MAXIS is deleting in game references to Alphaville Herald
by Alphaville Herald on 08/12/03 at 5:20 pm
According to the sim Doctor Legion, Maxis has deleted references to The Alphaville Herald in her bio. Doctor Legion reports that the contents of her bio were simply “Read the Alphaville Herald, alphavilleherald.com”. This message has been replaced by Maxis with the message “REMOVED BY MAXIS”.
No explanation has been given to Doctor Legion. Tomorrow I will be consulting with Intellectual Property Lawyers at the University of Michigan Law School, since clearly this is now a free speech issue. It also raises the question of whether this is retaliation agains The Alphaville Herald for outing illegal behavior within the game and bringing it to the attention of police authorities. We have invited Maxis to respond, but so far they have not done so. Stay tuned!
Nathan H
Dec 14th, 2003
Considering Maxis is a private company you don’t have the _right_ to free speech in their world Uri
Chris
Dec 15th, 2003
Free speech.. Are you kidding yourself? Who’s servers are they? Maxis. Who owns EVERYTHING on those servers? Maxis. It’s not yours, it’s yours to use and Maxis has the final say. They are God in TSO.
You won’t win. Bottom line is you broke their rules, you pushed (as intended) the line, and then broke it. Goal accomplished. Move on to your next target.
Ciao
Dan
Dec 15th, 2003
ah, but to play the sims online you have to pay, i don’t see how they broke any “rules” but clearly, freespeech has been violated.
Den
Dec 15th, 2003
Paying to use a game server doesn’t buy you any constitutional rights on the that server.
Chris and Nathan are right. There is no Free Speech issue here. Claiming free speech here is just ignorant.
Want to see a real life example of what is happening here? Go into a Target store, stand in the middle of the store and start shouting obscenties at everyone and yell about how much better of a store Wal-Mart is. That’s free speech, right? You might even buy a pack of gum to be a customer – that’s the logic being used here against Maxis, right?
Can anyone predict how long it will take for the staff at Target to “censor” you? When the police then come to arrest you for refusing to leave the Target store, is that a violation of your rights too?
No, you idiots, it’s not.
Danny
Dec 15th, 2003
Yep… this is not a free speech issue.
I wish people would learn just exactly what the Constitution protects.
The Constitution protects you from the government preventing you from saying what you want… not a corporation especially one that you are paying to use a service and which you probably agreed to alot of restrictions when you signed up for the game.
Please just say that it is “clearly a case of me whining”.
Chet
Dec 16th, 2003
Lol, This is NOT a case of censoring free speech. Anyone has the option to state what they feel outside the game, up to the point of being slanderious. This website is an example of free speech, and now a days, anyone can make a website.
The game belongs to Maxis. That stated then, EVERYTHING on THERE servers belongs to them. The avitars, houses, land, money, cloths… ext. Anything in game belongs to them, you are paying for the oportinity to use there servers, to play with there toys.
Dont expect to put something on there servers that they won’t like, and have it stay there.
Alex
Dec 30th, 2003
The constitution protects you from the Federal government’s infringement on your rights. In fact, in the early days of this country you still didn’t have any rights of free speech in most states, as state governments weren’t covered under the constitution. Later on the ndividual states added ammednments to their constitutions that covered you. Companies, however are not covered by the constitution, especially when you agree to a EULA
chemist109
Jan 18th, 2004
The comments about free speech not applying to company owned property are not strictly accurate. There is an informative discussion here:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/firstamstateaction.htm
concerning Marsh v. Alabama in which the supreme court declared that a company-owned town is not exempt from the 1st and 14th amendments even if the speech is something to which the company objects.
I doubt that it applies in this instance, but I think that the previous posts suffer from a severe misperception of what the constitution actually protects.
Urizenus
Jan 18th, 2004
Thanks for that link, Chemist. /respect
NickE
Feb 5th, 2004
It was removed because this site contains “bashing” on other players such as granny, vouler etc….
NickE
Feb 5th, 2004
In other words Personal Attatck