- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Sythe Gold
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- 668
There have been many events that have unfolded within the past week as part of RS's "Bot Nuke Week". At this time, we would like to clear the air and let you all know in more detail what we are doing about it.
Bot Client
The recent "Bot Nuke" RS update has been analyzed and it has been determined that there is no reason why we will not be back online within the next two weeks. This is a conservative ETA and we hope to be back online sooner. We will return. We will provide more accurate updates throughout the coming week as we progress on our work.
Threatening Emails
On Tuesday, October 25th, Fagex contacted many of our customers via email stating that they had "strong evidence that you may have purchased and used botting software in the past, specifically ibot software". The email later goes on to threaten that if you do not stop botting you may be named in a lawsuit based on DMCA violations which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Since then, there have been many rumors spreading throughout the community as to how Fagex got a hold of, and planned to use this information.
Earlier this year, Fagex's lawyers subpoenaed PayPal for information regarding purchase information of bot customers. Knowing how sensitive this information is, and how much we care about our customers, our lawyers immediately responded to this subpoena to question their intentions. Their lawyers specifically made it clear that this information would not be shown to any Fagex employees. To ensure this, we filed a protective order on the information with the courts to make it illegal for their lawyers to show any of the information to Fagex employees.
Later this summer, Fagex illegally circumvented the protective order. To dupe the courts, Fagex filed a separate suit in the California Federal Court (Fagex Limited vs. John Does). The courts in the State of California did not know about the protective order, and granted Fagex's lawyers access to the PayPal information again with another subpoena for that case. Of course, this time, there was no protective order. This is a mockery of the U.S. legal system.
We were not made aware of these actions by Fagex until we learned of the emails going out this past Tuesday. Since then, our lawyers have been preparing an emergency motion to submit to the courts explaining what Fagex has done, and the demands we have regarding their actions. This filing was submitted to the courts and made public today. The filing can be publicly read from a PDF document here. If this interests you, we encourage you to read and then re-read this filing for a full perspective on the situation (case filing starts on page 5).
A notable summary of the demands made in the filing are as follows:
Ordering Fagex to dismiss the case in the State of California (Fagex vs. John Does).
Ordering Fagex to immediately destroy any and all information obtained from the PayPal subpoena.
Ordering Fagex to take no action against any of the customers or RS accounts of the customers that they received from the subpoena.
Ordering Fagex to resend an email to all affected customers retracting the statements made in the email sent out earlier this Tuesday and to publicly post an apology on their main websites stating the same.
All demands can be found within the filing on pages 26-27.
It is also noteworthy that this filing is a motion to file an extended motion, so it will not contain all exhibit information. The full motion, including all exhibits, should be available Monday. We will follow up with a link to that filing when it becomes publicly available as well. Being an emergency motion, a decision of these demands by the Judge should be made within the following week. The maximum decision time is two weeks.
In conclusion, nothing is more important to us than our customers. We have and always will fight to protect our customers in every way possible. We are extremely apologetic for any ill-concerns this mess may have caused you. We hope by publicly keeping you informed on the situation, you all will understand this very important fact.
Bot Client
The recent "Bot Nuke" RS update has been analyzed and it has been determined that there is no reason why we will not be back online within the next two weeks. This is a conservative ETA and we hope to be back online sooner. We will return. We will provide more accurate updates throughout the coming week as we progress on our work.
Threatening Emails
On Tuesday, October 25th, Fagex contacted many of our customers via email stating that they had "strong evidence that you may have purchased and used botting software in the past, specifically ibot software". The email later goes on to threaten that if you do not stop botting you may be named in a lawsuit based on DMCA violations which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Since then, there have been many rumors spreading throughout the community as to how Fagex got a hold of, and planned to use this information.
Earlier this year, Fagex's lawyers subpoenaed PayPal for information regarding purchase information of bot customers. Knowing how sensitive this information is, and how much we care about our customers, our lawyers immediately responded to this subpoena to question their intentions. Their lawyers specifically made it clear that this information would not be shown to any Fagex employees. To ensure this, we filed a protective order on the information with the courts to make it illegal for their lawyers to show any of the information to Fagex employees.
Later this summer, Fagex illegally circumvented the protective order. To dupe the courts, Fagex filed a separate suit in the California Federal Court (Fagex Limited vs. John Does). The courts in the State of California did not know about the protective order, and granted Fagex's lawyers access to the PayPal information again with another subpoena for that case. Of course, this time, there was no protective order. This is a mockery of the U.S. legal system.
We were not made aware of these actions by Fagex until we learned of the emails going out this past Tuesday. Since then, our lawyers have been preparing an emergency motion to submit to the courts explaining what Fagex has done, and the demands we have regarding their actions. This filing was submitted to the courts and made public today. The filing can be publicly read from a PDF document here. If this interests you, we encourage you to read and then re-read this filing for a full perspective on the situation (case filing starts on page 5).
A notable summary of the demands made in the filing are as follows:
Ordering Fagex to dismiss the case in the State of California (Fagex vs. John Does).
Ordering Fagex to immediately destroy any and all information obtained from the PayPal subpoena.
Ordering Fagex to take no action against any of the customers or RS accounts of the customers that they received from the subpoena.
Ordering Fagex to resend an email to all affected customers retracting the statements made in the email sent out earlier this Tuesday and to publicly post an apology on their main websites stating the same.
All demands can be found within the filing on pages 26-27.
It is also noteworthy that this filing is a motion to file an extended motion, so it will not contain all exhibit information. The full motion, including all exhibits, should be available Monday. We will follow up with a link to that filing when it becomes publicly available as well. Being an emergency motion, a decision of these demands by the Judge should be made within the following week. The maximum decision time is two weeks.
In conclusion, nothing is more important to us than our customers. We have and always will fight to protect our customers in every way possible. We are extremely apologetic for any ill-concerns this mess may have caused you. We hope by publicly keeping you informed on the situation, you all will understand this very important fact.
