Green server and "operating under legal permission"

[cd288]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And as Rogean said in a post (and I'm paraphrasing here), while he can't reveal the terms of the contract ... he'd have to be pretty dumb to sign a contract Daybreak could just revoke for no reason whenever they felt like it.

Not really. The P99 staff probably had very little leverage here to negotiate terms since, at the end of the day, Daybreak could have just forced them to shut down the server due to the copyright violation. I wouldn't be surprised if the contract permits Daybreak to terminate for any reason at any time. As a corporate attorney, I would never agree to give a third party control over my client's IP like that - the contract would always allow me to terminate for any reason; the exception being things like a licensing scenario where the IP-holder is getting paid to license out the IP for a specific period of time, which isn't applicable here. Now, there's no real reason Daybreak would particularly care about terminating the contract at this time, but if P99 started pulling like 5 figures in players with regularity, I bet you Daybreak would re-consider.

Legal contracts between entities don't "expire", unless it's written into the contrract. If company A has a contract with party B, and company C acquires company A, A's contract with B remains unchanged.

This isn't technically true. The part about expiration is true, but when it comes to acquisitions most of the time you have to write into the contract that it will be binding on your successors/assigns. In this case, I would not be surprised if that was not in the contract with Daybreak. Again, P99 has very little leverage as far as negotiating the contract goes, and if I were Daybreak's lawyer I would refuse to agree to that because you'd want to make sure it was easier to sell the IP to somebody if you wanted to in the future (and saying the agreement with P99 is binding on them could make it harder to do that).

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not really. The P99 staff probably had very little leverage here to negotiate terms since, at the end of the day, Daybreak could have just forced them to shut down the server due to the copyright violation. I wouldn't be surprised if the contract permits Daybreak to terminate for any reason at any time. As a corporate attorney, I would never agree to give a third party control over my client's IP like that - the contract would always allow me to terminate for any reason; the exception being things like a licensing scenario where the IP-holder is getting paid to license out the IP for a specific period of time, which isn't applicable here. Now, there's no real reason Daybreak would particularly care about terminating the contract at this time, but if P99 started pulling like 5 figures in players with regularity, I bet you Daybreak would re-consider.



This isn't technically true. The part about expiration is true, but when it comes to acquisitions most of the time you have to write into the contract that it will be binding on your successors/assigns. In this case, I would not be surprised if that was not in the contract with Daybreak. Again, P99 has very little leverage as far as negotiating the contract goes, and if I were Daybreak's lawyer I would refuse to agree to that because you'd want to make sure it was easier to sell the IP to somebody if you wanted to in the future (and saying the agreement with P99 is binding on them could make it harder to do that).

I can sum up everything you just wrote with a single word: pedantry. Look, I'm no lawyer, but if you actually read my original post, the parts you left off agreed with you. I explicitly said that A) the details matter, and B) even if a company forms an iron-clad contract, there are still ways of breaking said contract (eg. dissolving the company).

But none of that matters, because for one thing this place existed for years without a formal legal agreement, and for another none of us knows the details of the agreement (except Rogean). Any discussion of the details is just "armchair quarterbacking". So while nothing you said was strictly wrong, it also didn't add or change anything germane to the conversation (ie. it was pedantic).

Ultimately what actually matters are the specific terms of the contract that Rogean and Daybreak signed. And while you and I might not know those details, Rogean does.

So until someone gives me a reason to think otherwise, I'm going to go by:

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Without going into any details regarding our agreement (because I can't), I'll speak very generically here.

It wouldn't make much sense for one to enter into any sort of contract of protection if said contract could be rescinded without breach.

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[cd288]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I can sum up everything you just wrote with a single word: pedantry. Look, I'm no lawyer, but if you actually read my original post I even said, explicitly, that A) the details matter, and B) even if a company forms an iron-clad contract, there are still ways of breaking said contract (eg. dissolving the company).

But none of that matters, because for one thing this place existed for years without a formal legal agreement, and for another none of us knows the details of the agreement (except Rogean). Any discussion of the details is just "armchair quarterbacking". So while nothing you said was strictly wrong, it also didn't add or change anything germane to the conversation (ie. it was pedantic).

Ultimately what actually matters are the specific terms of the contract that Rogean and Daybreak signed. And while you and I might not know those details, Rogean does.

So until someone gives me a reason to think otherwise, I'm going to go by:

Well, it did add something to the conversation, which was correcting your definitive statements about contracts, etc. which weren't accurate and therefore misinforming.

I wasn't trying to say the server is going to be shut down, just that I'm sure it would not be extremely difficult for Daybreak to do so. I would imagine if they did that Rogean could try to sue for breach (if he can pay the attorney's fees and court filings), but the damages there would probably just be compensating him for the money spent on server upkeep/maintenance and hardware over the years. Point being, I'm sure Daybreak could shut it down with relative ease and (if they did it in breach of contract) minimal damages; however, like I said in my post I doubt they would ever do so unless it got to the point where it was seriously harming their business (i.e. tens of thousands of subscribers). Right now, there's barely any population on P99 so they don't care, and probably hope that maybe it will lead people to join TLPs for various different reasons (deciding they want to play past Velious, re-discovering EQ but wishing they had a bit more QoL, etc.).

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, it did add something to the conversation, which was correcting your definitive statements about contracts, etc. which weren't accurate and therefore misinforming

I used a specific word, with a specific meaning, and I think it flew over your head:

Originally Posted by Merriam-Webster Definition of a "pedant"

one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge.

I was not writing a legal treatise! I was participating in a discussion (in a 20-year old elf sim forum) about why we don't (practically) need to worry about P99 going away.

You did "accurately correct" me ... or at least some tangential details of what I wrote ... but it was in a way that added nothing to the conversation at hand (because we weren't having a conversation on contract law). And it couldn't have been hard to find legal errors in my post, because again, I wasn't trying to write a legally accurate treatise. Everyone else here understood as much.

It's like if two people are having a conversation and one uses the word "literally" to mean "very", instead of "actually", so you interject and tell them that they're using the word wrong ... because you're an English genius and you know better and want to show off.

Except ... those two people were having their conversation just fine, and understood each other perfectly. Your interjection did nothing to improve or facilitate their conversation at all: it was just an excuse to show off your knowledge, at the expense of everyone listening.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I used a specific word, with a specific meaning, and I think it flew over your head:



I was not writing a legal treatise! I was participating in a discussion (in a 20-year old elf sim forum) about why we don't (practically) need to worry about P99 going away.

You did "accurately correct" me ... or at least some tangential details of what I wrote ... but it was in a way that added nothing to the conversation at hand (because we weren't having a conversation on contract law). And it couldn't have been hard to find legal errors in my post, because again, I wasn't trying to write a legally accurate treatise. Everyone else here understood as much.

It's like if two people are having a conversation and one uses the word "literally" to mean "very", instead of "actually", so you interject and tell them that they're using the word wrong ... because you're an English genius and you know better and want to show off.

Except ... those two people were having their conversation just fine, and understood each other perfectly. Your interjection did nothing to improve or facilitate their conversation at all: it was just an excuse to show off your knowledge, at the expense of everyone listening.

Actually, no. It wasn't an excuse to show off knowledge. Two people were in an argument and you were one of them. You were asserting something that was wrong to try and prove your point. I corrected you. Ergo, relevance.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Actually, no. It wasn't an excuse to show off knowledge. Two people were in an argument and you were one of them. You were asserting something that was wrong to try and prove your point. I corrected you. Ergo, relevance.

And what was the false claim .. that was also important, significant, and germane to the discussion ... that you needed to correct, specifically?

(This forum has a quote function, and it should be super easy to use it to show the claim that I made.)

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

At that time, technically Daybreak could have sued because they could argue that P99 was misappropriating their IP (i.e. copyright violation) and essentially stealing their customers away from Daybreak's product by using Daybreak's IP to provide EverQuest through Velious for free.

Young lawyer, perhaps you could clarify for me: what specific copyrighted (not patented or trademarked or whatever) works does Project 1999 infringe on?

Bonus question: can you explain the difference between copyright and other forms of intellectual property (just in a "prove you get it" kind of way; not looking for a treatise)?

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I can sum up everything you just wrote with a single word: pedantry. Look, I'm no lawyer,

I'm not a lawyer either, but that guy is a corporate attorney. Maybe he can post back and answer me a question. Cause you see I was wondering, if I own a piece of software that sends out signals, and I send those signals to a guy who puts them in a giant calculator and sends them back to me, how is copyright involved? Because the guy with that calculator, he built that himself. And the client software, I have a receipt for that.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by BlackBellamy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not a lawyer either, but that guy is a corporate attorney. Maybe he can post back and answer me a question. Cause you see I was wondering, if I own a piece of software that sends out signals, and I send those signals to a guy who puts them in a giant calculator and sends them back to me, how is copyright involved? Because the guy with that calculator, he built that himself. And the client software, I have a receipt for that.

I'm not sure what your question is really. This analogy sort of misses the IP issue involved between P99 and Daybreak.

At any rate, I wasn't agreeing with OP that I think P99 is at risk of being shut down. I was just saying that Daybreak likely could if they wanted to, which they probably never would because P99 will never get to the level of causing an economic issue for Daybreak.

[Deathrydar]

Ya'll are feeding the troll...