The eSports Partners Comment Debacle
(Reposted from the Big in Japan blog)
Last year Alex wrote a post on the Texas Startup Blog announcing that a Texas based startup called eSports Partners (evidently backed by Jerry Jones) raised $5MM (the post is likely removed from here, but Google has a cache here). The text of the post is below:
According to Todd Anders from GuideCap, Coppell based eSports Partners raised a $5,000,000 senior credit facility from Compass Bank (GuideCap arranged the financing). Never heard of eSports? Todd explained, “The company is very low profile and wants to keep it that way.”
Run by CEO Michael McKay, eSports is a merchandise service provider offering solutions for NFL and collegiate markets. The company reported revenues of $31.5MM with 250 employees.
Their solutions include ecommerce (site design, content development and management), retail consulting (store locations, build out, merchandising and management), game day operations (venues to sell team merchandise), catalogs (creation and order fullfullment) and several other related services.
eSports’ clients (gathered from a quick Google search) include the San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins, University of Arkansas Razorbacks, Miami Doplhins, University of Tennessee, Miami Hurricanes, Denver Broncos, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Detroit Lions, Tennessee Titans, Indianpolis Colts, Arizona Cardinals and Texas A&M University.
He never took much notice, but evidently the post received a few negative comments and as a result the company requested that Alex remove the negative comments and provide the identities of the people who made negative comments. After talking it over with a couple of lawyers he was assured that he would prevail, but only after $20,000+ in legal costs. Alex contacted the company and their lawyers and suggested that he was willing to remove the post and the comments, but he wasn’t willing to provide the identities unless ordered to by a court. The company demanded that he backup the database and retain it in the event that the company can secure a court order for the release of the identities.
Do you think Alex is doing the right thing? Should he remove the post? What obligation does he have to stand up to companies who receive a few negative comments? We would love your comments (positive or negative).
Sounds like one for the EFF:-)
As the company is a public entity, something entirely different than a private person, I don’t think that there’s really a reason for them to release the names of the poster OR remove the comments. The only tricky thing would be if former employees had signed a gag order of some sort?
My personal views:
1. Companies aren’t protected the same way that a private person is and/or should be.
2. Private citizens, or even employees of the company, should have some rights to getting material off of a site if it defames them in any way. My reference point is that site that was getting sued because women had made untrue statements about a guy online that probably weren’t true (link: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/08/01/545/17812)