FTC: Machinima Took Secret Cash To Shill Xbox One 156
jfruh writes: The Machinima gaming video network took money from a marketing agency hired by Microsoft to pay "influencers" up to $45,000 to promote the Xbox One. Crucially, the video endorsers did not disclose that they'd been paid, which has caused trouble with the FTC. For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
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Sounds like the punishment is to promise to not do it again
The government seems to think it's okay to treat corporations as people--until it comes time to hold them ACCOUNTABLE for anything, of course. Then they're most definitely NOT treated like people.
"Your honor, I'm sorry that I stole from that cash register. But I promise not to do it again."
"Well okay, Tyrone, we won't give you any further punishment since you PROMISED not to do it again."
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Yes, because the FTC now trumps the right to free speech. Everyone is a drooling idiot and needs to be protected from big bad corporations. Don't like em, turn em off.
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It is well established law that commercial speech has a lower bar to regulation than non commercial speech. We regulate what advertisers, food producers, credit and financial sellers (and many more) can and must print all the time. This is no different. More pointedly, they aren't saying you can't do exactly what they did, you just have to tell people you're doing it. How am I should I determine if I don't like a particular bad corporation and "turn it off" without some basic information about what it's
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Yes, because the FTC now trumps the right to free speech. Everyone is a drooling idiot and needs to be protected from big bad corporations. Don't like em, turn em off.
This sort of idiocy is the reductio ad absurdum of libertarianism and the belief that any government action is bad, and anything done by business is good.
Meanwhile, in the real world, corporations are quite rightly limited in what they can do. They do not have the freedom to lie in their advertising, for instance.
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Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
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So if the management changes, the current management is not responsible for anything.
I'm not sure the judges will agree with that.
Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it....
Re:Good excuse... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not?
Because that would allow companies to get out of any liability for illegal or negligent activity by simply shifting around their management structure regularly.
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Good news: The Board of Directors doesn't shift very often (if at all - it's kind of glacial at best), and those members are usually among those in the dock when a company is accused of something bad.
Either way, the current management will eat the FTC fines (if any), and if the activity was criminal, I'm pretty sure the authorities can locate and drag in the former CxO's for the time period in question... while fining the current company if there are financial repercussions.
So no, it's not as if a company c
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Either way, the current management will eat the FTC fines (if any), and if the activity was criminal, I'm pretty sure the authorities can locate and drag in the former CxO's for the time period in question
Well, they won't have to look very far, at least. Machinima's CEO from 2013 is currently the Chairman of their Board of Directors. As soon as the heat came down, he resigned as CEO, became Chairman, appointed his own CEO successor, and hoped no would would notice the shell game.
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It depends who owns it.
And when you sell a company, you also sell its assets and liabilities.
If my due diligence fails to pick up on the fact that the company I just bought in fact owes another billion in taxes they forgot to mention, then I am the one who owes that billion to the government.
(In practice, I'd also be suing the former owners for damages, but I still owe the government).
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It's not really the same business if the management structure has changed. In that case, they're not really backpedaling after getting caught doing something wrong; they're party to a lump of shit being handed off to them, and have to decide how to handle it.
I would hope any responsible business would make such a decision--even if it looks, on the surface, unethical and *highly* illegal, you want to get a handle on the whole thing first to identify why it's in place, if there was some mitigating factor,
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Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it....
Looks like the ultimate loophole has been found!
What is most surprising is that Microsoft used paid shills. Who knew?
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Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it...
It's not me that's being punished, it's the company that's being punished, regardless of who the current executives and managers are. Isn't that the whole reason that "corporations are people", so that they can act and be acted upon independently of any real person that works there?
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Well, as corporate officers, they'd have to fight the charges, or somehow deal with them, but this isn't about the new leaders, it is about the company. If you fire the CEO of a car company when it is found that their cars all explode into a giant fireball at 6,000 miles, the corporation is still responsible and the new CEO has to deal with leading the corporation through that. I don't think anyone blames the new CEO for the problem, though (unless he was a member of the executive team during past misdeed
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I wouldn't want to get hung for my predecessors misdeeds but the corporation certainly should. The corporation was the same before and after. Why should shareholders benefit simply because they fire the last CEO before anyone outside the organization figured out what was going on?
Re:Good excuse... (Score:5, Informative)
So if the management changes, the current management is not responsible for anything.
Of course, that was WAY back in 2013, when Allen DeBevoise was the CEO of the company. Now he's just the Chairman of our Board of Directors.
Lol, I'm not even joking.
Re:It's going around (Score:4, Informative)
But that was disclosed. It's okay to be a paid shill if you tell people you're a paid shill.
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Isn't that what Marketing does?
Before someone says it's a "youtuber" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before someone says it's a "youtuber" (Score:4, Funny)
Well hell, it's okay then!
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It always cracks me up how every time a AAA title comes out, every mainstream game "journalist" is either calling it the GREATEST THING EVAR! or not saying anything at all. Only when a game is so obviously broken that players are in active revolt do they say anything negative at all. And even then, they just bump their normal 10/10 or 9/10 down to an 8/10.
IGN PC review of Batman Arkham Knight. [ign.com] Not so much as a mention of any problems in the initial review.
9.2/10 AMAZING!!!
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I think it is only gaming journalism that couldn't be trusted to be objective, mainstream media doing just fine.
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You mean a blog post that's hosted at forbes.
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Wow! It's almost as if GamerGate had a point, complaining about corruption in the gaming media.
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Except that it's the console review, not the PC review.
"Reviewed on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One"
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When you can show ANY evidence of this happening, and of Gamergate actually being involved with it, then you can speak about it. Until then, you are a troll.
Evidence of Harrassment (Score:2, Insightful)
Here, let me show you how it's done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That is direct video evidence of an anti-Gamergate Sarkeesian supporter threatening physical violence against a pro-GG guy. We unquestionably know exactly who that guy is (and which side he's on), exactly who he's talking to, and exactly what he said. It took me less than a minute to find the link.
But I bet almost no one reading this has heard of it until now.
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You missed, call up people's offices to get them fired for being "sexist" for daring to speak against the party line.
No, that's Machinima Inc. (Score:2)
Re:Before someone says it's a "youtuber" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Before someone says it's a "youtuber" (Score:5, Funny)
Am I doing this right?
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Problem is quiet the opposite, where the SJWs label everyone who is just a little right of them as Conservatives. SJWs are basically our Tea Party, complete with possible upperclass backing to make sure we elect their leaders of choice instead of people like Sanders. Why else is he the only candidate that got their stage charged by BLM?
Congrats, you're corporate tools. Deal with it.
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Amazes me that every time gamergate comes up, someone talks about how amazed they are that noone "gets it", but they're still unable, or deliberately unwilling, to articulate what "it" actually is.
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Gamergate was about not enough women making sandwiches for male gamers.
You need to say "Sudo make me a sandwich." It works much better that way!
Well... (Score:3)
1. Not surprised
2. How many other marketing agencies are getting away with it?
Seriously, the past couple years it has reached the point where I'm questioning if half the things I'm reading online are even genuine, or just shilled marketing from some PR team to push an agenda or product. It's happened on imgur, on reddit, even 4chan. Nevermind the gawker media rags, gaming media, and even mainstream media. I wouldn't even be surprised if it has happened here. We've all probably seen it - these people we've never heard of who suddenly get mass exposure for no reason, or things that nobody would've given two shits about, but every network carries the story. (Hurr, is the dress black and blue or white and gold!?!)
It's like mass advertising has become mass propaganda, and there's nowhere you can go to escape it.
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Half? Wow, you're optimistic.
I see FAR too many things which are basically written as press releases, passed off in the media as an article, and which has a tiny little footnote indicating it's a press release.
Print media does this this too. They'll put it as a "special feature" or some other crap, a
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, the past couple years it has reached the point where I'm questioning if half the things I'm reading online are even genuine, or just shilled marketing from some PR team to push an agenda or product. It's happened on imgur, on reddit, even 4chan. Nevermind the gawker media rags, gaming media, and even mainstream media. I wouldn't even be surprised if it has happened here. We've all probably seen it - these people we've never heard of who suddenly get mass exposure for no reason, or things that nobody would've given two shits about, but every network carries the story. (Hurr, is the dress black and blue or white and gold!?!)
It's like mass advertising has become mass propaganda, and there's nowhere you can go to escape it.
You're about a century late to the party [wikipedia.org]. But better late than never.
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it has reached the point where I'm questioning if half the things I'm reading online are even genuine, or just shilled marketing from some PR team to push an agenda or product.
You've come to the right place, I can help you with that.
Stop questioning, my dear friend. Half the things you're reading online are shilled marketing from some PR team.
And that's if you choose what you read carefully.
#GamerGate (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember everyone: #GamerGate is about harassing women and excluding minorities from gaming. It's absolutely not about ethics in gaming journalism and "pay for play" coverage, which never happens.
This message brought to you by gaming journalism.
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Yeah because #GamerGate totally gave big companies like Microsoft and Sony a hard time for this and not indie developers where evidence of impropriety was circumstantial at best.
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If that's what you mean by he-said-she-said by a jilted boyfriend, then sure why not?
Re:#GamerGate (Score:5, Funny)
Ethics? Us taking money from the companies whose products we review?? Firing journalists for giving bad reviews?? Literally in bed with the studios?
LOOK! MISOGYNY!
[runs away]
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Poe's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
If GG had only focused on issues like this, i for one would be cheering them on. But GG didn't come into existence when, for example, Jeff Gerstmann was fired under pressure from a game developer whose game he reviewed poorly, way back in 2007.
They didn't erupt into fury until an indie female developer had sex with a journalist who never even reviewed her game. _That_ was the ethical violation so shocking that it demanded the creation of a movement. And then followed up by throwing a hissy-fit about Sarkesion's and Wu's op-ed pieces. And because there was no rational reason for the level of objections they were raising they resorted to misogynistic threats and insults of anyone who disagreed with them.
So now actual violations of ethics in game journalism are being overshadowed by the group that's using ethics as a flag to wave over their apparent rage that women are involved in gaming and have opinions about it. Claiming to be concerned about "ethics" while focusing almost exclusively on categories of people you dislike is like saying "think of the children" while drafting laws to enable spying on and imprisonment of the kinds of people you dislike.
Sorry, That Narrative Has Crumbled (Score:2, Informative)
The FTC got involved as far back as December [reddit.com] in direct response to Gamergate pressure, and Gawker was forced update their disclosure policy (and tons of articles that were then clearly in violation). And just recently they updated their disclosure guidelines (guess who was running an ethics campaign asking for exactly that?):
http://www.reddit.com/r/Kotaku... [reddit.com]
The section of the FTC's website that deals with disclosures was updated late last month:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advic... [ftc.gov]
Some of this new guidance directly reflects the language and particulars of the concerns GamerGate asked the FTC to address.
"Is “affiliate link” by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a “buy now” button?"
Consumers might not understand that “affiliate link” means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a “buy now” button would not be adequate
Does this guidance about affiliate links apply to links in my product reviews on someone else’s website, to my user comments, and to my tweets?
Yes, the same guidance applies anytime you endorse a product and get paid through affiliate links.
The revised webpage contains a great deal more language that needs to be analyzed but these two examples in particular reflect specific complaints GamerGate had about how Gawker Media handle their affiliate link disclosures. I know of no other group of people who were vocally complaining about this specific practice to the FTC. In addition, the FTC emails from my previous posts confirm that, yes, the FTC tailored part of their new guidance because of frequent complaints sent by GamerGate.
And then there are the ma
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The problem most of us non GamerGaters have is seeing the connection between this and vitriolic attacks on anyone daring to offer a feminist critique of games.
Story title is nonsense (Score:1)
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It's not as if you actually expected Microsoft to go "yep... we did that. Our bad." ...right?
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If I were to hire a PR firm, I sure wouldn't want to be supervising everything they do. If I was going to do that, I'd just do my own PR.
If you indeed did that, you may not want to look *too* surprised when your company name is excoriated in the press due to something dumb on the PR firm's part.
Here's a clue: When you hire a PR firm, you do it to get ideas out of them, and to have them do the grunt-work of buying ads, setting up and running booths at shows, order/buy cheap swag on your behalf for your TAMs and reps to give away, and crap like that. Once you hire them, you had damned well better approve everything they do that interacts with
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Well, the problem with that approach is it delivers a death blow to market-based and libertarian ideas.
This doesn't worry me personally that much, but I do understand there's a lot of people who get cognitive dissonance off such a conclusion. Here's why we can't have both this and a 'market' or 'freedom'; basing things off people individual decisions means those decisions have to be legitimate.
If the rule is that you're lied to and tricked, no person can devote the amount of time and energy needed to uneart
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Well, the problem with that approach is it delivers a death blow to market-based and libertarian ideas.
Either you've got to support a strong court system and the threat of force to back it up, or you've got to live by caveat emptor and not only let people simply deal with the consequences of fraud, but also make all debt the responsibility of the lender and not the borrower. Then you don't need a court system, and you can just work by might makes right. The only part which changes is not needing a court system. Guess that's anarchism.
Does this mean libertarianism is best described as the belief that a privat
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Either you've got to support a strong court system and the threat of force to back it up, or you've got to live by caveat emptor and not only let people simply deal with the consequences of fraud, but also make all debt the responsibility of the lender and not the borrower. Then you don't need a court system, and you can just work by might makes right. The only part which changes is not needing a court system.
There's another option, which is where a legislature sets some standards and a regulatory agency
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Does this mean libertarianism is best described as the belief that a private court system is the best way to enable capitalism, which in turn is supposed to magically cure all ills with an invisible hand?
Yes, but with libertarianism you won't have nasty old capitalism, but a real free market. And there's no magic, you just need perfect information, no barriers to entry, no monopolies or cartels, perfectly rational actors and so on.
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Hint: What you described is anarchy, not libertarianism.
Please learn the difference...
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Hint: What you described is anarchy, not libertarianism.
Please learn the difference...
Libertarianism as commonly understood would soon amount to anarchy. With no government at all, those with the most money/guns would be able to do what they liked.
Of course, in practice you could have watered-down libertarianism (some government, some taxes, a limited police force, some sort of contract court and so on) but this would mean saying "all government is evil, except for this new type of government we have re-created which is basically the same as an Eighteenth Century government" and this do
I have a couple of responses (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Deepfreeze.it: http://www.deepfreeze.it/ [deepfreeze.it] does a great job of digging into and revealing the ties, 'backscratching' and outright corruption behind most of the gaming journalists on the big sites.
2) http://www.gamespot.com/forums... [gamespot.com] or at least the general question: "Gaming 'journalist' - seriously? It's a multibillion-dollar industry, and yet most of the "journalists" are freaks sitting in mom's basement desperately trying to pretend they're the next Perez Hilton, and who are tickled if someone even mentions they exist. None of them have the credibility of even the shammiest movie review shill.
Re:So (Score:5, Funny)
I work in bank robbing, and I have robbed banks many times. The most effective bank robberies are the ones where you don't run in and scream "This is a bank robbery!". I don't see a problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
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That is because you're considering 'effective' in strictly local terms rather than systemic terms.
A concept like 'ethics' is about managing the functioning of whole systems: it's not simply a moral scold.
I shan't moral scold, as I think you may not understand the concept. I am merely highlighting the system-failure side of things :)
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I work in marketing, and have paid for "advertorials" many times. The most effective ads are ones not marked as advertisements. I don't see any problem with this
Well, it isn't a problem if you're a marketer. It is, however, a BIG problem if you're a consumer who's being lied to.
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I work in marketing, and have paid for "advertorials" many times. The most effective ads are ones not marked as advertisements. I don't see any problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
Now you see, that's because you're an abominable monster. Humans have this mental construct called a "sense of honesty" which makes them feel offense at this kind of activity.
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I work in murdering people, and have paid for "executions" many times. The most effective executions are ones not marked as executions. I don't see any problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
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Thank you for the convenient definitions of "fraud" and "unencumbered by anything resembling a conscience".
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The most effective ads are lies portrayed as truth.
FTFY.
So, new group of people is getting the money now? (Score:2)
For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
But you stopped taking this kind of money as soon as the new management came in, right?
[crickets]
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So if hidden debt or undisclosed tax liabilities were discovered, would the fact that these were the byproduct of a previous management regime negate the culpability of the current management regime?
Re:So, new group of people is getting the money no (Score:4, Funny)
But, sirs, that was YEARS ago--way back in the 2013 era. You can't hold us responsible for what happened in the long-long-ago!
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No .. .corporations give continuity to a legal entity which can outlast humans ... if we start saying corporations have no culpability when their management turns over they could essentially give themselves a get out of jail free card ... "Oh, sorry, we have a new board so we get a clean slate".
And that will pretty much mean we're all completely fucked, because corporations will never be liable for anything every again.
As an entity, the corporation better still be responsible, or you can expect every compan
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It for instance means that the directors wouldn't get prosecuted, but the company could get a fine. Of course that still means the current management take a hit in their paycheque, while the previous management get away scot free. Not entirely fair.
No, it would mean either the current employees take a hit to their paycheck or the customers end up paying more for the product. But the top management? Never.
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There is a difference though between the company being liable and the management being liable. It for instance means that the directors wouldn't get prosecuted, but the company could get a fine. Of course that still means the current management take a hit in their paycheque, while the previous management get away scot free. Not entirely fair.
Directors are hardly ever prosecuted unless it's really egregious fraud, like Enron.
liability yes, culpability no (Score:2)
If the business has a debt, or any other liability, that liability of course continues regardless of changes in management. Assuming it's incorporated, the business carries liabilities completely independent of management or ownership. Which is why you can sue the business, you don't have to sue each individual stockholder for $1 each.
CULPABILITY is essentially a moral issue. Culpability refers to knowingly doing WRONG, to being guilty in an ethical sense. One cannot possibly be guilty (culpable) of
Find old management, crucify them (Score:2)
And for good measure, crucify a random _half_ of the current one. Maybe that will send a message....
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So, who is paying you?
The first link was a rant by twitter [slashdot.org], someone who is so obsessed with Microsoft that most of his comments are about them. In that same post, he created a list of Slashdot accounts he declared to be paid Microsoft shills, based on evidence such as
Likewise in windows you can change the background color and text color of the BSOD (or at least you could uder 98, I haven't had the desire to play around with it under 2000 / XP since they crash much less frequently).
My Windows Server 2003 desktop (YES I USE IT AS A DESKTOP!) is perfectly stable and has yet to give me one single hiccup.
CmdrTaco is gay
Shut up, Twitter.
(the last comment was made after it was discovered that "twitter" had created and was using extra ./ accounts)
And based on your posting style, I might assume you and he were the same person.
FTC Order (pdf) (Score:1)
The actual order [ftc.gov] (probably not linked in the article because why would you do that?)
Really? (Score:2)
"For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge."
So what? Corporations all want to be treatred as citizens and have the same rights as people, the corporation, in it's current state, should still be punished for wrongdoing.
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Should you be punished for a murder that happened in your house before you owned it?
The right way to deal with this is to track down the original management and deal with them.
Why didn't you go for "should you be punished for a murder that happened in your car before you owned it"?
Because there's no stupid analogy quite like a stupid car analogy.
predecessors (Score:2)
Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
Yeah, but did they know about it?
If yes, why didn't they disclose it to the authorities?
If no, why are they not aware that something like that went on in their company?
OneyNG (Score:2)
We knew for a long time that Machinima was up to no good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[NSFW - As most of the stuff by Oney]
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When you watch a TV show in the UK that has product placement in it, the warning appears before the show or movie telling you. The U.S. should start doing this.
I don't remember ever seeing this warning here in the UK. Do they hide it in some small print somewhere or am I just incredibly unobservant?