So a buddy mine became very popular on twitter and online in general because he obtained a copy of CoD: Ghost 10 days early. He posted tons of pictures and content online. Well yesterday his twitter account was locked and he was notified that Activision will be contacting him. What kind of trouble is he in? Can/will Activision sue him for leaking pictures of a game before the "release date"?
Generally, Activision will want to know who sold/gave him the game earlier. The same thing happened with the latest Pokemon release with retailers breaking the street date.
Your friend should contact his own lawyer if and when Activision threatens him with legal action. Usually it's just bull**** to scare people into complying with their corporate policy, but he should take it seriously and talk to a lawyer.
If your friend is military, too, I seriously doubt Activision would pursue any legal action. Can you imagine the headlines of the premier military shooter company suing a vet?
So a buddy mine became very popular on twitter and online in general because he obtained a copy of CoD: Ghost 10 days early. He posted tons of pictures and content online. Well yesterday his twitter account was locked and he was notified that Activision will be contacting him. What kind of trouble is he in? Can/will Activision sue him for leaking pictures of a game before the "release date"?
This wording makes it seem awfully passive for an actual lawsuit. Was it Twitter that told him Activision would be sending a letter or Activision itself? Regardless, the best advice is always to ignore every threat of a lawsuit up to and until an actual complaint is filed. When a civil complaint is filed with the local court, the court will send certified mail to the defendant address included in the complaint. If in some crazy universe your friend is named as a defendant, he will know he got a complaint in the mail. It's a waste of time to contact an attorney before then, and even if one does agree to meet it would be to unethically milk a consultation fee on a case they know they won't take.
As for the actual legal issues, there's no intellectual property breach, so the suit is in contract. The contract instrument for your friend's liability would be the End User License Agreement, if any. The source he got the game from is probably also under a distributing arrangement, and would be paying practically the entire sum of any judgment. So your friend's involvement will probably just be limited to a source of evidence for that suit, if anything at all. He might get a subpoena, but more likely it would be an out of court deposition. It might be a good idea to get an attorney for that, but I doubt it's strictly necessary since he probably won't even be named in any suit. Just be honest and answer the 2 or 3 questions, and that should be the end of it.
Your friend should contact his own lawyer if and when Activision threatens him with legal action. Usually it's just bull**** to scare people into complying with their corporate policy, but he should take it seriously and talk to a lawyer.
I agree. Definitely have the friend advise and confer with his lawyer.
If your friend is military, too, I seriously doubt Activision would pursue any legal action. Can you imagine the headlines of the premier military shooter company suing a vet?
Suppose his friend is sued. Can this be quoted then?
You can't guarantee this, and it could even be tempting fate!
You must know that people here cannot and, per professional rules, must not provide legal advice. (I don't care for the form of the words now, you know, 'constitutes' or 'construed as'; besides, where I work, or would work, certainly has a different wording for the same principle.)
Your consulting the brains trust of MTGS users is inappropriate for you and for us, and your concern feels a little misplaced (even if you were not to consult MTGS and were to contact a local lawyer).
If you think this is somehow appropriate, well, my apologies! However, I don't think anyone on this site would believe that it would be appropriate to refer potential legal or other professional matters here. In fact, most would think that you should probably get your affairs sorted so that, should such things arise, you know a guy or you know a guy who knows a guy.
Haha, that was just my own speculation - not in any way to be taken as legal advice
I meant that from a PR perspective, not a legal one.
Well, suing anything within the purview of the DoD for anything is invariably a bad thing, no matter what.
However, it is entirely possible that an action could be hush-hush, so...
Depending on what's the deal with the jurisdiction, one may be able to consult a lawyer regarding a matter to which he or she is not a party. Of course, this depends on the jurisdiction and its body of law.
This and litigation funding is being reviewed here.
I agree. Definitely have the friend advise and confer with his lawyer.
Suppose his friend is sued. Can this be quoted then?
You can't guarantee this, and it could even be tempting fate!
You must know that people here cannot and, per professional rules, must not provide legal advice. (I don't care for the form of the words now, you know, 'constitutes' or 'construed as'; besides, where I work, or would work, certainly has a different wording for the same principle.)
Your consulting the brains trust of MTGS users is inappropriate for you and for us, and your concern feels a little misplaced (even if you were not to consult MTGS and were to contact a local lawyer).
If you think this is somehow appropriate, well, my apologies! However, I don't think anyone on this site would believe that it would be appropriate to refer potential legal or other professional matters here. In fact, most would think that you should probably get your affairs sorted so that, should such things arise, you know a guy or you know a guy who knows a guy.
Giving someone your opinion on the strengths/weaknesses of a suit, at least in the US, is NOT legal advice because there is no attorney-client relationship established. It's basically impossible to establish one with an online avatar, since you don't know his/her name, or even if they are an attorney at all. Try responding to a judge when he asks if you're represented by saying, "Yes, Jay13x from MTG Salvation is my attorney." This is just absurd.
Actually, it's infuriating that people don't ask for information about the law more often, and especially when the reason is because they think they know something about legal ethics when they don't. And based on the comment that you think suing a soldier in personam is the same as suing "within the purview of the DoD", I really doubt you know the first thing about civil procedure or professional ethics, even in New Zealand.
I mean it's often enough that people don't ask for information because they think they can figure it out themselves, or because they don't want to share private details about mistakes they made. That's unfortunate of itself. But heading people off ahead of time on this idea that it's unethical to talk about the law is barbaric. People watch too much TV. They get so much crappy information from legal dramas in the first place. Now they're inventing barriers for themselves to find out because of some misguided perception that the law is arbitrary and insensitive. If this were the case with, say, the medical field, people would be inept on the point of putting BandAids on cuts because of some fear they'd upset some doctor somewhere. Common understanding of the law should be cultivated, not chopped off at the root.
Giving someone your opinion on the strengths/weaknesses of a suit, at least in the US, is NOT legal advice because there is no attorney-client relationship established. It's basically impossible to establish one with an online avatar, since you don't know his/her name, or even if they are an attorney at all. Try responding to a judge when he asks if you're represented by saying, "Yes, Jay13x from MTG Salvation is my attorney." This is just absurd.
Actually, it's infuriating that people don't ask for information about the law more often, and especially when the reason is because they think they know something about legal ethics when they don't. And based on the comment that you think suing a soldier in personam is the same as suing "within the purview of the DoD", I really doubt you know the first thing about civil procedure or professional ethics, even in New Zealand.
I mean it's often enough that people don't ask for information because they think they can figure it out themselves, or because they don't want to share private details about mistakes they made. That's unfortunate of itself. But heading people off ahead of time on this idea that it's unethical to talk about the law is barbaric. People watch too much TV. They get so much crappy information from legal dramas in the first place. Now they're inventing barriers for themselves to find out because of some misguided perception that the law is arbitrary and insensitive. If this were the case with, say, the medical field, people would be inept on the point of putting BandAids on cuts because of some fear they'd upset some doctor somewhere. Common understanding of the law should be cultivated, not chopped off at the root.
I should be clear that we do not want people giving legal advice on RLA. That was what 9909 was getting at.
Giving someone your opinion on the strengths/weaknesses of a suit, at least in the US, is NOT legal advice because there is no attorney-client relationship established. It's basically impossible to establish one with an online avatar, since you don't know his/her name, or even if they are an attorney at all. Try responding to a judge when he asks if you're represented by saying, "Yes, Jay13x from MTG Salvation is my attorney." This is just absurd.
Actually, it's infuriating that people don't ask for information about the law more often, and especially when the reason is because they think they know something about legal ethics when they don't. And based on the comment that you think suing a soldier in personam is the same as suing "within the purview of the DoD", I really doubt you know the first thing about civil procedure or professional ethics, even in New Zealand.
Whoa, chillax, guy! Please have a little more grace and heart, for which you are known, and don't jump into this aggro rant mode.
I am thoroughly sorry if you somehow were very much offended and angered by my post, but you're reading into this more than you should and you're misreading into this more than I would like you to.
Be that as it may that one may give his or her opinions on the merits of a suit, at least in the US, and that opinion will not constitute legal advice, do you really believe it is appropriate or in the interest of MTGS that the forum hosts such questions and the responses to these questions? How could possibly guarantee that a user not simply take something at face value, without a modicum of further consideration?
To play things safely, wouldn't you agree that these were best left to local lawyers?
If it pleases you and makes you feel better to know so, I do not in fact know too much about civil procedure, as these would be intensively taught in a postgraduate (after one earns his or her LL.B. or J.D.) certificate-awarding programme (civil and criminal procedure are taught, but to such an unsubstantial degree; also, professional development and ethics classes essentially amount to best not to be bold, at least until you are no longer students and have completed the professional course that actually leads to your being admitted to the court). Much better?
On what constitutes the practice of law, I could go back and forth with someone of admittedly no legal education.
As I am the only to have admitted anything, you'd be wrong if you were referring to me. It's not surgery, but I am completing a formal education in the law. I'm not sucking at not too bad a school either!
But what I'll do instead is just say that if anyone does want to know about it, the correct book to consult in the US is Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers. (No, telling people the name of a legal manual is not the practice of law either.)
Schools here might study US law as well as Roman, common, European civil and international law, but they don't really care about practising law in other jurisdictions.
As you might know, though perhaps things are different for you when you were at BYU(?), but law school doesn't prepare you for actual practice. After you graduate here, you do a practical course and - blahblahblah, you don't care!
Oh, while I thought I read simply 'Opinion over leaking pictures', this title of this thread is in fact 'Legal Advice over leaking pictures'.
Well, pardon. It's just that people are likely to place a lot of importance on the law, because it has the power to destroy, imprison, and financially ruin people. So for those reasons, yeah, I do believe that it's in the interest of everyone for a public forum to be an appropriate place to ask for information about the law. Safe or not, you can't protect people anyway from the level of stupidity it would take for someone to take action in court based off nothing other than an MTGS user's opinion. A similar analogy would be to prevent people from talking about human biology because they might inhale an entire bottle of Tylenol to get rid of a headache. For some reason we trust people with that, but don't trust them to make the simple decision of retaining professional help for serious legal problems. All the more puzzling, since law is something that people and voters can determine, while human biology is not. It's hard to exercise your right to political free speech if you think people aren't allowed to talk about the law.
On what constitutes the practice of law, I could go back and forth with someone of admittedly no legal education. But what I'll do instead is just say that if anyone does want to know about it, the correct book to consult in the US is Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers. (No, telling people the name of a legal manual is not the practice of law either.)
I should be clear that it's not legal advice unless you're an attorney, hold yourself out as one, and establish an attorney-client relationship.
Talking about the law is different, and if the site has some paranoid stance that you can't, why have RLA at all?
There isn't a paranoid stance on legal issues, and you're welcome to discuss the law (for instance, in the 'dating' help thread currently running we discuss the laws around the issue). For civil cases (especially third party ones like this), it's always better to just leave advice at 'seek professional help'. The only hard and fast rule is on medical advice, in which people should always be referred to a professional.
In the future, if you want to discuss Real-life advice policy, take it to Senori's or my helpdesk. And avoid the condescending attitude.
I would think Activision is just looking for the person(s) that leaked the game early. Something like this happened with my son and Battlefield 3. My son got his hands on a copy about a week before it was to be released. He was contacted by police and the company how he obtained the game so early. He told them where he got it and he was never hassled again.
Long story short, my son knew someone who worked for a store that was going to carry it. Hes misrepresented receiving record and stole the games from the store and sold them. He was fired and was charged with multiple charges.
This wording makes it seem awfully passive for an actual lawsuit. Was it Twitter that told him Activision would be sending a letter or Activision itself? Regardless, the best advice is always to ignore every threat of a lawsuit up to and until an actual complaint is filed. When a civil complaint is filed with the local court, the court will send certified mail to the defendant address included in the complaint. If in some crazy universe your friend is named as a defendant, he will know he got a complaint in the mail. It's a waste of time to contact an attorney before then, and even if one does agree to meet it would be to unethically milk a consultation fee on a case they know they won't take.
As for the actual legal issues, there's no intellectual property breach, so the suit is in contract. The contract instrument for your friend's liability would be the End User License Agreement, if any. The source he got the game from is probably also under a distributing arrangement, and would be paying practically the entire sum of any judgment. So your friend's involvement will probably just be limited to a source of evidence for that suit, if anything at all. He might get a subpoena, but more likely it would be an out of court deposition. It might be a good idea to get an attorney for that, but I doubt it's strictly necessary since he probably won't even be named in any suit. Just be honest and answer the 2 or 3 questions, and that should be the end of it.
I wouldn't be so quick to make the same assumptions.
No intellectual property breach? It depends. That stuff that the friend leaked is protected by copyright. The friend's liability could arise from copyright infringement from the unauthorized distribution or duplication of the copyrighted work by posting it online.
Honestly I don't get what the big deal is if someone got the game early. Its going to be released soon away so who cares. Its the same thing when someone gets thier hands on a magic set early.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Standard
none
Modern UBG B/U/G control BBB MBC WUR Control WWW Prison RRR Goblins
Legacy BBB Pox UBG B/U/G Control UWU StoneBlade UW Miracle Control
Honestly I don't get what the big deal is if someone got the game early. Its going to be released soon away so who cares. Its the same thing when someone gets thier hands on a magic set early.
To these companies it is a big deal though. If a game goes wild early and suddenly gets bombed with bad reviews, it can cost the company millions or even billions in potential profits. Not only that, but with games having big online components that may or may not be tied into rewards from single player mode, it could potentially unbalance things early on.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
Your friend should contact his own lawyer if and when Activision threatens him with legal action. Usually it's just bull**** to scare people into complying with their corporate policy, but he should take it seriously and talk to a lawyer.
If your friend is military, too, I seriously doubt Activision would pursue any legal action. Can you imagine the headlines of the premier military shooter company suing a vet?
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
This wording makes it seem awfully passive for an actual lawsuit. Was it Twitter that told him Activision would be sending a letter or Activision itself? Regardless, the best advice is always to ignore every threat of a lawsuit up to and until an actual complaint is filed. When a civil complaint is filed with the local court, the court will send certified mail to the defendant address included in the complaint. If in some crazy universe your friend is named as a defendant, he will know he got a complaint in the mail. It's a waste of time to contact an attorney before then, and even if one does agree to meet it would be to unethically milk a consultation fee on a case they know they won't take.
As for the actual legal issues, there's no intellectual property breach, so the suit is in contract. The contract instrument for your friend's liability would be the End User License Agreement, if any. The source he got the game from is probably also under a distributing arrangement, and would be paying practically the entire sum of any judgment. So your friend's involvement will probably just be limited to a source of evidence for that suit, if anything at all. He might get a subpoena, but more likely it would be an out of court deposition. It might be a good idea to get an attorney for that, but I doubt it's strictly necessary since he probably won't even be named in any suit. Just be honest and answer the 2 or 3 questions, and that should be the end of it.
Suppose his friend is sued. Can this be quoted then?
You can't guarantee this, and it could even be tempting fate!
You must know that people here cannot and, per professional rules, must not provide legal advice. (I don't care for the form of the words now, you know, 'constitutes' or 'construed as'; besides, where I work, or would work, certainly has a different wording for the same principle.)
Your consulting the brains trust of MTGS users is inappropriate for you and for us, and your concern feels a little misplaced (even if you were not to consult MTGS and were to contact a local lawyer).
If you think this is somehow appropriate, well, my apologies! However, I don't think anyone on this site would believe that it would be appropriate to refer potential legal or other professional matters here. In fact, most would think that you should probably get your affairs sorted so that, should such things arise, you know a guy or you know a guy who knows a guy.
Haha, that was just my own speculation - not in any way to be taken as legal advice
I meant that from a PR perspective, not a legal one.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
Well, suing anything within the purview of the DoD for anything is invariably a bad thing, no matter what.
However, it is entirely possible that an action could be hush-hush, so...
Depending on what's the deal with the jurisdiction, one may be able to consult a lawyer regarding a matter to which he or she is not a party. Of course, this depends on the jurisdiction and its body of law.
This and litigation funding is being reviewed here.
Giving someone your opinion on the strengths/weaknesses of a suit, at least in the US, is NOT legal advice because there is no attorney-client relationship established. It's basically impossible to establish one with an online avatar, since you don't know his/her name, or even if they are an attorney at all. Try responding to a judge when he asks if you're represented by saying, "Yes, Jay13x from MTG Salvation is my attorney." This is just absurd.
Actually, it's infuriating that people don't ask for information about the law more often, and especially when the reason is because they think they know something about legal ethics when they don't. And based on the comment that you think suing a soldier in personam is the same as suing "within the purview of the DoD", I really doubt you know the first thing about civil procedure or professional ethics, even in New Zealand.
I mean it's often enough that people don't ask for information because they think they can figure it out themselves, or because they don't want to share private details about mistakes they made. That's unfortunate of itself. But heading people off ahead of time on this idea that it's unethical to talk about the law is barbaric. People watch too much TV. They get so much crappy information from legal dramas in the first place. Now they're inventing barriers for themselves to find out because of some misguided perception that the law is arbitrary and insensitive. If this were the case with, say, the medical field, people would be inept on the point of putting BandAids on cuts because of some fear they'd upset some doctor somewhere. Common understanding of the law should be cultivated, not chopped off at the root.
I should be clear that we do not want people giving legal advice on RLA. That was what 9909 was getting at.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
I should be clear that it's not legal advice unless you're an attorney, hold yourself out as one, and establish an attorney-client relationship.
Talking about the law is different, and if the site has some paranoid stance that you can't, why have RLA at all?
I am thoroughly sorry if you somehow were very much offended and angered by my post, but you're reading into this more than you should and you're misreading into this more than I would like you to.
Be that as it may that one may give his or her opinions on the merits of a suit, at least in the US, and that opinion will not constitute legal advice, do you really believe it is appropriate or in the interest of MTGS that the forum hosts such questions and the responses to these questions? How could possibly guarantee that a user not simply take something at face value, without a modicum of further consideration?
To play things safely, wouldn't you agree that these were best left to local lawyers?
If it pleases you and makes you feel better to know so, I do not in fact know too much about civil procedure, as these would be intensively taught in a postgraduate (after one earns his or her LL.B. or J.D.) certificate-awarding programme (civil and criminal procedure are taught, but to such an unsubstantial degree; also, professional development and ethics classes essentially amount to best not to be bold, at least until you are no longer students and have completed the professional course that actually leads to your being admitted to the court). Much better?
What precisely are your qualifications anyway?
I'm afraid we actually have a different view on this.
For what it is worth, and perhaps not a lot, I do agree with you on the view that an improved understanding of the law isn't a bad thing.
ETA:
As I am the only to have admitted anything, you'd be wrong if you were referring to me. It's not surgery, but I am completing a formal education in the law. I'm not sucking at not too bad a school either!
Schools here might study US law as well as Roman, common, European civil and international law, but they don't really care about practising law in other jurisdictions.
As you might know, though perhaps things are different for you when you were at BYU(?), but law school doesn't prepare you for actual practice. After you graduate here, you do a practical course and - blahblahblah, you don't care!
Oh, while I thought I read simply 'Opinion over leaking pictures', this title of this thread is in fact 'Legal Advice over leaking pictures'.
On what constitutes the practice of law, I could go back and forth with someone of admittedly no legal education. But what I'll do instead is just say that if anyone does want to know about it, the correct book to consult in the US is Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers. (No, telling people the name of a legal manual is not the practice of law either.)
There isn't a paranoid stance on legal issues, and you're welcome to discuss the law (for instance, in the 'dating' help thread currently running we discuss the laws around the issue). For civil cases (especially third party ones like this), it's always better to just leave advice at 'seek professional help'. The only hard and fast rule is on medical advice, in which people should always be referred to a professional.
In the future, if you want to discuss Real-life advice policy, take it to Senori's or my helpdesk. And avoid the condescending attitude.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
Long story short, my son knew someone who worked for a store that was going to carry it. Hes misrepresented receiving record and stole the games from the store and sold them. He was fired and was charged with multiple charges.
I wouldn't be so quick to make the same assumptions.
No intellectual property breach? It depends. That stuff that the friend leaked is protected by copyright. The friend's liability could arise from copyright infringement from the unauthorized distribution or duplication of the copyrighted work by posting it online.
Damages could be statutory.
none
Modern
UBG B/U/G control
BBB MBC
WUR Control
WWW Prison
RRR Goblins
Legacy
BBB Pox
UBG B/U/G Control
UWU StoneBlade
UW Miracle Control
To these companies it is a big deal though. If a game goes wild early and suddenly gets bombed with bad reviews, it can cost the company millions or even billions in potential profits. Not only that, but with games having big online components that may or may not be tied into rewards from single player mode, it could potentially unbalance things early on.
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