Slashdot Mirror
Infinium Labs Threatens Gaming News Site
Over the past year or two, Slashdot has run a number of stories about Infinium Labs and their Phantom Game Console (that phrase still makes me smile, every time). I think we've been generous to them, taking their game console talk at more or less face value, despite the vaporous nature of the product. Now they've decided that threats are a better plan for improving their image than producing a real product, and threatened HardOCP over an older news story. Our own Robin Miller has talked to Infinium and written up his impressions of the situation.
I thought this kind of behavior was reserved for companies that could afford to lose customers or that had an existing customer base. What do they wish to gain? Slander is difficult to pin on someone especially new organizations if you're in the public eye.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
I'm no legal strategist but wouldn't it be smarter for Infinium to actually demo one of these consoles then go after HardOCP for slander/defamation/whatever? Right now it sounds like they don't like the attacks on their vapourware. My idea assumes, naturally, that Infinium actuall has a Phantom console to demo...
Infinium needs to shit or get off the pot (ala SCO)
Trolling is a art,
While I have to give props to Roblimo for having the courage to have a bit of satirical fun with this, it almost makes me want to cry to realize that things have gotten this absurd.
Has the business world become so totally detached from reality that they honestly believe that they shouldn't be criticised for something as blatantly bullshit as this? What kind of strange alternate reality is this company living in?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Actually, the HardOCP article is more of an attack on the credibility of the founder of the company. While it's nothing but a listing of hard facts, it paints a very bleak picture of Tim Robert's competence as an entrepreneur. Essentially, it charges that many of the companies he worked for were failures, and the only ones which are still operational (or could at least be contacted) had family members working in high places there. The only exception to this is a company that went IPO a couple of years after he left and then sunk to the point of being threatened with delisting. They basically come out and say that the man is a multi-time loser who has wasted millions of investor dollars and whose business doesn't even have a physical office -- just a bunch of press releases.
As a news organization, HardOCP has a lot going for them in a slander/libel case. The only thing I think which they might be liable on is the implication (not a direct statement) that Tim Roberts being at WorldCom was somehow related to the bankruptcy of WorldCom.
As for the trademark violations, IANAL, so I don't know how liable a news organization can be for using a company's name and logo in a report without their permission. I doubt that they're going to be in any serious trouble, so long as they go back and place "tm's" on everything, but trademark law has surprised me many times before.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Slander regards spoken insults, in print it's called libel. That aside, it isn't libel if it's the truth. So long as nothing HardCOP said was fabricated - it's an open and shut deal. Infinium is just wasting even more time and money not making games.
Why the hell does Infinium labs care now, five months later? If they felt wronged by the story, you'd think they'd have at least demanded a retraction back when it broke. So my guess is that this is the only way they can get back in the headlines anymore. They probably had some press release recently that was passed over by the media - so now they're fighting to be remembered.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
They have no intent to sue. They just hoped that by sending a threatening letter they might get HardOCP to take down an article that might scare away the venture capitalists that they want to extract money from.
But I would take it even further, following Robin's strategy.
Just remove all articles. Inifinium has produced nothing but laughable trash when it comes to PR anyway and I don't think the gaming industry needs any more from blowhard vaporeware merchants. Don't give these guys any soap box, good bad or otherwise, in which to con venture capitol from anyone else. Especially with the clear lack of respect they have for the online community you would think they would want to entice.
Just make them vanish. I mean jeebus, these were the rocket scientists who couldn't get an online email form to work right - who thinks they can produce a secured broadband game delivery console before Sony and MS swallows up the market?
They want the "truth" to come out? Fine. Let them put a product on the shelves. Until them, just blackball them from the web.
Shouldn't Infinitum Labs be more concerned about, you know, getting some sort of product out on the market? The fact that they're suing seems to prove that the Phantom is nothing more than vaporware. If you have an actual product that's actually going to be worth buying, suing only pisses your customers off. If Infinitum Labs was really worried about the claims made against them, they should try and disprove that information or at least put an optimistic spin on it.
So, to Infinitum Labs, I say this: release your console! At the very least, demonstrate that this isn't some ploy to bilk money out of investors. What's that, Infinitum Labs? You say you can't do that?
Thanks to their frivilous lawsuit everyone and their dog will know about it. I can't imagine this sort of thing will be good for business.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
FTDA was intended to protect famous trademarks from being "diluted" through third-party derivative use. Unfortunately for Infinium, they'd have trouble simply proving their mark is "famous" in the legal sense of the term ("famous" for what? Vapor?). Even worse for them, injunctive relief under FTDA now adheres to an "actual harm" standard (Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue Inc., U.S., No. 01-1015, AKA "that Victoria's Secret case), which Infinium would be hard pressed to show.
Finally, of course, their threat is absolutely meaningless because of the provisions of 15 U.S.C. 1125(c)(4)(C):
Oops. How much they pay for that legal representation again?-Watchful.Babbler (*Still* no freaking password!)
I had never heard of this letter the flap was linked here. If the intent was to remove the article in hopes it would not be noticed by more people, they have failed in a big way.
It's sort of like when the Catholic church say we should boycott a movie. One that many have never heard of until the publicity of the boycott helps to a) make more people aware of the movie and b) pique the interest of those who may wonder, "What's the big fuss, maybe I should go see it to check out the hub-bub."
Had this letter never been written, then it would not have been linked and I would never have seen it. By Show of hands how many here are seeing this for the first time?
AFAIK HardOCP's article is a great little example of investigative journalism that dares to go a little deeper under the surface. This is pretty atypical given your average pseudo-tech articles with which we're being bombarded these days. Can you say Tom's? I knew you could. They just won themselves a regular reader. (ok, maybe for this week)
No hay banda
Good idea Infinium! Now everybody knows about the article you didn't want them to see. Intimidating people into not revealing inconvenient facts only works if you're big enough and ruthless enough to scare the people who have the information into submission. Since you aren't big enough to do that, people are willing to stand up against you - and the information you wanted to keep away from the world is spread about for all to see.
Your response to the article should tell your prospective investors that you're not smart enough to actually deserve their money or to use it wisely.
So was this Kevin Bachus' "first move" after joining up with Infinium Labs? I don't recall hearing any other action from him since leaving Microsoft.
So, after a couple (few? I forget exactly when he defected) months with the team, the best thing he can come up with to add credibility (wasn't that one of the things he was touted to do?) to the Phantom is to sue a news site for libel and diluting their trademark?
What exactly was he in charge of on the DirectX team, anyway? The patent portfolio?
Or, giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe calling the phone-in press conference was just the first task Mr. Roberts assigned him to?
It just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside when I see all these video game industry "leaders" from Microsoft (Seamus "I want to invent another layer of middle-man!" Blackley in particular) leave, only to be shown for the useless, uninspired jackasses that they are. It's a little harder to survive when they don't have a near limitless supply of cash, eh?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
With all the commenting of vaporware, censorship, and after reading the article, here's what bothers me. 1) This sounds like Fraud. Really, really, really bad fraud. I don't think I would buy this game console for that reason. But, I have other reasons to. 2) Because the "Phantom" console uses a custom version of the Windows XPe kernel (the hell is XPe by the way... I've never heard of it.) Even though Microsoft has let this sort of thing happen before, I don't think they'd let it go on to for too long. Especially with X-Box 2, etc. I'd think that Microsoft and Sony would do something like the streaming game content themselves, along with adding other stuff that could be useful. 3) These people have no idea about console design apprarently. Aren't the rules of console design supposed to be "standardization" of product, so that EVERY game you design can work on EVERY console you PRODUCE! What's with this "configure your own system" crap? What if a new game comes out that you can only play on the highest end configuration and you have the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, that's not good. I just don't trust this period. It's definitely not a "fair cop guv."
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
hmm, how exactly do we boycott something that does not exist?
I once had a sig that read "It's easier to listen to a sycophant, than a critic", and, after reading the above I was reminded of a criminology book I once read (apologies for not being able to remember the title) that posited the theory of "right-brain thinking" as one of the principle sources of criminality in man. In right-brain theory (if it can be called a theory), individuals learn from early childhood that satisfying the ego comes first, above all else . This leads to a rigid adherence to a "me first" attitude in every aspect of life. In essence, right-brainers mature with little to no self restraint, living every day in a constant state of "gimme now!!!" possessiveness. Anyone that tries to "oppress" the selfish behavior is automatically perceived as the "enemy", while those that encourage it are blessed as companions in arms.
Reading about this Infinium nonsense, and thinking over what you wrote, made me wonder: could capitalism will prove to be the greatest curse that mankind ever brought on itself? Could we be creating generations of right-brainers, all feeding one another's egos for the sole purpose of eliminating all competition?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.