his company have performed and expedited, that would benefit from his and his company's attention.

So, once again, this article will be edited sometime later tomorrow afternoon. This article. Over here. Yeah, this one.

Filed under: First Thing We Do Let's Kill All The Lawyers, IGE, RMT, _ Comments Off

Comments (48) Trackbacks (9) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Trevel
February 14th, 2008 - 20:40

Sorry, I don’t understand — which article are you talking about?
Scott Jennings
February 14th, 2008 - 20:41

This one!
Trevel
February 14th, 2008 - 20:44

Ah, thanks.

You really should have linked it somewhere in the actual body of the blog post, you know. Makes things easier.
Igniferroque
February 14th, 2008 - 20:49

I’m glad you got the electronic version since they appear to have sent the hardcopy to your address in Virginia.
Michael C. Neel
February 14th, 2008 - 20:53

Hope they sent a letter to google too…

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:H-b2_PtVr_oJ:brokentoys.org/2008/01/30/pierce-to-yantis-to-evers-to-chance-the-rise-and-fall-of-ige/+http://brokentoys.org/2008/01/30/pierce-to-yantis-to-evers-to-chance-the-rise-and-fall-of-ige/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Scott Jennings
February 14th, 2008 - 20:54

Not only that, one I moved away from some years before even leaving Virginia!

Pity when your only way of finding people is through out of date Whois records. Because, you know, I’m so hard to find.
Ryan Shwayder
February 14th, 2008 - 20:55

What’s unfortunate is that, though there is no legal reason for you to comply with that request, we (non-lawyers) get scared when lawyers throw their weight around and tend to scare easy.

I’ll go ahead and send them my brain since I made the unfortunate mistake of reading your article, and all the articles you linked, before I realized it was illegal for me to read. Damn it. Would faxing them my ass work?
Jiffy
February 14th, 2008 - 20:57

“Would faxing them my ass work?”

Only if you send a cover sheet with the words, “Hootchi Mama” on it.
Naladini
February 14th, 2008 - 21:03

Return all copies of the document …. it sounds like … with just a little bit of programming, you could email them the copy of the complaint from your browser cache. Oh, now there’s a copy in your sent items folder, maybe you should forward that one to them too? Ah, the beginning of a pattern …
J.
February 14th, 2008 - 21:58

You should ask them to submit copies of the court order to seal. Was that documented at all, ever?
Boanerges
February 14th, 2008 - 22:11

Reminds me of when one of my superiors at work found that a website of ours had been copied, lock stock and barrel, by a rival company (they did a search and replace to put their name in for the most part but the missed a few hilarious ones). He emails us after the discovery and demands that we find a way to stop anyone from copying our site ever again.

Umm… yeah…
LawyersCanBiteMe
February 14th, 2008 - 22:31

Can’t stop the signal Mal….

http://lawyerscanbiteme.blogspot.com/
Matt Mihaly
February 14th, 2008 - 22:43

Fuck that Scott. Don’t let them bully you. I’ve got no real complaint with IGE but that is total bullshit. I hope you are, at minimum, infuriated by their tactics. Going to go blog about this right now.

–matt
VPellen
February 15th, 2008 - 01:54

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

I did a little searching around, and from what I gather, when a legal complaint is sealed, it means it can’t be discussed by anybody. Doesn’t seem to matter if you’re an employer, a member of the press or just an average Joe, sealed means sealed. I think Scott is technically obliged to take the thing down. But, again, I am not a lawyer.
Cameron K
February 15th, 2008 - 03:04

You need to get ahold of Leonard Crabs and lawyer the fuck out of them!

PS Hi Scott
IainC
February 15th, 2008 - 04:24

Wait though. The sealing order only applies to the original complaint. The order states that the plaintiff was required to submit a new complaint within ten days (so before 27/9/07) and as far as I can see there is no evidence that the subsequent complaint was also sealed.

As long as you only reference the later complaint then frankly they are blowing out of their ass.
Artheos
February 15th, 2008 - 05:36

I particularly like the slam on their client’s RMT efforts in games that expressly forbid it as a condition of playing!
Brock
February 15th, 2008 - 05:47

again!

http://brockpierce.blogspot.com/
Tachevert
February 15th, 2008 - 07:10

I suspect that you actually meant to say this article!
Heartless_
February 15th, 2008 - 07:20

I hear Jack Thompson is an excellent games lawyer.
kalain
February 15th, 2008 - 09:37

Ah, the old “remove data from the entire internet!” C&D letter.
JT
February 15th, 2008 - 09:55

You know Scott, if you really want to fight these IGE goons… you have enough grounds here for Racketeering and Money Laundering.
Paks
February 15th, 2008 - 10:09

Two words…

Denny Crane

http://bostonlegal.seenon.com/detail.php?p=12043&v=All&DCMP=KNC-G-Denny_Bobblehead&HBX_OU=50&HBX_PK=denny%20crane&pa=Netramind_denny%20crane_G_Dcrane_Dcrane

Nuff said.
Paks
February 15th, 2008 - 10:12

oops Link Gone Wild!!!

Sorry
aimhigh seelowe
February 15th, 2008 - 10:12

Bravo to JT for a) his amazing prose b) pokeing these slack jawed paper hangers in the eye with his ASTOUNDING command of the english language…and preventing resulting injury from taking a stance against attorneys in a country that JAILS REPORTERS FOR HIDEING THEIR SOURCES.

Hang in there. And keep us posted.

BTW…any games we can BOYCOTT…BOYCOTT…BOYCOTT…as a reaction to this blatant “mean face” postureing?
Arrakiv
February 15th, 2008 - 10:45

I believe what we are stumbling into here, is yet another example of “Once its on the Internet, its always on the Internet.” As much as lawyers seem to miss that.
Cameron Sorden
February 15th, 2008 - 11:23

Ridiculous.
SirBruce
February 15th, 2008 - 11:58

Scott, you shouldn’t take them down unless they provide copies of the sealing order.
rbtroj
February 15th, 2008 - 12:47

did Pierce’s wikipedia article get vandalized or is what’s in there true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Pierce

Wait — who are we supposed to be mad at here?
Nick McLaren
February 15th, 2008 - 14:40

Dugg! I have a particular dislike for legal bullying too, so let’s give them some unwanted attention, shall we?

http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Legal_Bullying_of_a_Fine_MMO_Blogger

Cheers,

Nick
Ed
February 15th, 2008 - 16:27

They did provide Scott with a copy of the sealing order and I’m pretty sure that if he failed to comply he could be held in contempt of court. He could probably also sued for causing the “fine and upstanding” Mr. Brock Pierce’s case harm. Or something. It’s a shame that nobody saved copies of the original PDF that MMOCitizen posted and mirrored them around the world. er… wait…
Apache
February 15th, 2008 - 17:24

never, ever, ever, ever reply to those kind of emails
SirBruce
February 15th, 2008 - 17:32

Sorry, where does it say Scott got a copy of the sealing order? Because they said they didn’t have on on VirtuallyBlind.
Ed
February 15th, 2008 - 18:02

If you read the PDF that Scott posted, pages 3 & 4 are the motion that contain the order sealing the complaint. “IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that: Plaintiffs’ Complaint be sealed…”
SirBruce
February 15th, 2008 - 19:16

Sorry, I don’t have a copy of that document.
Brandon J
February 15th, 2008 - 20:16

Just wondering if you talked to any lawyers about your options? Was the C&D clearly rubbish, or does it have some bite?

Either way, this is going to explode in Matthew Hayes’ (Pierce’s lawyer) face, as he just succeeded in getting the word out… gotta love tech-savvy lawyers ^.^

btw, if anyone wants to help Matthew understand the blogging community better, you can e-mail him your helpful advice at hayesm@gtlaw.com.
SirBruce
February 15th, 2008 - 20:29

Okay, I’m blind, thanks Ed I see it now.
TPRJones
February 16th, 2008 - 02:33

So, is this why http://www.mmocitizen.com/ has gone poof?
Gwaendar
February 16th, 2008 - 03:02

Pardon my ignorance but to this foreigner, it seems odd that a lawyer for one of the parties should have any powers to enforce a court’s order directly, by themselves. Wouldn’t he actually be required to go back to the judge and whine that his sealing order isn’t being respected and then the court does something about it? Is a lawyer for one of the parties really allowed to play the law enforcement agent?
JJC
February 16th, 2008 - 11:15

While I can’t speak for Scott, not without some sort of cash retainer, the fight just isn’t worth it. Besides, the coverage of the removal far surpassed the coverage of the suit from what it seems. The C&D did far more to highlight the problem than if they had just left it alone. We also got a kitten. Everyone is a winner here.
D-0ne
February 16th, 2008 - 18:52

Scott,
Mind if I go to google cache or some other and copy and paste the whole dame thing over to my site?
Paul Hutson
February 17th, 2008 - 16:17

Doesn’t sending you this letter only make the last post you made more widely publised?

Oh well…. Keep on blogging… The posts make my work days fly by somewhat faster
Brandon J
February 17th, 2008 - 23:18

Benjamin Duranske’s take on this issue at the Virtually Blind site, for those of you who missed it.

Great analysis of what happened, when and what that really means.
Mike Gribbin
February 18th, 2008 - 12:52

Attempting to censor information has only spread it faster for as long as people have tried to do it.

(Well, I can’t say that for certain of course. If information were successfully censored I wouldn’t know!)
Jeremy Williams
February 19th, 2008 - 02:33

I like the final pointing out of TOS which their website spat in the eyes of.
Real classy.
Smashed Goblin
February 21st, 2008 - 17:05

It’s been awhile since an update of any kind – did they have Lum kidnapped and tortured?!
VPellen
February 21st, 2008 - 23:22

Isn’t the GDC on right about now?
Ant ButterNut
February 25th, 2008 - 21:24

On a side note, the website about the IGE lawsuit, mmocitizen.com is like…. gone.