When there is a disproportionate violation of interests and that site is actively pursuing to hurt the product and release confidential information about it.
They have the right by law.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
leakerz wasn't part of the NDA, they just posted the videos... they shouldn't be held accountable.
Usually in instances like this, the request comes from the game company's legal team. If the website in question was divulging trade secrets, and publishing information they don't own the rights to then compliance is the best way for them to avoid a crippling lawsuit.
If you don't like it, you should call your congress person.
leakerz wasn't part of the NDA, they just posted the videos... they shouldn't be held accountable.
Genleo, there are laws against the reciept of stolen goods. It's not terribly nuanced either from what I recall. I can't see how you are missing all of this.
Exactly Pawn hops get fined for receiving and trying to sell stolen goods...if they do it enough times they are closed down.Receiving stolen private/protected Intellectual property is also against the law .I doubt Leakerz.com didn't know the information they received and put up on their site was under an NDA agreement and not avaialble to the general public.Even if such was the case I knwo of know law system anywhere where Ignorance of the law is an excuse.
A NDA is a contractual agreement between two parties. The only violator is who leaked it.
Your right the IP is the property of EA, but technically they have to prove there was an attempt to make a monetary gain of such property.
It seems that you are not getting it either, lectrocuda.
There does not have to be some sort of monetary gain in the case of dispersing intellectual property and this is because the presence of the leaked information can lead to said gain in innumerable ways. With the leaked information it is very possible for someone to gain insight they would not have otherwise, before the company who may or many not use it and has the right to first use, thereby putting out a product that is appreciably based of something that they did not have the right to use in the first place.
NDAs exist for a reason and they protect intellectual rather than physical property. The person holding information in violation of a NDA, even if they did not obtain it personally and are merely receivers, are not only receiving stolen property but aidding and abedding those who stole the intellectual property if they do not make this known to the rightful owners of said property.
One does not have to steal or hold something in order to make a profit, they may merely want it for themselves, and this is still unlawful because they had no appreciable right to acquire said thing. Why is this so difficult to understand?
That is not true. I am a party to an NDA at this current time. It is an agreement between me and the company I am working for. Thats it.
To say that EA owns the rights to the intellectual property that is Star Wars is also false.
Lucas Arts owns the IP.
The only case that EA would have is source code.
That being said, exactly how was the IP damaged by this leaked footage?
In fact it wouldnt surprise me one bit if EA leaked the footage themselves in an attempt to get people like us discussing their game. Granted people already were, but the more that their game is on our minds, the more likely we will buy.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
The thing here is that by hosting those images and beta information they were a party to a contract violation. Secondly, the name Leakerz.com implies motive in being a vehicle for the transformation of copyright material and therefore would make them liable if EA so chose to hunt them down with legal paperwork.
Were they nothing but a link collection to lets say photobucket, flickr, rapidshare, or some other file hosting service then they would probably be in the same boat as many different pirate websites and would have been more difficult to shut down, instead EA/BioWare would have gotten to spend the time going after all the different hosting sites which would immediately take down the material much like how youtube takes down the colbert report within a few minutes of it being hosted up there.
leakerz wasn't part of the NDA, they just posted the videos... they shouldn't be held accountable.
Genleo, there are laws against the reciept of stolen goods. It's not terribly nuanced either from what I recall. I can't see how you are missing all of this.
Exactly Pawn hops get fined for receiving and trying to sell stolen goods...if they do it enough times they are closed down.Receiving stolen private/protected Intellectual property is also against the law .I doubt Leakerz.com didn't know the information they received and put up on their site was under an NDA agreement and not avaialble to the general public.Even if such was the case I knwo of know law system anywhere where Ignorance of the law is an excuse.
A NDA is a contractual agreement between two parties. The only violator is who leaked it.
Your right the IP is the property of EA, but technically they have to prove there was an attempt to make a monetary gain of such property.
It seems that you are not getting it either, lectrocuda.
There does not have to be some sort of monetary gain in the case of dispersing intellectual property and this is because the presence of the leaked information can lead to said gain in innumerable ways. With the leaked information it is very possible for someone to gain insight they would not have otherwise, before the company who may or many not use it and has the right to first use, thereby putting out a product that is appreciably based of something that they did not have the right to use in the first place.
NDAs exist for a reason and they protect intellectual rather than physical property. The person holding information in violation of a NDA, even if they did not obtain it personally and are merely receivers, are not only receiving stolen property but aidding and abedding those who stole the intellectual property if they do not make this known to the rightful owners of said property.
One does not have to steal or hold something in order to make a profit, they may merely want it for themselves, and this is still unlawful because they had no appreciable right to acquire said thing. Why is this so difficult to understand?
That being said how did the website violate either one of these by showing a screenshot?
NO
Once again, what is the IP in question?
There is plenty of information on line about NDA's and leaks to the press.
The website had a reason for taking it down, could of been an injunction was filed and rather than fight it they simply complied. Regardless, they are not stealing.
An NDA is a calculated risk taking for the benefit if the parties involved.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
Not to fan the flames of what seems to be a rip-roaring good time (Okay, a little to fan the flames) but--
I see in a lot of the previous posts a lack of understanding for what the purpose and function of an NDA agreement is from the perspective of tort law.
A Non-disclosure agreement is (to put it simply) a form of contract that extends temporary, explicit rights to intellectual property with a number of unspecified clauses in addition to the agreement of a party not to disclose those intellectual properties to parties as outlined within the contract.
What does this mean? It means that an NDA is not a contract limiting your rights as it is a contract extending you new rights with provisions. The art, the source code, the files and game design? None of that belonged to you to begin with. You never had a right to any of it...until the NDA gave you those rights with certain limits attached. When you broke that contract, you no longer were eligible to have those materials and may be liable for a variety of other penalties that were spelled out in that same contract.
But many of you are now wishing to bring up the argument : "That's fine and dandy but that doesn't give E.A. the right to shut down a website showing videos I (the violator) provided!!" and here's the funny part... you're right. That doesn't give them the right... something else does.
If you pay attention to the way that an NDA operates, you'll catch it for yourself.... the website never had the rights to show any of the intellectual property of E.A. to begin with. The only person who had any permissions whatsoever were those who signed off on the NDA which provided them certain rights. As a result, it doesn't matter how they recieved those materials or what legal trouble those people are in as a result, all that matters is that they are holding someone else's intellectual property (the images in the video consist of IP from EA's artists, and may demonstrate exclusive systems belonging to EA) without any right to them. The person who sent them those videos didn't have the power to provide any rights for that.
Further, a lot of people (armchair lawyers) have an odd quote that they make that is based upon an accurate precedent but has been verbally twisted out of context : If they make no money from it, they are not liable.
This is very close to rulings which have been made about intellectual property, but not quite. The actual IP standards being referenced stated : A threshold for a civilly recognized violation of intellectual property rights may be met if the injured party(ies) may claim a -loss- of revenue as a result of actions by the accused party(ies) with the IP in question.
What does this mean? This means that you don't actually have to make a dime to be legally responsible for IP infringement. The person that holds the IP simply has to prove that you might have cost -them- a dime. In this case, imagine if the video shown had displayed a graphics glitch, lacked a feature or had a bug that, despite it being a work in progress, convinced just one purchaser to avoid the product -- Legally, the company that showed the video has met the threshold for an IP lawsuit. Crazy huh? Doesn't matter that you never made a nickel, all that matters is that the IP rights holder can prove to the court that they -might- have lost money.
Many people think that because the average company allows pictures and videos and god knows whatever else on fan sites, this somehow means that their IP rights are waived. This isn't true. The right to claim IP infringement rests with the IP holder and is not waived even when the person has issued the IP without restrictions. There are some really stellar examples of this with so-called "freeware" IP cases, where people have released software under various freeware licences and years later, changed their minds and told the wide word "delete my property" and sued anyone who argued. Unfortunately the tort laws have not caught up with the internet age, a fact lamented by many a lawyer, barrister, magister and judge.
"E.A. would have to release a CnD (Cease and Desist)" -- Depends. In the US there is a fun act called the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which sets certain processes in place to get things removed from websites without much more than a form issued (though other steps are expected to follow). While this is of course, a matter of US law, it is a law intended to ratify and put into action an international treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996). As a result, it's not really adding new rules onto international copyright laws so much as creating a specific structure in the US for enforcing said copyright standards. While other countries are not bound by the DMCA because it is a local extension on international copyright standards, many internet providers outside of the US choose to voluntarily comply rather than risk the later steps to follow which -are- covered by international copyright standards. So... depends. In the US, a DMCA takedown notice is enough in the short term and outside of the US, it may still be enough despite it having no actual legal power over them.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
Did you know it is easier for a 'Company' to get a website taken down for breaching 'copyright' laws than it is for a law enforcement agency to get a website taken down for breaking laws in terrorism/pornography/child abuse
think i am joking?
No I think you just don't understand. If Leakerz.com ISP was in any lawbidding country they would get notice(usually after notice has been sended to possible owner of website) from EA that asks them to pull plug from server that containts illegal information. Reason why some websites are really hard to get down is because all countries have separate laws and separate police. If USA police finds material that is breaking law in USA they must first contact police on that country where server is and ask them to bring it down.
Leakerz.com seems to be registered on Turkey by company called Alantron.
First time I've heard of a website being registered on a Turkey poor thing, anyone ring up animal welfare yet?
OmaliMMO Business CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 1,177
Originally posted by MMOrUS
Originally posted by Sasami
Originally posted by Obidom
Did you know it is easier for a 'Company' to get a website taken down for breaching 'copyright' laws than it is for a law enforcement agency to get a website taken down for breaking laws in terrorism/pornography/child abuse
think i am joking?
No I think you just don't understand. If Leakerz.com ISP was in any lawbidding country they would get notice(usually after notice has been sended to possible owner of website) from EA that asks them to pull plug from server that containts illegal information. Reason why some websites are really hard to get down is because all countries have separate laws and separate police. If USA police finds material that is breaking law in USA they must first contact police on that country where server is and ask them to bring it down.
Leakerz.com seems to be registered on Turkey by company called Alantron.
First time I've heard of a website being registered on a Turkey poor thing, anyone ring up animal welfare yet?
Nah, the cooling fans for the server act as an A/C unit for the Turkey, and the server itself dispenses various amounts of seed throughout the day.
That turkey is pimped out. Let's just say he gets all the hens.
I do not know the legal side of what EA can and can not do in this case however, morally it is wrong for the site to participate in such actions. With a name like Leakerz.com I suppose this is what they do. The problem as I see it is that EA is attacking the wrong site, they should be addressing the sites that sell hacks to games instead of playing NDA feild. Just a thought.
leakerz wasn't part of the NDA, they just posted the videos... they shouldn't be held accountable.
Genleo, there are laws against the reciept of stolen goods. It's not terribly nuanced either from what I recall. I can't see how you are missing all of this.
its not stolen. whoever leaked it is wrong for violating the nda, and depending on the contract can be held liable for any damages.
The website however is under non such agreement, therefore EA must file a cease and desist order with whatever court has jurisdiction. Then the site either complies or goes to court. In court if it is found that said site is guilty of breaking any actual laws, then and only then could they be forced to nullify whatever damages were caused. Also they could be forced to give up their source..but that where things get grey.
Is said website protected by the constitution under the first amendment. Meaning are they defined as "press", because technically the court has stated that "blogs" are not "press" and therefore their sources are not protected.
Its not cut and dry as some would make it, but hey look at the state of the country, not much education going on now a days.
Any who, I imagine the website would choose to just take it down since EA is like a billion dollar corp. with billion dollar lawyers who could probably bankrupt the site in court filing fees alone.
Thanks for putting some sense into this tread. Saved me from typing...well said.
Not to fan the flames of what seems to be a rip-roaring good time (Okay, a little to fan the flames) but--
I see in a lot of the previous posts a lack of understanding for what the purpose and function of an NDA agreement is from the perspective of tort law.
A Non-disclosure agreement is (to put it simply) a form of contract that extends temporary, explicit rights to intellectual property with a number of unspecified clauses in addition to the agreement of a party not to disclose those intellectual properties to parties as outlined within the contract.
What does this mean? It means that an NDA is not a contract limiting your rights as it is a contract extending you new rights with provisions. The art, the source code, the files and game design? None of that belonged to you to begin with. You never had a right to any of it...until the NDA gave you those rights with certain limits attached. When you broke that contract, you no longer were eligible to have those materials and may be liable for a variety of other penalties that were spelled out in that same contract.
But many of you are now wishing to bring up the argument : "That's fine and dandy but that doesn't give E.A. the right to shut down a website showing videos I (the violator) provided!!" and here's the funny part... you're right. That doesn't give them the right... something else does.
If you pay attention to the way that an NDA operates, you'll catch it for yourself.... the website never had the rights to show any of the intellectual property of E.A. to begin with. The only person who had any permissions whatsoever were those who signed off on the NDA which provided them certain rights. As a result, it doesn't matter how they recieved those materials or what legal trouble those people are in as a result, all that matters is that they are holding someone else's intellectual property (the images in the video consist of IP from EA's artists, and may demonstrate exclusive systems belonging to EA) without any right to them. The person who sent them those videos didn't have the power to provide any rights for that.
Further, a lot of people (armchair lawyers) have an odd quote that they make that is based upon an accurate precedent but has been verbally twisted out of context : If they make no money from it, they are not liable.
This is very close to rulings which have been made about intellectual property, but not quite. The actual IP standards being referenced stated : A threshold for a civilly recognized violation of intellectual property rights may be met if the injured party(ies) may claim a -loss- of revenue as a result of actions by the accused party(ies) with the IP in question.
What does this mean? This means that you don't actually have to make a dime to be legally responsible for IP infringement. The person that holds the IP simply has to prove that you might have cost -them- a dime. In this case, imagine if the video shown had displayed a graphics glitch, lacked a feature or had a bug that, despite it being a work in progress, convinced just one purchaser to avoid the product -- Legally, the company that showed the video has met the threshold for an IP lawsuit. Crazy huh? Doesn't matter that you never made a nickel, all that matters is that the IP rights holder can prove to the court that they -might- have lost money.
Many people think that because the average company allows pictures and videos and god knows whatever else on fan sites, this somehow means that their IP rights are waived. This isn't true. The right to claim IP infringement rests with the IP holder and is not waived even when the person has issued the IP without restrictions. There are some really stellar examples of this with so-called "freeware" IP cases, where people have released software under various freeware licences and years later, changed their minds and told the wide word "delete my property" and sued anyone who argued. Unfortunately the tort laws have not caught up with the internet age, a fact lamented by many a lawyer, barrister, magister and judge.
"E.A. would have to release a CnD (Cease and Desist)" -- Depends. In the US there is a fun act called the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which sets certain processes in place to get things removed from websites without much more than a form issued (though other steps are expected to follow). While this is of course, a matter of US law, it is a law intended to ratify and put into action an international treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996). As a result, it's not really adding new rules onto international copyright laws so much as creating a specific structure in the US for enforcing said copyright standards. While other countries are not bound by the DMCA because it is a local extension on international copyright standards, many internet providers outside of the US choose to voluntarily comply rather than risk the later steps to follow which -are- covered by international copyright standards. So... depends. In the US, a DMCA takedown notice is enough in the short term and outside of the US, it may still be enough despite it having no actual legal power over them.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
Methinks you have direct dealings with the legal system, or you stayed at a Holliday Inn last night.
I will take "Actual lawyer" for 200 Alex.
Thanks for the write up
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
Not to fan the flames of what seems to be a rip-roaring good time (Okay, a little to fan the flames) but--
I see in a lot of the previous posts a lack of understanding for what the purpose and function of an NDA agreement is from the perspective of tort law.
A Non-disclosure agreement is (to put it simply) a form of contract that extends temporary, explicit rights to intellectual property with a number of unspecified clauses in addition to the agreement of a party not to disclose those intellectual properties to parties as outlined within the contract.
What does this mean? It means that an NDA is not a contract limiting your rights as it is a contract extending you new rights with provisions. The art, the source code, the files and game design? None of that belonged to you to begin with. You never had a right to any of it...until the NDA gave you those rights with certain limits attached. When you broke that contract, you no longer were eligible to have those materials and may be liable for a variety of other penalties that were spelled out in that same contract.
But many of you are now wishing to bring up the argument : "That's fine and dandy but that doesn't give E.A. the right to shut down a website showing videos I (the violator) provided!!" and here's the funny part... you're right. That doesn't give them the right... something else does.
If you pay attention to the way that an NDA operates, you'll catch it for yourself.... the website never had the rights to show any of the intellectual property of E.A. to begin with. The only person who had any permissions whatsoever were those who signed off on the NDA which provided them certain rights. As a result, it doesn't matter how they recieved those materials or what legal trouble those people are in as a result, all that matters is that they are holding someone else's intellectual property (the images in the video consist of IP from EA's artists, and may demonstrate exclusive systems belonging to EA) without any right to them. The person who sent them those videos didn't have the power to provide any rights for that.
Further, a lot of people (armchair lawyers) have an odd quote that they make that is based upon an accurate precedent but has been verbally twisted out of context : If they make no money from it, they are not liable.
This is very close to rulings which have been made about intellectual property, but not quite. The actual IP standards being referenced stated : A threshold for a civilly recognized violation of intellectual property rights may be met if the injured party(ies) may claim a -loss- of revenue as a result of actions by the accused party(ies) with the IP in question.
What does this mean? This means that you don't actually have to make a dime to be legally responsible for IP infringement. The person that holds the IP simply has to prove that you might have cost -them- a dime. In this case, imagine if the video shown had displayed a graphics glitch, lacked a feature or had a bug that, despite it being a work in progress, convinced just one purchaser to avoid the product -- Legally, the company that showed the video has met the threshold for an IP lawsuit. Crazy huh? Doesn't matter that you never made a nickel, all that matters is that the IP rights holder can prove to the court that they -might- have lost money.
Many people think that because the average company allows pictures and videos and god knows whatever else on fan sites, this somehow means that their IP rights are waived. This isn't true. The right to claim IP infringement rests with the IP holder and is not waived even when the person has issued the IP without restrictions. There are some really stellar examples of this with so-called "freeware" IP cases, where people have released software under various freeware licences and years later, changed their minds and told the wide word "delete my property" and sued anyone who argued. Unfortunately the tort laws have not caught up with the internet age, a fact lamented by many a lawyer, barrister, magister and judge.
"E.A. would have to release a CnD (Cease and Desist)" -- Depends. In the US there is a fun act called the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which sets certain processes in place to get things removed from websites without much more than a form issued (though other steps are expected to follow). While this is of course, a matter of US law, it is a law intended to ratify and put into action an international treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996). As a result, it's not really adding new rules onto international copyright laws so much as creating a specific structure in the US for enforcing said copyright standards. While other countries are not bound by the DMCA because it is a local extension on international copyright standards, many internet providers outside of the US choose to voluntarily comply rather than risk the later steps to follow which -are- covered by international copyright standards. So... depends. In the US, a DMCA takedown notice is enough in the short term and outside of the US, it may still be enough despite it having no actual legal power over them.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
About time we had someone who understood law chime in on this stuff.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
the problem with a nda ,it assumes the person is capable of agreeing to a contract.if they are UNDER 18 they are not legally bound to a contract,or if they are not of sound mind again cannot be bound to a contract.
the nda states when you sign up for it you must be 18, hence you purgered yourself, and the intellectual property is still EAs. It would be like if a 15 year old stole something from a store....they would still get in trouble with the law and the shop owner. Plus the owners of the webste are handling illicit property.
What are the requirements for signing up to test?
To be eligible for consideration and possible selection as a game tester, you must be a registered member of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community and be 18 years of age or older. There are confidentiality and license restrictions as well as other terms you must agree to in the Game Testing Agreement in order to complete the tester application process.
I'm glad that my long spiel was useful for the folks keeping up with the topic.
On the matter of contracts and incompetency (mental or age-based) the matter breaks down pretty simply.
It's true that any contract that expects to be legally enforceable includes a number of statements by each party (known as Affirmations) that describe who they are, what their place is in the contract and their understanding and acceptance of the terms. Often, for the sake of making it painfully clear if it ever goes before a court, you may be asked to sign or initial at different places so that you have agreed to each individual affirmation or section. Someone judged legally incompetent (which, in an entirely different matter, doesn't always include children) may not be held to any of these.
But then we run back to the purpose and nature of an NDA. It exists to provide new rights with provisions. By not being competent to be held to a legally-enforced contract, you were also not comptetent enough to be extended the rights in that contract. That means that you (accidentally or otherwise) are holding intellectual properties you have no rights to. What happens after this depends on your local laws.
In all jurisdictions I know of, an incompetent that violates a law (in this case, IP theft) is guilty of breaking that law, despite the fact that they may not understand what they've done. The question is : Who do we punish and what punishment do we give them?
Sometimes this is decided by legislation that spells out what to do if a minor violates the law. For instance, in California there is an anti-piracy bill I remember being debated that includes seperate, specific fines to be issued if a minor is guilty of pirating movies, music or software. Sometimes the law provides for the guardian of an incompetent party to be held responsible as a form of guilt through negligence (your ward couldn't have committed that crime if you hadn't allowed them time, opportunity and lack of supervision). Sometimes, the law provides the judge the right to make alternate rulings (juvenile detention, therapy, community service) or to waive punishment altogether because of their incompetence. In none of the cases is the accused found 'innocent' because they were incompetent.
Sooooo with that all said : If you are legally incompetent (we'll say a five year-old) and you somehow sign an NDA and do something bad with the IP you're given access to... you are in the same boat as if you stole the IP... the only question is what the court feels is right to do about it. If you're lucky, the judge may have the leeway and inclination to decide that you are guilty but your incompetence disbars punishment.
I should end this little pedagogic speech with the standard legal disclaimer dressed up a bit:
Law is not slot machine or a formula. It's a living system and what I've described is just the most likely result. It is entirely possible everything I've described will be proven wrong tommorrow by a judge that feels he knows better. Please do not feel that I am providing definitive and legally secure counsel. If you actually get tied up in a legal mess, get someone local and find out how things stack up in your area.
Not to fan the flames of what seems to be a rip-roaring good time (Okay, a little to fan the flames) but--
I see in a lot of the previous posts a lack of understanding for what the purpose and function of an NDA agreement is from the perspective of tort law.
A Non-disclosure agreement is (to put it simply) a form of contract that extends temporary, explicit rights to intellectual property with a number of unspecified clauses in addition to the agreement of a party not to disclose those intellectual properties to parties as outlined within the contract.
What does this mean? It means that an NDA is not a contract limiting your rights as it is a contract extending you new rights with provisions. The art, the source code, the files and game design? None of that belonged to you to begin with. You never had a right to any of it...until the NDA gave you those rights with certain limits attached. When you broke that contract, you no longer were eligible to have those materials and may be liable for a variety of other penalties that were spelled out in that same contract.
But many of you are now wishing to bring up the argument : "That's fine and dandy but that doesn't give E.A. the right to shut down a website showing videos I (the violator) provided!!" and here's the funny part... you're right. That doesn't give them the right... something else does.
If you pay attention to the way that an NDA operates, you'll catch it for yourself.... the website never had the rights to show any of the intellectual property of E.A. to begin with. The only person who had any permissions whatsoever were those who signed off on the NDA which provided them certain rights. As a result, it doesn't matter how they recieved those materials or what legal trouble those people are in as a result, all that matters is that they are holding someone else's intellectual property (the images in the video consist of IP from EA's artists, and may demonstrate exclusive systems belonging to EA) without any right to them. The person who sent them those videos didn't have the power to provide any rights for that.
Further, a lot of people (armchair lawyers) have an odd quote that they make that is based upon an accurate precedent but has been verbally twisted out of context : If they make no money from it, they are not liable.
This is very close to rulings which have been made about intellectual property, but not quite. The actual IP standards being referenced stated : A threshold for a civilly recognized violation of intellectual property rights may be met if the injured party(ies) may claim a -loss- of revenue as a result of actions by the accused party(ies) with the IP in question.
What does this mean? This means that you don't actually have to make a dime to be legally responsible for IP infringement. The person that holds the IP simply has to prove that you might have cost -them- a dime. In this case, imagine if the video shown had displayed a graphics glitch, lacked a feature or had a bug that, despite it being a work in progress, convinced just one purchaser to avoid the product -- Legally, the company that showed the video has met the threshold for an IP lawsuit. Crazy huh? Doesn't matter that you never made a nickel, all that matters is that the IP rights holder can prove to the court that they -might- have lost money.
Many people think that because the average company allows pictures and videos and god knows whatever else on fan sites, this somehow means that their IP rights are waived. This isn't true. The right to claim IP infringement rests with the IP holder and is not waived even when the person has issued the IP without restrictions. There are some really stellar examples of this with so-called "freeware" IP cases, where people have released software under various freeware licences and years later, changed their minds and told the wide word "delete my property" and sued anyone who argued. Unfortunately the tort laws have not caught up with the internet age, a fact lamented by many a lawyer, barrister, magister and judge.
"E.A. would have to release a CnD (Cease and Desist)" -- Depends. In the US there is a fun act called the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which sets certain processes in place to get things removed from websites without much more than a form issued (though other steps are expected to follow). While this is of course, a matter of US law, it is a law intended to ratify and put into action an international treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996). As a result, it's not really adding new rules onto international copyright laws so much as creating a specific structure in the US for enforcing said copyright standards. While other countries are not bound by the DMCA because it is a local extension on international copyright standards, many internet providers outside of the US choose to voluntarily comply rather than risk the later steps to follow which -are- covered by international copyright standards. So... depends. In the US, a DMCA takedown notice is enough in the short term and outside of the US, it may still be enough despite it having no actual legal power over them.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
well that should shut all the armchair lawyers up
I think that covers it.
If you post the pictures, you are breaking the NDA.
If you put the pictures, vids, on a website, you are infringing the copyright, because you don't own those pictures, and the people you got them from had not right to give them to you.
It would be like claiming you had the right to keep a stolen painting someone sold you.
Not Making Money is NEVER a defense for infringing on copyright.
Think of it like your house.
You own it. You get to decide who uses it, and who doesn't.
What if you go on vacation.
Do you think someone could just live in your house while you were gone without asking you?
After all, you didn't lose any money, so that would be ok, right?
No, of course not.
When you own an intellectual property, you control how the public sees it, which ads value to your IP.
Thanks for the excellent information Belledaire, very interesting.
To toss in another analogy I view Leakers as similar to a Pawn shop that accepts stolen goods. It is up to the pawn shop owners to ensure the goods are not stolen (where I live anyways) and if the police can prove the goods were stolen they are confiscated and returned to the owner.
Should the pawn shop get caught doing this too often they are deemed an illegal fencing operation and ordered to close.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
When there is a disproportionate violation of interests and that site is actively pursuing to hurt the product and release confidential information about it.
They have the right by law.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Not THIS topic again. NDA this, beta leaks that. I only have one word for this thread.
Waffles.
That is all.
Usually in instances like this, the request comes from the game company's legal team. If the website in question was divulging trade secrets, and publishing information they don't own the rights to then compliance is the best way for them to avoid a crippling lawsuit.
If you don't like it, you should call your congress person.
You- "Mr./Mrs. Congressman... I have a complaint about an online game"
Congressman-"Whats an online game and why should I care?"
Heh heh. Thats how I imagine that conversation going.
That is not true. I am a party to an NDA at this current time. It is an agreement between me and the company I am working for. Thats it.
To say that EA owns the rights to the intellectual property that is Star Wars is also false.
Lucas Arts owns the IP.
The only case that EA would have is source code.
That being said, exactly how was the IP damaged by this leaked footage?
In fact it wouldnt surprise me one bit if EA leaked the footage themselves in an attempt to get people like us discussing their game. Granted people already were, but the more that their game is on our minds, the more likely we will buy.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
The thing here is that by hosting those images and beta information they were a party to a contract violation. Secondly, the name Leakerz.com implies motive in being a vehicle for the transformation of copyright material and therefore would make them liable if EA so chose to hunt them down with legal paperwork.
Were they nothing but a link collection to lets say photobucket, flickr, rapidshare, or some other file hosting service then they would probably be in the same boat as many different pirate websites and would have been more difficult to shut down, instead EA/BioWare would have gotten to spend the time going after all the different hosting sites which would immediately take down the material much like how youtube takes down the colbert report within a few minutes of it being hosted up there.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
That being said how did the website violate either one of these by showing a screenshot?
NO
Once again, what is the IP in question?
There is plenty of information on line about NDA's and leaks to the press.
The website had a reason for taking it down, could of been an injunction was filed and rather than fight it they simply complied. Regardless, they are not stealing.
An NDA is a calculated risk taking for the benefit if the parties involved.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
its like harboring a fugitive
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
Not to fan the flames of what seems to be a rip-roaring good time (Okay, a little to fan the flames) but--
I see in a lot of the previous posts a lack of understanding for what the purpose and function of an NDA agreement is from the perspective of tort law.
A Non-disclosure agreement is (to put it simply) a form of contract that extends temporary, explicit rights to intellectual property with a number of unspecified clauses in addition to the agreement of a party not to disclose those intellectual properties to parties as outlined within the contract.
What does this mean? It means that an NDA is not a contract limiting your rights as it is a contract extending you new rights with provisions. The art, the source code, the files and game design? None of that belonged to you to begin with. You never had a right to any of it...until the NDA gave you those rights with certain limits attached. When you broke that contract, you no longer were eligible to have those materials and may be liable for a variety of other penalties that were spelled out in that same contract.
But many of you are now wishing to bring up the argument : "That's fine and dandy but that doesn't give E.A. the right to shut down a website showing videos I (the violator) provided!!" and here's the funny part... you're right. That doesn't give them the right... something else does.
If you pay attention to the way that an NDA operates, you'll catch it for yourself.... the website never had the rights to show any of the intellectual property of E.A. to begin with. The only person who had any permissions whatsoever were those who signed off on the NDA which provided them certain rights. As a result, it doesn't matter how they recieved those materials or what legal trouble those people are in as a result, all that matters is that they are holding someone else's intellectual property (the images in the video consist of IP from EA's artists, and may demonstrate exclusive systems belonging to EA) without any right to them. The person who sent them those videos didn't have the power to provide any rights for that.
Further, a lot of people (armchair lawyers) have an odd quote that they make that is based upon an accurate precedent but has been verbally twisted out of context : If they make no money from it, they are not liable.
This is very close to rulings which have been made about intellectual property, but not quite. The actual IP standards being referenced stated : A threshold for a civilly recognized violation of intellectual property rights may be met if the injured party(ies) may claim a -loss- of revenue as a result of actions by the accused party(ies) with the IP in question.
What does this mean? This means that you don't actually have to make a dime to be legally responsible for IP infringement. The person that holds the IP simply has to prove that you might have cost -them- a dime. In this case, imagine if the video shown had displayed a graphics glitch, lacked a feature or had a bug that, despite it being a work in progress, convinced just one purchaser to avoid the product -- Legally, the company that showed the video has met the threshold for an IP lawsuit. Crazy huh? Doesn't matter that you never made a nickel, all that matters is that the IP rights holder can prove to the court that they -might- have lost money.
Many people think that because the average company allows pictures and videos and god knows whatever else on fan sites, this somehow means that their IP rights are waived. This isn't true. The right to claim IP infringement rests with the IP holder and is not waived even when the person has issued the IP without restrictions. There are some really stellar examples of this with so-called "freeware" IP cases, where people have released software under various freeware licences and years later, changed their minds and told the wide word "delete my property" and sued anyone who argued. Unfortunately the tort laws have not caught up with the internet age, a fact lamented by many a lawyer, barrister, magister and judge.
"E.A. would have to release a CnD (Cease and Desist)" -- Depends. In the US there is a fun act called the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which sets certain processes in place to get things removed from websites without much more than a form issued (though other steps are expected to follow). While this is of course, a matter of US law, it is a law intended to ratify and put into action an international treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996). As a result, it's not really adding new rules onto international copyright laws so much as creating a specific structure in the US for enforcing said copyright standards. While other countries are not bound by the DMCA because it is a local extension on international copyright standards, many internet providers outside of the US choose to voluntarily comply rather than risk the later steps to follow which -are- covered by international copyright standards. So... depends. In the US, a DMCA takedown notice is enough in the short term and outside of the US, it may still be enough despite it having no actual legal power over them.
Okay, now that I've fanned the flames and talked up a storm, I step back and watch the fun continue. For those of you genuinely curious, I hope this provides a few new tidbits.
Not liking you back just takes too much energy.
First time I've heard of a website being registered on a Turkey
poor thing, anyone ring up animal welfare yet?
Nah, the cooling fans for the server act as an A/C unit for the Turkey, and the server itself dispenses various amounts of seed throughout the day.
That turkey is pimped out. Let's just say he gets all the hens.
OP, want some cheese with that "wine"?
Alright, now I stunk up the thread with a lame pun, everybody move along.
I do not know the legal side of what EA can and can not do in this case however, morally it is wrong for the site to participate in such actions. With a name like Leakerz.com I suppose this is what they do. The problem as I see it is that EA is attacking the wrong site, they should be addressing the sites that sell hacks to games instead of playing NDA feild. Just a thought.
What gives them the right?
They own it.
Thanks for putting some sense into this tread. Saved me from typing...well said.
Methinks you have direct dealings with the legal system, or you stayed at a Holliday Inn last night.
I will take "Actual lawyer" for 200 Alex.
Thanks for the write up
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
That and EA has awesome lawywers.
Very interesting wrap-up, it makes senses.
Thanks.
well that should shut all the armchair lawyers up
About time we had someone who understood law chime in on this stuff.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
the problem with a nda ,it assumes the person is capable of agreeing to a contract.if they are UNDER 18 they are not legally bound to a contract,or if they are not of sound mind again cannot be bound to a contract.
the nda states when you sign up for it you must be 18, hence you purgered yourself, and the intellectual property is still EAs. It would be like if a 15 year old stole something from a store....they would still get in trouble with the law and the shop owner. Plus the owners of the webste are handling illicit property.
What are the requirements for signing up to test?
To be eligible for consideration and possible selection as a game tester, you must be a registered member of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community and be 18 years of age or older. There are confidentiality and license restrictions as well as other terms you must agree to in the Game Testing Agreement in order to complete the tester application process.
I'm glad that my long spiel was useful for the folks keeping up with the topic.
On the matter of contracts and incompetency (mental or age-based) the matter breaks down pretty simply.
It's true that any contract that expects to be legally enforceable includes a number of statements by each party (known as Affirmations) that describe who they are, what their place is in the contract and their understanding and acceptance of the terms. Often, for the sake of making it painfully clear if it ever goes before a court, you may be asked to sign or initial at different places so that you have agreed to each individual affirmation or section. Someone judged legally incompetent (which, in an entirely different matter, doesn't always include children) may not be held to any of these.
But then we run back to the purpose and nature of an NDA. It exists to provide new rights with provisions. By not being competent to be held to a legally-enforced contract, you were also not comptetent enough to be extended the rights in that contract. That means that you (accidentally or otherwise) are holding intellectual properties you have no rights to. What happens after this depends on your local laws.
In all jurisdictions I know of, an incompetent that violates a law (in this case, IP theft) is guilty of breaking that law, despite the fact that they may not understand what they've done. The question is : Who do we punish and what punishment do we give them?
Sometimes this is decided by legislation that spells out what to do if a minor violates the law. For instance, in California there is an anti-piracy bill I remember being debated that includes seperate, specific fines to be issued if a minor is guilty of pirating movies, music or software. Sometimes the law provides for the guardian of an incompetent party to be held responsible as a form of guilt through negligence (your ward couldn't have committed that crime if you hadn't allowed them time, opportunity and lack of supervision). Sometimes, the law provides the judge the right to make alternate rulings (juvenile detention, therapy, community service) or to waive punishment altogether because of their incompetence. In none of the cases is the accused found 'innocent' because they were incompetent.
Sooooo with that all said : If you are legally incompetent (we'll say a five year-old) and you somehow sign an NDA and do something bad with the IP you're given access to... you are in the same boat as if you stole the IP... the only question is what the court feels is right to do about it. If you're lucky, the judge may have the leeway and inclination to decide that you are guilty but your incompetence disbars punishment.
I should end this little pedagogic speech with the standard legal disclaimer dressed up a bit:
Law is not slot machine or a formula. It's a living system and what I've described is just the most likely result. It is entirely possible everything I've described will be proven wrong tommorrow by a judge that feels he knows better. Please do not feel that I am providing definitive and legally secure counsel. If you actually get tied up in a legal mess, get someone local and find out how things stack up in your area.
Not liking you back just takes too much energy.
I think that covers it.
If you post the pictures, you are breaking the NDA.
If you put the pictures, vids, on a website, you are infringing the copyright, because you don't own those pictures, and the people you got them from had not right to give them to you.
It would be like claiming you had the right to keep a stolen painting someone sold you.
Not Making Money is NEVER a defense for infringing on copyright.
Think of it like your house.
You own it. You get to decide who uses it, and who doesn't.
What if you go on vacation.
Do you think someone could just live in your house while you were gone without asking you?
After all, you didn't lose any money, so that would be ok, right?
No, of course not.
When you own an intellectual property, you control how the public sees it, which ads value to your IP.
Thanks for the excellent information Belledaire, very interesting.
To toss in another analogy I view Leakers as similar to a Pawn shop that accepts stolen goods. It is up to the pawn shop owners to ensure the goods are not stolen (where I live anyways) and if the police can prove the goods were stolen they are confiscated and returned to the owner.
Should the pawn shop get caught doing this too often they are deemed an illegal fencing operation and ordered to close.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon