Mike Turner Removes Intellectual Property From Interzone Games

[DCUnited4]

Kind of hard to make a profit selling video games in a country that censors the living fuck out of every game it can get its hands on. I have a feeling if they made a game about deporting all immigrants and declaring the glory of the white race Australia would be all for it though

[rumboxfilms]

Next you'll tell us that Australia is a warmongering nation who tortures detainees, has a massive murder rate, no national healthcare and a teabagger cult who prays for the death of any brown-skinned Primeminister.

I'll settle for a backwards video game rating system any day.

[DCUnited4]

actually if you combine the attempted murder rate and the murder rate Australia tops the US as do many other countries - its hard to kill someone with a knife but on pure desire to murder most countries top the US. As for health care and the teabaggers - well you see after we cut ties with the Brits we didn't get to ship all of our bad seeds off to a whole other continent, though the US still boasts the second highest healthy life expectancy rate behind only Japan

[rumboxfilms]

A simple search would have given you pause before posting such utter bullshit.

[DCUnited4]

I'm assuming thats a note to self

[DCUnited4]

oops, accidentally used one of your other accounts for thumbs upping and and downing to reply huh? better luck next time

[rumboxfilms]

Seems your'e just here to make shit up and milk arguments. US is #34 on the CIA Fact Book list of countries by life expectancy. Japan is #3. Australia is #7. That's by your own CIA.

I only need one account. It's not hard to figure out that people generally think you're a shithead here.

You may have the last word...

[DrChandra2]

Force them into bankruptcy, and have the judge issue an action to reclaim the servers and IP. Taking them to another company like this is an illegal conveyance.

[PsykomantaBrain]

Dear god!!! I worked at IZ as an intern on 2008... I'm shocked to see this!!!

A few months after I left, IZ closed the Brazil studio where I worked because of the crisis... But I never knew things were getting so out of hand... damn...

My best wishes to all of you guys at IZ Perth. I saw how hard you worked on the game.

Cheers

[RobArdill]

GEERS is your friend. Ask the liquidator for your records so you can make a claim. Super isn't covered though.

[SirFlashington]

Dude, I suggest more aggression next time you interview. because he's a manager, he's trained with press interviews. "no comment" or silence isn't an indication of anything, and it's what many managers are coached to do.

I'm sorry for your loss, but you have to take this to the government level, stop work asap and get a geers form. Be advised that the geers payment does not cover super/401k, but it helps by getting the work time back.

[lifeinabag]

well there goes any business interzone had

[alcamie]

BTW, You didn't have to turn the camera off. The police had no right to make you turn off the camera and you were well within your rights to continue film. For next time.

[themonopolymen]

This is true, but on every occasion the Cops asked to turn the camera off - they also threatened to Sieze it. I know that's illegal, but they couldn't take the chance that the evidence would be erased by the Police.

[Frap357]

Upload the source code and IP and release it open source to everyone.

Then he can sit with his stolen IP, and it wont be no use for him, since everyone else have it too.

[keyzervega]

Main you have to think like an american. Take him to court over lost wages, ask the court to grant you the IP over the work you haven't been paid for. Then sue him in the US / Ireland were ever over copy right infringement, he will never get to use your stuff :)

[jhwisner040]

The process of extradition isn't, as far as I know, generally used for civil cases. They would have to press criminal charges with the criminal justice system. Even then extradition for non violent crimes can often be slow to move- and even then only with great pressure being applied by interested parties or a clear government interest worth the expense and potential diplomatic pitfalls.

[keyzervega]

What extradition, the company has gone bankrupt, it owes the tax office money and it owes wages and super.

Nothing to extradite, if the bankruptcy court will hand over the ip as payment or even if it say ip was handed to company as they weren't being paid. its theirs.

Lie in wait till the company uses it and then sue them

[jhwisner040]

He has already failed to appear at cases against him and has fled the country. Extradition is how you get someone to appear in court when they're in another country refusing to return.

They could sue in Ireland. Not sure how friendly Ireland is to foreign plantiffs suing companies that nominal provide jobs to the Irish people.

[themonopolymen]

This requires MONEY. 50 thousand dollars, in an Australian jurisdiction alone, just to get an injunction.

[keyzervega]

Thats seems a bit excessive, even still why couldn't the tax office do that ? The tax office and the employees are creditors - if the company has gone into bankruptcy.

[Stormgrip]

With a situation like this, it shouldn't be a problem getting him back to Australia for Court, from wherever he decided to flee to.

[princessblacklung]

Dump his body in the outback - let the dingos sort him out

[SuperSexyCommando]

SUE HIS HAS!!

[cfreukes]

If he was smart he would have had them replicate the data off site (for backup purposes) then remotely wiped the servers.

If they were smart they would have left the camera at home and busted his skull with a crt, stole the backup tapes and shuffled all the drives in the array.

[ZeldaDD]

Hm, that's pretty terrible really.

[benasselstine]

good work getting this douchebag on video.

but uh, he took a COPY of the code. isn't it his code to copy?

[jhwisner040]

Hiding money or property or removing it from a jurisdiction in anticipation of its siezure in civil and criminal proceedings is illegal pretty much everywhere.

Think of it like a US 1099 employee realizing they can't pay their quarterly taxes so they take their money (still lthiers at that point since taxes have not been assessed) and fleeing the country. That's basically what he did, except you replace one form of asset with another. Still illegal.

[benasselstine]

didn't he take a _copy_?

[jhwisner040]

By taking a copy of the IP, he has deprived the employees and the Australian tax authority of any value there was in that asset- which was owned by the corporation that is currently under litigation.

The value of intellectual property comes from exclusivity of legal distribution and use. By fleeing with it, even a copy of it, to another jurisdiction he has destroyed this exclusivity. A better analogy than the one I used might have been the tax evader burning what he could not carry.

[benasselstine]

That doesn't make a lot of sense because if the Australian tax authority owns the IP, they also own the copy.

[jhwisner040]

*sigh*

And if your bank forclosed on your house and you burned it down they would still own the rubble... and you would still go to jail. I'll repeat myself. What he did destroyed any value the IP has as an asset that is currently under consideration in ongoing litigation. That is illegal.

He also fled the jurisdiction which means his copy is beyond the control of the Australian tax authority. Whether his copy is also worthless is immaterial- as in the case of burning your forclosed house.

[benasselstine]

I dunno, because I'm not a lawyer. When did he lose his copyright? Which law wins? He never had the right to burn down his house.

Being a Free Software guy, I know that non-exclusive rights to software has a value this is more than zero.

[jhwisner040]

When you're being sued or are in tax debt, you lose some control over your assets in a sense. You can't destory them and you can't hide them, remove them from the jurisdiction where litigation is pendng or ongoing, or otherwise willfully compromise them. If you were getting divorced you could be in legal jeapordy if you fled the country with assets subject to that litigation and then also failed to appear in court- as he and his company had already.

[benasselstine]

I'd agree that he certainly destroyed the exclusivity by copying the software. However he may have already had an older copy off-site... which means there wasn't much exclusivity to the IP as it resided on-site.

[jhwisner040]

It wasn't the act of copying it in and of itself that is problematic. It is that he has fled with it beyond the immediate reach of the Aussies and shown no willingness to appear in court thus far. The possibility of him having a copy would not, by itself, have destroyed the apparent exclusivity of the IP. It is his actions surrounding this copying.

[jhwisner040]

Free software fine, but this was not software that was developed to be free. It was developed as copyrighted software and partly funded by the Australian government. Even if the IP (again, this isn't a copy of the software it's a copy of the development docs, source code, the complete IP) were still worth SOMETHING in an academic sense, it's market value is effectively zero since no company would buy it at tax auction- at least not for anything more than pennies of what it had been worth.

[benasselstine]

Can you please characterize this software somewhere that is not on this list? I for one might purchase it if it contains lots of artwork. It might be a quite a bargain for the purchaser.

[jhwisner040]

You would have to ask the programmers and artists what work had been actually completed to know that. The source code, minus the artwork, would not look all that interesting plastering every square inch of a 2500 sq. ft. house though. Well maybe in a geek-chic kind of way.

[benasselstine]

Hmm I wouldn't pay a cent if i wasn't purchasing the copyright on the works. I kinda makes me wonder what I'd be actually purchasing at an auction.

[jhwisner040]

Exactly- that's what I was getting at.

[jhwisner040]

It's not like making a copy of a retail version of the game- in which case the original is not nescessarily devalued. It's more like burning down a house that you can't pay the mortgage on. It's even more like copying the serial key to a piece of software and running off with it. Destroying the exclusivity of that key effectively renders the software worthless. Destroying the exclusivity of control of an IP and fleeing the jurisdiction with it renders the IP worthless. Illegal.

[jhwisner040]

A good example of how loss of control over game source code can impact the value of that code to an entity that wishes to use it would be the leaking of the Half Life 2 source code. While it was not in the hand of a single individual in the end but rather anyone who wanted to download it, this is actually more similar to this case than it might appear. Like the fleeing CEO, the large numbers of anonymous downloaders left valve without legal recourse in terms of reclaiming exclusivity.

[jhwisner040]

Their only legal recourse was to press charges against the original hacker. Even this did not undo the damage though since exclusive control of that IP was compromised. For that and other concerns, the game was delayed significantly.

Similarly, any company wishing to buy the IP at a tax auction would see it as compromised as they could not purchase exclusive control over it while another individual and company was running around and potentially planning to use it themselves.

[HKaorin]

I'm American, but the behaviour of this company against their employees absolutely disgusts me.

[behinderteleberwurst]

Are you saying that most Americans would like this behavior? I don't really get the "I'm American, but" part of your post.

[HKaorin]

Oh, was I wrong to assume that most of the people who would see the comment would not be?

[moozaad]

Usual games industry BS. The least professional industry in the world; full of bad management, bad projects and bullying.

The only way forward if you have a soul or life is independent dev houses and don't take anymore ****.

[blarghblarghblat]

What a bloody crook. I feel sympathy for all the IZ employees.