Spiderman, Sony vs Marvel

An anonymous reader writes "It now looks like Marvel has a dispute with Sony over Spiderman. This short report tells how Sony is trying to take over Spiderman. First we saw the dispute between Marvel and Stan Lee, and now this."

Comments

Sony?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

What, that was the guy with the silver skin wasn't he?

EXLUSIVE DRUDGE REPORT

[Anonymous Coward]

as in it's probably bullshit, or at the very least exagerated..

Ie; "The loss of SPIDERMAN could affect all of SONY's future financial plans for its U.S. entertainment company"

Yeah, I'm sure sony has no other way of making money and will file chapter 7 because of a little spiderman tiff.

Re:EXLUSIVE DRUDGE REPORT

[bomb_number_20]

don't be a fucktard.

Most of drudge's stories are just links to articles in other publications, most of whom get their news through AP or Reuters (their validity is an entirely separate argument). What you're complaining about is the focus he chooses to use for compiling his articles.

sensationalistic? yes. but that doesnt mean he's wrong. the bigger problem is the same one that plagues /., no one bothers to read the articles. they glance at the headlines and then act like they've read the whole thing.

Re:EXLUSIVE DRUDGE REPORT

[AceM2]

Freakin AC.. It said it *could affect* future financial plans.. Not that Drudge thought SONY would go under just because of a movie. I mean seriously.. If I see a new video card and decide I wanna buy it.. shelling out the $300 out of my checking account is going to *affect my future financial plans*.. As in.. I'm going to have to save more than I planned to buy some new games or whatever.. If you wanna come down on someone for bullshitting, at least have a good reason.

Easy way out

[fjordboy]

Stan lee just has to "discover" a couple of "unpublished" comic strips that involve Spiderman being gay and dying in some way. Sony and Marvel won't touch spiderman w/ a ten foot pole after that! The creative power is still in Lee's hands...he just needs to make use of it! Sony and Marvel will give up their claims...and Lee will get royalties galore! Easy solution.

Re:Easy way out

[NineNine]

Even better. In the next issues, it comes out that Spiderman is a pedophile!! Sony would drop that faster than a hot potato. Then Stan Lee spins the plot (after Sony went away) so that it was all some evil plot to frame Spiderman. Everything's right in the world again.

Re:Easy way out

[fjordboy]

Exactly! After making my initial post, I realized that Spiderman coming out of the closet wouldn't be all that shocking to begin with...I'm sure after watching the movie most people could have assumed that.

Why does *every* superhero have to wear skin-tight suits? Decreased wind resistent *can't* be the only reason...

Re:Easy way out

[NineNine]

Actually, there are gay superheroes already. Like Ben Affleck as Daredevil, for example! I don't believe that J-Lo thing for a second. It just screams "publicity stunt".

Re:Easy way out

[King_TJ]

Heh.... I hate to say it, but I think Stan Lee might be the LAST person on earth to even consider a remotely "risque" situation in one of his comic strips.

As much as I think Spiderman is a great superhero concept, the Sunday comic strip (which Stan Lee supposedly does himself) is *lame*!

I guess he's trying to make sure it's ok for younger kids to read and everything, but come on! The stilted conversations are almost unbearable. There's much more suspense and sense of believability in the dialog of "Brenda Starr", for crying out loud!

Re:Easy way out

[martyn s]

Or The Rawhide Kid

I'm confused...

[Xerithane]

I see Marvel has a point with the merchandising, that they are supposed to do most of it with the joint agreement. I'm not sure how Sony is violating Marvel's rights on the Spiderman franchise because as far as I can tell, they're making movies.

This is a really horrible report, so Google News comes to the rescue and I found a fanboy site with a lot more information.

Hope it helps, because the Drudge report was just confusing.

Re:I'm confused...

[Dr Caleb]

From reading the article, I glean that Sony is advertising Spidey in such a way as to not include Marvel in any way.

"Spiderman" by Sony Entertainment. No mention of Marvel anywhere. At least, that is what I get from "MARVEL is accusing SONY of doing everything it can to disassociate SPIDERMAN and MARVEL in the minds of retailers."

Re:I'm confused...

[ad0gg]

I think sony was abusing the license for movie spiderman. Prime example is the game "Spiderman the move", Notice how there is no mention of marvel. Sony got the royalities since it was "based" on the movie. Also blockbuster used spiderman to advertise their products and same goes with bestbuy with spiderman in their commerical. These royalities were paid to sony not marvel.

Re:I'm confused...

[dbrown]

This is absolutely true. Have you gone into Best Buy, Circuit City, or other consumer electronics stores? The Sony marketing department has made sure that Spider-Man film loops are prominantly displayed on all Sony TV's, especially the high-end flat plasma displays. Its even worse at the Sony Metreon. All the Sony computers had Spider-Man themes, all the TV's were showing Spider-Man film loops, Spider-Man "the making of", etc., etc.

When I think of Spider-Man, I now think of $10,000 Sony Plasma displays, not Marvel Comics. Given this, I can certainly understand why Marvel is pissed off.

Re:I'm confused...

[chrispl]

I have seen tons of Sony/Spider-Man tie-ins since the movie came out. If I was Marvel I might be worried that people will start seeing Spider-Man as a Sony "mascot" in the same way Sonic the hedgehog was all over Sega.

Since Spider-Man is arguably Marvel's hottest property, and that Spider-Man has appeared alongside the Marvel logo on and off for years they are probably getting nervous that their ace is getting played by another company and its mostly Sony seeing the profits.

Then again the powers that be at Marvel may just be nuts but who knows?

Re:I'm confused...

[WatertonMan]

This doesn't sound right as much of the video game involved characters not in the movie. (Although perhaps licensed) If they did do what you say though then clearly Marvel has a point.

On the other hand Harry Knowles says this is nothing. (Not that his track record is that great, mind you) Ain't It Cool News

Re:I'm confused...

[squiggleslash]

Oh great. So now we're going to see people buying $10,000 Sony TVs... leaving them in the boxes so they can sell them in "mint condition" in 10 years "in its original packaging".

This is just sad... ;-)

Sony vs Marvel

[mrgrey]

Sony vs Marvel

Sony's next big console game....

I remember the day...

[NineNine]

... when Spiderman wasn't a corporate trademark to be argued over, but just a cool comic book that I'd pick up and read. So nice to have the corporate legal eagles shit all over it.

Re:I remember the day...

[SoftCoreHonesty]

You must be pretty old because I remember owning Spiderman underoos about 30 years ago. Spiderman became an over-commercialized corporate trademark long before Sony came along. Spiderman, Batman, Hulk, and Superman were all sell outs. Now give me Ghost Rider anyday.

Re:I remember the day...

[LMariachi]

You asked for it.

Hmm

[AvantLegion]

I guess Spiderman himself wasn't available for comment...

Marvel's next superhero

[Infonaut]

should be "LawyerMan". Armed with the Pen of Destruction and the Briefcase of Neverending Legal Briefs, he wages war in the shadowy world of corporate dealings.

And he never loses. Well, maybe he loses every so often to make things interesting, but he always wins on appeal ;-)

Re:Marvel's next superhero

[smcn]

Meet Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. (flash required) Not by Marvel, but great all the same.

Literally kidnapped?

[sssmashy]

MARVEL accuses SONY of literally kidnapping Spidey.

SONY literally kidnapped Spiderman? What, a bunch of Sony exectuves have Spidey chained up in the basement of their corporate HQ? This sounds like a good plot for the next comic book... sure, Spidey can defeat the Green Goblin, but does he stand a chance against capitalism run amok?

Re:Literally kidnapped?

[sik0fewl]

SONY literally kidnapped Spiderman? What, a bunch of Sony exectuves have Spidey chained up in the basement of their corporate HQ? This sounds like a good plot for the next comic book... sure, Spidey can defeat the Green Goblin, but does he stand a chance against capitalism run amok?

I think he was speaking figuratively when he said Sony literally kidnapped Spiderman.

Re:Literally kidnapped?

[Fryboy]

Or they kidnapped the _literature_ of spiderman?
Or is that taking 'literally' too literally.

Fry

I've said it before..

[NanoGator]

Sony's every bit as evil as you guys thing Microsoft is. I don't know why they're not on Slashdot's radar.

The basic gist of the complaint is that they are attempting to rebrand Spiderman as a Sony product. Though I don't have any opinion as to whether they're guilty here or not as I don't have enough info to base an opinion on, I do know that Sony's been complained about before. Anybody remember when they were developing the Super NES CD that never arrived? It fell through because Sony wanted this to be a Sony branded machine. They basically wanted to take over Nintendo's well developed market. Fortunately, Nintendo had the balls to stand up to them. That's indirectly how Sony came around with the Playstation.

Slashdot really should be eyeballing Sony. Sometimes you guys pay too much attention to Microsoft.

Re:I've said it before..

[mojowantshappy]

Mostly because Sony is the big competition for the X-Box, so a lot of anti-microsoft people like to rally behind them (me included).

Also, Sony is quite broken up compared to most companies. They have their movie division, their music division, their computer division, their video games division, etc. So though I really hate Sony's music and movie division, I still like their video game division.

Also, offering linux for PS2 can't hurt.

Re:I've said it before..

[JordanH]

• Also, offering linux for PS2 can't hurt.

Yeah, they don't oppose and even encourage Linux on the PS2. That's important around here.

Also, they sell (sold? haven't seen one recently) CD-RW drives, DVD-RW drives, MP3 players, etc. even though they are into producing content in a BIG way.

Their laptops are cool (but pricey) and run Linux pretty well.

They just seem to "get it". They may be bare knuckled when dealing with competitors and collaborators, but they make/sell and support things that people want, without regard to some grand lockin strategy. Unlike certain Massive Software vendors I can think of.

Sony also faught MS on the provisions in Windows licenses sold to PC Manufacturers that would limit their ability to sue MS over patent infringement. On the other hand, Sony did make a side deal with MS so that provision of the Windows' licenses didn't apply to them, which could be viewed as a way to attack other PC makers.

Re:I've said it before..

[SarekOfVulcan]

The basic gist of the complaint is that they are attempting to rebrand Spiderman as a Sony product

This is hardly a surprise. My HP2 desk calendar mentions Quidditch(tm), Hogwarts(tm), Hagrid(tm), and others, with fine print at the bottom stating that "characters...are trademarks of and (c) Warner Bros."

Wonder what JKR thinks of all this...

Re:I've said it before..

[rgmoore]

Okay, find me a Sony brand Digital Camera that supports anything besides Memory Stick.

You mean like the CD Mavica that writes directly to 8cm CD-R disks? Or were you thinking of the FD Mavica that writes directly to floppies?

Actually, I agree with your general point that Sony likes using technology that doesn't always interoperate well, going back at least to the days of VHS vs. Beta. I'm not sure, though, that it's necessarily an issue of trying to lock users in. Sony just doesn't seem to get the idea that standardization can be more important than technical sophistication. They do seem to accept the idea of letting others use their technology. CDs are a great case in point; Sony and Philips developed the basic standards and let others make them too. But when there's not a universally accepted standard, Sony seems to be tenacious at sticking to their version of the technology over an emerging de facto standard than most manufacturers.

Re:I've said it before..

[rgmoore]

Sony makes stuff you like, so you don't mind buying Sony branded stuff. But Microsoft makes stuff you don't like, and when you have to buy MS branded stuff you get irritated because you don't want to give them money. Only then the word monopoly makes an appearance.

You miss the point. If I like Sony stuff, I'm free to buy it. If I don't like it (and I don't) I'm free to buy somebody else's. If it turns out that most people don't like paying extra to buy Sony's stuff that doesn't play nicely with other manufacturers' products, then Sony will lose market share and either change their strategy or leave the market. That's the way markets are supposed to work.

If I like Microsoft's products, I'm also free to buy them. If I don't like Microsoft's products, though, I don't necessarily have much choice not to buy them. It's all-but impossible to find a decent PC laptop that comes without Windows, so I may be stuck paying for a Microsoft product whether I want it or not. That's not the way markets are supposed to work, which is why you'll hear people complaining about Microsoft's monopoly.

more info

[ih8apple]

More info that Drudge doesn't mention...

Re:About what I would expect from Sony

[stratjakt]

Your take on the Nintendo/Sony thing is wrong. Nintendo made a deal to let Sony develop the "PlayStation" CD addon for the SNES. Then they dropped them for Phillips. Then they dropped Phillips after Sony threatened to release their own SNES compatible CD playing "PlayStation". Then Nintendo gave up altogether, after watching TG16 and Sega CD fail miserably. Then Sony took the project and made it into Playstation X, which we all know and love (PSX).

Or something like that.

Anyways, dont get to riled up over a Drudge report story. The guy has a habit of taking minor day-to-day corporate memos and blowing them up into the "scoop of the century".

Knowles Knows

[Malicious]

Harry Knowles has explained the scenario pretty well already.

Lots of accusations but no proof.

[gpinzone]

What a waste. I actually read the article first before posting this time. I've learned my lesson.

Dance with the devil...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Look, everyone here at Slashdot should realize Sony is a big evil megacorp akin to (or worse than) Microsoft. Sony goes through some really big lawsuits all the time, some of them for doing some really fucked up shit.

It's not news. It's Sony. So, while I hope Marvel comes out ahead through all this (either by gaining more money, correcting the situation, or taking Spiderman from Sony altogether) I still can't help but wonder what exactly Marvel expected from Sony?

Contracts? In the hands of an evil entity like Sony, contracts don't mean anything that money can't change.

Ethics? There is no ethics in business.

Plain old common sense? HAHAHAHAH

You know what they say about dancing with the devil....

Re:Dance with the devil...

[The Lynxpro]

How is Sony more evil than Microsoft? At least when Sony tries to corner a market all to themselves, their product is quality. No rational person will argue that VHS was actually superior to Beta. Are Microsoft operating systems quality? Wait, I don't think I have to wait for an answer to that since we are all on Slashdot. Was IE superior to Netscape prior to the infamous bundling? Nope. As for Sony slapping Nintendo around, Nintendo deserved it. Nintendo was a monopolist that stole Atari's intellectual property and tried to lock every company up making third party software, which Atari never did when it was the monopoly power in the videogame industry. But with all that said, the Playstation2 is inferior to the Xbox... Granted, the game that gets the most play on my Xbox is "Gauntlet Legends" but I'm pretty old school in my videogame passions... Hence my screenname, err, handle... :)

Spiderman should be in the public domain by now

[asscroft]

All this copyright crap is backfiring on these corporations. It's ridiculous. By now Spiderman is so commonly known that it would be terribly hard to "damage" the image of Spiderman, even if it was "hijacked" by modern day story tellers. I mean the "proper rights owners" killed superman and none of us bought that bullshit, did we? If copyright lasted only the 12 years or whatever it was supposed to last this wouldn't be a problem. Whoever told the best Spiderman story would be king of the box office, not whoever won the court battle.

Re:Spiderman should be in the public domain by now

[iamblades]

Well, all that's fine and good, but this is about trademarks, not copyright.

Trademark doesnt expire, it gets diluted, and this is probably one of the driving reasons behind this lawsuit.

in my next life...

[mario]

..I'll study law and specialize in copyright issues - I think the chances *not* to have a well-paid job are very low, if I look at the numerous stories about problems, that some companies seem to have in this area :)

This sounds familiar..

[xRelisH]

Why does this remind me of two young kids in the playground, with one whining:

"It was mine first, give it back!"
"Nuh uh, you gave it to me!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
...

more careful reading

[GunFodder]

I believe this quote is referring to Sony Pictures, the movie producing subsidiary of Sony. It is quite possible that the only profits Sony Pictures made last year were from Spiderman, so the economic impact of a loss of license would be huge.

Re:more careful reading

[dragoncortez]

Actually, after a quick search to verify facts, it's quite clear that Sony Pictures would have made a sizable profit even without Spiderman last year. This article shows Sony with two other movies in the top ten from last year. So, I don't think there's any doubt the story is a bunch of bull.

With great power...

[Chocolate Teapot]

...comes a great army of lawyers.

This had interesting parallels

[Torinaga-Sama]

So which one is Apple and which one is Microsoft?

Mr.Lee is very obviously Xerox.

I strongly object

[burgburgburg]

to your use of the modifier "probably" in your comments!

Drudge has worked very hard to ensure that everything he reports is a great big load, and your comments cast aspersions on his efforts.

Shame. SHAME!

Skin-tight? It's fairly obvious

[burgburgburg]

They're proud of their super packages, and want to share them with the world.

In some cases, literally.

Re:By The Steps:

[ebbomega]

By the looks of it, yes. Seemingly, Marvel had a license with Sony about the Merchandise, but now it looks like Sony has broken the terms of that license and now Marvel is asking to have it chucked out. The report has got to be one of the worst written articles I've ever seen and it doesn't explain much, most importantly it seems we have ZERO clue what the main clauses are that are going to be used since it seems that the license may not be publically available until the case itself.

I think it's quite possible that Marvel has a case. Pretty probable too... big companies tend not to go up against bigger better companies that could buy their ass out unless they happen to be faltering *coughSCOcough*.

Marvel's doing better than ever. Movie exposure is enticing more and more people to read superhero comics and it seems to have moved once again away from the stereotypical fanboy and more into the traditional playgrounds of childhood fantasy.

Marvel wouldn't cut the rug out from underneath them by ending a contract with SONY without good reason. Obviously there's tension between the two companies and Marvel wants out of the contract so they can build a better relationship with a different company.

Fine. No real harsh damage done to anything really except that Sony doesn't get a third Spidey movie. I don't even know if Sam Raimi's going to want to touch a third Spidey movie, and most likely there's going to be lots of FUD around a third movie any ways, cuz frankly I don't know if people have forgotten about Batman Forever and Batman and Robin yet.

Marvel to employ Iraqi Information Manager ...

[binaryDigit]

As new Minister of Marketing.

"Those infidels at Sony don't even have the rights to the character at all. If they think they do, it's all in their minds"

"I feel safe from Sony, so should you"

"They are going to surrender or burn inside their little rice burners"

"Sony has never made a Spiderman film! This I tell you!"

"We will welcome them, with lawyers and taunts!"

"they are nowhere near completion on the sequel ..they are lost in the Australian desert...they can not read a compass...they are retarded."

Its all about the money.

[DJProtoss]

Whether Sony has been trying to take the brand over (either intentionally or not), Marvel's plan probably goes more like this: 1.licence brand out to movie studio 2.big movie made, everyone makes lots of money, more films started. 3.Movie studio invests lots of money to make next movies 4. threaten to attempt to revoke licence (we are here) 5. Movie studio sees investment threatened, gives marvel big wads of cash. 6 (sorry, had to put it) profit!!!

Losing Money Over Spiderman?!?!?

[MisterMook]

HEY! I thought Sony was on the verge of destruction thanks to the 47 billion dollars worth of illegal file trading my 11 year old engaged in last week! Now that I know it's just Spiderman I feel much better.

Oh yeah...

[M.C. Hampster]

... As opposed to Slashdot, which gets all of the stories right.

I remember when trademarks weren't legal.

[Syncdata]

Spiderman was a cool comic book because Marvel, not sony, not you, and not some amorphous, non corporate comic machine in the sky, paid cool artists, and cool writers, to produce a cool comic, which had to be printed on a cool press, and distributed nationwide.
This takes money, and if Marvel doesn't recieve the fat royalties that come from having a lucrative franchise (are people allowed to have those anymore on /.?)then there will be no more cool comics.
I remember when someone could be protective of their own intellectual property, and not be sanctimoniously lectured about it.
This is not a troll, though it will likely be modded as such.

Re:I remember when trademarks weren't legal.

[gosand]

I remember when someone could be protective of their own intellectual property, and not be sanctimoniously lectured about it.

I do too. It was back when it wasn't called intellectual property.

I feel a rant coming on....
The problem is, Sony didn't make a Spiderman movie, make some money, and that's that. They are trying to establish the Spiderman Franchise. Nothing is "normal" anymore, everything has to be pushed way too far. You can't just get something good and then appreciate it for that - you have to have it repeatedly crammed down your throat until you are so sick of it you'll embrace anything that is just SOMETHING ELSE.

Everything has to be capitalized on, to squeeze every frigging drop of life out of it. Everything is to the extreme, hardcore, in your face, number one, top selling, smash hit. Every week I see a commercial about the "number one movie in America", or the "new hit series" that has only aired two episodes. It is why a simple book like "Chicken Soup for the Soul" had every imaginable bastardization of it hit the market. That book may be pretty good, but I'll never read it because I am so SICK of seeing variations of that title. It's why the TV show The Osbournes was ruined after the first season. The first season was original, and genuinely funny. Now it is all engineered.

It can all be summed up by the geniuses behind The Simpsons. Last night they aired the episode of Poochie the Dog. Spiderman is becoming Poochie, just like Batman did, just like Star Wars did, just like 99% of all movies and music are today. We live in a world of Poochies.

giant screw up

[BigBir3d]

This entire thing has been f'ed up since the beginning. Stan Lee gave away something he shouldn't have. So did Marvel. IMO, both of 'em are getting what they deserved. Bunch of money hungry, no foresight, whiney bitches.

Stan Lee should have said everything SM related, ever, has my name on it, and I get x%.

Ditto for Marvel (with Stan's agreement intact).

Studio Math 101

[John Leeming]

It's not "creative accounting"...it's called "Studio Math".

Studios arbitrarily state that a movie must make 3xCost to make a profit; if a movie costs $10million, it must make $30million to break even.

The expenses are the cost of the production, the cost of advertising/promotion, and the cost of distribution.

What the public does _not_ know is that promotion is an arbitrary figure, and distribution is a set amount established each year when the NATO Group (National Association of Theatre Owners) say how many theatres are willing to open a film a year in advance of release!

Realistically, post-production expenses are less than a _third_ of production cost...that $10million movie only costs $3.5million to hype and ship.

So where does the rest of the "expense" come in?

First, it's to pay for any frill or perks the stars may expense the studio, like Eddie Murphy's requirement for a custom-designed home where he films, or Julia Roberts' wanting hand-shaved virgin duck testicles melted in aged Tibetan yak butter, or any other ludicrous item or device.

Second, it's used to cover studio expenses even _marginally_ related to a film. Jack Valenti says that he can hear the sound stage buzzer in Studio 8 when the doors are open on Studio 3 a mile away...so Valenti orders multi-million dollar soundproofing or weatherproofing or smearing the walls with lamb's blood, and charges it to HOWARD THE DUCK's post-production expenses.

Read the trial transcripts and summaries for the lawsuit Art Buchwald filed on Eddie Murphy and the production of COMING TO AMERICA, which is the best explanation of "Studio Math"

You too can learn how TITANIC is considered a _loss_ by the two studios who paid for it, and guess how much of a tax write-off they got for it (140% of expenses is the last rumor).

20th Century Fox declared STAR WARS a money maker only _after_ it was pointed out that there was no possible way a $10million film making over $500million could be a "loss".

Spider-man, not Spiderman.

[dwheeler]

It's "Spider-man", not "Spiderman". There's a hyphen in the name. If you're going to fight over $millions, at least get the name right.

Hmmmm......

[FaasNat]

This looks like a job for Superman!

is that why they paired with Verant?

[Stalcair]

back during the Ultima Online beta many expressed distaste of EA's customer support. Many places detail the treatment of testers then customers (or rather just the way that known bugs were ignored in favor of "enhancements" and extensions). EQ came along and many jumped ship (or Captained both... must live on that planet with 36 hour days and only 4 hours of sleep). After the honeymoon was over however, many reported that the customer service showed signs it was flat out sick of dealing with its customers.
I feel sympothy for them but they should be professional. I and my wife decided we would like to get back into the game of MMOG so I did a bit of research at that time on the various MMOG's out then. What I came across was a varied array of horror stories dealing all with customer service. I read about how players had their accounts suspended and then terminated often when they were actually the victim of hacking attacks. (it was hard to filter through the BS, but some presented their cases very well to include providing what evidence they had and Verant/SOE responses.

I was warned by some that in the unlikely event that my account was somehow compromised through no fault or negligence of my own then by reporting it there was a high probability that my account would be permanently deleted. I thought that was odd and so decided to verify the policy with Sony.

Looking online at their site, I did multiple searches through the knowledge available and perused everything from the FAQ's and posted legal mumbo jumbo. However, it appeared that all that was ever mentioned was, "We are not responsible for securing your computer or network." OK, that doesn't sound unreasonable at all. However, past experience also knew that this could easily be just an ambigious coverall attempt to justify stupid decisions upon their part. I needed hard facts so why not ask their friendly customer service reps (that was before the trend to call it "customer care" appeared I believe).

What happened next seemed at first to be sadly just another fine example of dealing with customer service and tech support today. I first stated my question. Then stated after that more specifics about it, including what I was NOT asking. I also pointed out clearly at the beginning that I had read as much info as I could find on their site and included the relevant FAQ portions that I felt did not fully answer my question. First response back? Noise. It appeared that an automated system went through and mined my question with the customer rep only reading the scripts output. He responded that I look at the FAQ and restated what I myself had quoted in my email regarding their "responsibility." (BTW, my questions were basically "If I take precautions of firewall, anti virus, spyware checking, yadda yadda yadda, what would happen if someone somehow managed to crack my account?" and also "In such a case as this, would Verant and SOE's policy allow banning of the victim's (me) account?")

I responded with a generic statement up front of "please read this email in its entirety as the original query was not addressed" and proceeded to then quote my original question. I really could not think of another way to post it.

This time it seems he read a bit more. He then proceeded to quote from the FAQ how each banning case goes through a review process... yet did not say that it was possible. Time for response numero dos.

This time he addressed the portion of my query about the compromised account review policy... but still did not give a concrete answer as to whether their policy allowed them to ban the victims account. (I had explicitly asked this every time). Well I guess I will fire up another response.

This time I apparently had worn him down a bit (and I refrained from calling him a turdstain or anything else like that) and he testily responded that the security of the accounts was solely the responsibility of the user. He then seemed to use his own words to paraphrase the parts of the FAQ about, "don't give yo