3DMark Suing [H]ard|OCP?!?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:33 am

This statement was just posted on [H]. It's getting pretty bad when you see people getting sued for their thoughts. I've had two legal papers served to me since Legit Reviews went online over statements I said on the site. Pretty crazy eh?

3DMark Makers Upset with [H]:
Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Futuremark, wrote in this morning with a directive for HardOCP to stop slandering their 3Dmark product line and threatens to bring in lawyers. I do have to think that this is a shot across our bow as surely ATI and NVIDIA have told Futuremark about recent interviews we have done with the video giants in preparation for an upcoming HardOCP editorial.

I strongly advise you to not to slander our product, 3DMark, on your web site. Take down all your false and unjustified and baseless claims about 3DMark.

Sincerely,

Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Futuremark Corporation
[email protected], http://www.futuremark.com

As is normal operating procedure, we like to be specific as to what exactly the company wants removed. So I responded, " I have reviewed the document that you sent (Tero sent a 15 page PDF that was a reproduction of today's HardOCP news page in full (possibly a copyright violation in itself )) and see no slanderous, false, unjustified, or baseless claims whatsoever about "3DMark." Could you please be more specific as to your allegations and advice?

Tero replied with...

You know what I mean. Your articles have consistently discredited 3DMark for years now and the few justifications there have sometimes been have been without merit. It seems to us as if you have something against our product personally and are using your popular website as a platform to attack and trying to discredit on purpose and with baseless claims and sometimes also with erroneous information.

I will no longer communicate with you after this. Our attorney is looking that this situation will get resolved and will contact you if necessary.

Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Futuremark Corporation
[email protected], http://www.futuremark.com

"You know what I mean," was hardly the answer I expected. But just remember that having an opinion these days means having a band of high priced lawyers at your side.

I do stand by the opinion that 3DMark05 "sucks" as a benchmark based on the fact that it does not tell me anything specifically about the games I play. Did 3DMark tell us how DOOM3 was going to play? No. Will 3DMark tell us how HL2 or STALKER will play on a given system? No. Does that mean 3DMark is worthless? Surely not. 3DMark has a ton of great and fun uses; I just don't find any of them as a benefit to our readers or myself directly. On that note, the entire 3DMark series can be a great tool for end users testing tweaks and such on their systems and it can be a great source of fun competition across the Net.

Our editorial on the state of 3DMark will be published soon, and I guess this one will be another that we have to pay the lawyers to read before it goes out the door. But if Futuremark thinks their baseless threats and attacks on our opinions will gain them ground with the hardware community, or us they are badly mistaken.

And Tero, I know you guys are not Americans, so you might want to catch up with The United States Constitution and specifically the First Amendment to it. I guarantee you that HardOCP is very much inside its legal rights to express opinions about your products and will continue to do so. What amazes me is that you are stepping on some of the very toes that Futuremark relies on to make its money, and those toes belong to the gaming and hardware communities that we share the truth with on a daily basis. Now take our advice. You are barking up the wrong tree little doggy.

Thank god [H] has the budget to fight legal issues. They have already spent over $150,000 in cash on the Phantom console lawsuit. Crazy!

Post by **Illuminati** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 1:10 pm

That is crazy. Kyle, more power to ya.

DISCLAIMER TO THE ABOVE STATEMENT:
My statement, "Kyle, more power to ya." (to be further regarded as "the statement"), was made as a reference to the amount of respect I have for Kyle Bennett to stand his ground and defend his legal rights in the midst of lawful action against him or his company. This statement does not reflect in any way that I or Legit Reviews agrees or disagrees with Kyle's statements or Kyle's actions.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 1:22 pm

I am now boycotting Phantom and 3Dmark, i will not use either for work or for personal use until they stop using littigation agains independent review sites.

Bio-Hazard · Post by **Bio-Hazard** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 2:22 pm

Well, Phantom blows, plain and simple, but that's just my thoughts on the subject and if anyone objects, they can come on out and find me where I live.........

As for FutureMark, they are Europian, enough said.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:01 pm

hey I still got the memory out of the only phantom ever shown to the public... That would be the one Kyle smashed... LOL

eric m. · Post by **eric m.** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:17 pm

i don't understand why it is illegal to give a negative opinion of a company if that is what someone feels is the truth. how is that "slander"? it's not like [H] is gaining any money from saying futuremark sucks, are they?

if it continues like this one of 2 things will happen:

1. review sites will stop giving reviews.

2. review sites will just always give positive reviews of products in order to keep getting freebies from them, which does absolutely noone any good except the reviews, are the companies getting the free advertising by supposedly "credible" sites. if you say a bad product is awesome even though it's not, that is also illegal, right?

it's sad. if someone puts out a product that obviously sucks or has some defect or bug in it for whatever reason, the companies need to be held accountable for it, and not sue people to shut them up.

Immortal · Post by **Immortal** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:37 pm

Poor Kyle is getting lawsuits left, right and centre and all of em from companies that are a lot better than stopping to a low level cause someone dissed em.... i find it appaling and pathetic to be honest.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 5:44 pm

Kyle make quite a bit of money off [H]ocp, and this kind of crap goes with the territory.
He should turn around and press charges againist futuremark and the VP for extortion.
It's funny after the way they beat that un-named graphic company/scam in court another company would even try this.
BTW The [H] site seems to be partially broken right now, main page does not come up.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 6:26 pm

Dont think that this is not putting a hurting on Kyle, $150k in legal expenses in the last 6mths will drain even the richest of Internet sites. Yes he may have made good money in the past but that kind of cash is not easy to move around. My big thing is that its not illegal to have opinions, rather its sanctioned, the press is allowed to have opinions and to do investigatory articles. Nothing HardOCP did was illegal. The only reason that IL or 3dm could every find a solid legal footing is if they were able to outright prove that Kyle made false accusations. The very fact that they have not done so speaks volumes about their organizations. If they have the evidence to show that Kyle and Steve are breaking the law by defaming, or publishing false information that disrupted or hurt business.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:43 pm

oh I'm not saying $150k wouldn't hurt, but he should be able to recover that (If IL actually has any money left)
and that's the intent of these threats to get him to back down rather than risking more.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:46 pm

And Tero, I know you guys are not Americans, so you might want to catch up with The United States Constitution and specifically the First Amendment to it. I guarantee you that HardOCP is very much inside its legal rights to express opinions about your products and will continue to do so.

I totally agree with this said right here. They can't do much due to our First Amendment. Yeah, there are some limititions, nonetheless. If what they, HardOCP, say is hurting business, then Futuremark could play on the responsible end and ask [H] to remove certain content way before they say they're getting lawyers involved. I would think this would make Kyle a bit more happy and not so cocky. It also will make the other company, Futuremark in this case, not look so damn naive.

LVCapo · Post by **LVCapo** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:26 am

I personally think people should stay away from saying this or that "sucks", to me that isn't professional at all. While I totally believe in a persons first amendment rights, I also believe in instances like this, as a person others look to for advice, that the person who wrote the piece needs to elaborate more than "does it show me how well i can play UT4 or Doom 3". Unless the program is written for purposes like that, then how can you quantify the satement? Looking at it from the developers point of view, they are offering a service, basically the same service they have offered all along, it is only one of many benchmarks, albeit the most popular. If you are going to slam someone, slam them for their product not doing as advertised, slam it for shortcomings, whatever.
I haven't read the article in question, i do not know Kyle Bennet personally, I like his site, I usually like what he has to say.
I feel that we have an obligation to all of you, the readers. You put your trust in us to give you unbiased and good reviews and articles that help you make an educated buying decision or to sort out issues with your current system. I just have an issue with someone saying something "sucks", other than that, these companies need to understand what our job is and why we're here.