PC Zone [http://www.pczone.co.uk/news/33317.html]
Ian Bell And David Braben At Loggerheads Over Web Site
15 September - PC Zone -- Elite was one of the greatest games
ever, still being held in regard over fifteen years on from its humble
BBC Micro beginnings. The space game was great indeed... but that
was fifteen years ago and no one in their right minds would be worried
about it now, right? Wrong.
Yesterday saw co-writer David Braben bring a legal action against his
partner writer, Ian Bell for creating and operating a site dedicated to
Elite and which carried various items which could be emulated in order
to play the game on various formats.
The site, which had registered over 90,000 hits, and was at
www.cix.co.uk/~ibell/elite, has been taken down after Mr Braben also
threatened to sue hosting company, CIX. Mark Wilson, IT Director of
CIX Ltd, had informed Ian Bell that the site would go down, but not only
that, Bell's other sites were taken down as well and replaced with Error
404 messages.
This isn't a new argument, but it's the first time Braben has actually got
anywhere with his side of he argument. Originally, he had attempted to
obtain the removal of commercially defunct versions of Elite from the
web and in 1997 he attempted to sue EMAP for distributing Elite with
an emulator package on one of its cover CDs. He lost.
So the battle is once again being fought. Fingers crossed that this little
venture goes kaput too, and Ian can get back to supplying a game that
was supposed to entertain the masses, not be kept from them.