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The Courts Government Entertainment Games News

ESA Praises Sting of Game Software Pirates 50

Posted by Zonk from the yer-goin-down-me-hearties dept.
Next Generation reports on the arrest of 19 software pirates in Chicago. The ESA sent along their congratulations to federal law enforcement officers, who took down the warez dealers as part of a task force titled 'Opereration Site Down'. From the article: "The international piracy warez group known as 'RISCISO' reportedly pirated $6.5 million worth of games, software and movies since it began operations in 1998. The group maintained several servers that contained 23,000 CD ROMs worth of pirated material, according to the ESA."
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ESA Praises Sting of Game Software Pirates More

ESA Praises Sting of Game Software Pirates

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  • The more you tighten your grip... (Score:3, Funny)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:40AM (#14659497)
    The more pirates will slip through your fingers...

    • Re:The more you tighten your grip... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ucahg ( 898110 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:51AM (#14659568)
      I hope not. I hope those who spend time, research, and money into creating new software get paid for their product. You know, kinda like everyone else.

      • I hope those who spend time, research, and money into creating new software get paid for their product. You know, kinda like everyone else.

        But getting money from selling copyrighted data is not like everyone else.

        I get paid by the hour, like most people. Basically, I'm selling some of my time to my employer. If you sell software or music/movies, your salary is not a function the amount work you've done but for the number of people willing to buy the result of that work.

        • Re:The more you tighten your grip... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @10:17AM (#14659786)
          But look at any other industry. The cost of figuring out how to build the car is much of the cost you pay for one. You only have to figure out how to build the first one. Same goes for a lot of other things that require knowledge to build. If you only consider the costs of the production of the product, and not the work that goes into figuring out how to produce it, then everything ends up looking like it should cost much less than it does.
          • Amen to that, brother. My employer will spend $1.5 billion on research and development this year. That's all for new product development and it's typical of the other companies in the same business (a semiconductor manufacturer). So, if we sold one chip, it would be pretty expensive. Since we sell millions, the price drops. But it doesn't drop to next to nothing because, besides the manufacturing costs, the capital costs also have to be recovered. In my industry, R&D is the number one expense.

            -h-
  • Oh, Sting, not String. Now the headline makes more sense. I thought the ESA was praising a series of virtual swashbuckling misadventures.

  • Flying Spaghetti Monster will NOT be pleased (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:48AM (#14659546) Homepage Journal
    In 2000, there were only 17 pirates left.
    Now we are in negative figures just watch as global average temperature become uncontrollable.

    Repent your sins.
    The end of the world is nigh.

    http://www.venganza.org/ [venganza.org]

  • Cannot compute (Score:3, Funny)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:48AM (#14659555)
    Sorry, I can't imagine 23'000 CD-ROM's worth of information, how much is it in the standard Library of Congress format?
  • Here is a real link. [next-gen.biz]

    Wonder - the article seems to suggests these were not terrorists but it isn't clearly addressed.

  • Never heard of the group (Score:5, Interesting)

    by garylian ( 870843 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @10:01AM (#14659645)
    I guess the RISCISO group was website based. I hadn't heard of them. I've seen the ones that use Usenet to distribute to anyone who wants the software.

    Even those Usenet groups are dying down. The last time there was a sting, the volume of posting dropped from about 25 titles a day to about 10 titles a day. About 2 months ago, it dropped again, to about 2-3 titles a day it seems. This is probably why.

    Even without those types of pirates, I think you will be seeing a lot of software stop being pirated. The more titles require on-line play with servers to connect to, the easier for the software companies to make sure there is a digital handshake that would be hard to get around.

    Besides, you see a lot of the software companies releasing games that have major bugs in them, requiring a patch that has to be downloaded. I am suspecting that this is one of their methods to defeat the ISO type pirates. Sure, someone can download their game. However, it is basically a free demo that will crap out on you about 5 hours into gameplay due to a major bug. In order to fix said bug, you have to download the patch, which re-installs whatever copy protection the ISO type pirates removed. A simple process, but effective.

    Secure-ROM 7 apparently also seeks out such programs as Daemon Tools and refuses to let the application run if it is installed. Even people using stuff like Blind Write and other tools that try to hide applications like Daemon Tools are failing to mask their usage.

    Personally, I am kind of tired of the pirated software stuff. The software companies are going to harder and harder methods of protection, and it can and does catch paying customers in their path.

    I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again. I had used Daemon Tools to hold an image of the original CD 1, so I didn't have to swap so much. (I'm an admitted game junkie, and I'm tired of swappings CDs when I want to play Half-Life 2, as opposed to Sacred, as opposed to NWN, etc.) A HD crash more than a year later wiped the CD image out. When I went to re-install, there was a new patch to put in, so I installed it when I loaded the game again. The problem is, they added new protection in the latest patch, and said protection told me that my original game CD was not valid. Calls to Atari were a joke. They refused to fix it because when they asked for a diagnostic to be run, it identified that Daemon Tools was found in the registry. Even uninstalling it, they refused to help. I offered to mail them the original game box first, and they could return me a new box with new CDs. No dice.

    Many game companies are offering free demos of products available to download from places like fileplanet. So, there is no need to pull a full cd image from some place that is going to require a patch that will re-enforce the pirate's efforts, anyways. But, people that buy the games can suffer, and find their software is ruined years later by a patch the are supposed to need.

    Personally, I think half of the patches for Blizzard's Diablo II: Lord of Destruction that have been done over the years is to reinforce copy protection.
    • I remember seeing that name tied to things I had downloaded in the past. I can't recall what they were as I generally don't use anything but OSS any more. I don't use OSS because it's 'free.' I used to get all my software for free anyway. I use it because I trust it, and asside from a few VERY time-wasting games (I bought an XBOX for that purpose) there's nothing I can't do well enough under GNU/Linux and the host of free software out there. In short, I stopped using that stuff because I no longer need
    • I doubt that piracy will stop at all, it's just moving onto different areas. I seriously think that these anti-piracy measures actually reduce sales by putting all sorts of crap in your way just to play a game that you bought! When it's not only easier to download a game off bit-torrent or whatever but you actually get a better product when doing so, something's seriously fucked up.
      • I doubt that piracy will stop at all, it's just moving onto different areas. I seriously think that these anti-piracy measures actually reduce sales by putting all sorts of crap in your way just to play a game that you bought! When it's not only easier to download a game off bit-torrent or whatever but you actually get a better product when doing so, something's seriously fucked up.

        I totally agree. When I tried to run Doom 3 for the first time it had the nerve to tell me it wouldn't run due to my cd emulat
    • when I want to play Half-Life 2

      For Half-Life 2 if you registered your CD with a steam account you don't need the CD check. Just uninstall the game. Redownload using Steam. I bought all my Valve games with the CD but I never have to whip out the CDs anymore. Totally love Steam. I hope more companies do something similar.
    • The original Deus Ex had an excelent workaround. Even with the patches, you could play the game without the CD, thus, with a burned copy. One of the game's .sys folders contained a line that looked for the CD in D:. Well, that was the default and you could easily change that to the folder on your HDD that contained all the game files, seeing as it copied the CD onto the drive for its install.

      Oh, and no, I didn't pirate the game. I got a copy from my brother whose computer couldn't run it properly (he h

    • Re:Never heard of the group (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @12:23PM (#14660768) Homepage Journal
      I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". When I went to re-install, there was a new patch to put in, so I installed it when I loaded the game again. The problem is, they added new protection in the latest patch, and said protection told me that my original game CD was not valid.

      If you think that's bad, you should have seen Homeworld: Cataclysm [wikipedia.org]. It came with a "Copy Protection" scheme that did the following: If there's a CD-Writer installed on the system, don't run the game. Do not print a useful error message.

      I had to call up support (I *hate* calling support) to find out what the problem was. The only way to play the game is to replace your CDRW drive with a CDROM (!) or download an unofficial crack to "fix" the issue.

      I don't know what Sierra/Barking Dog Studios was thinking, but it couldn't have been a very complex thought. Nearly every system released on the market has a CD Burner installed! The return rates on the game must have been incredible!

      Corporate stupidity. Bah, humbug.
      • That's really odd...all of my computers have CD-RW drives on them and neither Homeworld nor Homeworld Cataclysm ever complained about them. In fact, I never had any issues at all. I have the original disks for both as well (gotten from the bargain bin when they went cheap), not cracks. I never had to crack either.
        • It is possible that in later creations of the CDs, they fixed that.

          Most of the time, when a game has been out long enough to hit the bargain bin, it is no longer version 1.0. It is 1.3 or something. So, there are no patches, and if the patch fixed the problem, viola.

          I'm not saying that IS the reason, but it is possible.
    • Conversely, the current Doom 3 patch removes the CD checks, rather than adding new ones. Which is a complete Godsend, as I seem to have lost my Disc 1 (probably by sticking it somewhere random when I had to eject it in order to put something else in the DVD drive). I've still got my discs 2 and 3, but of course that doesn't help very much.
    • I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again.

      You do always have the choice of taken them to small claims court for deceptive marketing practices. Since they sell globally and have a 1-800 number they have to come to your city/town/whatever's courthouse to defend themselves. When they don't - you can place a lien on their business. This stops them from getting any new loans from a bank until the lien

  • makes me wonder.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tont0r ( 868535 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @10:02AM (#14659656)
    if they will notice that despite all these piracy busts they do, their profits still remain the same.
    • As soon as they bust one group, another fills its vacancy. It's like busting drug cartels... the only way to get rid of them is to attack the root of the problem, not the symptom. You want less piracy? Make games less costly to purchase, and easier to do so on a whim (impulse buying is what is saving music right now, via iTunes).

  • This ESA = Entertainment Software Association (Score:5, Informative)

    by TorKlingberg ( 599697 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @10:26AM (#14659843)
    This ESA is probably Entertainment Software Association [wikipedia.org].
    Strange that the articles doesn't say, as most of us probably think of ESA as European Space Agency [wikipedia.org]
  • This is actually a follow-up to a previous article [slashdot.org].
  • Your tax money pays for this crap.
  • Only they only pirated $6.5 million since 1998? Pansies... My nieces have probably pirated more than that and they're all under 12.

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:55PM (#14662485) Homepage Journal
    Some company(anything like the BSA?) is praising cops busting people.

    This reminds me of(in Clerks) when Randall kicked out some customer out of the video store and Jay goes "YEAH!@#". Ie he contributed absolutely nothing. Rhetorical!

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