Slashdot Mirror
HardOCP Wins Against Infinium Labs
An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has won a huge legal round against Infinium Labs. The WhereIsPhantom website has all the details, straight from the court dockets. There is a list of orders a mile long for Infinium Labs and owner Tim Roberts to comply with by Sept. 30th."
Infineon got smacked down for price fixing its chips.
Not a good week for Infin*.
Anyone got a link that works? The phantom site seems to have disappeared into thin air.
Infinium is a bit like a scab, if you pick at it it'll only get worse.
Isn't this company/product the original vapor ware. Comments... Even the website is vapor.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
Just in at the courthouse, an order regarding KB Network's Motion to Compel and Motion for Sanctions. Upon review of Plaintiff's Motion, the court finds that the motion should be granted in part and denied in part. Read on for the details...
Judge Kaplan has ordered Infinium Labs to prudce a series of documents by September 30th. These include:
1) "Documents reflecting the identity and location of potential investors, venture capitalists, investors, partners, shareholders to whom private placement memorandums were provided, or other stake or equity holders in Infinium Labs who are located in the state of Texas other than shareholders that acquired Infinium stock on the public market, and the transactions, proposed or consummated with same."
2) "Pleadings and final judgments from any Court of any Jurisdiction in which Timothy Roberts was or is a Defendant between the dates of August 1, 2001 and February 29, 2004; and; the 2003 Tax Return of Timothy Roberts when filed."
3) "All documents in their possession, custody, or control that evidence, reflect, relate to financial transactions (including any beneficial transaction) between Infinium and Roberts from August 2002 to the present, including but not limited to printouts of all bank, credit card, and other financial transactions currently maintained in electronic form."
4) "All emails sent or received by Infinium's Texas employees."
5) "All year-to-date payroll information and records for 2003-2004 for all of Infinium's Texas employees.
6) "All documents reviewed by Kevin Bachus in preparing the declaration submitted in support of Defendant's motion to dismiss that have not otherwise been produced."
7) "All loan documents between Infinium and Roberts, including but not limited to documents pertaining to the $50,000 loan Roberts testified about in his deposition."
8) "All archival data and all forum postings from Infinium's websites."
9) "A complete and unaltered copy of the 'Who's We' agreement."
10) "All Infinium board of directors minutes and resolutions, with the substance of the resolution redacted unless it pertains to Roberts. Defendants are also ordered to make unredacted copies of its board of directors minutes and resolutions available for inspection by Plaintiffs' counsel at the office of Defendants' counsel. Defendants shall make such documents available for inspection on or before September 30, 2004. If, after inspection, Plaintiffs believe that any redacted portions of these documents should be produced, they may seek appropriate relief from the court."
11) "Plaintiffs' may re-depose Infinium and Roberts, with questioning at the second depositions limited to documents and information not produced to Plaintiffs prior to the first depositions. The combined duration of the first and second depositions shall not exceed seven hours per witness. Additionally, at the option of defendants, the depositions may proceed by telephone... . Plantiffs shall pay the costs of the second depositions and each party shall bear its own attorneys' fees. The second depositions shall be completed by November 5, 2004."
Now, once you've digested all that you'll remember that the court also ruled against KB Networks in some parts. That is actually only one item which is: "Plantiffs' request for sanctions is denied."
Analysis
It appears that HardOCP came away with a large victory. Without the transcriptions from the first depositions, we can only speculate based on subsequent motions on what transpired that day. It's quite obvious that the focus is purely on Tim Roberts and following the extensive money trail that has resulted. Section Six is of interest since it's the only one dealing with Kevin Bachus. What did Bachus say (or not say) during his deposition that piqued the interest of Kyle's lawyers?
We now have mention of a $50,000 loan that Roberts testified to in his deposition. What is the significance of this money? Further, will the production of emails, the old website and payroll be enough to prove Infinium can indeed be rightfully sued in Texas?
http://hardocp.com/
HardOCP Vs. Infinium Update:
WhereIsPhantom.com has one of the latest documents filed in our case on-line for you to download and of course gives their thoughts on what IL's lawyers have to say about coverage of the case. To quote the filed motion from IL's attorneys:
Infinium is concerned about the tactics of the Plaintiffs and their lawyers in this case. This case has received an unusual amount of publicity for a case of its type. In fact, Plaintiffs' counsel has issued their own press release announcing the institution of this action and that the Plaintiffs stand behind their negative statements about Infinium and Roberts. Likewise, the plaintiffs run a website called www.hardocp.com wherein they continue to publicize this lawsuit. Additionally, a website has been established called www.whereisphantom.com which "exists for the sole purpose of brining to light as many details as [it] can uncover about Infinium Labs, the lawsuit with KB Networks, and anything else that IL is involved in.
It is my personal opinion that if they did not want this case to be publicized on the Web, they should have not threatened to sue a website multiple times.
Just as a note, all documents that WhereIsPhantom.com posts are a matter of public record. You just have to pay to download them. Sounds like a pretty solid "tactic" to me. Just wait till it gets exciting.
Well, to be fair, I didn't expect this to show up on the front page of Slashdot either. We're just a two-bit operation over at Whereisphantom.com trying to bring the truth to light.
It didn't make it to this article, but four employees quit yesterday from Infinium Labs for various reasons including a late paycheck. The Sarasota office is expected to close (the one with the $300,000 sign) and all operations move to Seattle. There'll be more tomorrow I promise. (And hopefully that'll include more bandwidth.)
This should be of intrest
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
They posted an "expose" on Infinium - shady history of CEO, their "offices" being nonexistant, their shady employees, etc etc. Infinium threatened to sue, sent them a C&D, so HardOCP sued them to get a statement from the court saying they are in the clear and legal and not committing libel/slander
For some background information you might want to check back to these past articles.
You know, I am not one to generally criticize Slashdot for it's mistakes, dupes, slant or whatever. It is what it is. I just wish that the posters or the editors would give just a little background on the stories submitted, even if it is just a review from the last time it was discussed.
There are people on this forum with a great deal of different backgrounds that may not always be familiar with the names, companies, and situations involved in stories that might interest a causal reader, without him or her having to dig up research just to know what the story is even about.
Kudos also to HardOCP for not running scared when faced with legal threats. If more of the "little guys" were able to stand strong against frivolous or iffy strong-armed legal challenges, the world might not be perfect but we'd be headed in a better direction.
HardOCP is a gaming website. Last year, they ran an article questioning the Infinium Phantom Console which had been announced, but no one had yet seen.
The article did some probing into the company, and some of their claims, such as the history of the president of Infinium.
Infinium stated they would sue HardOCP over the letter, and sent e-mail to tell HardOCP to change or remove parts of the article. HardOCP didn't cave, and so, there was a lawsuit, and now it's progressed to this (which isn't really a win).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You should have included all of the previous Slashdot coverage of Infinium's and HardOCP's quarrells.
For some reason they tried to sue HIM to take the article down like 4 months later!!! He corrected matters of fact...silly stuff that didn't change any of the article's real information. They tried to drag him to court in Florida...so he "counter" sued in Texas court [where Kyle lives and supposedly they had an office also!] to have a case dismissed... they then preceded to sue him again.
I can't say why this is such a big deal. The only thing I can see is that Roberts appears to be a serial "scammer" [but then 50% of VC seekers are anyway] and it was just too easy a target for Kyle to pass up...and if you read the forums or letters replys, Kyle LOVES a good Flame war! can you say recipe for trouble!!!
No I think the system would fail 1) becuase the world does NOT need another console (and I challenge anyone to prove to me that consumers have been crying for another system) 2) because of its shit content delivery system (do we really want this, really? Most people want their games on media if for no other reason than to trade the crap/old games for credit at a store) 3) because people love an underdog, unless ofcourse, it's a boastful, litigious, ill-conceived underdog in which case you could sell tickets for front row seats to an exclusive showing of its spectacular and fiery failure. I personally can't wait for this thing to end in a smoldering ruin and bring shame upon everyone involved. Even if it is a good idea my wallet only allows for so many good ideas.
They don't work because by the time somebody posts a Coral link, the site is already down.
Coral is a cacheing solution; unless it can get a copy of the site to cache it, it can't serve it up.
This is why Coral needs to be used beforehand (IE, in the slashdot post) in order to be of any use. And even then, it works best on sites that have relative URLs on the images.
A suggestion to the owner of said site: Coralize as much of your site as you can, and enable HTTP compression (mod_gzip, mod_deflate, IIS6's compression, etc) for whatever else you can. With all that combined even a home connection should be able to handle a slashdotting.
In my original submission, I spread the love around a bit. In all honesty, I'd rather be slashdotted to kingdom come and have the word get around, rather than have the site up and running and no one paying attention.
Just be sure to come back later and visit. We've got over 200 articles covering the entire saga from beginning to end. The tale includes money trails, court intrigue, drugs, hackers and phreakers... you just can't make this stuff up.
Summary, Hard[OCP] is far from an impartial reporter in this, they finally get proof of a real phantom and dis it as much as they can for being exactly what Infinium have always said it was.
Actually if you were following this early on, they were pretty reasonable at first, seeming to take a "we're curious to see what this company has to offer, but it's hard to get information" sort of tack. They didn't really get bitter and spiteful and start smashing machines with sledgehammers or anything until they started getting vitriolic legal threats from Infinium and public attacks on the Phantom website just for having done their jobs as reporters. I kind of have to say, I can't find this totally unreasonable.
The "hatchet piece" on the CEO you mention was totally legitimate investigative reporting. Was it negative? Yes. But it was also accurate and supported by documentation.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I salute you sir!
From a distance.
..right when this whole feud started. They seemed like nice enough people. The were set up in temp offices in Seattle's bank of America building. Most of the PMs are ex-Microsoft (No MS jokes please, we are torching IL right now...) and at the time they were looking to hire a ton of people. They had the hardware done (Although I never saw it, being a first interiew), and were looking at the software delivery system. The ranking manager came off as a bit odd, but I didn't get and sense of shysters trying to pull a fast one or clueless idiots who couldn't pull it off. If all the negative press about the president being totally evil/inept isn't true, I'd give the console a fifty percent chance of seeing the light of day.
The guys I talked to even thought that PA's shot at them was funny, so they have a sense of humor about all the press. I'm sort of glad I wasn't offered a job, though. Too much wierd stuff was happening.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!