UK Anti-Piracy Campaign [Aug 20, 2008, 07:43 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Times Online has news that five developers, Atari, Topware Interactive,
Reality Pump, Techland, and Codemasters, are serving notice to 25,000 UK
families demanding they pay a settlement, or risk being taken to court over
software piracy (thanks
Edge Online). Here's a portion:
The computer games industry has launched an unprecedented assault on illegal downloads, demanding payment from thousands of families who obtained the latest releases over the internet without paying.
Five of the world’s top games developers will serve notice on 25,000 people across the UK, requiring each one to pay £300 immediately to settle out of court. Those who refuse risk being taken to court. The companies will target their initial legal actions on 500 people who ignore the letters.
The companies involved – Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters – make some of the popular games, including The Lord of the Rings, the Colin McRae Rally series and Operation Flashpoint. It is estimated that as many as six million people in Britain share games illegally over the internet. The aggressive action marks a dramatic change in the approach to copyright on the internet. The British music industry, hit hard by illegal file-sharing, has taken action against just 150 people in ten years.
The game makers have appointed the law firm Davenport Lyons. This week Isabela Barwinska, an unemployed mother of two, became the first person in the UK to be ordered to pay damages to a manufacturer. She must pay more than £16,000 to Topware after downloading Dream Pinball through a file-sharing site.
I mean seriously, if you can walk into a store, steal something, then get arrested and convicted of shoplifting, why then can't you be arrested and convicted of stealing IP via an online medium? Theft - regardless of the medium (tangible goods vs IP) and venue (store vs online) is still theft.
Actually it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. I'm honestly surprised at you Derek, would have figured you'd be the last person to trot out the "stealing a tangible good and downloading a copy of something are the same thing" line.
Obviously they MORALLY roughly equivalent, but when the industry is chanting the mantra that one download = one lost sale, it's hard to respect their endeavor. If they cannot enforce their customers honesty, without themselves resorting to lies and skewed statistics, then they don't deserve that honesty in return.
What have lawsuits done for the RIAA? Nothing, except make them universally hated. Music piracy is alive and well.
I guess I'm just not seeing how suing this single unemployed mom is going to help combat piracy. The real pirates are downloading through encrypted connections, TOR, and other secure means. Hell, she probably wouldn't have even purchased the thing to begin with.
The RIAA has proven suing the end user does NOTHING. They must go after the source, it's the only way to beat piracy. Smart end users aren't going to be caught anyway.
I just can't help but laugh everytime some industry talking head blames piracy, and then proceeds to do NOTHING to combat it. They just keep sinking more money into disc-based copy protections that only hold up if your game is garbage and no one wants to bother cracking it.
Do you have a single fact to back that up?
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