February 7, 2013
Two months ago, almost to the day, I pulled all of my virtual world instances and stopped all of my interactions with the Metaverse community. You are not going to believe what happened to bring this about.
On December 7th, I received a letter from a lawyer in Toronto, Ontario who was representing a software development firm in Toronto. The company was claiming two things; that I had infringed on their trademark by using the word "Excelsior" and that the Station infringed on the intellectual property they were developing for their own virtual world project. Their claim was that I had somehow gained unauthorized access to their systems, or was given the content from their systems, and was using their ideas and content to develop Excelsior Station. The letter went on to say that any claims that might be made against me would be dropped if I handed over all my files so they could remove all of thier content.
I freaked.
I overreacted and pulled everything without any word of explanation. I've been through a civil suit and I spent all those years in a law office, I know how fucked up and destructive a law suit can be. That was my concern. Created Worlds, SoftPaw Estates, everyone connected with my builds could possible be dragged in. With the resulting court expenses costing them so much that they go bankrupt. I can take anything that anyone hits me with, but I cannot tolerate anyone else getting hurt because I am being attacked.
To anyone that this action has let down, I apologize. And an apology is in order. As I said, I overreacted. If I had kept calm and dealt with this as I should have, and which I soon did, then any disappointment this has caused would not have happened.
Here's hard enough to believe that this could happen in the first place. The usual practice is to demand the removal of infringing content or trademark. But not this one. They were demanding my files, promising to return them to me with any infringing content removed by them. It was that or suffer the expense of traveling to and from Ontario, plus all those court costs. Hell, it was even worded as if they were doing me a favour!
But, I had the weekend to think it through and that next Monday morning, I called a lawyer. In fact, I called the lawyer I worked with for 10 years. Harry and I had worked very well together and we have a pretty solid friendship. He got things rolling and I went out to Vancouver to meet with him. And it was a very good meeting, too. Not just because of some preliminary results, but I got to visit with people I haven't seen in over eight years. After all, it was the start of the Holiday Season and things were going to move pretty slowly until January, so I took the time to relax and refresh myself, getting ready to deal with the stress that court brings.
It is at this point that I will tell you that I am not going to name any names. I'm not going to post pics of the letter or anything else that might identify them. This is on the advice of my lawyer and is to protect me from any further actions, such as getting sued for defamation. That would be all I'd need just then. Not only that, but since I had already withdrawn from the Metaverse, Harry recommended that I maintain that until this was settled.
So, why am I posting now? Well, settling this situation took one hell of a turn.
You see, Harry had set in motion the initial work while I was on my way to meet with him. Basically, gathering background information about the company and their lawyer, getting current with the legislation, searching case law, all the things I used to do when I worked there. And it wasn't long before things began to not add up.
First of all, no listing for the software firm could be found. No business registry, no phone book listing, nothing. A bit odd, but not all that unusual. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in Canada, you can save costs by letting the government assign a number as the business name. After that, you can simply us "dba" to have a name for your business. "dba" stands for "doing business as". As a fictitious example, the result would be 123456789 LLC dba Acme Inc.
But then another very odd thing surfaced. The law firm representing the company didn't seem to exist either. And a law firm would be listed. How else are they going to get new clients if people can't find a phone number for them? And then the lawyer himself. His name is not on the Ontario Bar Association. That's when the proverbial alarm bells started ringing. You cannot practice law in Ontario without being a member of the Bar. Not in any province in Canada. And Harry was all over this.
That was in the first week of January. Since then, an investigation by the RCMP has been launched and charges of misrepresentation, fraud, criminal impersonation and about a dozen other charges have been laid against the "lawyer" who started this. Today I received the notarized documents regarding those charges as well as a letter from Harry advising me that I can start trying to restore everything, as well as letting all of you know what has happened.
Which raises a huge question. What now?
I've had a couple of weeks while waiting on the documents to think about this. And I don't know. I will be working on this site again, but with a big change. In the past, I have generally stuck with writing about AuroraSim and issues within the Metaverse. I'm going to expand that now. I've seen now that what goes on in the Real World has huge impacts on us, both as a community and as individuals. And I will be tweeting and commenting again, too.
I've also returned to the world of MMO gaming and hadn't realized how much I had missed it. So, I will be spending some time in those virtual worlds, slashing and slaying my way to victory. By the way, for anyone interested, you can find me in EVE Online, Fallen Earth, Star Trek Online and Star Wars - the Old Republic. Perhaps I'll blog a little about my adventures and mishaps in those worlds.
But its the Station I am truly undecided about. Do I seek to restore it to Created Worlds? Perhaps I should seek a new home for it, perhaps as its own VW? Or maybe completely rebuild it. I've seen that AuroraScape is up and running and that their hosting company, Zetamex, have AuroraSim based packages. Perhaps a 4,096 by 4,096 would be the way to go? Anybody have any ideas?
The important thing, though, is that I am no longer in a battle to protect my work. I can rejoin the community that I have come to love and return to enjoying all the wonderful people, things and ideas that it is brimming over with.
I am so sorry to hear about all that, I have to be careful myself doing business being an sole proprietorship and all. I do plan to move to an LLC when I start making more money enough to support that, but I can understand your fear.
In terms of AuroraScape, I would be so happy to see you around there. Since launch it has actually been quite steady, be happy to have you as a member of the community again.
I plan on it :-D
At the moment, I'm headless chickening around restoring things and catching up.
It's nice to see you back.
Your reaction was wise, the effect of such a lawsuit can be devastating. It's quite worrying to see how threatening people with lawsuit can be a tool for extorsion this days ! And it's reassuring to see you have done what had to be done to counter this ! ^_^
I hope to visit your sims soon !
Dandier Steel, aka DD Ra in most Metaverses.
Thanks :-D
Not sure when I'll get my instances back up and running, or in what form, at that. But I will be posting about things as they progress. At this point, I have decided to restore Port Conor to Kitely. Its nothing special. I had it running as a show of support for Kitely. And one option is to 'convert' Excelsior Station to OpenSim and place it on Kitely, too. The problem with that is that the Station was built to show what can be done with AuroraSim. *shrugs* I gots time, so no need for me to rush into anything
Why don't you put Excelsior in Aurorascapes?
I am actually discussing that possibility with them :-D
I've known about AuroraScape for a long time. In fact, I was involved in a very minor way with its initial development, until this crap happened. I hope we can work out details as I like the people and respect them very much and so having the Station with them would be great.
phew!!! you should also sue for damages from having to spend 4 solid days reading all the blog posts i have written since this all started! that's gotta be worth a poutine! =D
i am so glad you have this crap settled and i actually think it's cool that you have the RCMP working on your behalf! (American readers - RCMP = FBI except with horses and guns on strings) =D
i sure missed you but should have known you'd get through anything =)
Thanks, Ener
I have kept up so there's no backlog, but I was sure tempted to go against my lawyer's advice and post a few comments here and there :-D
As for suing, I could. I lost 2 full months of interacting with my community as well as working on the Station and all, so I do have grounds. And I may yet, depending on the DumbPutz's own actions in the future. I've done time, two and a half years, and this guy is facing well over ten. That's a hell of a price to pay for fucking with me, ten years locked in a cage trying not to drop the soap.
Glad to see you back Sarge ! I was wondering, like everyone else as it all just happened so fast!
I'm really happy that everything worked out and you were fortunate enough to have real legal advise & help to sort it out.
I think this is an important lesson that you have shared and maybe it will help to enlighten some other folks to the fact that there are heaps of scams in various forms for various reasons. I hope that you will be able to take legal action for costs, damages, psychological stress and anguish, etc…
Taking some of your points here: Might make a good article on it's own for you to write up… What to do if you receive such notices / letter's. Scams that have been done in the past (related to VW's and similar to this) etc… could help some folks to avoid some of the mental anguish & stress this *stuff* causes.
I am really surprised that they would claim Excelsior was their TM. Excelsior is a common term used by various companies and products over the years. They cannot Trademark it, for example, just like Aurora, which is representative of a Natural Phenomena, city & towns are called Aurora in Canada & USA and possibly some in other countries as well.
I'd bring you the proper Cheese Curds for a good Canadian Poutine but unfortunately the St-Albert's cheese factory burned to the ground a week or so ago, so now we are completely deprived of the squeakiest cheese for poutine. Ironically I'm headed west of Kingston Tomorrow and could have delivered one to ya.
I think Ener might like this idea… Make a new world called Poutine Station where all the various Poutine Recipes from around the world & Virtual Examples could be found…. don't forget the Jos Louis' for desert !
Glad to see ya back !
WhiteStar
*chuckles*
Well, that poutine would be awful cold by the time you got it to me. You see, I think you misunderstood. The DumbPutz is in Toronto, I'm in BC :-D.
As for someone trying to claim Excelsior as a trademark, well, such things happen all the time. Apple tried something along those lines years ago, didn't they? And I recently read where Games Workshop, makers of Warhammer 40K, are trying to claim "space marines" as a trademark, so this isn't anything new.
I really like your idea of writing something about such scams and all. I have a deep interest in the Law so that would be right up my alley. There's certainly a kilotonne of resources out there, all I'd need to do would be to gather it. Yeah, that's all :-D
Ohhh I thought you lived near Kingston Ontario for some reason, I must have been thinking of someone else… LOL So many people over the years, easy to get confused who lives where.
Well both you and I can digest CanLII & Lexum information, it's generally not good reading and difficult to decipher. I would suggest a itty bit of caution though… you know about offering legal advice (avoid it) so if you write such an article(s), post it as My Experiences or "suggestions" and don't forget to state that this is not legal advice but reference info on things to do and to always contact proper legal council in legal matters. You know the old disclaimer dealio. CYA! I know you know but for safety sake I felt I should mention it as I would remiss in failing to do so.
Definitely! Ten years in a law office teaches a person about the power of disclaimers :-D
Have you ever tried a 4,096 by 4,096 region in Aurora? I didn't have any luck with anything larger then 1024x1024. That may have changed but I don't think so.
Yes, I have :-) I actually started a project called 8K Square ( see http://excelsior-station.wikidot.com/8k-square ). That was a region that is 8196m x 8196m in size. However, I soon ran into teleportation issues related to the 4,096m distance limits, so I have dropped it until such time as that can be worked out. Vehicles worked fine, though and I had a total blast zooming around an empty landscape on a hoverbike I've built :-D
At the moment, I am rebuilding Excelsior Station as a 4,096m x 4,096m region, though teleportation still appears to be an issue when using the command line teleport function (gtp x y z in chat). Double-click on minimap teleporting works just fine. I'll make some landmarks soon and will add to this reply with the results.
With the advent of AuroraScape ( http://aurorascape.com/ ), an AuroraSim based grid, I will be experimenting with connecting a 4096x4096 for the purpose of helping the Timothy (the owner) to test and debug thigns related to size and connection and such.
You know, if a person can live with a limited teleporting function, there doesn't seem to be much limit to what size a region can be. Well, maybe limits like RAM and such.
Post preview:
Close preview