Witcher 2 Torrents Could Net You a Fine 724
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Eurogamer:
"Gamers who download upcoming PC exclusive The Witcher 2 illegally could receive a letter demanding they pay a fine or face legal action. If gamers refuse to pay the fine, which will be more than the cost of the game, they could end up in court, developer CD Projekt told Eurogamer. 'Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,' CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiski said. 'In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading it illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, "Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine." We are totally fair, but if you decide you will not buy it legally there is a chance you'll get a letter. We are talking about it right now.' Interestingly, The Witcher 2 will be released free of digital rights management – but only through the CD Projekt-owned digital download shop GOG.com. That means owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers – and it will not requite an internet connection to run."
Re:that's not how copyright law works (Score:5, Informative)
If you're torrenting a game that's sold as a download without DRM, I'm pretty sure you're not a customer.
Just sayin'.
Re:DRM-free means no excuse (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Intended Reaction? (Score:2, Informative)
GOG not the only place to get The Witcher 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Intended Reaction? (Score:3, Informative)
even Marx criticised it as bollocks.... ok he never actually said "bollocks" but that's what he meant..LOL
here is a quote from the wiki [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Farewell, gog.com (Score:3, Informative)
So what's your suggestion, that nobody bother to enforce the law at all?
When it's him breaking it, of course!
None of these people have a consistent, rational, moral argument in favor of piracy. It always boils down to greedy little shits. Hell, I've had plenty of pirated software on computers over the years. Know why? I'm a greedy little shit too. Difference being I'm not afraid to admit it.
(Truth be told, I have FAR less than I did while younger. Just deleted CS5 the other day, figuring I can use Gimp, iPhoto, and Pixelmator.)
Re:Maybe I'm missing the point but... (Score:2, Informative)
Your argument would be plausible *if* there was more possible confusion between what is able to be legally torrented and what is not. However, it would likely be difficult to argue that you didn't realise the game was not being given away for free. If isn't like someone browsed through a store and thought "that looks nice... I think I might get it". The downloader (probably) deliberately went out and searched for the game after hearing about it, so it seems a bit ridiculous to claim that it never occurred to the downloader to check who owns the copyright.
The suing of the people who downloaded it can be argued to be relevant for just this reason. People do get punished for purchasing stolen materials (even unknowingly stolen, such as a car) by having the material taken away. In this case where there is no physical material to remove, what would discourage people from knowingly downloading games that are being illegally given away? Assuming the fines are reasonable (i.e., twice the game price or something, just to make up for the extra trouble the company went to to track down the person), it seems like a worthwhile activity to me.
Re:Intended Reaction? (Score:2, Informative)
The only reason pirates pirate is because they can.
They are blood suckers.
The only way DRM figures into the picture is that making it hard for legitimate customers to enjoy their stuff only pisses them off.
Now, I used to pirate, but I recently got a DMCA notice after torrenting HTTYD. Charter's abuse department then forwarded it to me along with a TOS violation notice. It was 100 percent legit, and the evidence with it had me caught red handed, timestamps and IP address included.
Paramount caught me fair and square, and were even nice enough to tell me "stop it and we'll forget this happened."
Re:Intended Reaction? (Score:1, Informative)
Should I be allowed to go to the patent office, get a patent of something you invented and start producing and selling it?
After all, it doesn't directly hurt you. There is no proof the people buying it from me would have bought it from you. Perhaps they only bought it from me because I was better at marketing.
Piracy of video games hurts everyone. The more people who pirate the game the less the developer makes. The less they make the less likely they are to keep hiring people and produce even more games.
Let's say I made a video game that sold 1 million copies. Now let's say .5 million copies were pirated. Now what if that extra 500,000 would have allowed me to keep the two programmers I'll need to fire because of the economy?
You can't say it doesn't hurt, you can say it only appears not to hurt.
Minecraft is a great game and only about 10 bucks. Because people decided to buy it rather than pirate it he was able to expand and get a team of devs who will hopefully help get the game growing faster. If we all pirated it we would have been left with 1 guy who eventually would see no reason to keep making minecraft.
Re:Leaking (Score:3, Informative)
How about pointing to TFA? The company itself put a version of their software up on a torrent site for people to download from freely. How can they then say said downloads were illegal?
I may have just missed something here, but I've just read both links available and I can't see anything where it says that they have uploaded a version of their software, or created any torrents. Where is it written that they did? I don't mean this as a troll as I may have just overlooked it somehow..Or has that juicy little bit of information been removed from the article since its initial publishing
Just to note, if they did upload/create their own torrents then I completely agree with you. That is them effectively publishing their material in a free manner, although I suppose if you downloaded it and installed it having to go through an EULA, legally dubious I know, then they could claim that you did not agree to their terms. But in those circumstances they wouldn't be able to sue you for just downloading it..