70 replies to this topic

[Doro]

Dalthalion, on 09 April 2012 - 16:22, said:

Seven words:  "We recorded this voice chat during gameplay."

They don't have to say whether or not it was Turbine's chat or not.  They just have to have a voice sample on record.

I think they'd need proof that they got it from in-game.

[Dalthalion]

Doro, on 09 April 2012 - 19:13, said:

I think they'd need proof that they got it from in-game.

Like they got proof of wrongdoing about people like Scormus?  They make up the rules as they go along, and they will not stop at anything to quell a dissenter.

[Knowfere]

If a Turbine employee was recording voice chat over vent, I would think a person could get them for recording without consent, just like for a phone line. In game voice chat, yes, I could see Turbine having control, but outside, no. So I would think they'd HAVE to prove it was done using their voice chat. Somehow.

[Haimostigar]

That can get tricky. How I understand it Federal law requires only one person of a conversation to know it's being recorded in order to be legal. However some states require consent from all parties involved. Massachusetts is one such state.

[Jackalope]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights  

Article 9  
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.  

If you extend this into the creation of Turbine and the pseudo reality of a virtual world and their community vis a vis the company/customer relationship, their punting you from it arbitrarily can be seen as a violation of that article. It's a grey part here, but courts have been known to be willing to extend into the digital frontier.

Article 12  
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.  

They do this all the time. 'nuff said. While we do post certain statements, we aren't making anything up, and conjecture is not fact or a statement of fact, it's theorizing. What Turbine did to Scormus and other people is a violation of this article.  The reputation tool that Turbine provides could be legally construed as a measure of personal reputation within the community, and that when they attack it by using negative reputation, or just infracting and such for nothing more than an attempt to silence, they are also violating that article.

Article 19  
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.  

The CoC is in violation of this one. Therefore, so is Turbine.  

These are supposed to be International Law, not governmental rules. Businesses are not excluded from them, since most companies are incorporated (which is a fancy way of saying they are granted legal person-hood, and no person can violate law). Turbine can claim they do not have to uphold them, but that would be false. They can terminate a relationship, but they can't do so by violating the law. It might take money, but if someone can prove they are breaking international law by tarnishing a persons reputation and using other tactics, Turbine could lose.

I'm just tossing this out there. I for one wouldn't bother, they are what they are, and not worth the dirt in my toilet. BUT, the mere fact that it can be proven they break the law in their actions is enough damage. No one can really defend them without also defending the human rights violations included in their actions. People may scoff and laugh, but these things do matter. And since it is law breaking, the protections they think they have (no class action, venue, etc) no longer apply. You can't break the law, and then expect it to defend your actions. I for one wouldn't mind seeing a group of customers take Turbine to task for their violations, and see what the courts think of it, since legally Turbine is an entity that can be sued for the violations. It would be no different if the CEO actually walked up to you and physically silenced you, locked you out of the grounds, called you names in public and tarnished you reputation in print, and then basically stole money from you by ending your lifetime account without legal justification and no compensation offered, and took steps to cover it all up. The EULA itself contains violations of International Law.

[I'm theorizing here, law is not my specialty, but I can see the parallels. See, the thing is, if only governments are accountable to this law, then all corporations can act with impunity. But that isn't what it says. No person is to be allowed to infringe another person, for any reason.]

[The MMO Troll]

Knowfere, on 09 April 2012 - 21:21, said:

If a Turbine employee was recording voice chat over vent, I would think a person could get them for recording without consent, just like for a phone line. In game voice chat, yes, I could see Turbine having control, but outside, no. So I would think they'd HAVE to prove it was done using their voice chat. Somehow.

And that's the key. I don't think they could record audio from a service they don't control (like TS or Ventrilo), but they could have something in the ToS that anyone using their in-game voice chat automatically agrees to be recorded. As for how they could use comments in Vent against a player, I'm sure they could simply say the employee who was listening in took notes on what was said, that is perfectly legal.

Then again, I doubt Turbine is overly concerned with legalities, as I doubt they expect anyone would seriously take them to task in court over their actions.

[Spidey]

I hope you people are just theorizing. There's no way that WB or turbine would ok an employee of theirs recording a 3rd party program. The legal consequences are too great. Seriously, some of you people take this shit too far. Paranoid much?

[Darmokk]

Does the audio actually go through their network?

Normally it should be direct client to client, no?

[Dalthalion]

Spidey, on 10 April 2012 - 04:02, said:

I hope you people are just theorizing. There's no way that WB or turbine would ok an employee of theirs recording a 3rd party program. The legal consequences are too great. Seriously, some of you people take this <expletive> too far. Paranoid much?

Not much.  Just noticing the next logical step in their pattern of deceit.

[The MMO Troll]

Spidey, on 10 April 2012 - 04:02, said:

I hope you people are just theorizing. There's no way that WB or turbine would ok an employee of theirs recording a 3rd party program. The legal consequences are too great. Seriously, some of you people take this shit too far. Paranoid much?

Paranoid? Not at all. I could easily see Turbine monitoring 3rd-party voice comms, if they felt the reasoning was important enough. We already know Turbine bans and infracts players on their forums based on what that person posts on 3rd party gaming sites. So why would they not react if they happened to have an employee in a kinship, who hears someone in said kinship spreading information the company does not want discussed on said Kin's Vent server?

Yes, it is a bit of a stretch, but considering the direction Turbine has been going, not that much of one. Personally, I don't think Turbine would do this, but I would not be surprised if I heard that they had, either.

[Thrabath]

On the other hand, if someone is on the Isengard/Palantir test server (or any other test server they may have) and speaks about it on vent where by chance also is a turbine employee online, so he hears it, would anyone complain if the person speaking about that stuff gots banned?

[Hawkmoon]

Dalthalion, on 09 April 2012 - 18:24, said:

Well, then the burden of proof is on the player, who has absolutely no access to Turbine's internal logs.

I don't think so.  The burden of proof is still with Turbine.  They must still prove it.  Now I doubt someone would go to court over it...  But it would still be that Turbine has to prove said person was ingame at the time.

[Doro]

Thrabath, on 10 April 2012 - 09:37, said:

On the other hand, if someone is on the Isengard/Palantir test server (or any other test server they may have) and speaks about it on vent where by chance also is a turbine employee online, so he hears it, would anyone complain if the person speaking about that stuff gots banned?

That is actually very interesting. He'd definitely be breaking the NDA but they would have to illegally record him to have any proof.

Mind you, I'm currently banned from all future expansion betas because apparently I broke an NDA for RoI by telling people to search in google for LOTRO Isengard map (not exactly a difficult thing to work out) and telling them just to have a look at the images. What was odd was that I wasn't actually part of the RoI beta, yet they said I was still under the NDA. I thought agreement meant you had to agree to it?

[The MMO Troll]

Doro, on 10 April 2012 - 11:13, said:

What was odd was that I wasn't actually part of the RoI beta, yet they said I was still under the NDA. I thought agreement meant you had to agree to it?

You are indeed not bound by an NDA that you did not agree to, but at the same time, Turbine is perfectly within their rights to label you an "untrustworthy person" (whether you broke the NDA or not), and ban you from any further beta. It's stupid, but it is also their playground, and they can invite whoever they wish.

[Doro]

According to Celestrata, it's in the forum rules not to break NDAs.

20.   You may not post, repost, or link to any information covered under a Non-disclosure agreement, including but not limited to spoilers, screen shots, and videos.

Since I neither posted, reposted or linked any information covered by the NDA, I couldn't see how that applied but apparently it also means 'don't give people hints on how to find information covered by the NDA'. How they can see me telling people to use Google and search for an obvious combination of words as linking information, I have no clue.

[Thrabath]

What is more interesting, what would happen if you posted it only on, for example, this board?

[LordVorontur]

Thrabath, on 10 April 2012 - 12:53, said:

What is more interesting, what would happen if you posted it only on, for example, this board?

Probably the same outcome.

[Doro]

Well the forum rule is only if you post on their forums. If you aren't part of the beta, you aren't subject to the NDA from that, either. So, if you post information on here, they can't touch you.

Just as you can't post private messages from mods on the forums but I post them all the time here. They can do nothing but ask for you not to do it again (which I've had).

[Dalthalion]

But they touch, nevertheless.  And here we come back to the crux of the problem.  If they can make up and enforce unwritten rules on a whim, how can they at all be considered consistent or trustworthy?

[Sincilbanks]

From my experience? There's no chance they are monitoring voice chat, either internal or external. Highly unlikely this stuff gets logged either, the data requirements would be massive and recovering a snippet equally onerous.

Only way I can see it happening is the reporter of the incident recording the chat themselves as evidence and submitting it.

FWIW, there's no way our team would have initialised a disciplinary action on a 3rd party voice chat, that would have been way out of our domain for my team...