Some of you may be aware of British games blogger Bruce Everiss, who has occasionally popped up on this site to express his opinions (mainly on how Nintendo are going to fail and everyone other than Nintendo will succeed). Some commenters have mocked him for this - I know I have, several times. Still, that's what the Internet is for.

However, you may not be aware that for the last few months Bruce has been involved in a pretty serious legal battle with the makers of a browser game, Evony. Bruce did some investigating of the company behind Evony and found evidence that it was linked to gold-farming in China, and other details that Evony weren't too happy about. After Bruce posted these on his website, Evony hit him with a libel lawsuit - and for some reason chose to do so in Australia, even though none of the parties in the case have any connection to the country. It seems that this was a case of libel tourism, i.e. a company choosing to sue someone in a country with the most favourable libel laws from their point of view.

The case could have led to Bruce being hit not only with a claim for damages, but also huge legal bills (which tend to be the most dangerous part of being sued for libel). All credit to Bruce, however - he fought back and continued posting articles about Evony on his website, poking huge holes in their legal case.

The upshot is that two days after the case started, Evony's prosecution collapsed. The whole story is here on the Guardian in the UK. The fact that this is being picked up by a national newspaper gives an indication of how big a deal this is - this really was a threat to free speech on the Web. Imagine if you could be sued on the other side of the world in a country you've never had any contact with, no matter where you live, for a blog entry or a comment on a thread? Even if what you've written is true?

Anyway, you can send your congratulations to Bruce on his website, where you can also find details of Evony's unsavoury practices. He may come across as an obsessive or a troll at times, but on this point he was completely in the right.

Good to know that although he is wrong about Nintendo on so many levels, he is still not a bad person.

he still deserved to be mocked in the past though. some of the things he wrote were just ridiculous.

But he is right about the 3DS needing a Phone ability!!! ;)

Great. Freedom of speech wins this time.

Well he's not a very respectful person, but he was in the right in that situation so glad he won.

Ahh, I'll begrudgingly give him the congratulations he earned on this one, but I will not stop calling him Bacongames.
No one will take that from me, no one...

Not even Bruce deserved to have that lawsuit against him.

Misguided regarding Nintendo -- yes.

Libelous regarding Envoy -- court says NO!

Mike from Morgantown

Does that mean I won't see evony ads ever again? Please say yes, please, please.

Boss of evony works for or with SKYNET!!!!!

http://www.bruceongames.com/2010/03/23/david-guo-boss-of-evony-and-hacking/

大学毕业才２年多的郭耀琦已是广州众达天网的总经理。 Graduating from college only two years of Guangzhou Zhong Guo Yaoqi is up to Sky-Net’s General Manager. 温尔文雅的他看上去怎么也不像是黑客的“克星”，但他和袁鉴（众达迅通的另一创始人）在网络安全领域都是属于年轻有为的技术型人才，他们研发的天网防火墙 在业界也拥有很好的口啤，早在１９９９年大陆与台湾的黑客大战中，天网防火墙就显露了它的威力。 Winer is not how elegant he looked like a hacker’s “nemesis,” but he and Yuen Kam (Jones EPSCO another founder) in the field of network security technologies belong to the young and promising talents, they Skynet developed the firewall in the industry also has a good mouth beer, as early as 1999, the mainland and Taiwan hacker war, the days of network firewall reveal its power.

Bruce on games= John Connor in disquise confirmed