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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not want to violate the spirit or letter of such a nice notice, even if their information on where I live is somewhat out of date and no other attempt was made to contact me before this.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.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 and is filed under First Thing We Do Let's Kill All The Lawyers, IGE, RMT, _. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  1. #1 by Trevel on February 14th, 2008

    Sorry, I don’t understand — which article are you talking about?

  2. #2 by Scott Jennings on February 14th, 2008

  3. #3 by Trevel on February 14th, 2008

    Ah, thanks.

    You really should have linked it somewhere in the actual body of the blog post, you know. Makes things easier.

  4. #4 by Igniferroque on February 14th, 2008

    I’m glad you got the electronic version since they appear to have sent the hardcopy to your address in Virginia.

  5. #5 by Michael C. Neel on February 14th, 2008

  6. #6 by Scott Jennings on February 14th, 2008

    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.

  7. #7 by Ryan Shwayder on February 14th, 2008

    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?

  8. #8 by Jiffy on February 14th, 2008

    “Would faxing them my ass work?”

    Only if you send a cover sheet with the words, “Hootchi Mama” on it.

  9. #9 by Naladini on February 14th, 2008

    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 …

  10. #10 by J. on February 14th, 2008

    You should ask them to submit copies of the court order to seal. Was that documented at all, ever?

  11. #11 by Boanerges on February 14th, 2008

    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…

  12. #12 by LawyersCanBiteMe on February 14th, 2008

    Can’t stop the signal Mal….

    http://lawyerscanbiteme.blogspot.com/

  13. #13 by Matt Mihaly on February 14th, 2008

    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

  14. #14 by VPellen on February 15th, 2008

    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.

  15. #15 by Cameron K on February 15th, 2008

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

    PS Hi Scott

  16. #16 by IainC on February 15th, 2008

    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.

  17. #17 by Artheos on February 15th, 2008

    I particularly like the slam on their client’s RMT efforts in games that expressly forbid it as a condition of playing!

  18. #18 by Brock on February 15th, 2008

  19. #19 by Tachevert on February 15th, 2008

    I suspect that you actually meant to say this article!

  20. #20 by Heartless_ on February 15th, 2008

    I hear Jack Thompson is an excellent games lawyer.

  21. #21 by kalain on February 15th, 2008

    Ah, the old “remove data from the entire internet!” C&D letter.

  22. #22 by JT on February 15th, 2008

    You know Scott, if you really want to fight these IGE goons… you have enough grounds here for Racketeering and Money Laundering.

  23. #23 by Paks on February 15th, 2008

  24. #24 by Paks on February 15th, 2008

    oops Link Gone Wild!!!

    Sorry :(

  25. #25 by aimhigh seelowe on February 15th, 2008

    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?

  26. #26 by Arrakiv on February 15th, 2008

    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.

  27. #27 by Cameron Sorden on February 15th, 2008

    Ridiculous.

  28. #28 by SirBruce on February 15th, 2008

    Scott, you shouldn’t take them down unless they provide copies of the sealing order.

  29. #29 by rbtroj on February 15th, 2008

    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?

  30. #30 by Nick McLaren on February 15th, 2008

    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

  31. #31 by Ed on February 15th, 2008

    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…

  32. #32 by Apache on February 15th, 2008

    never, ever, ever, ever reply to those kind of emails

  33. #33 by SirBruce on February 15th, 2008

    Sorry, where does it say Scott got a copy of the sealing order? Because they said they didn’t have on on VirtuallyBlind.

  34. #34 by Ed on February 15th, 2008

    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…”

  35. #35 by SirBruce on February 15th, 2008

    Sorry, I don’t have a copy of that document.

  36. #36 by Brandon J on February 15th, 2008

    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.

  37. #37 by SirBruce on February 15th, 2008

    Okay, I’m blind, thanks Ed I see it now.

  38. #38 by TPRJones on February 16th, 2008

    So, is this why http://www.mmocitizen.com/ has gone poof?

  39. #39 by Gwaendar on February 16th, 2008

    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?

  40. #40 by JJC on February 16th, 2008

    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.

  41. #41 by D-0ne on February 16th, 2008

    Scott,
    Mind if I go to google cache or some other and copy and paste the whole dame thing over to my site?

  42. #42 by Paul Hutson on February 17th, 2008

    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 :)

  43. #43 by Brandon J on February 17th, 2008

    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.

  44. #44 by Mike Gribbin on February 18th, 2008

    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!)

  45. #45 by Jeremy Williams on February 19th, 2008

    I like the final pointing out of TOS which their website spat in the eyes of.
    Real classy.

  46. #46 by Smashed Goblin on February 21st, 2008

    It’s been awhile since an update of any kind – did they have Lum kidnapped and tortured?!

  47. #47 by VPellen on February 21st, 2008

    Isn’t the GDC on right about now?

  48. #48 by Ant ButterNut on February 25th, 2008

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

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