Jack Thompson disbarred

Sorry that we’re a little late covering it, but I’ve been too busy celebrating to significantly cover it. The Florida Supreme Court has affirmed a judicial referee’s decision to disbar Jack Thompson, the anti-video game violence crusader, permanently, with no reinstatement, and ordered him to pay more than $40,000 in fines.

The news was so big that GamePolitics, a favorite target of Thompson actually went down over the past several days.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Thompson’s past, these were the charges laid against him by the Florida Bar:

• Respondent made false statements of material fact to courts and repeatedly violated a court order
• Respondent publicized and sent hundreds of pages of vitriolic and disparaging missives, letters, faxes, and press releases, to the affected individuals
• Respondent falsely, recklessly, and publicly accused a judge as being amenable to the “fixing” of cases
• Respondent sent courts inappropriate and offensive sexual materials;
• Respondent falsely and publicly accused various attorneys and their clients of engaging in a conspiracy/enterprise involving “the criminal distribution of sexual materials to minors” and attempted to get prosecuting authorities to charge these attorneys and their clients for racketeering and extortion
• Respondent harassed the former client of an attorney in an effort to get the client to use its influence to persuade the attorney to withdraw a defamation suit filed by the attorney against respondent.

While it’s never a good thing that an attorney be disbarred, Gameslaw does support the decision. Thompson’s actions hurt not just his victims, but all attornies in the games industry, and all consumers under the protections of the First Amendment. It’s sad that it came to this, but substantive justice was done.

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Electronic Arts Sued Over Spore DRM

A class action suit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The Complaint alleges violations of the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the California Unfair Competition Law as well as alleging tortious trespass to property.

The suit is directed against EA’s use of the SecuROM Digital Rights Management technology. This technology allows users a set number of installs from their disc, no matter how many systems they own or use. Plaintiffs describe SecuROM as “a second, undisclosed program” that “hijacks” computers. They contend that consumers are not properly warned about the program’s existence when they purchase Spore, stating that SecuROM is “secretly installed to the command and control center of the computer (Ring 0, or the Kernel), and surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation on the computer, preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances and/or disrupting hardware operations.”

Plaintiffs seek the remedies of disgorgement of profits and damages for trespass in an amount exceeding $5M.

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A note on Activision’s stealth lawsuits

Yes we’re aware of them. No, we won’t be reporting on them until they “unstealth” themselves, and substantive information comes out about them. The litigation is still pending, as are settlement negotiations in some of the cases as far (says GamePolitics), and given that intimidation tactics are reportedly being used against the defendants to browbeat them into a settlement, we don’t want any speculation on our part to potentially influence the outcome of this case.

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Follow up on SCEA/Jaffe copyright infringement case

Boingboing.net has an analysis of the facts in the SCEA/Jaffe God of War 2 copyright infringement case. It’s a worthwhile read for the facts of the case though I wouldn’t lend it much credence for legal conclusions (such as their claim that “The legal issue will be decided by deep pockets and, conceivably, a jury.” Whatever causes of action survive the inevitable 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss, will inevitably be kicked on summary judgment, meaning not only will this not ever get to a jury, it likely won’t get to significant discovery beyond what is already out their in the public.)

The article does elaborate on some things that were in the complaint but not really discussed in media coverage:

Starting in January 2002, the complaint says, the pair pitched their creation to Sony and companies that do business with Sony, who then “actively collaborated with each other regarding Plaintiff’s works.” Acting on their behalf, L.A. attorney Judith Karfiol sent the materials on to the Monteiro-Rose Agency, Ken Sherman & Associates, and Josh Berman, all companies who “regularly do business” with Sony. Bissoon-Dath also pitched Olympiad directly, in October 2002, to Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Anyway, judge for yourself here.

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Sorry for the delay…

Just so everyone knows, the continuation of my California statute analysis will be a bit delayed due to an incredibly hectic week ahead. I’ll be caught up in brief-writing, my law school’s 100th anniversary ceremonies (NESL rules!), finding and configuring a new laptop, and other such. Please be patient, this website and service to the game industry in general are always on my mind. Thanks
–Liz

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SCEA and David Jaffe sued over God of War copyright infringement

According to Kotaku and Gamepolitics, Sony Computer Entertainment America and designer David Jaffe have been sued in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for alleged copyright infringment involving the action game God of War.

The Complaint was filed in February by Jonathan Bissoon-Dath and Jennifer Barrette-Herzog, and SCEA and Jaffe filed their Answer with the Court on August 29th.

Among the similarities raised in the complaint:

• Plaintiff’s works tell the original story of how a champion saves Athens from destruction by the invading Spartan army that has been sent by Ares… [GoW]… is the story of how a champion chosen by Zeus and Athens saves Athen from destruction by an invading army sent by Ares…
• In plaintiff’s original work and God of War, the Champion’s family is hacked to death in a one-room building in a small peaceful village. In both stories the Champion feels partially responsible even though he is not really to blame…
• In exchange for Kratos’ pledge, Ares gives him… the Blades of Chaos… two massive, glowing, sword-like blades fastened to chains fused to Kratos’s wrists… These Blade of Chaos are taken directly from a scene in Bissoon-Dath’s work… “As Zeus strides forward… his hands MORPH into two massive swords that glow like light sabers…”
• …Owen must cross the Bottomless Valley over a long, sagging suspension bridge, shown on Barrette-Herzog’s map… in God of War Kratos must cross the Bottomless Chasm on a long, sagging suspension bridge…

Jaffe’s response denies all of the plaintiff’s substantive allegations, and raises affirmative defenses on grounds that the plaintiff’s work is not original authorship, is in the public domain, is improperly registered, that plaintiffs lack standing, that there is federal issue preclusion over one of the causes of action, and that the causes of action fail to assert a claim upon which relief can be granted.

We’ll keep you posted as more information unravels on this case.

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Analysts disavow comparison of T2-EA merger to Yahoo’s failure

Gamepolitics reports that analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen and Co. is disavowing comparisons of the Take Two — EA merger failure and this years Microsoft/Yahoo failure. According to Creutz (when asked if they were similar):

I’d say no. YHOO [Yahoo] is clearly a company in decline, with an entrenched management. TTWO [Take-Two] is a company with arguably improving business fundamentals and a management team that I believe was willing to deal at the right price. I also think that MSFT [Microsoft] shareholders were not excited by the prospect of a YHOO acquisition whereas most ERTS [Electronic Arts] shareholders wanted the TTWO deal to happen at a reasonable price.

Creutz also believes that Take Two boss Zelnick is secure in his position:

Any shareholders who wanted to get out of the stock at $26 (EA’s best offer) had ample opportunity. Anyone who was holding out for a higher price feels the same way as Zelnick – no deal at $26. As long as the business turnaround continues then I think Zelnick is safe.

The market might think otherwise. Despite the downturn Take Two’s stock price had held steady until the past couple days, at which point it dropped from the low $20’s per share to about $15 per share. This may be attributable to this weeks bank collapses. EA’s stock has steadily declined from around $49 per share at the beginning of the month to around $43, but has not been hit in the same way over the past two or three days as Take 2 has.

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Back up

Site’s back up, and comments are fixed again. Run wild. Please be responsible with comments. Keep in mind if you include an external link, your comment will be held for moderation, so don’t worry if it doesn’t immediately appear. For everyone else, it shouldn’t be held for moderation, though that may change if we get a deluge of spam. So enjoy it responsibly, and my apologies for the length of time it took to get them fixed.

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Site notice: Temporary Downtime

The site will be temporarily down for a software upgrade over the next couple of hours. Hopefully this will fix the bug preventing y’all from adding comments to posts. Please contact us using the contact form if you notice any errors.

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Pew Internet Poll is good news for game policy

WTOP news reports that the Pew group has released a major study on the effects of video gaming on kids (PDF link), and it bodes quite well for the industry. One of the things that struck me during the Video Game Violence and Policy panel at PAX as well as during our legal issues panel, was the statement that there currently is no good data set of research on the topic that can be used as a factual basis for either a policy change, or for an evidentiary basis in a legal action. That likely no longer is the case with the Pew poll, given that the Pew group is a clearly non-partisan actor in the games policy debate, and is a respected research organization. Plus, as best as we can tell, statistically the information is meaningful.

Read the rest of this entry »

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