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Bethesda sues a Fallout fansite

Kartik Mudgal — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:31:48 +0000

A Fallout fansite has been sued by Bethesda for distributing free Fallout posters, or something like that. Yes, we can’t believe it. Law firms usually operate separate of the entities that hire them, so this shouldn’t be a surprise to many.

Earlier Bethesda had sued Mojang for using “scrolls” in their game title. It wasn’t settled with a Quake 3 game and this won’t be as well.

So far, so good. I made some free posters, set up a quick one-page site and leaned back to enjoy the fact that I was helping Fallout-fans around the globe.

But suddenly, after a few weeks, I got an email: What’s this in my inbox? A legal letter from the global law firm DLA Piper on behalf of Bethesda?

Now, I’m not out looking for trouble. I set up the website out of pure “fandom”, and the last thing I wanted – or expected – was to be threatened with a lawsuit by Bethesda. What pisses me off isn’t the fact that they’re looking out for their trademark – as they have every right to do so. What I’m pissed about are large companies abusing their monetary power, hiring global law firms to go after a fan online, immediately threating with a lawsuit.

Had they had the slighest bit of PR-savyness, they would have shot me a quick personal mail asking me to remove the (supposed) infringing content – and preferrably sent me some nice Fallout-swag as a nice gesture (yes, I am that corrupt).

But no, they had to bring DLA Piper into the picture. You know what? I’m tired of behaviour like that. I’m tired of intellectual rights holders – be it RIAA, MPAA or in this case Bethesda – going after little guys like myself and threatening them into obedience. Some people doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or money to fight their cause, so they just fold after receiving a letter like that. But just because you can’t afford to fight, doesn’t mean your oponent is right.

You can read the whole thing here, including the lawsuit papers.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Beyonce’s $100 Million Dancing Game Lawsuit

James Reith — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 01:02:48 +0000

A company that was working on a dancing game endorsed by R&B sensation Beyonce Knowles say they were “destroyed”, as well as being put $100 Million out of pocket, after the singer withdrew from the project. Gate Five, the company which was working on the title, are suing Ms. Knowles (or Mrs. Z, rather) for “a bad faith breach of contract so callous that, on what appeared to be a whim, she destroyed Gate Five’s business and drove 70 people into unemployment, the week before Christmas.” Gate Five claim the game would have made $100 Million and they had already sunk $6 Million into the project by the time of Beyonce’s departure. According to court documents she “made an extortionate demand for entirely new compensation terms she wanted,” which then “backfired and drove away the financier (who found [Knowles] too erratic to do business with), she pulled out of the project in breach of the agreement.”

Apparently, Beyonce’s negotiation tactics were “so unscrupulous that her then manager (who is also her father) renounced them”. According to Gate Five: “In early December everything was still a go. And then the week of Christmas, she said that’s it, I don’t want to hear from you guys, go away, resulting in 70 people losing their jobs.” They continued, “we’d much rather make a game than litigate. But we want to recover damages that Gate Five suffered.”

Dance titles are big business currently, so their gigantic profit predictions may not be so ridiculous.

Thanks to CVG for the info.

PS3 Hacker ‘Geohot’ Flees To South America

James Reith — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:32:18 +0000

The bizarre story of George ‘geohot’ Hotz, the hacker who Sony are suing for making the PS3’s security key public, has taken an even stranger twist. According to a court document filed by Sony, after Hotz was ordered to hand over his hack related hard drives: “Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and…Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral. Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions.” Hotz has fled and South America is quite a big place…

Thanks to IGN for the info.

Sony sues GeoHot and other hackers

Debabrata Nath — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:50:02 +0000

We all saw this coming and it has finally come.

Yes, Sony’s sued George “GeoHot” Hotz and the entire group of failoverflow which includes Hector Martin, Sven Peter and others. This lawsuit was the result of them releasing the PS3 root security key to the public which allows the release of modified firmware, pirated software and homebrew apps to be run on the console.

The charges filed by SCE are as follows:

18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) – Confidential Information On Computer
18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(4) – Intent To Defraud And Obtain Value
18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A) – Knowing Transmission of Code
18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(B) and (C) – Intentional and Reckless Damage And Loss
18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(6)(A) – Trafficking in Password
18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7)(B) – Intent to Extort

GeoHot has updated his website to inform about the same.

The lawsuit against Martin and Peter appears to be an act of desperation since neither reside in the United States.

You can download the lawsuits from Hotz’s website.

We think this is a good move by Sony as it’ll teach such wrongdoers a lesson and might prevent other hackers to try and carry out similar acts of disgust in the future.