What, movie stars aren't people? They aren't protected by the same laws as we are? Give me a break.. Free speech. It's a big deal here. I'd like to see this go to court, and I'd like to see SomethingAwful win. That doesn't mean I like the comic and it doesn't mean I don't see what's wrong with it.

And like it or not, Ubisoft is just making this worse.

What's there to feel so bad about anyway? Do you really think that she's like, at home crying about this right now? Do you really think this hurts her image much, if at all?

I know that if this comic was put into words and those words were about someone here, you'd be banned for it.

There's a reason for that ban, and it's one of the most natural things we feel about one another.

SA taking this to court and winning is a win for the right to make baseless claims about other people and publicly defile them on the net. That's a cause to fight for if ever there was one!

This thread makes me sad and disappointed, and I'll stop reading it now.

I'm glad there are people out there who can make the distinction between libel and slander and the stupid shit we see on the internet--because there is a difference--and running to your lawyers whenever shit like this happens is fucking lame. This is a poor attempt at humor gone terribly wrong. It's tasteless, it's disgusting, but it shouldn't be condemned to censorship or banned or ILLEGAL just because someone doesn't like it. SomethingAwful should be able to decide for themselves what they do or do not need to censor.. unless something is truly libelous, or in some other way against the law.

If every person with any level of public exposure sued someone every time something like this happened, our legal system would be even more cluttered with frivolous lawsuits than it already is. You want it? Try it in the UK and I wouldn't give a shit what happened. And it would be libel, if anything, by the way.. which is a stretch if you ask me.

And it wouldn't take WORDS Simon. If that comic was posted here, in its current form, YOU WOULD BE BANNED. But that's not really the point. It's not our job to uphold free speech, and it's not my job to judge SomethingAwful's decisions either.

A page that I will continue to visit, by the way. Photoshop Phriday rocks.

"In law, defamation is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism."

And it is something to fight for--because this isn't fucking libel and it's not fucking illegal.

There are already laws against libel and slander. This isn't slander by any means though. It could be libel, but I don't think it's that easy to define it as such. Personally, I'm thankful that there aren't tort laws against people having their feelings hurt, which is basically what this amounts to. Freedom of speech is far more important than that.There are plenty of things that are appalling that aren't worth litigation.

I fail to see how this could possibly ruin anyones life.

I think we're forgetting that this comic wasn't created by SomethingAwful...it was made by someone else and off site linked on their forums. Pretty stupid to threaten them with litigation for that.

The image's bandwidth would have expired after a month but now it's mirrored everywhere and on it's way to meme like status. What's going to happen next time she's got a game to talk about? This will be dragged up again and again.

It's stupid and lame she has to be treated this way and even stupider to make a meal out of it.

The difference between this and libel is that the comic was very clearly satrical. Tasteless and a very poor attempt at it yes but satrical all the same. It wouldn't get past a magistrate.

Yeah.. apparently understanding the difference makes us awful people. What this world needs is less freedom, and more laws to protect us from things that don't actually hurt. That's 100% sarcasm, just in case someone managed to miss that.