Originally posted by DeanAU
Ok, just capping off here.
You accepted pictures from a "anonymous" user. Showing these unauthroised pics; (alike hosting pirated software) is also illegal. You really need to have a long hard (ok maybe not the best expression for 'coastercrazy.com) look at your self and the ethics which your site runs off. If I (theorictly) sent you a copy of a pirated NoLimits, would you host it?
I'm hoping you wouldn't, but if you ware willing to take these risks just for a 'exclusive', you deserved to be sued.
In the end; it does not matter where you got the screenshots from; they are still breaking the Non Disclosure Agreement.
Thank you for your time; and remember - you are still up for sueing- and in court, you can't 'anonymise' the user that sent you these screens.
Just to clarify a few things here.. WWS is not under NDA so drop the NDA thing. It doesn't apply to him. They may or may not have been legal, but I'm not a lawyer so I can't say for sure. Either way, it is not even close to the same thing as hosting illegal software. Yes, the person who sent them to him did break the NDA, and they could be in trouble if they are tracked down. But considering that there are already pics of Soaked all over the place (and I don't mean major gaming sites only), most websites would assume it's ok for them to show them as well. If it isn't ok, it's up to the company to contact the site and ask that they be removed.
Having people that don't represent Atari/Frontier in any way come on here and throw a fit isn't productive at all. In fact, you yourself could be violating the NDA since you're discussing it with non-testers. Plus, it just makes the tester, and to a lesser degree, the company, look bad when things are handled in this way.
It isn't uncommon to have a Soaked beta tester IM you asking if you want pics. I've had at least 10 different testers offer me pics and information, and I didn't know most of them. Alot of people can't keep a secret I guess. I'd guess that the vast majority of the testers have shown the game to a non-tester in some way.
Since I'm a developer myself, I do understand why they don't want unauthorized pics all over the place. But it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to understand why, and I doubt most of the testers completely understand the reasons either. Once WWS talked to people who took the time to explain what the problem was exactly, the pics were removed. Regardless, there's no need to keep threatening people, especially when you're not in a position to carry out those threats.