An American and Twitch streamer has sued the company behind the MMORPG Runescape because they muted him. He claims this violates his civil rights as muting restricts his freedom of speech and discriminates against him.
This is the accusation: A man from Pennsylvania, Amro Elansari, was muted by the company Jagex in a “not specified” game in March 2019. There’s strong evidence that this game is the MMORPG “Old Runescape.”
Those muted in Runescape can continue to play and trade with other players, but they can no longer use chat.
The man states that this muting restricts his civil right to free speech. He claims he has “invested” 2000 hours into the game and that Jagex dismissed his complaint about the muting without telling him why exactly.
He is now asking the court for damages in an amount deemed appropriate by the jury and for them to lift the muting.
This is how the courts decided: A first court ruled that the man could file his case but then rejected it. The right to free speech restricts state institutions in their actions, but not private companies or individuals.
The plaintiff then tried again with another angle. Now he claimed that Jagex was discriminating against him. According to his logic, he was treated “unequally” by the muting because everyone else was not muted.
However, the 2nd court ruled that nothing in Jagex’s behavior constitutes a disregard for anti-discrimination rights. Because they protect against discrimination based on race, color, religion, or nationality. The plaintiff did not state that he lost access to Jagex’s game for any of these reasons.
Twitch Streamer dubbed “Serial Litigant”
Who is the man? As reported by an online site from Pennsylvania, Amro Elansari is known as a serial litigant. In the last one and a half years alone, the man has filed 10 lawsuits, 4 of which were in July 2019, including the lawsuit against Jagex.
For example, in 2016, Elansari filed an appeal after being arrested for lighting a joint at a university in front of some police officers. On Twitter, Elansari advocates for the legalization of marijuana in the state of Pennsylvania.
As PCGamesN reports, Amro Elansari is also the Twitch streamer “The420Streamer”. He has 3,380 followers on Twitch and primarily plays Runescape there. Last year, he spent 1405 hours in the game, averaging 17 viewers (via sullygnome).
This is the conclusion: Ultimately, what remains is: One can be muted in a video game without it violating civil rights.
Oldschool Runescape experienced a significant revival in 2019 – in any case, Runescape is a popular MMORPG, especially on mobile.
A different lawsuit against an MMORPG was recently significantly more successful:
