Blog Archives
Sparks Talks About KryptoDEV Lawsuit
Aleks Manov, more commonly known by his alias Sparks, recently made several posts on the popular MMORPG server development forum, RaGEZONE, discussing his current lawsuit against Nexon America. Sparks is infamous in the MapleStory community for running and creating the MapleStory private server development forum, KryptoDEV, which was first sued by Nexon over two years ago on February 2010.
Sparks’ original post:
Hey there everyone,
I’ve got a few PM’s asking how my court went. Well, I hope this can be considered more of a discussion rather then spam but with that said, let me say this.
I was mistaken and the court date was actually April 18th (not the 1st as I think I mentioned in 1 thread on here). Which yes, hasn’t arrived yet. April 18th is a Wednesday for me and I’m flying out this Tuesday April 17th at 7:35 EST my flight leaves from Toronto, ON to Vancouver, BC (5 hour flight … Boring) for the Trial Hearing. I will be leaving BC on April 20th at 11:35PM (PST) and arriving on Saturday at 7AM EST
I do not know if everything will be settled on Wednesday as far as the case goes, there may be following hearings but Read the rest of this entry
Hello, hello, hello!
Hi fellow MNNians!
Well, the hacker seems to have struck again (this is turning out worse than the new star wars prequels) and effectively incapacitated the site for a good few weeks (oops). But we’re back and ready to go!
You’ll notice a few changes to the website. First of all, Read the rest of this entry
RaGEZONE Announce New Russian Off-Shore Sponsor and Host
At approximately 7 AM EST, RaGEZONE administrator MentaL announced a new sponsorship between RaGEZONE and an off-shore hosting company based in Russia called HostKey. According to MentaL’s announcement, ” Hostkey is offshore so anybody whom wishes to run a MMORPG development server without any real copyright or DMCA thread then will have a safe home. HostKey have pre-arranged an announcement of deals ready for you all, so if you want to be safe, secure and possibly run a very naughty website (piracy) then checkout Hostkey.”
It was also revealed that a new lawyer, Bradley J Freedman, was hired by Nexon to further prosecute RaGEZONE and FranTech. MentaL announced that RaGEZONE is now “officially located in Russia, land of Warez, sexy ladies and the OFFICIAL RaGEZONE servers,” and thus free of Nexon’s reach.
Read the complete announcement below:
Hellooooo!!!
Right then, where do I begin? Numerous years ago Nexon (MapleStory publishers) hired Mr Lloyd Korn to rid the world of MapleStory developments. Mr Korn took it upon himself to contact a previous host and had us remove the section to which I had no choice to comply (Despite the details being incorrect). A friend of mine who had been with RaGEZONE for some time called Francisco who headed FranTech offered us sponsorship (hardware) in exchange for advertising and would permit the use of MapleStory given he was fully aware of the legal situation surrounding it.
Since then, Nexon have issued several court cases against developers who are minors (Underage). During our transfer all attempts from Mr Lloyd Korn where ignored until Nexon then decided to throw down a huge lump sum of money and hired a Bradley J Freedman and unlike Lloyd this man had legitimate credentials and was also very respectful during his communication. Mr Freedman came forth with the same argument as Lloyd but had issued paperwork to sue FranTech for liability.
Nexon took it upon themselves to then conclude that FranTech should dismiss all associations with MapleStory and most notably several other development community’s that are not physically located on FranTech one single bit and hand over a sum of money to Nexon for its trouble. I was then told that I would be sued if I was not willing to co-operate and shut down MapleStory / RaGEZONE and hand over a sum of money for the inconvenience also. Nexon also stated to sue all parties involved within RaGEZONE / MapleStory and more (So making it appear that members and staff would be liable for actions). So basically, any written code you have hand written yourself Nexon believe its their property and you have no rights.
Upon hearing of the situation in its entirety I figured the course of resolution to protect FranTech from the lawsuit and myself and members was to seek refuge in another country, and that is what we have done. RaGEZONE is now officially located in Russia, land of Warez, sexy ladies and the OFFICIAL RaGEZONE servers.
We would like to thank HOSTKEY for their willingness to assist us in such desperate times. Our partnership with Hostkey is the same as FranTech. We will offer advertising to our users but this time Hostkey is offshore so anybody whom wishes to run a MMORPG development server without any real copyright or DMCA thread then will have a safe home. HostKey have pre-arranged an announcement of deals ready for you all, so if you want to be safe, secure and possibly run a very naughty website (piracy) then checkout Hostkey.
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Thanks all!
What do you think? Is RaGEZONE out of the woods? Do private servers now have a safe-haven in Russia?
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Let us know in the comments below!
RaGEZONE Admin MentaL Denies Infringing Nexon's Intellectual Property
On July 13th MentaL, the owner of popular MMORPG development forum RaGEZONE, posted an announcement discussing the Fran Tech and RaGEZONE court case. In his announcement MentaL denies any wrongdoing on his or RaGEZONE’s part and asserts that RaGEZONE is not infringing upon the intellectual property of Nexon.
You can read the full post below:
Right, this is how it stands. RaGEZONE does not host, distribute or provide illegal content for Nexon and MapleStory. The work that is here is all made by every single one of you. Under international copyright law and EULA generally when you play a game you are signing a contract in which takes away your rights to create an emulator and I’ve never played MapleStory, ever.
Nexon are attempting to rid this section from here under the bullshit argument that we are misusing their copyright. I can tell you that papers and court proceedings are up in the air right now and we are trying our best to resolve it for everyone. Nexon claims that the code shared by users is copyright code, also Nexon claimed that we also released hacks and so forth numerous years ago in which our ignorant previous host decided we had to remove offending content (but of course we did not and also in a legal term is considered slander), you can check it yourself here;
http://ragezone.com/legal/nexon/lloyd%20korn.pngOn a personal level with FranTech and Fran especially I consider us friends. He has been with us for many years so I also wanting to protect his assets. It appears Nexon is using bully tactics to get rid of us despite us not really breaking any laws. We do not host nor distribute any infringing material. In the event evidence to state that we are using copyright code exists I would 100% gladly remove of the offending material.
Take note of;
here are cases where a game creator has effectively shut down private game servers by threatening lawsuits due to obvious copyright violations, such as offering the client for download or offering downloads of modified files from the original game package, or perceived copyright violations, such as simply offering an “unlicensed” version of the game, which may or may not constitute actual infringement such as the infamous General counsel of Nexon America, Lloyd Korn in the MapleStory private server development [MapleStory Global]. Nexon are after me, it’s that simple. Despite me not being involved in the development one single bit plus with all the legal jargon in the middle, its messy to say the least. IF anyone has any valid comments to contribute then let it be heard.
Regards.
———- Post added at 10:51 AM ———- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ———-
EDIT # 1
In an effort to secure everyone from any future hassle (such as handing over ip’s and more). I’ve removed the WZ edits.
Server_emulator
We are still waiting on a comment from Nexon and RaGEZONE.
AbideStory DMCA'd By Nexon
It has been confirmed that AbideStory is the latest private server to be shut down by the ever mounting onslaught by Nexon America in their attempt to eliminate MapleStory private servers.
AbideStory fan created wallpaper
AbideStory was a ver83 private server that began beta testing for v90 in October 2010.
