Game Makers Accusing Innocent People of Piracy In the UK 190
eldavojohn writes "It's a topic that a lot of game makers like Atari don't want the public hearing: game makers wrongfully accusing clearly innocent people of piracy. From the article, 'According to Michael Coyle, an intellectual property solicitor with law firm Lawdit, more and more people are being wrongly identified as file-sharers. He is pursuing 70 cases of people who claim to be wrongly accused of piracy and has spoken to hundreds of others, he told the BBC.' If only a few are coming forward after receiving extortion letters ('Pay £500 OR ELSE!'), what's the actual number of those out there being wrongfully accused?"
Lawyers smelt money. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers figured out this is a way to print money. Why am I not surprised?
Its cheaper to pay them off than hire a lawyer and defend yourself. Many have no other choice.
Send out letters, receive money. Such a deal. Par for the course for for lawyers.
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That's called upping the efficiency... of course they'd earn more if people hired them to defend them in court, but that would be actual WORK.
I'm just surprised they haven't switched to emails with Paypal links in them.
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Re:Lawyers smelt money. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a law firm and I assure you this stuff is small fry for lawyers
Yes a one off would be small fry, but by the hundred or thousand it is good easy money. Get a senior partner to write a sufficiently blood curdling letter and then a junior legal secretary cut and pastes in the case by case name, address, etc. If there is any correspondence this is paid for by either the ''infringing'' punter or by the game maker.
Whichever way you look at it the legal parasites make money.
Re:Lawyers smelt money. (Score:5, Interesting)
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The parent is correct, just do the maths:
Demand £500 per letter.
1 letter costs 50p to print, put in envelope and post.
Thus, if more than 1 in 1000 people pays up, profit.
I'm surprised con artists are not already doing this from home, instead of the usual "you may already have won" rubbish.
The basic problem is that there is almost no cost involved in accusing someone of a civil offence and demanding payment on threat of legal action. If such letters carried a legal requirement to pay the recipient
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I'm not surprised, personally. If a conman gets caught and prosecuted for normal schemes like that, there is some consequence, but if the conman tries to impersonate a legal representative of a company like Atari, you start getting into defamation (your "representation" of Atari), extortion and practicing law without a license. I'm sure there are more things to pin on this person, too. Most conmen aren't quite *that* stupid.
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I'd love to see your independent research on the stupidity metrics of conmen.
Yes, there are a few clever bastards out there. Most of them are 2-bit morons who can't even spellcheck their shit.
Re:Lawyers smelt money. (Score:5, Funny)
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Sue me. I have deep pockets. I would LOVE to take-on these frakkers in court.
The thing I don't understand, if these people were innocent, why would they pay the $500 the letter requested??? I certainly wouldn't.
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The thing I don't understand, if these people were innocent, why would they pay the $500 the letter requested??? I certainly wouldn't.
"Anything for a quiet life."
Seriously, hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
Many people here have the attitude that the system is stacked up against them and that their chances of winning are so remote that it's better to pay the £500 to make these people go away than to risk losing 10 times that fighting a court battle.
Also, most of these people are
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The BCLU. (British Civil Liberties Union).
>>>"Anything for a quiet life."
I'd rather send back a letter with a one-word response: "NO." And then go to court if they drag me there. I think it would be fun. (By the way I made a mistake. The fine is approximately US$1000, not 500.)
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Because paying $500 is much, much cheaper than getting a lawyer and going to court?
The problem is that defending yourself costs money, wether you are innocent or guilty. This is a flaw of the legal system.
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That would be a $1000 not $500.. Yes that would be cheaper to get a lawyer, but not by much. I currently have a legal firm here in the UK wanting me to give them $500 to look through their files in deep storage to find out who owns certain IP assets. I think that kind of thing is nonsense, I bet they have the files I want on their desk, waiting for the money to come in.
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while you have deep pockets and probably more than half a clue as to how to produce a meaningful defense, your in a minority.
The costs of defending yourself against the charges made, engaging a solicitor, an expert witness, forensic examination of your computer systems, (which could only demonstrates the systems presented were not used, if you accept you can prove a negative). Loss of your PC hardware while defending the case, the loss of private data, unrelated to the case but stored on the pc systems, all
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Individully yes but in this case, the lawyers (Davenport Lyons) have made quite a reputation for sending out tens of thousands of such letters for different clients and also using less than accurate data as a basis.
It's a fairly safe bet that if you read about some individual in the UK getting a 'Pay us lots of money or we'll crush you' letter, it came from them.
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It may be small fry, but a lawyer would get to bill the client and collect a part of those "settlements." It might not be terribly lucrative for a major law firm that's involved in 6- or 7-figure settlements and payouts, but it's still easy money for smaller private practices with smaller clients.
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(1) It shall be an offence for any person who, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, makes any unwarranted demand with menaces. (2) For the purposes of this sectionâ" ( a ) a demand with menaces shall be unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the beliefâ" (i) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand, and (ii) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand; ( b ) the nature of the act or omission demanded shall be immaterial and it shall also be immaterial whether or not the menaces relate to action to be taken by the person making the demand. (3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liableâ" ( a ) on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £1,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both, ( b ) on conviction on indictment to a fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years or to both.
So thats a few years jail and a big fine for the offender. I *wish* i get one of these letters....
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If you were right in practise, then the jails would be full of prosecution lawyers, who lost cases. Generally even where someone is wrongly convicted they might get compensation but how often do the people who sometimes withheld evidence face any kind of punishment?
Anyone who reads slashdot regularly will be familiar with Jack Thompson's attempts to get debarred and how hard he had to work to achieve it.
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If there's one thing that the UK is good for it's following the law to the letter, crossing all t's and dotting all i's.
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Send out letters, receive money. Such a deal. Par for the course for for spammers
Interesting similarity, wouldn't you say?
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It sounds like you're accusing lawyers of randomly picking names from a phone book and extorting money from them.
I'd say it is much more likely that this is due to the ISPs who either aren't competent enough to match an IP address, at a given point in time, to the correct physical address, or who simply don't care enough to get it right.
The UK (Score:3, Funny)
Proudly trying to match or outdo the US in hostility towards own citizens, since 2001.
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I am truly no fan of the US' politics and haven't been for, err, about eight years, but in my opinion, the UK has let the US cough on their dust, they're so far ahead in this.
Seriously, they just need a curfew and they'll be 95% done with getting to what we've seen in V for Vendetta. At this very moment, I'm actually less inhibited against traveling to the US than I am against traveling to the UK.
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Re:The UK (Score:5, Interesting)
As disgusting as I find that (and saying that as someone who is regularly disturbed at night be drunk teenagers), it still doesn't equal a nationwide curfew for everyone.
A curfew for kids is actually taking the parents rights away to decide whether their kids are mature enough to be out past 10 pm. So it does go in a similar direction. Still, it's a far cry from a curfew for all adults.
Re:The UK (Score:5, Insightful)
First, it's for teenagers. Then it's for sex offenders. Then it's for convicted felons. Then you need to carry your identification papers with you at night to prove you're not one of them. Then being seen far from your house at night is grounds for arrest due to reasonable suspicion that you're up to no good. Then far means anywhere outside your front door.
Sometimes, the slope really is slippery.
Re:The UK (Score:5, Funny)
Duh, teenagers are sex offenders by default!
Pedophilia, underage sexual abuse, child porn. And that's before they get out of bed in the morning!
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And that's before they get out of bed in the morning!
That's dumb on their part--it's great fun fucking minors around the clock, outside bed, and especially outdoors. I should know ;)
(gf at the time, all above board)
Re:The UK (Score:5, Funny)
You'd be amazed how many 14-year-old boys find underage girls attractive.
Re:The UK (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should all minors suffer just because some are idiots? If some are doing something illegal, you can give them a selective curfew, if not, then they should be allowed to go out whenever they wish.
You know you are getting old when your instinct is to argue with that. And then I remember how much fun I had as a highschooler after midnight and then I side with the kids--and then I *really* think about how much fun I had as a kid after midnight and then I realize that there is no way they need to be out that late.
Re:The UK (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also no way that I need to decide which doctor I want to see... beside me liking having a choice.
There is also no way that I need to decide what clothes I want to wear. Someone else could do it for me and I still wouldn't suffer cold or make a fool of myself by walking around in the nude.
The fact that someone LIKES to do something should be enough of a point not have a discussion about who needs to do what. As long as a person, no matter the age, does not influence someone else's life overly negatively, they should be allowed to do whatever they please.
Since we are talking about kids that don't have the same kind of responsibility and rights as adults do, their guardians should be the ones to set the rules. Not the state.
Re:The UK (Score:5, Informative)
There is also no way that I need to decide which doctor I want to see... beside me liking having a choice.
In case you are under the impression that you can only see your 'assigned' doctor in the UK, this is not the case. You can ask to see another doctor when you book an appointment (either a specific doctor, or any male/female doctor). You don't need to give a reason.
Since we are talking about kids that don't have the same kind of responsibility and rights as adults do, their guardians should be the ones to set the rules. Not the state.
A agree entirely, and I'm amazed that California of all places has a curfew for teenagers. The nearest we have to that in the UK is an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order), which forbids individual petty criminals from certain acts -- for instance, banning them from a public place they vandalised, or imposing a curfew. You need to be arrested, taken to court and found guilty to get one though. It's meant to be better than sending people to prison etc.
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"California" doesn't. A very small collection of whacko towns in California do.
There is also no way that I need to decide which doctor I want to see... beside me liking having a choice.
In case you are under the impression that you can only see your 'assigned' doctor in the UK, this is not the case. You can ask to see another doctor when you book an appointment (either a specific doctor, or any male/female doctor). You don't need to give a reason.
Since we are talking about kids that don't have the same kind of responsibility and rights as adults do, their guardians should be the ones to set the rules. Not the state.
A agree entirely, and I'm amazed that California of all places has a curfew for teenagers. The nearest we have to that in the UK is an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order), which forbids individual petty criminals from certain acts -- for instance, banning them from a public place they vandalised, or imposing a curfew. You need to be arrested, taken to court and found guilty to get one though. It's meant to be better than sending people to prison etc.
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A agree entirely, and I'm amazed that California of all places has a curfew for teenagers. The nearest we have to that in the UK is an ASBO
No, there have been 'experimental' Children's curfews in the UK.
Reference:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7603517.stm [bbc.co.uk]
That says "voluntary curfew", but isn't clear what that means.
Probably something to do with this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4699095.stm [bbc.co.uk]
"A 15-year-old boy has won a landmark High Court challenge to the legality of child curfew zones used to tackle anti-social behaviour."
As I get older... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know you are getting old when your instinct is to argue with that.
Actually, the older I get, the more strongly I believe in opposing measures like that [the curfew].
Whether or not any one person enjoys or otherwise benefits from something is not the point, and must never be allowed to become the point. The important thing is that everyone should be free, by default, to do absolutely anything they like. Restrictions should only ever be imposed by law on behaviour that is actually harmful in some way, and any restrictions that are imposed should only ever be proportionate to the harm that would be done.
This is probably the important principle of any fair justice system, because without it, governments are free to set arbitrary laws for their own political (or worse) purposes. This leads to blanket laws, such as (to pick some common, controversial examples): speed limits and banning mobile phones while driving, instead of prosecuting dangerous or inconsiderate driving; trying to ban whole electronic communications networks, rather than either going after people who abuse those networks to infringe copyright or mandating restrictions on the networks that are reasonable and consistent with prohibiting just the illegal behaviour; or, as in this case, restricting the freedoms of a whole group of people on account of the unacceptable behaviour of a small minority (which is effectively guilt by association).
In each of those cases, the law probably does do some good, in the sense that it does inhibit harmful behaviour by some people. The problem is the collateral damage: the law also catches people whose behaviour would not have been harmful and punishes them anyway, which is unjust. Of course, it's easier to impose blanket laws, both for enforcement (increasingly mechanically; whatever happened to "man shall not be judged by machine"?) and for scoring political points ("Speed kills! Look, we imposed a new low limit to make the road safer outside your home, so now your kids don't have to stop, look and listen before they cross").
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But curfew is to put the cart before the donkey. If your problem is that kids are out doing crazy stuff because their parents are not able to handle the kids the way they need to, then you need to either give them the means to change that situation (e.g. chance the economy in such a way that they have both the time and resources to parent their kids) or make sure they just don't have kids.
I don't understand when this belief manifested that anyone was entitled to ruining a child's life.
Re:The UK (Score:5, Informative)
Most places have a curfew in the code for minors that is selectively enforced(if the kid looks like hes up to trouble). We have one in Frederick MD and most people don't know about it.
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It's the same in Chicago suburbs. All the areas around here have curfews for kids. They're just not enforced unless it's clear that someone is, as you said, up to no good.
I suppose my problem with it is not that kids are out, unsupervised, late at night. I dislike the idea of having laws that are selectively enforced. I simply don't have any faith in the discretion of law enforcement.
If we have a law, enforce it. If people have a problem with it, it will be refined or repealed. The wishy-washy stuff ju
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I guess the point I am trying to make is it is better to have cops you trust to make the right decisions (and yes, there will always be a few bad apples) than to hire any dimwit and have a long and strict code of rule enforcemen
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I remember the Frederick, MD curfew from when I was in high school. Usually unenforced. But occasionally the cops would get bored or something, and they'd sit around outside the fast food places at closing time. Employee closes store, gets out to go to his car, gets busted, and spends the night in jail if his parents don't pick him up. Never happened to me but did happen to people I knew. Yeah, that's a real useful law.
Curfews have a mixed
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My town, and most others in California, has a curfew for minors, 10:00pm.
Let me say that in another way: citizens of the USA are being denied their constitutional right and their human right to peacefully assemble.
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Reminds me of The Pedestrian [wikipedia.org] by Ray Bradbury.
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Ah, I see your problem... you don't understand likenesses.
I can't remember one instance where I have stated that V for Vendetta was actually meant to show us where the British were headed. What the movie did was show as a totalitarian state where the people was downtrodden in the name of security. Where personal rights were stripped away and law enforcement was on a power-high. The fact that the chosen country was British does NOT matter AT ALL.
The irony lies in the fact that the country that has been, poss
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Irony, dude. Look it up.
What has metallurgy got to do with politics ?
Re:The UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Crazy isn't it. It's like they've looked at the RIAA, seen the public attitude toward them and said "Yes! We want a slice of that animosity and hatred!"
Stuff like this is why I've largely stopped buying anything from mainstream publishers. I refuse to enable their greed and avarice anymore.
Support the independent game developers!
Re:The UK (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The UK (Score:5, Interesting)
The situation with regard to music licensing is insane in the UK. The pub near my mother got fined about a year ago because they had the cheapest kind of live music license, which only allowed solo or duet performers. One evening, there was someone in the audience who knew the performers and was invited to join in for a few songs. When the pictures hit the press, someone from the council saw them, checked the license allowed it, and fined them.
A friend from my salsa class recently opened a cafe and wants to have dance evenings occasionally. She can't yet though, because the total for all of the licenses she needs (apparently you need a license to let people dance in your cafe - WTF?) comes to around £3000 and she's unlikely to make that much extra profit from them. Some of the license money goes to the copyright cartels, some to the councils. Unfortunately no one is standing for council election on a platform of encouraging small businesses by reducing license costs, yet people wonder why the city centre is gradually losing all of the small businesses to massive chains.
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I'm a member of the Federation of Small Businesses, and there have been rumblings going in the direction of allowing "micro-businesses" (less than 10 employees or some such figure) relief or exemption from these extortions.
If I weren't so busy I'd be rather active in this area as it is massively obstructive and unnecessary
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Please be careful in the descriptions you give here. There are (at least, to my knowledge) two kinds of permission you would need to run the sorts of businesses you're talking about in the UK. There are the copyright-related ones (typically handled via blanket licensing through PPL and/or PRS) and the local ones like planning permission and public entertainment licensing (typically handled by your local council).
As someone with extensive experience running a very large local dance club, I know that neither
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Unfortunately no one is standing for council election on a platform of encouraging small businesses by reducing license costs, yet people wonder why the city centre is gradually losing all of the small businesses to massive chains.
Most people seem to lack fundamental understanding of cause and effect when it comes to politics. Or they see the direct effect, and can't think of the indirect effect. For example, take taxes:
Tax breaks = Yay, more money! ...except less tax income = more crappy public services = paying more for private services. So let's solve that with ...except less profits/investments = less jobs/lower salaries = Less income. So let's solve that with
Tax increase for companies/rich = Yay, Robin Hood!
More public jobs = Y
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Hrm. Where I work we pay a (larger) fee for our satellite TV service, which has XM radio on it, so that we're allowed to pipe it into our in-house audio & video.
I'm pretty sure we haven't had to pay anyone besides DirectTV for the privilege.
Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
They have been accusing innocent people of copyright infringement for years. Although this was limited to just their customers and potential customers. Of course when sales drop you have to expand your target audience.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
But... They include copy protection on their games, and continue to make it more and more aggressive.
How is this software piracy of which they speak even possible? I mean they wouldn't include the protection and ruin gaming for their legitimate customers if it didn't work... Would they?
*quietly waits for the sarcasm tag to be added to the html standard*
What a racket the copy protection business is. What other industry could thrive so much on failure?
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
What other industry could thrive so much on failure?
Weather forecasting
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What other industry could thrive so much on failure?
Weather forecasting
The entire healthcare system - who do you know that lives forever?
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>>>The entire healthcare system - who do you know that lives forever?
Which is why government-run hospitals don't make sense. There's no limit to how much a government could spend on a single patient (new heart, new lungs, life-sustaining machines, biotic limbs), and yet even if the government spent a Trillion dollars per patient, ultimately they will all die.
The entire goal of the system (stop death) is unobtainable, and the governments will bankrupt themselves trying.
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What other industry could thrive so much on failure?
Weather forecasting
The Bush Administration.
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While I hate DRM, there is a valid line of logic that the harder you make something to share, the less people will share. If someone could just lend a friend a disc for a few hours and they could have a full copy of a game, infringement might be even more widespread. Even still, I'm just playing the devil's advocate.
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Oh yeah???
Well stardock has no DRM: zero for its Games.
I bought SoSE primarily to support stardock (i don't play it, but that's another matter).
They care a sh1t if i share my keys with my friend or my brat brother.
Which is exactly why my brother also bought a copy: he says the stardock game is "cool" to buy and he hates sharing the key with anyone else.
or take WarCraft for instance. I can install the game client on any machine anywhere any number of times. Warcraft makers don't care. Thier model is to make
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If someone could just lend a friend a disc for a few hours and they could have a full copy of a game, infringement might be even more widespread.
Wait... since when is lending my disc to a friend considered copyright infringement? Where did I make a copy?
This sounds like a good cue to post a link to RMS' essay "The Right to Read":
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html [gnu.org]
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Wait... since when is lending my disc to a friend considered copyright infringement? Where did I make a copy?
To your PC's hard drive.
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HTML is extensible, you just use the damn tag and if somebody cares he will implement a browser capable of displaying it :)
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
"...more and more people are being wrongly identified as file-sharers..."
Copyright infringement is not theft, is not "piracy", and file-sharing is not automatically copyright infringement
Were they pirates - no
Were they stealing - no
were they infringing copyright - no
were they sharing files - no
were they using P2P technology (yes it is built into the game)
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Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
You certainly aren't a lawyer. "Only the CPS can prosecute anyone"? WTF? That's the most retarded statement I've ever heard in my life. The CPS prosecutes on behalf of the state. Anyone else can privately prosecute. You can also be sued. Back to IANAL 101 for you.
-10 points for accusing the BBC of "misinformation" when you're talking total shit yourself and the BBC are accurate. And -5 for everyone who modded you up.
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If that is the most retarded statement you've ever heard in your life you need to get out more.
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Copyright infringement is generally not a crime. It is a civil matter, in other words between the copyright holder (Atari) and the alleged infringer. Atari can sue for damages as outlined in the law, but it's not a criminal matter so there will be no criminal record or jail. The police will not investigate or prosecute it either.
The exception is large scale infringement for commercial gain. That can go down as far as the guy selling pirate DVDs at a car boot sale, but not someone just using P2P.
So far, ther
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Copyright infringement is not theft, is not "piracy", and file-sharing is not automatically copyright infringement
The term "piracy" has been used to refer to this sort of behaviour since centuries before computers were invented. Instead of spending your time writing incorrect comments on Slashdot, may I recommend consulting an etymological dictionary and learning something?
When did content makers get this stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Shared methodology of most content makers lately:
Old plan: Compete and make a better game. Get people to part with their money on the basis that your content is best. Convince them your game will improve their life.
New plan: Produce garbage no one wants. Restrict it so much it's unusuable. Treat your customers like criminals when they don't buy. Sue people almost indiscriminately (on the flimsiest evidence) to make up for short fall.
What the fuck happened? It feels like I'm in the twilight zone!
Err...right... (Score:3, Interesting)
And this amount of "70 cases" is relevant how, seeing that of course, the world only consisting of honest citizens, everybody rightfully accused of filesharing copyrighted content, would immediately admit to it?
I'm getting damn sick of this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm getting damn sick of this (Score:5, Interesting)
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The real question si not to know if you're right, it is to decide if you are ready to spend 10 years of your short life and risk your marriage and home for that.
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The real question si not to know if you're right, it is to decide if you are ready to spend 10 years of your short life and risk your marriage and home for that.
Yes, there is that risk. On the other hand if I try to live under a rock and not stand up for what I believe in, then it'd be a pretty boring life IMO. So, yes, I would risk it because the alternative (depending on your view) is being a prisoner anyway. Life is short, I agree. If you choose to live the "safe" life and you're happy, then great. I choose to defend my beliefs. The "cost" will definately involve losing something. The point is that whatever path you take you will lose something... it's a matter
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Stop buying games, then. Not just *buying* them, but playing them too. Or make your purchases much more carefully. I did this years ago and haven't bought a PC game in that time, unless it was a non-DRM thing off a budget label. The only game I play online is Counterstrike, because I have at least four legitimate copies of the original CD version at home, all of which entitle me to a Steam account with that game. I last loaded Steam about a year ago. Someone bought me FarCry for Christmas - I haven't
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Stop buying games, then. Not just *buying* them, but playing them too. Or make your purchases much more carefully. I did this years ago and haven't bought a PC game in that time, unless it was a non-DRM thing off a budget label.
You're wasting your time. If instead of playing games you were to spend the time writing free software, the world would be a better place and you'd feel good about yourself more.
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That's got to be the *oddest* troll I've ever had.
But, hey, it's my time. I'll "waste" it if I want to. Or I might just be coding free / Open Source software at the same time as playing. God, wouldn't *that* be ironic? Or maybe I spend my day helping out poor schools with their IT and teaching kids that free software exists and how to use it? Or *maybe*, just *maybe*, between myself and my brother alone we've run dozens of various youth clubs, both work/teach in schools, have taken pretty much all the I
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You're wasting your time. If instead of playing games you were to spend the time writing free software, the world would be a better place and you'd feel good about yourself more.
Troll much?
But without playing games, how would we be able to document how they work [tetrisconcept.com] in order to write free games implementing the same rules [pineight.com]?
Dumping games for use with emulators? (Score:2)
There are computers I've built for them loaded up with emulators for all their old consoles, freeware, and flash games.
How do they dump their authentic Game Paks so that they can use them with emulators for old cartridge-based consoles? What brand of, say, NES dumper do you recommend?
But even the (unskippable) cutscenes in Mario Galaxy which I played for the first time this week were so annoying because when I play, I just want to play.
In the case of Super Mario Galaxy, it isn't really a cut scene; it's a loading screen that's rawther tastefully done. Would you rather stare at a black screen? Or would you rather have all the meshes and textures in the game at N64 resolution so that they look like droppings on even a basic HDTV?
I'm quite happy to wait until everyone in the world has played New Cool Game X and sells it off cheap
Is this the case even when the publisher turns of
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Think this comic sums it up nicely: http://xkcd.com/488/
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For the truly lazy people out there, here is the same thing but clickable [xkcd.com]
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No body cares that you do the right thing. At least not the people who are taking your money.
I used to buy DVDs and CDs but gave that up because I found better service elsewhere. Looks like I may soon have to do the same for video games. Shame really I do miss those little disc things sometimes.
Not about piracy, about resale rights (Score:3, Interesting)
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I'll sue ya! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gonna sue because someone else used my IP address of 127.0.0.1 in their anti-piracy logs.
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Hey, that's the address of the Elite Warez Network.
Why NOT ? (Score:5, Interesting)
What, precisely, is the downside for ATARI's troll? Yes, they could have to pay [taxed/controlled] defense legal costs. But the defendant would have to put up all the money first, then try to recover the judge's award included in the verdict.
Please tell me again, what is the downside? Judges may well fume. But they can do nothing. The letters are not extortion, but an "offer to settle" that might even be excluded from evidence as such!
The UK legal system mostly works because of self restraint. And poorly when that fails. Sometimes you can find a barrister who doesn't mind egg on his face. Solicters live there.
Path of Least Resistance (Score:2)
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Righteous Inquisition Army of America
I was always partial to "Reveling In American Aristocracy" myself.
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There seems to be so much shit going on with the Internet these days that I am seriously going to get rid of it when I finish university!!!
<cluckin' bell chick>Goodbyyyyeee!</cluckin' bell chick>
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I've tried to quit the Internet but I get the shakes, vomit, and that's okay after a few days but then I see someone using a computer and, sure enough, pretty soon I'm in a back alley stealing women's purses for wifi access. It is a terrible cycle.
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enormous number of Joe Six-Packs who perceive it as their god-given right to committ theft via Lime Wire
It's not theft. Period. End of argument, by the way. If you want to call it theft, you are wrong, and the discussions needs to halt right there until you can start using words correctly. And no, that doesn't mean I approve. And no, that doesn't mean it's not wrong. But it's not theft, and we can't have a cogent argument when we're using false, and incidentally biased, terms.
Are they the companies that voluntarily provide products and services that you can choose to purchase or not
You need to check in on your definition of voluntary.