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Remember those t-shirts that had F.B.I. on them? You know, the ones that had F.B.I. at the top and Female Body Inspector at the bottom? O.K. good. Those have nothing to do with the following story.

NCSoft teamed up with the FBI to close down a third party company what leeching off of their intellectual property.

"FBI Agents working in conjunction with officials from NCsoft's(r) North American business successfully closed down a computer game operation alleged to be reaping profits by providing a fraudulent service to its players. The operation was closed down after multiple raids and interviews were conducted in various
cities from California to Virginia. Federal search warrants were served on owners of L2Extreme who were also
questioned during the raid. L2Extreme was providing its users with unauthorized service and code for NCsoft's online computer game, Lineage(r) II. The warrants enabled officials to halt L2Extreme's operations while collecting further evidence in the course of the investigation. The FBI estimates L2Extreme has up to 50,000 active users on its service. NCsoft estimates that monetary losses and damages from the operation are costing NCsoft millions of dollars per year.

L2Extreme advertised on its website, www.l2extreme.com, that more than half million registered
users had subscribed to play."

Three cheers for NCSoft! First Blizzard and now our pals at NCSoft. Who's next? SoE step up and dish out some justice!
This is a timely story in that it deals with copyright, intellectual property and cheating, three areas that are currently hot topics in Second Life and World of Warcraft.

"Operations like this essentially are defrauding customers by stealing from companies like NCsoft," said Matt Esber, NCsoft North America general counsel. "In the end those losses impact our customer support, product development, operational areas and ultimately they impact our player communities, most of which are trying to play games legitimately. This group in particular was downloading our version of the Lineage II software from our servers, costing us close to a million dollars in realized bandwidth costs during the period it was operational. "We've taken this action because we strongly believe in defending the intellectual property rights that we've worked so hard to create. We're extremely pleased that the FBI has worked with us so diligently to bring this particular case to its current state and we want our customers to understand that we will continue to fight similar operations in the future in order to maintain the integrity of all NCsoft games."

I'm thrilled to bits, giggling like a schoolgirl, that the leeches are getting it handed to them. Hoorah!

I noticed that Coyote has curtailed his Boomjack Facts of the Day. I'm no Vin Diesel, tis true, but hey, he left me hanging with a Wal*Mart fact. I wonder if you can see me from space like the great Wal*Mart of China?

Don't forget to post in our forums or at the bottom of this blog. If you are shy (or female and sending in naughty pictures) you can E-Mail me.

Every good guild needs a home. A home free of gold ads and secondary market farmers. Look no further than GuildPortal.com.

• MMOG Pie
  I can't remember if I cried
  When I tried to fill this content side
  But something touched me deep inside
  The day the MMO news died[Apologies to Don McLean, but yes we have no bananas or new articles today]

• United Nations Rejects Jedi Knights
  Religion not, you are.
• $12,500 In Taco Bell Bucks For Your Playstation 3
  Heeeeeey, Pepto Bismol...
• EBay Breeding Ground For Idiots
  Ebaums World finally dethroned.
• House Of Blues Can't Give Away Free Kevin Federline Tickets
  Also can't make him a singer or a human being.
• Kramer Hurls Racial Slurs
  Falls down, hits head, or maybe he did that first.
• Pranking A Telemarketer
  You know you want to do this.
• Bill O'Reilly Trashed Gaming, iPods
  ORLY?

As always, thanks for visiting TenTonHammer.com,
-- John "Boomjack" Hoskin