HardOCP Declares Win vs. Infinium Labs

Bill Bagel writes "Many of us have watched Infinium Labs' attempt to quash HardOCP's First Amendment right for the last year. HardOCP wrote this story on the Infinium Labs CEO, Tim Roberts, that was based on his own resume and some Google research. IL sued HardOCP, a home-based webpage business for $20M in Florida, and HardOCP fought back in a Federal Court in Texas for a declaratory judgment. HardOCP basically won when Infinium Labs finally gave up the fight citing great expenses involved in fighting the declaratory suit. The judge's order can be found here." The Cliff's Notes version can be found on WhereisPhantom.com.

Comments

Judge's signature

[mr.henry]

It's worth RTFA just to see the judge's funky signature. I guess I can make out the first name, but I don't see how you can get "KAPLAN" from a lowercase "a" followed by 13 "u"s.

Anyhow, congrats to Kyle & HardOCP.

Re:Judge's signature

[GoofyBoy]

Maybe he just wanted to see if anyone would notice.

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/

What does this say about...

[samdu]

...the pockets of Infinium? Surely a "company" that's preparing to "release" a new "game system" should have enough "money" in the bank to fight a legal battle like this.

Re:What does this say about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, it says that people were smart enough NOT to given this loser their money.

The whole point of the HardOCP article was "based on the track record, this guy will take your money, blow it without producing anything of value, and skip out on the bankruptcy."

This is exactly what I was going to say

[umrgregg]

Who signed that order? I could have been anyone: Jesus The Christuuuuuuuu, Jed Clampetuuuuuuuu, Justin Timberlakeuuuuuuu? Who knows...?

Good! Now if only...

[Chordonblue]

...we can get a similar judgement with SCO.

Yes sir... 2005 is shaping up to be a GREAT year!

Rights?

[dcw3]

Can someone please explain to me why corporations are afforded constitutional rights? Was that really the intention of the framers? I was under the impression that rights were for individuals, not companies. Obviously, IANAL, so please correct me if I'm misguided.

Re:Rights?

[DunbarTheInept]

Because it is physically impossible to put a corporation in prison for a couple of years, treating corporations as if they were individuals gives them all the rights of individuals, but not all the responsibilities of individuals. Corporations breaking the law do not face the same risk of punishment as individuals do. For them it's "Is this infraction worth the risk of a fine?", whereas for actual living, breathing people, the deterrent is "Is this infraction worth the risk of several years of prison?"

Re:Rights?

[Tassach]

Corrected Google Link, before someone jumps on me for it.

Re: infinite loop

[Speare]

If HardOCP countersues to recoup legal fees it will result in an infinite loop...

Don't you mean an Infinium Loop?

Re:RTFA,

[Torgo's Pizza]

Actually, this is the *original* suit. The countersuit in Florida was filed after the US District Court suit. Kyle was pre-emptive with his lawsuit so that Infinium Labs would stop threatning him with one.

There was no amendment

[phr2]

and no act of Congress turning corporations into persons. There was not even a supreme court decision.

Rather, the notion of corporate personhood got written into some other supreme court decision in the 1870's, by a former railroad executive who was working as a clerk at the Supreme Court. It wasn't part of the actual Court opinion but rather was part of the introduction or something like that, but regardless, later court decisions quoted it and it became binding law.

The Supreme Court in that era was very corrupt, even worse than now. The 14th amendment (resulting from the Civil War) spelled out a bunch of rights guaranteed to all "persons", i.e. all people (previously, only white people had rights). Corporations realized that they wanted to get in on the action and have those rights themselves, so after sufficient palm greasing, the decisions came down.

For more info, see the movie "The Corporation", which is really excellent.

See also: wikipedia on corporate personhood.

But it's an attractive concept

[gbulmash]

What's interesting to me in all this is that the console is an attractive concept. Roberts did his market research and crafted, if nothing else, a set of specs that got techies, gamers, and investors excited.

It wasn't Roomba, iBot, and XBox 8 all rolled up in one. It was a feature set that got a certain subset of the population excited while having the technical underpinnings to make it possible that it could see the light of day at a reasonable price point.

Call him a con-man or a snake oil salesman if you will, but give him some props for being able to identify the pavlovian triggers that have suckered investors into believing his concepts had merit over and over again. - Greg

Dude, they were suing people

[Chris Burke]

for putting publicly available but apparently embarassing information in a highly visible place.

Are they as irrelevent now as SCO will be after they lose their case? Yes. Do I still want to hear about it when it happens so I can laugh at them? Yes. Yes I do.

To Infinium Labs: Ha ha!