Infinium Labs Threatens HardOCP Again

XBox4Evr writes "In a follow up from two weeks ago, Infinium Labs is again threatening the tech website HardOCP with legal action. This in itself, is no big deal, but to actually read the letter from Infinium Labs lawyers will make you wonder if an educated person actually penned the documents. This seems to another huge blow to IL's credibility in the console market in general, now that ex-Xbox manager Kevin Bachus is on board with Infinium Labs."

Comments

But you miss the point!

[spoco2]

This is FUNNY! the letter sent to HardOCP is really, really amusing... it's written as if by a primary school child.

It's basically... "You wrote that we have not shown any real machines yet... you imply that we don't really have any"
"You wrote that you haven't seen an office yet... you imply we don't have an office"

It's just paragraph after paragraph of them saying things like that... it reads so very, very badly.

Plus it falls into periods of text which CANNOT have been written by anyone with ANY sort of legal training:
"The article inaccurately claims that HardOCP 'Compiled and researched all of the publicay available information we could find.' Clearly this is not the case or you are not very good at finding publicly available information."

Dear god that's terrible... it's so much like "you, you, you're a poopy pants... and, and, my dad says that what you said is wrong... you poopy pants"

I can see why they have not taken this seriously.

Re:But you miss the point!

[badasscat]

Plus it falls into periods of text which CANNOT have been written by anyone with ANY sort of legal training:
"The article inaccurately claims that HardOCP 'Compiled and researched all of the publicay available information we could find.' Clearly this is not the case or you are not very good at finding publicly available information."

Dear god that's terrible... it's so much like "you, you, you're a poopy pants... and, and, my dad says that what you said is wrong... you poopy pants"

I can see why they have not taken this seriously.

I'm sure this will not be the popular view here but I think this is both an incorrect and a dangerous way of looking at things. I mean, apparently lawyers can't win here at Slashdot. You use lots of legalese and it sounds like you're hiding behind it. You use plain English and you sound unprofessional.

What are lawyers supposed to sound like? How are they supposed to request changes be made to an article and retractions written?

It seems to me that this letter provides clear and in a lot of cases reasonable requests for factual changes to be made to an article. For example, the point about Tim Roberts being a Corporate Director of Medhire, not an employee - this is important because HardOCP implied he was lying on his resume. If what these guys are saying is true, he did not lie on his resume, and HardOCP is guilty of slander if they do not change this article (they will knowingly be leaving intact an article that is defamatory). They were also irresponsible for not researching the point properly to begin with.

If Infinium does decide to file a lawsuit (which they'd be dumb to do from a PR standpoint, but PR is obviously not their strong suit), they now have this document to point to specifically detailing HardOCP's transgressions, in plain English (so there can be no claim by Kyle that he did not understand any of their points), and requesting changes be made to address them. This is a required step in the process, if Infinium really is going to go the legal route.

I'm not saying the whole lawsuit threat is a smart way of doing business. It's certainly not helping the company's image any, and it's not the way I'd be going about things if I was running the show there - it seems very counterproductive. But it sure seems to me that when it comes down to it, Infinium may actually be right on a lot of points, and this was not the best-researched piece of writing that ever appeared on HardOCP. I do not fault the lawyers for speaking to Kyle like regular human beings rather than legal drones. I fault them for really, really bad public relations, but legally it seems to me that HardOCP is on the short end here.

It's not a freedom of speech or press issue when you lie about people with intent to harm their business. There are several points in those letters (including the one I noted above) that are factual issues that Kyle has chosen to ignore in his response. Don't turn this into something bigger than what it is - this is about defamation and slander, not freedom of the press. Some people are losing sight of the real issue, missing details and blowing things out of proportion, belittling lawyers and Infinium themselves without paying any real attention to what's really going on. With freedom of the press comes responsibility, and I'm not convinced this was really a responsible article on the part of HardOCP.

No, I do not work for either company involved, and have no interest in these proceedings either way, whether emotional or tangible.

Re:News for lawyers, stuff that bores...

[ThresholdRPG]

> Are lawyers nerds? I'm seeing more and more
> "Here's a link to some legal documents, enjoy!" on
> the front page of slashdot.

Here's the situation.

1) Most people think they know the law. They know the law is important, they think THEY are important, therefore they understand the law.

This erroneous conclusion is one of the reasons so many people get themselves in severe legal trouble.

2) Computer Nerds are usually smart. High tech stuff is currently one of the hottest fields. Therefore, since they are smart in one of the hottest fields, they decide they are ESPECIALLY smart.

Since lawyers are "old tech", anything they do must be inferior to anything high tech. Thus, computer nerds conclude they understand the law better than lawyers.

The result of this is that nerds LOVE to discuss and debate the law. They run a few google searches and turn into Atticus Finch on roids.

Sadly, their conclusions are usually WAY off base because the law is written to be deliberately difficult to understand without a legal education.

3) The internet has turned many areas of law on its head. There is an intense struggle created by the deficiencies in traditional laws that worked fine before the internet and before computer popularity. Thus, law and technology are often the two main elements to a major news story. This means people interested in either one will often become interested in the other simply because of how it might impact them.