Tag Archive for: troll

Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Says It’s Really Unfair That He Should Have To Tell Clients And Courts How Frequently He’s Been Caught Lying In Court

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Last month we wrote about the ultimate benchslap against noted copyright troll Richard Liebowitz. Judge Jesse Furman in the Southern District of NY published a 61 page opinion that goes into massive detail on Liebowitz’s longstanding pattern and practice of lying to courts over and over and over again. Beyond going into the cringe-worthy details of many lies told in this specific case — Arthur Usherson v. Bandshell Artist Management — it includes an appendix with 40 examples of Liebowitz lying, misrepresenting, and/or being sanctioned in other cases. It’s pretty stunning. The order dumped over $ 100k in sanctions on Liebowitz, but much more damning, it referred Liebowitz to the Court’s Grievance Committee, required Liebowitz to give a copy of the order to all of his clients, and said that it needed to be filed along with any new lawsuits he filed — which is notable, since Liebowitz seems to file new lawsuits every other day or so. Read more

Valve Clears Up Nothing With Its Latest Explanation Of What Games It Will Ban As ‘Troll Games’

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You will recall that several months back, Valve released a statement outlining what it considered to be sweeping changes to its game curation duties. While the company made a great deal of forthcoming tools on the Steam store for filtering game searches, pretty much everyone focused on the platform’s claim that it would no longer keep any game off its platform unless it was “illegal or a troll game.” That, of course, still left all kinds of ambiguity as to what is and is not allowed on the platform and it provided a wide avenue through which Steam could still drive its oversight truck. This led to our having a podcast discussion in which I pointed out repeatedly that this was every bit as opaque a policy as the one that proceeded it, which was followed by the real-world example of developers across the spectrum pointing out that they in fact had no idea what the policy actually meant. In other words, the whole thing has generally been an unproductive mess.

A mess which Valve tried to clean up this past week in an extensive blog post on its site which attempted to define what it meant by “troll games.” As the folks at Ars point out, this attempt at clarity is anything but. Much of what Valve lays out as “troll games” makes sense: scam games that work Steam’s inventory system, or try to manipulate developer Steam keys, or games that are simply broken due to a lack of seriousness on the part of the developer. But then it also said the definition included what most people thought of in the original announcement: games that “just try to incite and sow discord.”

Valve’s Doug Lombardi said at the time that Active Shooter was removed from Steam because it was “designed to do nothing but generate outrage and cause conflict through its existence.” That designation came despite the fact that the developer said the game was “a dynamic SWAT simulator in which dynamic roles are offered to players” and that he would “likely remove the shooter’s role in the game by the release” after popular backlash to the idea.

As the developer noted at the time, too, “there are games like Hatred, Postal, Carmageddon and etc., which are even [worse] compared to Active Shooter and literally focuses on mass shootings/killings of people.”

It’s as good an example as any for pointing out what has always been true about art forms: one person’s inflammatory content is another person’s artistic genius. More worrisome, Valve’s own words on its policy put the company squarely in the business of mind-reading, with its post suggesting that troll developers are those that aren’t actually interested in making or selling a game. It relies on Valve’s own analysis of a developer’s “good faith” in putting forth the game.

While good-faith developer efforts can obviously lead to “crude or lower quality games” on Steam, Valve says that “it really does seem like bad games are made by bad people.” And it’s those bad games from bad people that Valve doesn’t want on Steam.

Absent a mind-reading device, determining a developer’s motives isn’t an easy task. Defining what separates a good faith effort to sell a game from a “troll” involves a “deep assessment” of the developer, Valve says, including a look at “what they’ve done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more.”

We could spend a great deal of time discussing how qualified Valve is in making these determinations, or what value such curation provides for a platform like Steam. Or we could talk instead about whether this treatment sets video games back a notch or two as an art form, with corporate oversight playing the role of evaluating each artist’s intent.

But the real lesson here is that, whatever you think of Valve’s definitions above, it is clear as day that these explanations are not in line with the overall message in Valve’s original notice of the change in policy. The company explicitly said at that time that it didn’t believe it should be in the business of deciding what types of games with what types of content users should see on the platform. The whole point of this was for wide inclusion, whereas it seems really hard to see any daylight from this updated explanation and Steam’s historical curation policy. Valve still gets to decide what goes on the platform.

So many words and so much time for so little effect, in other words.

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Microsoft And Nintendo Team Up To Troll Playstation In Ads For Not Giving Gamers What They Want

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Buckle up, because this seemingly mildly interesting story has a ton of intersections on topics we typically talk about here at Techdirt. As a preface, you should recall that we firmly believe that content is advertising and advertising is content. By this we mean that every bit of content a producer makes serves to advertise that producer’s wider content library and that advertisements, in order to be engaging, must be useful and/or entertaining every bit as much as more traditional content typically is. We’ve also talked a great deal about how content producers in the digital spaces must connect with their fanbases, treat them well, and provide them what they want, or risk backlash. Add to that, finally, that we think restrictive protectionism in the name of wider profits often achieves the opposite of that goal.

Which brings us to Microsoft and Nintendo somewhat suprisingly teaming up to push out a bunch of ads centered on the ability for users of either to crossplay games across both systems.

For those of you who cannot see the video embed, it’s an ad put out by both Nintendo and Microsoft pointing out that gamers on both systems can crossplay with one another on some games, including the example shown in Minecraft. Frankly, it’s quite jarring to see these combo-ads (there are more) put out by two rivals in the console space. If you weren’t well-tuned to the video game industry, you’d probably be left wondering what the hell was going on here.

The answer is that these ads are rather entertaining trolling attacks targeting Sony’s Playstation 4, which has been the subject of some recent backlash coming out of E3 over the platform’s lockdown on its system’s games. While there is pretty much no such thing as a Playstation user that does not want crossplay enabled, and there are many who want it very much, Sony has gone the protectionist route. This is an attempt to convince friends of friends to buy Playstations so that they can play together, I suppose, but it’s stupid and awful.

Some of the world’s biggest games, from Fortnite to Minecraft to Rocket League, all support some variety of crossplay, allowing people with PCs, Xbox Ones, mobiles and Nintendo consoles to play on the same servers. Yet Sony continues to refuse to allow PlayStation consoles to get in on the fun when it comes to playing with Microsoft or Nintendo consoles.

In the wake of E3 and the disappointment of Fortnite’s account locking, then, two of the companies that do allow crossplay have teamed up to take a swing at the PlayStation 4 with this commercial for Minecraft, a game that’s also available on PS4.

A couple of reactions. First, Sony made this shit-sandwich for itself by not giving its customers what they want for no other reason than protectionism, so it’s not without fun to see them have to eat it up. Second, the combo-ads put out by Microsoft and Nintendo are both useful and, if you enjoy watching huge companies troll one another, fairly entertaining. And the companies have kept this up as a coordinated effort, rather than just limiting it to a one-off video ad.

And the Xbox Twitter account responded, of course, happily saying they’re ready to build something together. While this might have flown right past many gamers, enough will realize that both companies are going out of their way to rub Sony’s nose in crap to make this all a bit fun. Whether Sony will respond to the ribbing by finally unlocking its garden remains to be seen.

In the meantime, though, this is a great example of advertising as content.

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New Hampshire Court: First Amendment Says You Can Call A Patent Troll A Patent Troll

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A New Hampshire state court has dismissed a defamation suit filed by a patent owner unhappy that it had been called a “patent troll.” The court ruled [PDF] that the phrase “patent troll” and other rhetorical characterizations are not the type of factual statements that can be the basis of a defamation claim. While this is a fairly routine application of defamation law and the First Amendment, it is an important reminder that patent assertion entities – or “trolls” – are not shielded from criticism. Regardless of your view about the patent system, this is a victory for freedom of expression.

The case began back in December 2016 when patent assertion entity Automated Transactions, LLC (“ATL”) and inventor David Barcelou filed a complaint [PDF] in New Hampshire Superior Court against 13 defendants, including banking associations, banks, law firms, lawyers, and a publisher. ATL and Barcelou claimed that all of the defendants criticized ATL’s litigation in a way that was defamatory. The court summarizes describes the claims as follows:

The statements the plaintiffs allege are defamatory may be separated into two categories. The first consists of instances in which a defendant referred to a plaintiff as a “patent troll.” The second is composed of characterizations of the plaintiffs’ conduct as a “shakedown,” “extortion,” or “blackmail.”

These statements were made in a variety of contexts. For example, ATL complained that the Credit Union National Association submitted testimony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary [PDF] that referred to ATL as a “troll” and suggested that its business “might look like extortion.” The plaintiffs also complained about an article in Crain’s New York Business that referred to Barcelou as a “patent troll.” The complaint alleges that the article included a photo of a troll that “paints Mr. Barcelou in a disparaging light, and is defamatory.”

ATL had filed over 50 lawsuits against a variety of banks and credit unions claiming that their ATM machines infringed ATL’s patents. ATL also sent many demand letters. Some in the banking industry complained that these suits and demands lacked merit. There was some support for this view. For example, in one case, the Federal Circuit ruled the several of ATL’s asserted patent claims were invalid and that the defendants did not infringe. The defendants did not infringe because the patents were all directed to ATMs connected to the Internet and it was “undisputed” that the defendants’ products “are not connected to the Internet and cannot be accessed over the Internet.”

Given the scale of ATL’s litigation, it is not surprising that it faced some criticism. Yet, the company responded to that criticism with a defamation suit. Fortunately, the court found the challenged statements to be protected opinion. Justice Brian T. Tucker explained:

[E]ach defendant used “patent troll” to characterize entities, including ATL, which engage in patent litigation tactics it viewed as abusive. And in each instance the defendant disclosed the facts that supported its description and made ATL, in the defendant’s mind, a patent troll. As such, to the extent the defendants accused the plaintiffs of being a “patent troll,“ it was an opinion and not actionable.

The court went on to explain that “patent troll” is a term without a precise meaning that “doesn‘t enable the reader or hearer to know whether the label is true or false.” The court notes that the term could encompass a broad range of activity (which some might see as beneficial, while others see it as harmful).

The court also ruled that challenged statements such as “shakedown” and comparisons to “blackmail” were non-actionable “rhetorical hyperbole.” This is consistent with a long line of cases finding such language to be protected. Indeed, this is why John Oliver can call coal magnate Robert Murray a “geriatric Dr. Evil” and tell him to “eat shit.” As the ACLU has put it, you can’t sue people for being mean to you. Strongly expressed opinions, whether you find them childish or hilariously apt (or both), are part of living in a free society.

Justice Tucker’s ruling is a comprehensive victory for the defendants and free speech. ATL and Barcelou believe they are noble actors seeking to vindicate property rights. The defendants believed that ATL’s conduct made it an abusive patent troll. The First Amendment allows both opinions to be expressed.

Reposted from EFF’s Deeplinks blog

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