Can You Actually Unring A Bell?

I’ve just received this charming note from Brock Pierce’s lawyer regarding the Debonneville v. Pierce lawsuit.

It has come to our attention that you have made postings on the website www.brokentoys.org that violate the United States District Court’s Order sealing the Complaint in that case.

To avoid further harm resulting to our client from the violation of the Court’s sealing Order, we hereby demand that by no later than the close of business tomorrow (February 15, 2008) you: (1) take down your January 30, 2008 article discussing the allegations in the sealed document and (2) send our office all copies of the Complaint in your possession, custody or control.

Well, I certainly would not want to violate the spirit or letter of such a nice notice, even if their information on where I live is somewhat out of date and no other attempt was made to contact me before this. So, of course, late tomorrow afternoon, I’ll edit this post and remove the offending information. That should make everyone happy, right? It *is* what they asked for!

Just in the interest of openness, my response:

Although it is my understanding that I am under no legal obligation to comply with the court order you provided, I will comply fully with your first request and take down the blog article referenced by close of business on 2/15/08.

As I have no copies of the document you refer to, I cannot comply with the second request you have made.

I welcome your client’s renewed dedication to legal documentation and remind him that there are several outstanding end user licensing agreements attached to games I have assisted in operating in the past, regarding the explicitly forbidden trade of virtual items and characters in said games that he and his company have performed and expedited, that would benefit from his and his company’s attention.

So, once again, this article will be edited sometime later tomorrow afternoon. This article. Over here. Yeah, this one.