Press Release 10/09/99

Yesterday saw a threat of legal action close the web home of Elite 
(www.cix.co.uk/~ibell/elite), the seminal 80's space combat game written 
by Ian Bell and David Braben.

Created and operated by Ian Bell, the site carried an archive of Elite 
materials including Spectrum, Nintendo, BBC Micro and other commercially 
defunct versions of the game that could be played under emulation, plus 
public court documentation and national news reports of previous attempts 
by Mr Braben to sue various defendants for alleged infringement and libel 
in connection with the Elite game. The site had registered over 90,000 
page hits since 1997.

But in an email dated Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Mark Wilson, IT Director of CIX 
Ltd informed Ian Bell that CIX had been threatened with legal action by 
David Braben over alleged breach of distribution rights, and Wilson 
himself threatened to withdraw access to the site.

Two days later CIX Ltd did withdraw access to the Elite site, to three 
other sites operated by Ian Bell and to all his personal web pages, 
leaving a 'Error 404 -file not found' error message. It also revoked Ian 
Bell's write-access to the pages.

This action follows previous cases in which David Braben has attempted to 
obtain the removal of commercially defunct versions of Elite from the 
web. In 1997 his attempt to sue EMAP Images Ltd for distribution of a 
1985 version of Elite with in an emulator package collapsed when, after 
an assessment determined profits to be nil, the High Court made a 
landmark ruling denying Mr Braben's attempt to claim even the pre-trial 
settlement offer he had previously rejected (The Times, 3 Jan 1997).

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Contacts:
Ian Bell: ibell@cix.co.uk
David Braben: dbraben@frontier.co.uk
Mark Wilson, CIX Ltd: mw@cix.co.uk
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