
The blog site that leaked sensitive information about Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing yesterday has now issued a defence of its editorial position, including a personal attack against SEGA Community Manager ArchAngelUK, after receiving a legal message from SEGA to remove its information.
“This [legal threat], from the Sega employee [AAUK] who, in his spare time, runs on his Sonic website a “Depository,” which is chock full of items just begging to be tagged as copyright infringement,” site editor Tristan Bresnen exclaimed on a front page bulletin.
Sonic Wrecks, among sites such as The Sonic Stadium, hosts media obtained through SEGA products, but it is agreed that such use is not damaging to the company’s intellectual property. SEGA may see the leak of confidential information on an unreleased game as a different circumstance.
Bresnen further defended his position, stating that the discovery was not by way of hack but through files that were “already available without restriction” on the official game website. XML files were discovered, at which point the blog used ‘decompilers’ to uncover the information. Bresnen suggested that “Sega let something loose,” which is a bit of an extreme argument given the blog had to actually go out and find it for itself.
TSSZ sparked controversy when it obtained flash code from the official game website and reverse-engineered it to reveal material that had yet to be announced. Such content included new playable characters in the Bonanza Bros. and Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone. It certainly was controversial when TSS picked up on it, for all of a sudden the subject became taboo.
SEGA is obviously not very pleased with the situation. ArchAngelUK’s letter to the TSSZ blog reads; “I’ve been asked to confirm upon you SEGA’s official request to take down the following posts made about information on SEGA title Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing with immediate effect. The posts below…contain information that puts TSSZ News in breach of SEGA copyright and I am told additional legal issues as well that facilitate this request.”
Bresnen concluded his announcement by suggesting SEGA is responsible for the blog’s actions in the first place. He implies that he had no choice but to sanction a subversive investigation into ASR’s official website, following an interview snub from SEGA with Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett.
“Were those at Sega Europe better coders and better communicators–instead of those who seemingly can’t be arsed to return an E-Mail until it’s too late–it would have been possible for us to deliver you the information in question, and perhaps more, without subsequent fear and backlash erected from a situation that, again, rests on their shortcomings.”
Damn. This could get ugly, real fast. Remember No Drama ’09, and how it ‘completely failed’? Yeah, you’re looking at why we didn’t suggest a No Drama 10. Awkward.
Source: TSSZ