History Repeats Itself – Large Hadron Collider At Fault
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Well this ought to be fun; and I’m just hoping that my attorneys have taken their heartburn medication.
Where do I start?
No clue. So I’m just going to lay it all out as it flows from my brain to my fingers. It’s Sunday. I’m home alone. It is gloomy outside. My iPad is charging.
I get to rant.
Before I get to the meat of the reason for this post, let me set the stage by passing along some information that – being one of the denizens of the Intarweb from back when we were all eating noodles and drinking water so we could afford to pay Compuserve (or Bix) ISP and dial-up fees – I have picked up over the years. But if you’re not interested, you can just scroll to the very bottom to find the link to my open letter to that gun-totting fool, David Allen.
As [video game] industry celebrities – and public figures – there is a lot of attention placed on the things that we say and do. Much like Hollywood, there is an entire culture built around those of us who are actually named developers. And by that I mean those of us who, through our products, notoriety, fame etc gamers attach a face, words and actions. For example, my guess is that until Infinity Ward seemingly started imploding a few weeks ago, most of the billion or more gamers who bought and played Modern Warfare 2, had no clue who Jason West and Vince Zapella were. Now they do.
Much like the movies; you’d be hard pressed to know the name of more than one or two people in any given movie, but there is no mistaking Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, John Travolta etc. Then once in a while someone like Mark Strong shows up in a strong performance and you immediately try to figure out “who that actor is”. Once you know who he is, you can then relate to him, the movies that he does etc.
In our industry, believe it or not, the media feeding frenzy is just a bad – if not worse – as media frenzy in other caste cultures such as politics, entertainment, religion etc. However, due to the demographic and age distribution of the video game industry, we tend to have a lot more immature groups who by lending their voice to any one issue, can completely carpet bomb the social media space. There is nothing more satisfying than getting in on the ground floor of a good old Internet flamewar in any given forum or social networking site. At some point in our lives, most – if not all – of us have engaged in some manner of online tomfoolery or angst driven rhetoric that leaves us not only drained (for the most part) but also with little or no satisfaction other than knowing you got to say what you wanted to the other fool you’re engaged in flamewar combat with.
Image courtesy of Randall Munroe @ xkcd
Yes, basically someone, somewhere is wrong on the Internet.
And you think I’m just making stuff up? Go see what Mike Reed did to illustrate the combatants. Here is a sample (the Imposter).
And God help you if you think that person is someone other than yourself. Entire countries (see China) make policies around that single notion and are engaged in nothing short of a covert war with Google over content published online over there.
If you’re anonymous, then thats even better because not only do you get to engage in all manner of anti-social shenanigans, there is very little chance of anything you say online coming back to haunt your real life alter-ego. Plus you get to do all this in your underwear. Thats even more fun than walking outside – with clothes on – and yelling at your neighbor for letting his dog crap on your front lawn and then not picking it up.
By the graces of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), you can post pretty much anything you want online. That is of course assuming that you don’t go overboard, get yourself and the ISP sued over it because that is a whole other mess all by itself.
Most tend to regard Section 230(c) as granting blanket immunity to ISPs for content posted on their sites. Fact is that, no, they have no such blanket immunity because the outcome from any such stance comes from the filed cause of action. If the material is infringing upon copyrights, well then you have the DMCA to deal with that battle. When it comes to pornographic material, defamation etc, you need a different set of weapons to even engage in a CDA battle.
Basically, while the DMCA is a crystal clear (ok, for the most part) as night and day, Section 230(c) of the CDA is a minefield. In the middle of a desert. In a pitch Black environment. In other words if you want to actually test it, you can either a) sue or b) wait to be sued. Either way, you’ll find out soon enough. Heck, some complaints have gone all the up to the Supreme Court.
You think thats bad? Wait, it gets better.
From research, it appears that most online complaints involving anti-social conduct involving Section 230(c) comes from defamation and libel (written form), both of which are tort based. In other words, the end result is a personal injury claim; not unlike a car accident claim.
Remember that minefield? Well our good crusader friends over at the EFF even went as far as to lay it all out for the blogsphere using layman terms that anyone can understand.
Most ISPs and websites have clear rules and guidelines regarding defamatory material on their sites. Some flat out don’t encourage it and for others you have to go through hoops to even get them to acknowledge the material let alone take action. The basic argument is that a third party can’t determine what material constitutes defamation and what doesn’t. Since most ISPs and website owners don’t want to spend attorney fees finding this out on behalf of fourteen year old Timmy (posting as HighElfOblivion), they just err on the side of caution and use common sense to make a pre-determination. Better to be safe than sorry; but basically, do you – on behalf of Timmy – want to spend upwards of $10K on attorney fees just to tell another attorney to go piss up a tree?
Anyone who thinks that a defamation case is either straightforward to pursue, easy to win, let alone even worth pursuing for the most part, probably either has a team of lawyers on their payroll or they’re acting based on a bruised ego.
And when you get into things like Free Speech, as long as you’re not living in, oh I dunno, China, then all bets are off. For the most part, defamation cases are the kind of cases that help attorneys buy a new car, maybe a yatcht or even add an entire wing to their already sprawling homes.
Basically, if you come across defamatory material on the Internet, your best bet is to think twice about how you want to deal with it. The phrase pick your battles should immediately come to mind. If you do decide to pursue a defamation complaint, just be sure that you’re not a public figure because then you most likely have quite a long, ardous and expensive battle on your hands.
Wait! Did I mention that in a personal defamation case, your entire life basically becomes an open book and is thus open season in court? Lets hope that you’re not cheating on your wife, not paying your taxes, messing around with the boss’s wife, lied on your resume, treat your employees/contractors like crap etc because your character – and everything you’ve done and stand for – play a major role in such a case. Just go ask the always brilliant and immediately likeable Bruce Everiss, who those folks over at Evony sued for defamation because he wrote something about their game that they didn’t like.
What happens if some anon person on the Internet actually posts defamatory information about you? Well, you have very few choices. You can contact the site owner or ISP and hope that they actually have a decent TOS that allows them to remove it (regardless of whether or not it is in fact defamatory) or you can go find an attorney. In which case, good luck. Especially if the person is anon. You have to first obtain their personal information from the website or ISP. And that is a whole other battle in and of itself. But if you’re lucky, your attorney actually knows what he is doing and you find a judge who some say was seemingly asleep at the wheel, you might actually obtain the information you are seeking. With that information, now you have an actual person that you can actually sue, instead of just a John or Jane Doe. Good luck, all the same.
If you are are looking to sue a public figure like for example any celebrity or game developer who all fit the very definition of the word, then you don’t have much work to do in terms of who to sue.
If you are a public figure looking to sue someone else (e.g. common folk or another public figure) for alleged defamation, go ahead; I’m sure your attorney and the legal system could use the money, since you clearly don’t need it.
You’ve seen celebrities behave badly online and offline, almost on a daily basis. Heck, for the most part, some actually get paid to do it on national television in the form of reality shows. To the extent that even in our industry, some of our colleagues are doing the same darn thing whenever they get the chance to do so.
Which brings me to one of my favorite industry quotes:
“Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living. If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead…but don’t be surprised if we don’t uphold them.” – Warren Marshall, Epic Games
Did you actually READ all that?
So it comes now that on March 25th, 2010 David Allen – a public figure like myself – decided that he was suing myself and all the Quest Online, LLC investors. In the complaint he is suing me particularly for among other [ludicrous] things, defamation.
What a joke.
At issue (in the defamation part) is the fact that he alleges that I’ve defamed him by posting stuff like my responses to a news item over at industry watering hole, Gamasutra as well as what I said over here on the official Alganon forums. In fact, those threads are mentioned in his legal complaint filed in late March.
During the negotiations for his golden parachute buyout from the company, his attorneys tried to get me to either remove them or post a retraction. Guess how that ended.
Since I was President of the company – and represent the investors – he had to deal with me directly during this entire farce. I’m quite certain that this wasn’t something he’d planned for, since he was so used to running rings around these poor people.
First, he took money from the company bank account and sent it to a personal attorney in Seattle. This was his first bid to scare and strong arm us into submission.
He’s in Arizona, but he went and got a personal attorney in Seattle. Paid him with company funds that he had no rights to – to sue the investors whose very money it was. Yah.
Well, anyway that one didn’t end well at all; and the poor fellow got (from the QOL bank statements showing that the money was wired to him by David) a few thousand bucks from David for sending along letters to us and which basically got him nowhere.
By the time that it was clear to David that I simply wasn’t backing down, I think his Seattle attorney told him to get a local firm in AZ to handle the matter if he wanted to get any traction. And thats what he did.
So, I get another letter from his new Arizona attorneys, who, unlike the Seattle one, was probably more expensive because a few days after David emptied the last of the money in the QOL bank account, we heard from them. So my guess is that’s where the rest of the investor money went.
They didn’t get any traction either because I simply wasn’t going to cave in to baseless threats. Plus the amount of money that he was asking for as buyout for his equity in the company, was just outrageous.
In fact, to be honest, the only reason myself and the company didn’t sue David Allen first is because I was too busy trying to keep the company afloat, working on setting up new accounts, procedures, mapping out a plan for Alganon etc and I didn’t want to waste money on him. I felt that if he was that pissed, well, he could sue us and just give us (myself and the company) that much of an excuse to file all the complaints we were piling up for a countersuit in case he was crazy enough to do that.
Apparently he’s a crazy as a box of fruit loops because lo and behold, he actually filed a complaint in the court – AND – continued to send me these outrageous settlement demands through his new attorney. The idea here was with a complaint in place, myself and the company (and thus the investors) now had to either settle his outrageous claims by giving him money to go away or face a lawsuit.
I said no. Go ahead and sue. I didn’t bat an eyelid.
Anyway, by the time the dust settled and I refused to cave in to his outrageous demands for money, he went ahead and filed the suit against everyone on March 25.
Then on April 7th, he went one step further and issued a press release (ah yes, us public figures can be such egomaniacs) through PRWeb to make sure that the entire world knew that he had in fact sued us; me, Derek Smart, in particular.
It didn’t stop there. Course not, this is David Allen we’re talking about. So he compounds the problem with this bundle of joy – the entire reason for my writing this blog post to begin with and almost three weeks later. Why did it take so long? I was, uhm, busy?
For the past two months, there have been changes taking place at Quest Online, L.L.C. (“QOL”) and, unfortunately, a great deal of false information has been publicized.
In an effort to enhance Alganon’s® market visibility and following the direction of certain investors, QOL hired Derek Smart as a consultant on December 3, 2009 to assist in the area of sales and marketing. Soon thereafter, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, Mr. Smart began a smear campaign attacking my credibility, first privately among the investors, and then publicly. As many have read on various Internet websites, Mr. Smart has made disparaging remarks concerning my professional work and comments that could lead others to question my loyalty, honesty, and ability to successfully create, build, run, and manage a multi-million dollar MMOG development company; something I have been doing successfully for over four years. Please be aware that Mr. Smart’s comments are false and that I have filed a civil action against him in Maricopa County Superior Court for his defamatory conduct, among other things. I have been advised by my legal counsel to offer no further comment at this time on this matter during the pendency of the litigation.
Alganon® is an amazing MMOG that my team and I were able to develop for a fraction of the cost when compared to similar MMOG’s. This was due in part to a highly talented team of developers and their relentless efforts. Alganon® has the foundation of a great MMOG with state-of-the-art and custom-built wholly-owned technology, and exclusive intellectual property.
I stand by my efforts in creating Alganon® and building QOL, and believe operating with honesty, integrity, and honor is the only way to conduct proper business. I am confident that during the process of resolving this conflict, the truth will prevail and the factual account of the activities associated with the development of Alganon® will become known.
Yes Matilda, he’s suing me for defamation, but yet he’s issuing press releases like that. I’m not even going to say it, so you go ahead.
And that would be yet another of David’s mistakes.
Why am I not linking to his website instead of posting the excerpt? Well because it probably won’t be up for much longer due to his use of some copyrighted materials owned by the company and used without permission. You know, DMCA type stuff. The legal eagles are working on that one with the ISP. But anyway, I digress.
You have to ask yourself if he actually knows what defamation is, because reading the above – which I’m almost certain didn’t get the approval of his attorney – it doesn’t seem like it, does it?
Lets not even get into the fact that not only has it been discovered that he has been communicating defamatory statements between himself and several individuals (one of whom is a long time personal detractor and who has an entire website dedicated to defaming me – and who I can’t sue unless new material appears on his site, due the statute of limitations in CA where he is located, being one year), but also to other individuals.
Yes David, we have the emails, complete with headers. And my guess is that by the time the dust settles, under the ESI, we will most likely uncover much – much – more. Don’t you just love lawsuits?
And if you’ve ever been on the ground floor of a decent Internet flamewar or spat, then it should come as no surprise to you that most parties tend to create anon aliases (see Mike Reed’s imposter art above) in order to post in support of themselves and against the target party by using anon aliases. Usually in a bid to show others that their stance does in fact have support. Most egomaniacs and anti-social misfits tend to do this. Heck, the Gamasutra blog alone contained so many aliases and crazy posts, that in one afternoon after they enforced their TOS in the thread, the thread post volume sank like a ton of bricks dropped in a pool. Same with the forums over at MMORPG.
Yes David, we suspect that you and/or your friends are posting anon because most of the stuff that some of these aliases have posted contain material that is not even public knowledge. Again, here comes the ESI.
And this should prove to you that we’re not messing around. Remember that poor guy you were not only manipulating for him to post third party defamatory material but also actually giving privileged company information to? Let’s put it this way, you’ve screwed up so badly, I don’t even know where to begin. Come time for discovery, if your attorney doesn’t have a cow, then he’s a better man than me.
Anyway, tell you what David, since you clearly want to turn this into a public pissing content, rather than prove your case and let the courts decide the outcome, here is my open letter to you because a press release just seems so impersonal, don’t you think?
Have a nice day!
ps:
10-04-22 Warcry Network, Alganon 2.0 Impressions
10-04-18 Darzin, an avid MMO gamer interviews Derek Smart
10-04-18 Revamped Alganon Features
10-04-14 Warcry Network – Alganon 2.0 features
10-04-13 MMORPG – New Alganon Screen shots (56) galleries
10-04-13 MMORPG interviews Derek Smart
10-04-12 MMORPG – A New Look for the New Alganon
10-04-12 Warcry Network – Alganon Impressions
10-04-09 Warcry Network interviews Derek Smart
10-04-08 Ten Ton Hammer – Alganon attempts second launch
10-04-06 Warcry Network on Alganon’s upcoming revamp
10-03-22 Massively interviews Derek Smart
10-03-20 MMORPG interviews Derek Smart
10-03-18 ZAM Interviews Derek Smart
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