If you’ve used the internet for more then thirty seconds at any given time over the last few months then you’ve probably seen the giant boob ads for online game Evony. You know, the ones featuring euro-trash models with giant cleavage and the submissive tagline ‘my lord’.

Well, seems British blogger Bruce Everiss decided to have a closer look at the game and didn’t like what he found.

Turns out Evony is owned by chinese businessman Eric Lam, who runs a bunch of gold mining companies.

Not happy about being exposed, the chinese based Evony decided to threaten to sue over UK based Everiss’ comments. Oh and here’s the kicker, Evony is threatening to launch legal action using Australian law.

Chinese gold farming is a common gaming phrase and relates to ‘farms’ of workers (99.9% of the time based in China) who sit around playing games all day ‘farming’ special items and in-game currency which are then sold to other players for real world cash.

Due to players often being time restricted and lazy it’s a pretty lucrative business run at the expense of fairness and playability.

Usually the go is that these chinese farms latch onto an existing game and destroy the local game economy by flooding the market with ingame-currency and items. Evony however “cuts out the middle man” as Everiss puts it and charges players directly.

Mind you it’s not the first game to employ this model but coupled with a massive viral advertising campaign, comment spam and god knows what other marketing tacticts it’s easy to see why it’s raised the ire of gamers.

It seems Australia’s draconian online defamation laws are known worldwide and after a series of critical posts by Everiss on his blog, Evony are using NSW lawyers Warren McKeon Dickson and claiming defamation due to the fact Everiss’ blog can be viewed online in NSW.

No doubt the case that will be cited here is the infamous Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Vs Gutnick where it was ruled that if you can access information online from anywhere within Australia, regardless of the laws governing the country where the content was published, you are entitled to sue for defamation.

Basically anything ever published anywhere on the internet is open for anyone in Australian’s to launch legal action against.

It was a stupid decision then and it’s still a stupid decision now as we watch a Chinese company take advantage of the case to pursue defamation against a British blogger. Do we need any more proof our online defamation rulings are wide open to abuse and exploitation?

What’s Everiss supposed to do? Fly down to Australia to defend himself because some Chinese company doesn’t like bad publicity?

As far as I know nothing Everiss has posted about Evony is untrue and the case is simply a calculated step in Evony attempting to get the removal of bad press on their game.

As an Australian blogger who was threatened with legal action myself in the first few months of starting OzSoapbox it disheartens me that the laws of this country allow such frivolous law suits to be brought about by companies against individuals who don’t even reside here.

In doing so our legal system becomes nothing more then a political tool used at will by foreign interests to censor other foreigners. In effect we’ve whored out our courts to any global commercial interest by permitting actions like this to be legal.

Everiss meanwhile is stuck in an uneviable position;

So what can I do? If I remove the articles it is a victory for censorship and oppression. If I leave the articles Evony will bring a case against me that I cannot defend, even though I have told the truth.


Whatever you decide Bruce, good luck mate.

On behalf of Australian bloggers and the Australian legal system I apologise for my country’s hopeless ineffectiveness at bringing our defamation laws into the modern age. What a disgrace.



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