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.
What, are they gonna sue Penny Arcade too?
Dude, Whoa
I Hate The Stupid Phantom
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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,
Sue a well known gaming website.
/Guinness beer dude
BRILLIANT!
We did the same with DNF but 3D Realms never did something like that.
;)
That's maybe why lots of people here still think DNF is not vaporware
Iraq: war to save the U
The next step in their buisness plan is perhaps to do a SCO
How about suing another console vendor for $1 Billion for infringing on IP in their vaporware console?
I preemptively named my software company The Vapour Software Company, so that when people read articles about my late products they just think the writer is mentioning the name of my company again and again. The later my producs, the better the free advertising!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This will be the first console that will have a port of Duke Nukem Forever.
Lackey: Sir, we're not catching enough flies!
President: Very well. Activate the Vinegar Device!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I seem to remember Andre LaMothe being associated with this project. Is he still there? The dude has put together some great game programming books.
Step 1: Alienate your potential customer base by threatening to sue anyone who says anything bad about you. And make sure to get as much bad press as possible, before the product is even released.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Anyone else here want to short this publicly traded turkey?
Is the VC cash running out? What are they trying to keep "under the radar"? Their CEO at least is making a grand living producing nothing.....is this bad press pissing on their gravy train perhaps?
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
SCO announced today in a press release that they have acquired ownership of Infinium Labs and all rights to the Phantom game console.
In news related to this related news, legal procedings have been initiated against Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and the chick who used to work for Infinium who said something on Slashdot.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
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.
I have extended HardOCP.com's pledge to correct any and all possible inconsistencies or errors in our editorial entitled "Behind the Phantom Console" personally to Timothy Roberts and Kevin Bachus of Infinium Labs and they have yet to inform HardOCP.com of any information we presented as being not correct. This courtesy was extended on September 17, 2003, the date the article was published and has been extended several times since then with no reply ever being received by HardOCP.com. It is my opinion that Infinium Labs' only interest is stifling HardOCP.com and our opinions. HardOCP.com still stands by our thoughts and opinions put forth in our editorial and no amount of legal badgering and frivolous lawsuits will change those opinions that we have shared with our readers.
_____________________________
Kyle Bennett
Editor-in-Chief @ HardOCP.com
Nice to see they have no intention of rolling over.
I have extended HardOCP.com's pledge to correct any and all possible inconsistencies or errors in our editorial entitled "Behind the Phantom Console" personally to Timothy Roberts and Kevin Bachus of Infinium Labs and they have yet to inform HardOCP.com of any information we presented as being not correct. This courtesy was extended on September 17, 2003, the date the article was published and has been extended several times since then with no reply ever being received by HardOCP.com. It is my opinion that Infinium Labs' only interest is stifling HardOCP.com and our opinions. HardOCP.com still stands by our thoughts and opinions put forth in our editorial and no amount of legal badgering and frivolous lawsuits will change those opinions that we have shared with our readers.
It's good to see a website refusing to be intimidated by spurious legal threats. To often, all it takes is the sound of a lawyer clearing his throat to get a website owner to panic and pull content. Of course, HardOCP is not exactly a two-bit operation, and Infinium Labs is far from a massive corporation, but I'll take my victories where I can. Here's to the free press.
$1,250,100.
Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about that $100? I mean, $1.25 million is a nice, round number. Easy to remember and deal with, but that $100 extra is some sort of ugly wart at the end.
What is it? A birdbath? Prettier shingles? What honestly adjusts the price of a house by $100?!
----- ----- -----
Well, now you did something right.
;^>
But the conspiracy theorist in me is wondering how someone 'new around here' in one article just happens to have worked for the company featured in the very next one
quite a coincience you have to admit.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Anyways, anybody who is trying to sell stuff to the geek community needs to realize that most geeks just get pissed off by these companies bitching about stuff like this. Making threats(bullying) and trying to censor people(notice the .sig) annoys me.
Trust Your Technolust
Nobody ever told me that I'm a nerd before. Oh well....
[ Don't reply to this ]
Just covering my bases...I hate lawyer letters...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Let's see - this person is claiming to be Lyssa Watson but the domain the account links to is registered to Lisa Sabin. Furthermore, no Lyssa Watson has ever been employed at Infinium. Check the history of this account for further proof that this is thinly veiled disinformation in an attempt to gain karma [from moron mods] to further troll activities.
Is it just me or has their website vaporized as well?
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").
The console must also double as a server.
-ashot
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?"
I call shenanigans on this post, namely because:
1) "Macroscale Design" is n't a degree I've heard of, if anything for designing products you'd have a product design degree.
2) You don't do product design in rendering packages like maya and lightwave, more like Solidworks or if you did n't have the cash Rhino3D.
Who knows, look at her links... the one in her sig is for a high school volleyball team, yet she has a degree in macroscale design.
[ Don't reply to this ]
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.
she's my friend and I can vouch for her
Leola (754828)
Lyssa Watson (754835)
Amazing how both of you joined right about the same time given your ID numbers.
Thanks for identifying another troll account!
With that in mind, I hope these bastards at Infernalium.com are blessed with an army of dyslexic sycophantic PR flaks.
anyone else find it humorous that the lawyers who wrote the threat letter are at www.mofo.com ?
we could re-name the title of this story to something like:
SCO's lawyers take break from hell to perform pro-bono work for Infinium
After all, Bachus is a seasoned pro [...] in an interview with gamesindustry.biz published January 29, 2004, he said, "I plan to be working in this industry, hopefully at Infinium but if not then somewhere else, for a long time, and ultimately all I have is my credibility."
What, no skill, talent, experience, vision, morality or integrity? That damn journalist must have cut those bits out to save on his word count.
(though, to be fair - from a slashdot editor, I would have expected : 'All I have is my credibilty, and my credibility').
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.
I thought this kind of behavior was reserved for companies that could afford to lose customers or that had an existing customer base.
They already have 25 million units sold, and they're moving more all the time.
-- dR.fuZZo
an "Infinium Phantom Console" PC case modding contest. ;-)
If Infinium really wanted to shut up HardOCP, they could take one of two actions. They could either file a silly lawsuit, or actually show the console working and playing games to the press.
Given the fact that they chose the former, I think it's speaks volumes about what sort of product (or in this case lack of one) they have to show, and makes HardOCP's article all the more credible.
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."
Just think if you can fool a few rich people or companies, you too can live in a 3 million dollar home and not have to do any real work!!!!
Scam #1: Start a business in a hot area, get a few componies interested in your idea's. Get investers interested in your company, but telling them how companies are dying to buy your new product. Then sale the company before people realies there is no product and it starts fold.
Scam #2: Tell investers you have a new product idea for a hot market, get them to invest lot's of money. Then pay yourself an outragous salary, until you have used up all the investment. Then say you were a victem of a tough market.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
They advertise a fast AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor on a high speed Intel motherboard. Man, I would have liked that back with my Athlon 1.2 GHz. That VIA chipset sucked, everyone knows Intel makes the best chipsets!
It seems the Phantom gaming company is subject to the power of Google. I'm surprised they haven't sent legal letters asking Google to remove them from cache (maybe that's happened already -- I didn't read all of the related articles associated with the main articles).
I'm not surprised that Google is powerful, but instead how easy it could be used against somebody. It's a real eye opener, and potentially frightful to any public/coroporate figure.
Even for non-famous individuals, like most of us, this can be scary. For example, as we go through life some of our values and beliefs change based on the journey. However a repository of what you *were* like and what you *did in the past* might not accurately reflect what you are today. The use of information can sometimes be scary.
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 dunno. With a background like that of Tim Roberts and a product named "Phantom", I'm sure I could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this was the strategy from the start.
/. IANAL's and IAAL's debunk this particular conspiracy theory. :)
1. Produce hype and raise investment for a product that sounds like, looks like and feels like it's going to be vapourware.
2. Wait until the hordes of enthusiast web sites start labelling the product vapourware.
3. Sue the crap out of one of the smaller, juicier targets on the basis that they're having an financial impact on the product's ongoing development.
4. Rinse, repeat steps 1 and 3 until you've raised so much money you can either a) actually build the product or b) do a runner.
5. Well, profit. =P
Maybe I'm just a little jumpy in this SCO-et-al era. I'm not trying to bait but I would genuinely love to hear some
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?
Can anyone decipher that?
...and does anyone else suspect that this whole ordeal might be a front for the REAL BUSINESS?
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
The only thing that [REDACTED] gets out of this is publicity. Over and over they have proved to have absolutely nothing: no offices, no capital, no product, no sense.
I would suggest that we cease and desist with ANY discussion of non-existant companies suing over non-existant damage arising out of non-existant product. Therefore HardOCP, Slashdot, et al should simply remove all references to [REDACTED] and their alleged console the [REDACTED].
It's the only way to ensure that such sites aren't the victims of spurious legal action. Else they'd be accessories to fraud for perpetuating information about things that don't exist.
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
Anyone trashing Infinium here has not bothered to try out Infiniums offerings themselves. If you lazy asses would go to their web site you'd see that they have produced many great things already, including a really cool logo, an Acrobat PDF file with cool graphics embedded in it, and a kick-ass schweeet streaming video file that has techno beats, flashy words and graphics flying all over the screen, I was was like "Whoa! That logo is cool!" I want to upgrade my connection to T3 so I can download the bigger versions of the promotional versions, and here them in Dolby Surround!
The problem with most lame-ass gamers these days is everyone expects to go to the store and buy a plastic box and you bring it home and plug it in and "play with it", as if pushing buttons and controllling things on the screen really matters. Well that's old thinking. Now days we don't have to hold a gaming system in our hands to appreciate it. We can just download a promotional video clips (that are all free by the way, why pay for games when promotional videos are free?) and it shows you what the system would look like, that is if you wanted a plastic box taking space in your home, but we don't have to actually hold it and play it, do we? No!
Infinium is taking the next bold step into "non-interactive promotional gaming" and all of you are just screwing around wasting money on your Pac-Man ancient history non-promotional I-have-to-hold-it-in-my-hands gaming systems. Losers! All of you! I'm never reading Slashdot again, at least not until I come back to work on Monday, I swear, all weekend no Slashdot!
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
parent is a troll - see the whole story in another thread this morning - 2 new accounts, trolling for mod points
According to Phantom.net, the "creed comes to life March 31st 2004 at our Phantom online store where customers can customize their own Phantom Gaming Service to meet their individual needs." They go on to refer to March 31st 2004 as the "e-commerce launch" ROTFLMAO!!!!
There website reads like a vaporware/dot.bomb parody. Oh PLEEEASE let me submit my credit card information to the "Phantom Online Store"!
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
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.
That is something unlikely to happen. I have posted on their closed Phantom forums for quite sometime now and Hard OCP is often discussed. No one from the company or any of the supporters can offer any sort of official counter to much of anything said in the article. So far all they seem to complaign about is Tim's age being posted wrong, not a very good case for a defamation lawsuit if you ask me. They ignore inquaries into counter claims for the rest of the article. They also threaten to ban anyone who speaks of Hard OCP on their forums, most people who are skeptical rutinely have their posts deleted, censored, closed, or ignored. For the longest period of time you couldn't even link to the Hard OCP article in question, any mention of Hard OCP on the boards was displayed as Hard Opinionated corrupt propaganda which is amusing since that statement can easily be turned around to apply to them. The only thing close to an official response given by the company was posted on the forums, it was taken down a short time later probably due to the fact that all it basically said to the members was "They are lying, trust us." In short Infinium seems to be a lousy excuse for a competent company, can't answer to criticism, can't produce a product, can't explain exactly how projected product will work etc, It is amusing to confront the few diehard fans they have on the boards with hardcore facts though, something I shall continue to do until honest answers to my questions emerge.
MoFo: The Phantom Menace
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
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
Who knew
www.mofo.com as their web site address?
What will those whacky legal professionals come up with next?
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
And yes, it was expensive, but worth it. Price is no object so I ordered the "top of the line" model complete with a Bitboys video card and I even get a certificate to take to the store and pick up my copy of Duke Nukem Forever!! I WIN !
The plaintiff asks the Court to impose penalties.
The Courts impose penalties by interpreting the Law.
The Courts cannot stifle free speech any more than, paraphrasing, the Congress who shall pass no Laws to infringe against the freedom of speech or press. Now if some journalist was squelched by their boss, or by the Editor of some other newspaper, then you're right-- the First Amendment doesn't cover that. We're not talking about corporations controlling the avenues of speech on their own, we're talking about corporations controlling the avenues of speech, with the force of Law.
[
It's at infiniumlabs.net, not infiniumlabs.com
Wouldnt want them to miss out on their own (3rd?) slashdotting...
Using the Infinium labs legal team to fight a case of lible against an individual merely makes him look more guilty(of being incompetent in this case).
:)
Learn from the ants not the grasshopper.
As far as the Phantom goes it sounds like the kind of thing I would be interested in depending on how modular and cheap they are able to keep it. Don't let the head of the company being a complete ass from letting you enjoy what could potentially be a quality product.
From the above you can tell I am optomistic about the chances of the product launching, it's more like I believe it could launch. There really wouldn't be any work involved in creating the system they are talking about, grab some off the shelf components, add cheap modular OS, add win emulator (WineX?) Make deal with one of the billions of PC game designers to publish some games. And now this fellow has a bee in his bonnet maybe he'll get off his ass and do it. Or at least build an office
IANAL, but I believe you have misinterpreted the article you cite. Those people were fired, not something that requires due process in a court of law.
Both slander and libel require due process in a court of law, and are statutory, not constitutional, meaning that congress has enacted a law. The 1st amendment starts with "congress shall enact no law". If you and I have a business relationship (employment), you are free to cancel it for what I might say or write. If you want to force me to take back my words, you're going to have to take me to court where we'll we get into that constitutional laws trump statutory laws thing.
Infinium's law firm is called MoFo. That just about sums everything up nicely.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
hmm, how exactly do we boycott something that does not exist?
I give up. I can't tell the litigious bastards without a scorecard anymore.
Okay, someone clue me in. Which litigious bastards are we supposed to be angry at now?
These litigious bastards ... ...
these other litigious bastards...
now these litigious bastards
or perhaps (and oldie but a goodie) these litigious bastards
Man, that's going to be an awful lot of HREFs to compile in my posts to talk about anybody on Slashdot anymore.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Does anyone else find it a bit funny/wierd/strange (whatever) that MoFo is listed on the Phantom's web site as an investor? I don't know about you, but how many law firms do you know of invest in gaming consoles?
Also why is it that there are two legal counsils? One in California (MoFo), and one in Florida (IcardMerril)? Futhermore why would two different law firms haw use pretty much the exact threatening letter? Did they get it from the same book/website/Matlock episode?
I'm in Canada and I can tell it doesn't smell right from way up here!
...by a journalist. It's the doctrine of "actual malice" enunciated by the court in the case "New York Times vs. Sullivan". Essentially, the journalist has to have actually lied or acted with a deliberate disregard for the truth in publishing the defamatory story. Unless Roberts can successfully argue that HardOCP isn't a media outlet protected under Sullivan, I doubt that he will prevail in a libel lawsuit.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
There's no such thing as bad publicity."
I kind of see it like spam. Most of the people who read about this will be pissed off, but a few will be intrigued and preorder a console or invest in it as a long shot. With the exposure they're getting, they're going to "accidentally" reach at least a few receptive minds.
Also, on the offhand that they actually put together a product in some form, no matter how poor it is, people will now have heard of it...
(For the record, I think it's bogus and am apalled at their attempts to further pervert the legal system for financial gain.)
'the Internet is right.'
Links to the company's SEC filings are here. Pretty illuminating.
The article is a really good read, btw. What is wrong with this firm? No, wait, don't answer that.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
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.