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12 September 2005 Petty, spiteful timewasting is a Future stock-in-trade in these matters, and it's quite possible that even after 14 or 28 days they still won't file a defence. What happens then is that the claimant files for a default judgement, which after some more delay will be awarded by the court and can be used as basis for sending bailiffs against the defendant to recover the debt. However, when the bailiffs present their demand for payment, the defendant can then feign ignorance of the previous proceedings (often blaming the Royal Mail, even in the event that case documents have been sent by Recorded Delivery and signed for), and ask for the matter to be heard in court. This request is usually granted, and the defendant will be given 14 more days to produce a defence, at which point the process effectively starts over. You can only pull that trick once per case, however. 27 September 2005 Nothing yet. However long it takes them, I'm looking forward to hearing Future's defence at last. The fact of the contract breaches is an open-and-shut case. My terms regarding "single use only" could not be clearer. Also, the full repeat fees paid for re-use of the same material on the PC Gamer website in 1999, on not one but five occasions, would seem to eliminate any potential claim that it was not the company's practice to pay such fees with regard to re-use of my work. Future have avoided actually making a defence to the claim ever since I brought it to their attention in early 2000, for the understandable reason that legally they don't have any. It's going to be fascinating to see what they're going to try. 28 September 2005 Boo! I'm disappointed in you, Future. The company's Acknowledgement Of Service (AoS) arrived in this morning's post, indicating a tragic loss of nerve and spirit on the evil goons' part. Previously they'd have held out to the very last, filing the AoS on the deadline day itself, so I'd have to call the court at 3.59pm and find out if it had arrived before I could apply for default judgement. This time the big yellow chickens filed it with the court a whole day before the deadline. (The date of filing an AoS makes no difference to how much time you have to submit your defence - it just extends your time from 14 days from the date of original service to 28. There's therefore absolutely no point in waiting until the last minute to file the AoS, other than to petulantly keep the other party hanging around in suspense.) So now we have another 14 excitingly tense days to wait before we get to hear what zany defence Future's phenomenally expensive lawyers have desperately concocted to try to get them out of this sticky pickle. See you again on October 12, viewers! 01 October 2005 A letter arrives from Future's solicitors (Bristows of London). It says "We are Future's solicitors". I estimate the cost to Future of this letter at £250. 07 October 2005 Returning home from an epic and fruitful Snack Patrol, I find a postcard from the Royal Mail on the doormat, informing me of a Special Delivery item they've tried to bring me while I was out. Expecting it to be my Japanese import copy of Giga Wing Generations, I stroll all the way across town to the depot, only to discover to my considerable disappointment that it's a letter from Future's solicitors. "We enclose by way of service the Defence to your claim", it lies, because what's inside the envelope bears as much resemblance to a defence as Liverpool's back four did against Chelsea last week. The "defence" is essentially the legal equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". In 14 pages that I estimate have cost Future a minimum of £1,000 for this letter alone, their lawyers essentially refuse to admit that I, they, PC Gamer, the reviews, the invoices or anything else exists. The first item of the "defence", for example, is quoted below: "Pending further particularisation of the contracts under which the Claimant claims the material was supplied, the Defendant does not admit that it was permitted only one instance of publication, or that the time limit on such publication was 90 days from the date of submission." This is a slightly puzzling claim. Evidently, they appear to be suggesting that their client has found the terms of the contract in some way ambiguous or confusing. The terms in question read thus: 2. Permission is hereby granted to the first-named party above [Future] for the first UK serial rights only to the items named, for a period not exceeding 90 days from the specified date above, after which all rights revert to the author. (Yes, viewers, you read that right - we're being expected to accept that the UK's third-biggest magazine publisher doesn't know what First UK Serial Rights entail, and is also unable to comprehend the sentence "a period not exceeding 90 days".) The rest of the "defence" continues in similar vein, so I won't trouble you with quoting it - it merely demands copies of the articles in question, copies of the invoices, copies of details of what the invoices were for, copies of all letters I've sent them (excellently, refusing to admit to having received any even though they admit to having made an offer of settlement in response), copies of my mother's birth certificate and so on. However, on the upside, "The defendant admits that PC Gamer is published 13 times a year", so we're making some progress. All this would be standard lawyerly time-wasting bullshit, save for the fact that of course, Future and Bristows are already in possession of every single item of "particularisation" that they're asking for, from the several previous court cases that have already been brought in respect of the reviews. What this letter actually indicates is that Future and their lawyers plan to continue clinging desperately to their only possible chance of success - which is to say, pointlessly wasting so much time that if they're lucky, I'll be hit by a bus or fall down a mineshaft before being able to get the case to court. As such, today's document is hugely encouraging. It shows that Future's expensive top-of-the-range lawyers haven't managed to come up with even the merest hint of a leg to stand on - because if they did, we'd be hearing about it by now. It's going to mean a mildly tedious couple of days putting all this stuff together again (although not so much, because I've still got it all from last time), but that's okay - assuming there isn't a gigantic cock-up at Hampden on Saturday, I'm going to need something to do between the weekend and Wednesday to take my mind off the tension of Scotland's World Cup qualifying campaign. Go Moldova! 14 October 2005 Stupid football. Anyway, today brought the arrival of the Allocation Questionnaire for the case, which signifies that the timewasting period is more or less over. The purpose of the questionnaire is for the Court Service to be able to allot a hearing date for the case, based on the amount of time it's expected to take (and therefore when they can fit it in). I always enter an estimate of one hour, since every case I've ever brought has been centred on extremely straightforward facts requiring mere moments to establish - I think my record for a hearing was eight minutes, which was all it took to beat Future once over the unlicenced reproduction of one of my features in a Spanish edition of Arcade. The defendant's lawyers usually enter a higher figure, presumably in the hope of making the case harder to allocate a slot to and delaying proceedings further. Not long after both parties have submitted the questionnaire (along with another £100 court fee, in my case), the court will send out a notice giving the date of the hearing. So far this has been anywhere from three or four weeks away, to three or four months. It'll be interesting to see if the size of the claim makes any apparent difference to this. I've never had a hearing for a case beyond the limit of the Small Claims Court, so I don't actually know at this point if it'll be heard in a different way, or, if so, whether the waiting time will then be longer or shorter. (You might imagine that there would be more small claims - £5,000 or under - than large ones, so hopefully large ones, with less competition, might be heard sooner. But I guess it's equally likely that large claims are assumed to be more complex - wrongly, in this case - so more time is required to be allotted to them.) Today I also sent Future's lawyers my formal response to their Request For Further Information, which accompanied the "defence" that arrived on 7 October. Mindful of the audience, I wrote it in my best legalese (which is to say, by the end I barely understood it myself), but more pleasingly I did get to use the phrase "that pesky aforementioned Bristows evidence-eating dog". So, hearing date to follow quite soon. Maybe it'll all be over by Christmas... 22 October 2005 Returned from a far-flung Saturday morning shopping trip yesterday with 10 hard-won bottles of delicious South African Kola Tonic and a copy of a magazine featuring some photographs of an ex-girlfriend being spanked in a fetish club, to find something even more "punishing" (ha!) on the doormat - another letter from Future's lawyers. Four pages long and featuring no fewer than 25 numbered points, it in fact amounted to nothing more than yet another demand for yet more copies of documents they've already been sent at least three times, accompanied by dire threats about the enormous costs they would incur (and which, by implication, I might be liable for) in seeking court orders if I didn't send them a fourth time. Subsequently spent a relaxing Sunday morning compiling the requested information, along with a few bits of extra bonus content that I thought they might find enlightening and useful. This was all pleasant enough in itself, since it provided the opportunity to be sarcastic to lawyers for another couple of thousand words, but more excellently, Point 12 of the letter reminded me of a previous court hearing from the autumn of 2000 that I'd forgotten about. Brought in respect of Future's earlier reprinting of one of my PCG reviews on the mag's website, the case provided a ruling from the judge supporting my right to charge full reprint fees for repeat uses - which should prove an invaluable precedent, making the current case even more watertight than it already is. Previously, Future had simply paid up for the website uses without contesting them in court, which obviously saved time but wasn't in itself legally binding in subsequent cases (although it does help). But having that one example brought to court and judged in my favour should be very useful indeed, now that Bristows have kindly reminded me of it. Good work, expensive Future lawyers! 27 October 2005 For my birthday I get another letter from Future's lawyers, and it's a beauty. The letter (sent twice, for some reason) includes a copy of the defendant's Allocation Questionnaire (see Oct 14 entry). In it, Bristows make some inaccurate allegations about the case (stating, entirely incorrectly, that it involves matters relating to penalty clauses, and "complex IT technical issues"), requesting that the matter be brought at the High Court due to these issues and the size of the claim, and estimating that the case will require two days to be heard (rather than my suggestion of one hour). The good bit, however, comes in the section on costs. Bristows say in the AQ that the costs incurred by their client to date in the defence of the claim come to £5,000 (a sum roughly in line with the figures I've guessed at in this diary). More impressive, though, is their statement of their client's likely total costs for seeing the case through to completion. For this figure, Bristows estimate that by the end of the case their client will have incurred costs in the amount of ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS. It's worth taking a moment out to ponder this fully. It's hardly a secret that - due largely to Future's own actions, of course - I've barely been in employment for the last three years. My current assets would almost certainly struggle, and fail, to cover Future's £5000 costs to date, never mind 20 times as much. Therefore, even if Future were to somehow win the case (and I don't see how they possibly could), they'd still be AT LEAST £95,000 down on the deal. That, my fine chums, is the colossal magnitude of Future's spite and hatred. Rather than even attempt to make an honest and reasonable offer to settle the case out of court, they'd prefer to lose a MINIMUM of 95 grand (plus the five-figure sum they've already wasted on unsuccessfully fighting various elements of the issue) defending actions which could not possibly be any more clearly in the wrong. (They have, you'll recall, as yet not offered any actual defence to the undisputable empirical fact of the breach of the contracts.) Even after all this time, even knowing them as I do, they still have the power to take my breath away. 28 October 2005 Yesterday actually saw a further two exciting developments after I made the above entry, which I was too busy having birthday fun to document. Another letter arrived in the post, in which Bristows made suggested court directions which proposed that the case be heard no earlier than March 2006. This was to be in order that they make an application in the intervening time to have the case struck out for Abuse Of Process, citing the previous attempt to bring the matter to court in 2000. That case was eventually struck out, on appeal, on the grounds that Bristows claimed that I was wrong to bring only a sample case in respect of a single issue of PC Gamer's cover CD, rather than bringing all the infringements together at the same time. For some curious reason, they appear to believe that that judgement will also apply now, even though I now am bringing all the infringements together at once. More bizarre, though, was the email that arrived in the afternoon. It asserted that Bristows had advised Future that, on the grounds of the above, my case was "without foundation". Strangely, however, the email also contained an offer of settlement, increasing the only standing offer by a whopping 900% - which seems like an odd thing to do when you've just been told that the case against you is rubbish. Future, it said, were now prepared to offer a payment of £5,000 immediately, to be followed by a second payment of £5,000 in one year's time on the condition that: "You will keep confidential all the terms of this settlement and will make no further public comment whatsoever about this or any other litigation or disputes which you may have had with Future Publishing or its parent, subsidiary or associated companies." The offer, billed as "non-negotiable", was stated to be open for seven days, but of course I've just blown it anyway by telling you. Oh well. 16 November 2005 Yet another "request for further information" from Future's lawyers clutters my letterbox, demanding evidence that I sent them last time and which they acknowledge having received. It seems they really are determined to drive Future's bill up through the roof, and good luck to them with that. Pleasingly, I get to mention the pesky Bristows evidence-eating dog again in my reply. Next time I write to them, I'm going to start calling him "Binky" for short. 23 November 2005 Ooh! An interesting and new turn of events today. I'd earlier sent the court a letter detailing the inaccurate statements in Future's Allocation Questionnaire (see 27 October entry), and in his decision on allocation the District Judge has concluded that "Your case has been identified as one which may benefit from a mediation scheme". This is something I haven't come across before in my dealings with the courts, and indeed appears to be a new thing generally (the explanatory leaflet accompanying the letter is titled "The New Mediation Scheme"). The mediation hearing has been set for the 19th of January 2006, with an estimated length of three hours, although it's subject to a "mediation fee", payable in advance, of at least £450 for each side. (Which could prove tricky, so I'll have to pop down to the court this afternoon for a fee-exemption application form.) It's an informal process, with all parties sitting around a table - although the mediator can also speak to either or both sides individually - and any agreement made is, of course, legally binding (as a so-called "court consent" order, which sounds cute). Given that I've been attempting to engage Future in negotiation about this matter for the last six years, with no success whatsoever, it doesn't seem very likely that any such mediation will bear fruit. The company's offers of settlement so far have been of such a laughably insulting nature that the chances of their taking part in mediation in good faith appear slim. However, my immediate reaction is that this is a positive development. The judge has, for now at least, refused Future's application to have the case sent to the High Court, which had/has a chance of succeeding based solely on the size of the claim. (In asking for a Small Claims Track hearing because of the nature of the sum - that is, it's made up of lots of repeated instances of what is in itself actually a single sub-£5,000 Small Claim - I'm in essence seeking a special exception to the usual practice.) By January, with all the evidence having to be presented to the mediator, it'll be very hard for Future to sit in front of an independent third party in a courtroom and claim that my core allegation is in any way untrue. (My feeling is that this is what's behind the order - that the judge wants to force Future to do what they've dodged so far, namely set out what their actual defence is. Assuming they've thought of one by now.) As long as I can get a fee exemption I've got nothing to lose, and if I can't, I'm entitled to write to the judge and ask that the mediation be dispensed with and we go straight to a normal allocation hearing. Also, January 19 is considerably sooner than any actual hearing would likely be scheduled, so it presents an opportunity, albeit probably a slight one, to get things moving. Whatever happens, Future's timewasting, delaying and avoiding tactics will be one step closer to an end. 24 November 2005 May have spoken slightly too soon, there. With lightning speed, Bristows reacted to yesterday's order by firing off a letter to the court refusing to participate in the mediation process, on the grounds that "our client is of the view that the Defendant has no claim to bring". (The Defendant has no case? Clearly a bit of a Freudian slip, that one.) The supposed reason for this is that Future's lawyers apparently still plan to apply to have the case struck out for "abuse of process", For viewers joining us late, here's a quick recap of what that entails. Several years ago, when I first discovered and raised the issue of Future's unlawful publication of my work, I tried to bring a case in the Small Claims Court in respect of a single one of the 46 issues of PCG whose coverdisc included my reviews. The logic behind this approach was that (a) I didn't at that time have copies of most of the discs, so any attempt to claim for all of them would have failed at the first hurdle through lack of evidence, and (b) it would have been the quickest and cheapest (for both parties) method of settling the matter. Since all 46 instances of republication are wholly identical, a court verdict on any one of them would have been applicable to all 46, by reason of precedence. Thus, a single Small Claims Court hearing, which involves almost no costs on either side, would have sorted the whole business out one way or the other. Obviously, since Future have no actual defence against the claim, they sought to avoid this course of events by any means at their disposal. They filed for "abuse of process" on the grounds that my actions left them open to a legal process which is officially known by the picturesque description of "salami-slicing". The idea is that a claimant might effectively seek to unfairly "harass" a defendant by bringing endless separate claims, each actually representing only a small fraction of what would properly be a single case, hence wasting the defendant's time and money. When the application was initially held, the judge ruled that I was not guilty of this intention, partly because I'd offered to commit to a legally-binding agreement that I would abide by the result of the "test case" in respect of the other 45 instances, regardless of the outcome. However, Future appealed against this decision, and for reasons I still don't understand, another judge (who'd started the hearing with the this-can't-be-a-good-sign phrase "So, what ARE these 'CD-ROM' things, anyway?") granted the appeal. That judge explicitly refused, however, to grant Future a ruling that I should be forbidden from raising the matter again. (I know this because Bristows kindly included a transcript of his entire judgement, which my own copy of was lost long ago. It contains a number of elements extremely helpful to my case, so I ought to drop them a thank-you note at some point.) The only grounds for the "abuse of process" claim, then, was that I was failing to bring all my grievances with Future in respect of PC Gamer coverdiscs together in a single case. Since I'm now doing precisely that, it's extremely bizarre that their lawyers appear to believe that the previous judgement provides a basis for having this claim struck out. But it's a mark of their desperation at their palpable lack of any defence against the claim that they're even clutching at straws like this. In truth, I'd be surprised if this absurd application even made it as far as a hearing - if and when it arrives, I'll ask to have a summary judgement (where the judge reaches his decision based purely on the respective forms sent in by the two parties without them appearing before him in person) made on it. Still, it'll be several thousand quid more onto Future's bill, so I suppose it'll make Bristows happy either way. And hey, more happiness in the world is a good thing, right? 8 December 2005 Slightly baffling letter arrived today from the court. It reads: "The stay of proceedings ordered on 17th November 2005 shall remain in force until the Defendant files a notice of Application to strike out the Claim. If no such Application is made by 4pm on 12th December 2005, the stay shall remain until the Mediation Appointment fixed for 19th January 2006." This is good news, as it forces Future's lawyers to get a move on with the much-threatened abuse of process application (see 24 November entry) which is their last avenue for avoiding coming up with a defence. However, the letter is mystifying in its second sentence. Since Future have already officially refused to take part in the mediation, and I can't afford to, it's difficult to understand why the stay will remain in place should the strikeout application not be filed by the given date. If the application doesn't materialise, logically you'd expect things to start moving straight away, rather than wait six weeks on the basis of a mediation hearing that both parties have rejected. The only plausible explanation is that if the application DOES appear, the court plans to use the timeslot set aside for the mediation hearing to hear the strikeout application. But since the mediation hearing is conducted in the court building by an independent (and commercial) third party, not a judge, you'd expect that even if the room was free that day, the court's judges would all be booked up. In any event, though, it looks like SOME kind of significant progress will happen in the case by January 19, and that's definitely a welcome step. 23 December 2005 A special treat arrives courtesy of Future's lawyers, just in time for Christmas. It's the official notification of the strikeout application, which for some reason comes in the form of a pretend court order. Distinguished only by the word "draft" at the start, the letter is laid out exactly as if the application had already been heard and judged in Future's favour. The idea appears to be that this is a helpful and timesaving indicator from Bristows to the judge of exactly what it is they want him to grant, with blank spaces where he could fill in his name and the date, though presumably it's also meant to come as a confusing shock to the claimant, a bit like those scratchcards that fall out of magazines and make it look like you've won a million quid, as long as you call a premium phoneline and spend £35 in order to find out that what you've actually won is a "holiday voucher". The upshot, in any event, is that the court has now set a date for the hearing of the strikeout application, which will take place at 2pm on 30 January 2006. Either the application will be granted (which should be very, very unlikely), in which case the whole thing will be over, or it will be refused, in which case Future will - at last - actually have to try to come up with a defence for their legally-indefensible actions in first ripping off my work on a massive scale, and then maliciously attempting to destroy my livelihood for the next six years. Can't wait. 11 January 2006 Operation Minor Kerfuffle successfully concluded in Sunderland County Court. This was a warm-up action against a useless "credit management agency" who I'd employed to pursue Future for me in 2004. They were unable to do so, on account of having told me a pack of lies in order to get their £300 fee out of me, so I ended up suing them for my money back. I won, with all costs, and managed to turn the situation into a free holiday break back home in Scotland, but more importantly got some useful court practice in, as it had been a few years since my last case. 19 January 2006 A whopping bundle of documents, comprising no fewer than 221 pages, arrives from Bristows in respect of the hearing on the 30th. It contains no surprises, except that the defendant appears to have belatedly noticed that some of its infringements may now be outwith the six-year time limit for litigation laid down in the Limitation Act 1980. (I'll dispute this on the basis that my initial claim, made in 2000, clearly indicates an intent to litigate, delayed only by the need for evidence-gathering, and was made well within the limit. There are other issues there too, such as Future's admitted failure to comply with their duty to notify me of their intent to invoke the Act, but hopefully those won't be necessary.) The bundle is backed up with an emailed reiteration of the offer of 28 October, which I'd previously declined in terms which I'd describe as "comprehensively unambiguous". I email back to say that not only do I decline it again, but that should I receive any further offers of a similarly insulting and time-wasting nature, I'll subsequently dispatch any further communications from Bristows - either written or emailed - directly into the wastebin unopened. (I can get away with doing this if necessary, since the case can be conducted by relying solely on letters from the court.) I can only interpret the reiteration of the offer, given how firmly it was previously refused, as a sign of desperation on Future's part. Having received Bristows' skeleton arguments, I put my own together for the judge's guidance. I manage to keep mine down to two pages. 27 January 2006 Another document arrives from Bristows, this time a witness statement from Brent Manchester, Future's chubby Legal Affairs troll. Bear in mind, viewers, that the core argument Future are employing in the forthcoming hearing (incidentally postponed from Jan 30 until Feb 3 on account of another case) is that I should have presented the full evidence - that is, copies of all 46 infringing CD-ROMs - for my claim back in February 2000, instead of trying to prosecute a single instance. I've maintained that it wasn't possible for me to do so, because I didn't have copies of all the discs at that time and Future refused to supply their own library copies. In his statement, Brent not only denies having received any request to supply Future's copies of the discs, but - faintly astonishingly - explicitly denies that Future maintained a library of such discs, or that it does so now. In other words, for no obvious reason he's openly admitting that it would not have been possible for me to do the thing that Future's case is based on my having failed to do. I'm still scratching my head as to why in the world Future would volunteer this information, as one of the cornerstones of the strategy I was planning for the hearing was to try to somehow get them to admit it. Often, in previous court cases, I've assumed that when the other side does something before the hearing that seems amazingly stupid, there's some fantastically clever lawyery reason for it that I'm just too dim to understand, and will be horribly scuppered by when we get in front of the judge. So far, it's never been the case. Is it possible that all lawyers really are, in fact, just useless, cretinous morons? We'll soon see. 31 January 2006 Well, that's what I get for being a smartarse. On receipt of the 19 January bundle of documents, I sent Future's lawyers this email in acknowledgement: "I've now received the package. Only 221 pages? Are Bristows short of cash for the photocopier these days or something?" Two weeks later, their snappy retort is to send what I estimate is almost another 400 pages of pointless legal vomit, whose only possible intended purposes can be to intimidate me and to rack up costs for their client. As far as I can tell, almost every page of the new bundle is stuff I've already seen at least twice, and it includes (for example) 13 pages of "authorities" on penalty clauses, despite the fact that there are absolutely no penalty clauses, or alleged penalty clauses, being invoked anywhere in the case. On my kitchen scales, the bundle (for what is, let's remember, an extremely simple abuse-of-process application) comes in at an impressive 3.95 kilograms, or almost nine pounds of bullshit. 3 February 2006 So, what just happened? I don't know. I lost, is the short answer. And it gets quite a lot worse than that, so let's start at the beginning. Tense but confident, I arrived at the court to find we were the only people scheduled for a hearing, and we went straight in. I had a little superstitious shiver as we were shown into Room 4, the only place I'd ever previously lost a case, but we (me, Future's oily lawyer and three Future/Bristows spectators) all sat down and got straight down to business. Future's lawyer went first, and droned on in his awful, wet, monotone voice for 35 straight minutes, reiterating their case by repeating all the points already contained in the 400-odd pages they'd submitted, which the judge had already said he'd read in their entirety. I then discovered that the judge hadn't been given my skeleton-argument documents (which I'd delivered by hand to the court the previous week), but he skimmed quickly over my own copy and then I presented my case, all of which took a total of about three minutes. The judge asked a couple of brief questions, and then without any ceremony or announcement or apparent consideration went straight into his judgement. The judge had a very serious stammer, which meant that the, the, the, the, the, the entire judgement was, was, w-was, was, was, was was delivered pretty much like, like, like, like....... like, like, like this. It took an agonisingly long time, and the outcome wasn't clear until right at the end when, without offering any real explanation, he said that he'd decided to grant the application and strike out my entire case. Although he concluded - like previous judges - that the procedural errors I had made in pursuing the case were not necessarily deliberate or malicious, he nevertheless felt that looking at the situation as a whole, it was right that Future should be excused having to answer for their actions in court. And then came the really good stuff. He further granted Future an order preventing me from ever raising the case again without the express leave of a judge, an order which as far as I've been able to gather also prevents me from filing an appeal. (Unless, again, I can get special dispensation to do so from another judge, which is unlikely, and even if granted is expensive and rarely successful.) And for the final shot in the triple whammy, he awarded Future costs. What happens now is that they have three months to decide whether to actively pursue the costs award, a course of action which is apparently rather expensive (especially in a case such as this one where very little is likely to be recoverable, as I've got no money). However, Future have already previously stated their intention to pursue any such award, and given the huge sums of money they've already thrown at this case out of sheer spite, it seems unlikely that they would fail to continue to do so now, even though effectively they'd just be wasting more money with nothing to gain except rendering me bankrupt out of vindictive malice. With their costs already somewhere in the vicinity of £30,000 or more, they'll certainly achieve that aim. I don't have assets worth anything like that much, so the more-or-less inevitable prospect is that sometime in the next three months (and I'd be surprised if Future didn't prolong the suspense until the last minute) I'll be informed that I'm about to have some bailiffs come round, empty my house and sell the contents at auction for Future's benefit. After that, who knows? Man, that'll teach ME to have my work blatantly and undisputedly stolen by a multi-million pound company and complain about it! But one PS before I go and chuck myself under a bus: Do I regret doing this? Do I now wish I'd taken the "Ten grand and shut your mouth about eveything forever" option back in late October? Nope. I stood up for what I believed in and what was right, and the only thing I regret is that I didn't get a judgement that would help others in the past, present and future fight against being screwed over by big, greedy companies like I've been. I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd been bought off for their insulting pittance, and this way, wherever I end up sleeping, I'll do it soundly. As for Future and their lawyer scum, I hope they fucking die. 4 February 2006 Something I forgot yesterday in my shellshocked state. The reason I gave for not having brought all my claims together back at the start of the whole business in February 2000 was the seemingly logical one that, not being in possession of the evidence (ie the PC Gamer CD-ROMs), I could hardly launch a case. The first thing Future's lawyers would obviously do would be to deny the allegation and demand that I prove it, which I wouldn't be able to do, and the case would collapse instantly. In dismissing this argument, the judge said that in fact I "could and should" have brought the case without the evidence. When I queried this apparently bizarre statement, he declined to elaborate, saying only that apparently, in law, one doesn't need to have any evidence in order to bring a claim of this nature against someone. The question of how on Earth you would avoid having it immediately defeated were you to do so is just one of the many left unanswered by this case, which for the benefit of those joining us late can be summarised thusly: 1. Future illegally republish pieces of my copyrighted work almost 1,000 times and refuse to pay for it when they get found out. 2. They use all their legal and financial muscle to delay, obstruct and frustrate my attempts at bringing them to justice, for six years. 3. On the grounds that the case has been delayed, obstructed and frustrated for six years, the judge lets them off scot-free, and instead orders me to give them everything I own. If anyone can explain that to me in a way that makes sense, I'd be grateful. |
