Jim Sterling in court.

[wulf3n]

I honestly can't tell any more if Digital Homicide actually believe what they're saying or are just trying to drum up more publicity in whatever way they can.

 

[SweetShark]

Its seems I will do the Devil's Advocate for now an pinpoint some mistakes did Jim in the Text I posted above:

- He called himself a profesional even right now he don't call himself one trying to prove wrong the DigiHom.

........oh dear lord. Even if I am trying to be part of the "devil's side", I can't save the sayings of DigiHom....
DigiHom trying the whole time to make....a "point", but fail multiple times.
Yes, it is good for a "reviewer" [Jim never claimed he reviewed any squird game] to know the development's history of a game, but doesn't change the fact it is a bad game.

- A defence again agaist Jim it would be that indeed Jim doesn't take his time to look for the controls and try to play a game properply when he made his mind that a specific game is bad.
- Jim said he never attack the people who made a product but only if they attack first. JiiiIIIiiiiim, I think you are lying and your nose getting a little bigger mate :3

.......DigiHom are FULL of themselfs. Even the Devil can defende them base the transcript I read...
*keep reading* Oh dear, it get worst for them...
.
.
.
Ok....I will stop to get a little back from my sanity...

I will try find something else which MAYBE DigiHom can defende themselves...

 

[SweetShark]

So I read some Basics about the laws in Courts.
The whole thing is around "defamation" it seems.

defamation - Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel.

This is DigiHom want to archive.

DigiHom to have a case, it must show:

- Someone made a statement.
- That statement was published.
- The statement caused you injury.
- The statement was false.
- The statement did not fall into a privileged category.


Please pay BIG attention to the last part: The statement did not fall into a privileged category.

privileged category - is a special right or advantage available only to a particular person or group of people.

To be simple and if I am correct [my English aren't perfect sadly], because the statement wasn't available only to a specific kind of people, there is a possibility because the laws Arizona courts have, DigiHom CAN win this case.

Very, VERY interesting things I read I must admit. I will post more later.

 

[SweetShark]

Also the Publication of a Statement is VERY shady:

If Digimon said Jim to remove the bad claims about his product, Jim have the responsibility to do so as a person who own a service as a reviewer.

The we have the Qualified privilege:

Qualified privilege applies to statements that people make out of some legal, moral or social duty. Qualified privilege does not, however, apply if the person makes the statement out of malice. For example, a person reporting someone to the police will not be liable for defamation unless he/she does so in bad faith and primarily to injure someone?s reputation or otherwise harass or annoy them.

Here DigiHom can win EASILY because of the nature his videos on Youtube have most of the time.

 

[rcs619]

Also the Publication of a Statement is VERY shady:

If Digimon said Jim to remove the bad claims about his product, Jim have the responsibility to do so as a person who own a service as a reviewer.

The we have the Qualified privilege:

Qualified privilege applies to statements that people make out of some legal, moral or social duty. Qualified privilege does not, however, apply if the person makes the statement out of malice. For example, a person reporting someone to the police will not be liable for defamation unless he/she does so in bad faith and primarily to injure someone?s reputation or otherwise harass or annoy them.

Here DigiHom can win EASILY because of the nature his videos on Youtube have most of the time.

His videos on youtube are fully protected under US fair-use laws, which cover review, criticism and satire. There is literally nothing about his videos that they could sue about.

This is why they aren't actually suing him based on his videos. They are suing him based on a post he made on his blog (which the Romine brothers admitted in a phone call that they felt was 'more vulnerable' since Jim's blog is a private project and not protected by youtube or Maker Studios like his videos are).

He only actually made one false claim in that article, where he said they'd stolen a piece of artwork from Deviant Art (something they totally *have* done multiple times before). As soon as it was brought to his attention that they'd actually bought it from stutterstock, he edited the article to show that they did. Arizona state law, however, still allows you to sue for slander and libel even if a retraction is made to the original material.

Considering that this was done without malice as a piece of journalism (journalists make mistakes all the time, retract them, and never get sued unless it's super-egregious), and because it's going to be pretty hard to prove that this one part of one article caused them all this financial harm, I doubt DH will accomplish much besides publicly embarrassing themselves.

Anything related to Jim's videos is completely irrelevant to the case. This isn't about whether or not Jim said mean things about Digital Homicide in his videos, this is about whether one portion of one article that they are technically able to sue over *actually* caused them 10 million dollars in damages. I don't think they can prove that.

 

[jklinders]

Unlikely this will see the inside of a courtroom. Digital Homicide's gofundme to get 75k to hire a lawyer with has failed miserably. Pretty sure Sterling has a lawyer on retention so assuming a judge doesn't laugh this out before any evidence is presented these tools will get destroyed in court.

 

[SweetShark]

Also the Publication of a Statement is VERY shady:

If Digimon said Jim to remove the bad claims about his product, Jim have the responsibility to do so as a person who own a service as a reviewer.

The we have the Qualified privilege:

Qualified privilege applies to statements that people make out of some legal, moral or social duty. Qualified privilege does not, however, apply if the person makes the statement out of malice. For example, a person reporting someone to the police will not be liable for defamation unless he/she does so in bad faith and primarily to injure someone?s reputation or otherwise harass or annoy them.

Here DigiHom can win EASILY because of the nature his videos on Youtube have most of the time.

His videos on youtube are fully protected under US fair-use laws, which cover review, criticism and satire. There is literally nothing about his videos that they could sue about.

This is why they aren't actually suing him based on his videos. They are suing him based on a post he made on his blog (which the Romine brothers admitted in a phone call that they felt was 'more vulnerable' since Jim's blog is a private project and not protected by youtube or Maker Studios like his videos are).

He only actually made one false claim in that article, where he said they'd stolen a piece of artwork from Deviant Art (something they totally *have* done multiple times before). As soon as it was brought to his attention that they'd actually bought it from stutterstock, he edited the article to show that they did. Arizona state law, however, still allows you to sue for slander and libel even if a retraction is made to the original material.

Considering that this was done without malice as a piece of journalism (journalists make mistakes all the time, retract them, and never get sued unless it's super-egregious), and because it's going to be pretty hard to prove that this one part of one article caused them all this financial harm, I doubt DH will accomplish much besides publicly embarrassing themselves.

Anything related to Jim's videos is completely irrelevant to the case. This isn't about whether or not Jim said mean things about Digital Homicide in his videos, this is about whether one portion of one article that they are technically able to sue over *actually* caused them 10 million dollars in damages. I don't think they can prove that.

Two mistakes I made:
I wrote Digimon and not DigiHom....
I wrote Amazone and not Arizona....

As I wrote in my previous posts, I don't want DigiHom to win. I just trying to see how they can possible win this case.
They can sue him base his videos sadlt. Any kind of publication ot a statement can be material to justify defamation.
Also maybe Jim can say his videos aren't malice to the developers, but Digimon will say otherwise.

However I read now the Arizona laws base this kind of court and it seems can win also.
If Jim have proof [which he have] that any kind of publication he made is just pure opinion and not malice, he can win.
Sadly as I said because of the nature Jim's behavior, he critic the other very "vulgar" which can easily translated as malice act.

 

[s0denone]

I'm not sure how anyone could say that Jim posted that stuff neutrally and without malice.

He is/was clearly involved in some kind of spat with those two idiotic brothers and he wrote what he did in an attempt to discredit them. It will be very easy for them to prove his intent by simply showcasing other work he has done on their games and his tone within.

 

[Strazdas]

Oh...OH! Right! Yeah, no. He's still a thing. I honestly keep forgetting about him. Maybe its because I don't have a reddit which from what I understand he's big on, but once every ten days or so I always say "OH! Who was that one guy?!"

who do you mean, Jim Sterling? because if so i literally never saw anyone mention him on reddit and i reddit almost daily.

I wonder how much he going to raise to help him in his case. Because I think at this point Jim was about the only person left buying Digital Homicides games to rip them to shreds. Everyone else thinks they are a joke, I can't see them raising more than $100, that is not going to get them very far.

Jim does not buy games. He has a press account and can play all steam games for free.

Fun Fact: Jim works for Polaris, which in terms is owned by Maker Studios which is owned by Disney, They are pretty much suing Disney.

Good luck with that.

As far as I know, no. Jim is self-employed.

His youtube channel is with Polaris, his Jimquisition website is self-employed.

personal gain would be hard to argue since his videos aren't monetised with ads or the like, So views don't gain him anything. So saying stuff to get views and retracting it later makes no sense.

They are. the only videos that are not monetized are Jimquisition videos, which are paid via patreon. other videos are monetized with advertisement, including those that showed DH games. That being siad, this is not enough to prove personal gain.

Doesn't TB have a law background? I mean, he probably doesn't want to be dealing with a frivolous lawsuit, but I doubt some claim about slander like DH's would really shake him. He seems to always enjoying taking devs down a peg that think they can walk over youtube critics. I remember after the "interview" with DH Jim said something along the lines of TB saying he WANTED DH to sue, if only to set a precedent in the favor of youtubers.

TB was a copyright lawyer before he started being Youtube video maker, so hes the last person you want to sue over something like this. TB is extremely well versed in legalities of youtube video making as he demonstrated on many occasions. The guy does not leave any venues open for attack.

 

[JimB]

I'm not sure how anyone could say that Jim posted that stuff neutrally and without malice.

He is/was clearly involved in some kind of spat with those two idiotic brothers and he wrote what he did in an attempt to discredit them. It will be very easy for them to prove his intent by simply showcasing other work he has done on their games and his tone within.

Malice, in legal parlance, refers to an intention to cause someone injury. Criticizing people for repeatedly doing the same shitty things is not inherently malicious; if it was, then every critic who has ever written reviews of two Uwe Boll movies better call their lawyers, because they're in for some shit. And he did compliment them when they made a game he enjoyed, though I misremember the game's title. Some kind of fantasy FPS game.

 

[Truth Cake]

To be simple and if I am correct [my English aren't perfect sadly], because the statement wasn't available only to a specific kind of people, there is a possibility because the laws Arizona courts have, DigiHom CAN win this case.

Very, VERY interesting things I read I must admit. I will post more later.

Yeah no you're very right, there is a very real possibility Jim will lose this case because of that backwards law that even corrected articles are grounds for defamation, especially if DH puts on his best "I'm a poor American indie developer and this dirty British troll is killing muh business!" (a business that's more of a factory for churning out half-assed shit games as quickly as possible, but I'm sure they'll leave that little tidbit out) face even if that's a pretty boldfaced lie... well I suppose in a certain sense it isn't, but considering the shady behavior of DH at best, it's hard to say they don't deserve it.

The core issue of this case is Jim had something in an article which was false and qualified for defamation, though he quickly corrected it. Sadly that still could make him guilty. Unfortunately I'm sure if DH wins they'll herald this as a great triumph of the 'little guy' over big bad internet troll Jim Sterling, as if through all of his 'bullying' (read: criticizing their shit games, which are pretty unanimously considered shit if Steam reviews and many failed greenlight projects are any indication) they still came out on top and protected their content... even though that's absurdly far from the reality of the situation.

The only reason it's only the defamation thing (as well as an assault charge... the fuck? Like... no, not even fucking close...) and not something more pertinent to their apparent grand (read: greed) crusade is because that's all DH has ANY chance of actually winning in court against Jim, and if they don't know it then whatever greedy hack lawyer they hired does. Remember that bullshit that DH was talking about Let's Players (and Jim in particular) infringing upon his copyright by showing gameplay of his game in their videos and how he was going to sue Jim for that? Notice how nothing about that is in this suit, because it was utter shit.

Even assuming worst-case scenario and Jim loses and has to pay some fee for DH's imaginary lost profits (let's face it, their shitty indie games wouldn't have made much post-Steam refund implementation even if Jim had never touched one of their games so only the most extremely extortionate judge will award much to DH anyways, and that's assuming this ever makes it to a courtroom), DH continues to churn out shit games that no one buys and Jim keeps working as a critic same as before... nothing will change really, except Jim will be a bit poorer and DH might actually make money on their crap game factory scam. If Jim wins, most likely DH will cease to exist because of court costs and lawyer fees and such, and the world will have lost nothing of value.

Hoping for the best (Jim wins and DH disappears forever, remembered only as a laughingstock in the gaming community), but even assuming the worst things probably won't turn out too bad.

 

[s0denone]

I'm not sure how anyone could say that Jim posted that stuff neutrally and without malice.

He is/was clearly involved in some kind of spat with those two idiotic brothers and he wrote what he did in an attempt to discredit them. It will be very easy for them to prove his intent by simply showcasing other work he has done on their games and his tone within.

Malice, in legal parlance, refers to an intention to cause someone injury. Criticizing people for repeatedly doing the same shitty things is not inherently malicious; if it was, then every critic who has ever written reviews of two Uwe Boll movies better call their lawyers, because they're in for some shit. And he did compliment them when they made a game he enjoyed, though I misremember the game's title. Some kind of fantasy FPS game.

I don't believe he complimented the game, merely stated it was average and less shit.

I am also quite aware of what "maliciousness" has to entail to qualify in a court proceeding, but I still remain confident it would be pretty easy to infer from Jims videos centered around Digital Homicide, including his warnings/threats to them about him bashing their product.
The fact that he continually made videos about their games specifically implies maliciousness in itself, given all the negativity contained within ---

And again, that is all the circumstancial evidence, of which there is plenty more. What could Jim hope to gain from calling them out on buying some non-descript whateverthefuck and calling them pathetic developers and the like?
When you put that in the context of all his other comments and videos directed at them, the maliciousness becomes incredibly easy to infer.

Jim will be asked to reimburse whatever sales the brothers can justify to have potentially lost as a result of his article, which will likely amount to next to nothing, if anything, and then the case will be be concluded.

 

[JimB]

The fact that he continually made videos about their games specifically implies maliciousness in itself, given all the negativity contained within.

It does not. Too many of his videos have been direct reactions to fans request, fan updates, and DigiHom directly antagonizing him.

What could Jim hope to gain from calling them out on buying some nondescript whateverthefuck and calling them pathetic developers and the like?

I'm going to need a link to where he did that. I do not recall him ever calling them any names at all, let alone "pathetic developers," specifically because of the store-bought assets. I remember him calling them cowards for the way they treated him, but only that.

 

[s0denone]

I remember name-calling. If there wasn't, it will be significantly more difficult for the idiot bros.

 

[JimB]

I remember name-calling. If there wasn't, it will be significantly more difficult for the idiot bros.

Okay, so...do you remember where and when it happened?

 

[Monsterfurby]

Doesn't Arizona have a provision that makes lawsuits that serve to silence criticism themselves counter-suable?

Maker Studios or not (they still list him, but only reference old content), Jim should at least be able to afford a decent lawyer. This is going to be entertaining.

 

[Monsterfurby]

(double post for some reason)

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I actually feel kind of sorry for them, in the same way that you feel sorry for a Level 2 Pidgey who leaps out to attack your Level 96 Charizard and then refuses to let you escape, even though you only know Blast Burn, Hyper Beam, Fire Blast and Overheat. And it's sunny.

Anyone who has more than one offensive move of the same type on a Pokemon is wasting space. If that many shots from Blast Burn won't take another 'Mon down, then Fire Blast won't help, and you should probably switch.

OT: Yeah, Digital Homicide has absolutely nothing here. They'll probably take this as far as they possibly can, but Jim's got a big enough war chest to ride it out.

 

[Politrukk]

Also the Publication of a Statement is VERY shady:

If Digimon said Jim to remove the bad claims about his product, Jim have the responsibility to do so as a person who own a service as a reviewer.

The we have the Qualified privilege:

Qualified privilege applies to statements that people make out of some legal, moral or social duty. Qualified privilege does not, however, apply if the person makes the statement out of malice. For example, a person reporting someone to the police will not be liable for defamation unless he/she does so in bad faith and primarily to injure someone?s reputation or otherwise harass or annoy them.

Here DigiHom can win EASILY because of the nature his videos on Youtube have most of the time.

His videos on youtube are fully protected under US fair-use laws, which cover review, criticism and satire. There is literally nothing about his videos that they could sue about.

This is why they aren't actually suing him based on his videos. They are suing him based on a post he made on his blog (which the Romine brothers admitted in a phone call that they felt was 'more vulnerable' since Jim's blog is a private project and not protected by youtube or Maker Studios like his videos are).

He only actually made one false claim in that article, where he said they'd stolen a piece of artwork from Deviant Art (something they totally *have* done multiple times before). As soon as it was brought to his attention that they'd actually bought it from stutterstock, he edited the article to show that they did. Arizona state law, however, still allows you to sue for slander and libel even if a retraction is made to the original material.

Considering that this was done without malice as a piece of journalism (journalists make mistakes all the time, retract them, and never get sued unless it's super-egregious), and because it's going to be pretty hard to prove that this one part of one article caused them all this financial harm, I doubt DH will accomplish much besides publicly embarrassing themselves.

Anything related to Jim's videos is completely irrelevant to the case. This isn't about whether or not Jim said mean things about Digital Homicide in his videos, this is about whether one portion of one article that they are technically able to sue over *actually* caused them 10 million dollars in damages. I don't think they can prove that.

They aren't suing about his videos if I'm wholly correct here I think it's the posts on his own website?

Anyway is there anyone here who has the Arizona law statutes for me I can pick through them, I don't know if Arizona's law covers the necessity of intent in defamation/libel.

The main defense Jim will use is that due to earlier proven claims it was easy for him to make a mistake, when the mistake was found he retracted the statements covering that.
On all other claims he can go for his fair use and the immediate distance he has from his audience but on this specific case it is important to know if

Edit: whoops didn't see that last part of your post.

 

[Politrukk]

I remember name-calling. If there wasn't, it will be significantly more difficult for the idiot bros.

Okay, so...do you remember where and when it happened?

In that youtube interview one of the Romine brothers basically tries to put down Jim as evil, going to listen to it again to see if I can find some badmouthing.

I know he meant the other way around but it goes back and forth between these two so I don't think anyone can get to anyone on that note.