Commodore Threatens Blogger For Being Skeptical About Its Amiga Plans

from the here's-an-opinion-for-you... dept

Thu, Sep 9th 2010 10:12pm — Mike Masnick

Slashdot recently pointed us to the fact that OSNews received a legal threat from Commodore USA for publishing an article that was highly skeptical of Commodore's Amiga plans. Slashdot focuses on the fact that the legal nastygram is obviously copied from ChillingEffects.org, including odd formatting and references. While that part is amusing, I don't think it's that interesting. While there's been some discussion about copyright on legal documents, in general, lawyers copy others' legal language all the time, and it's (mostly) considered to be okay.

What's more interesting to me is the threat itself. It's yet another case of someone getting upset about someone's opinion, and thinking that threatening a defamation lawsuit is somehow a good idea, rather than one that simply draws a lot more attention to the content they don't like. Just because someone says something you don't like, it doesn't mean it's illegal.

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Filed Under: amiga, defamation, nastygrams
Companies: amiga, commodore, osnews

16 Comments

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ECA (profile), 10 Sep 2010 @ 12:14am

ya, know...
I waited along time to watch the Amiga come back.
And looking at what they are creating, I have contempt.

THIS system started out 15 years BEFORE MS, even thought of a good graphical interface.
Before MS DOS and windows had COLORS, Amiga had 256 TIMES as many colors..
when WIN/TEL had BEEP/BOP/BOOP...Amiga had STEREO SOUND..
With 512K..not a MEG..it had better graphics and speed.

THEY were AHEAD of the game. and STOPPED. Then a graphic video company got ahold of it and made the Video toaster and Flyer.. WHICH even win 95 had problems doing.

NOW to start from scratch with 3 corps jumping all over it..
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Fuzzface, 10 Sep 2010 @ 12:23am

Commodore's website
Just been to Commodore US website and i can confirm that i agree with the writer of the original article - The website is shoddy and amateurish. There is incorrect formatting on several pages. There is duplication of information on two of the pages directly accessable from the homepage. The site is almost completely non-interactive. This site could have been created on any kid's home pc with very little effort. The designers and coders of this site should be ashamed of producing something this poor for such a well known brand name. Perhaps Commodore should direct their efforts into sending legal challenges to the website designers. For me, the Commodore's own website is more damaging to the company than one small article(no offense intended)
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- Marcel de Jong (profile), 10 Sep 2010 @ 2:54am
  
  Re: Commodore's website
  Perhaps the website is created and hosted on an old Amiga?
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  - Yeebok (profile), 10 Sep 2010 @ 6:11am
    
    Re: Re: Commodore's website
    If it was running on an Amiga it'd pre emptively multitask.. in the equivalent of DOS, on a 7.14Mhz CPU and 512Kb of ram, booted off an 880Kb floppy :)
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Fuzzface, 10 Sep 2010 @ 12:32am

Update after revisit to website
Sorry I made a mistake - there is lots of uselessly duplicated information. Also the Ubuntu page talks about version 10.04 and the computers seem to be shipping with 9.10 (according to the pages for each device and store pages and systems pages) which is almost a year old now. Sack your website designers Commondore
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Fuzzface, 10 Sep 2010 @ 12:41am

Ubuntu 9.10
Just found out that Ubuntu only support old versions of their OS for 18 months - unless its a long term support version (good idea Ubuntu - encourages people to upgrade) So the shipping version of Ubuntu from Commodore is only going to be supported for another 7 months or so. I make no comment about Commodore's decision to shipp this version.
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Kenny, 10 Sep 2010 @ 1:27am

Free speech and opinions
It's a very interesting point - the bit about legal threats to bloggers that is.

I run a site called The Weekly Gripe and as the name suggests, posts somewhat opinionated articles and there's also a moderated forum which can often end up in a heated debate.

On several occasions I have been threatened with legal action because of an opinion or a comment posted by a visitor. More often than not there's no prior communication, can you please take this down etc. The first thing I hear is the threat of lawyers! As it happens I am very careful to make sure the material isn't defamatory or libellous, yet the complaints still come in and I don't think I'd be wrong in calling cyber-bullying. Yes, that's probably the best description. Big sites and big companies (and some smaller companies) think they can push people around with legal threats knowing full well that the little guy doesn't have the money to spend on lawyers.

I truly believe that the day of REAL free speech has come and gone and what we have left is a mediocre, censored diatribe. There are many articles sent to my that I would sorely love to publish but know I cannot.
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akston, 10 Sep 2010 @ 1:45am

Huh...
Commodore, fire that lawyer. Lame lame lame lame lame. Obviously you've done yourself a great disservice.

In terms of the hardware, interesting form factor, I'm tempted by the Phoenix - good that you can get Lucid pre-installed. Hope it's cheap.

But an Amiga? That dream is dead, quit whipping it.
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Paul G, 10 Sep 2010 @ 2:20am

Boiler Plate
Google 'boiler plate legal document'. Somewhere out there is the source used for the document. It is a pretty common practice to obtain and customise such documents. Maybe this time it was done by a less than competent person.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Sep 2010 @ 2:22am

Commodore died YEARS ago and should just stay dead, Like thier computers are.

SUE THAT!
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DelBoy, 10 Sep 2010 @ 4:10am

Pricey
Just had a look at the prices.

Highly competitive $1250 (NOT) for the equivalent of an entry level PC or Notebook - but without the monitor & other little touches like the ability to clock & customize.

I want a gold case & diamond keys for that price.

lol, Can't see how Commodore could afford a decent lawyer - can't imagine these things flying off the shelves.
Probably the reason why about $1 was spent on the website.

I don't think the blogger has anything to worry about.

Thats my 2 cents, so sue me!.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Sep 2010 @ 6:41am

10 print "Does Commodore suck?"
20 if No goto 40
30 if yes goto 50
40 "yes it does!"
50 "you know it

Anyone want a 1200 dollar paper weight?
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MissingFrame, 10 Sep 2010 @ 6:53am

What about the free publicity?
All this stink is raising publicity for them, they must be geniuses in viral marketing!
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Krubuntu (profile), 10 Sep 2010 @ 8:29am

Is this a joke???
Is that really their site? It's horrific! I searched for their international site and all that came up was http://www.commodoreworld.com/ and http://www.commodorecorp.com/, both of which have Under Construction images that 1998 wants back. NO ONE is going to take them seriously with the way that site stands. It frustrates me as the C64 was my first machine and I wouldn't have gotten interested in computers with out that thing, and now they're attempting a comeback with site that looks like it was created using Tripod's HTML editor for WEB TV!? On a positive note, the devices are pretty.
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Krubuntu (profile), 10 Sep 2010 @ 8:52am

Oops...
I guess I should read the articles before hitting enter. So this is actually some guy that has retained the brand Commodore and not the company that built my introduction to the digital age.
I pray that this is a hoax....please be a hoax....
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Sep 2010 @ 5:25pm

Lol! The comments about the website must have hit home, they both now display the classic "Under construction" graphic. How wonderfully '90s.
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