Slashdot Mirror
London Lawyers Demand £600 For One Game
Barence writes "A PC Pro reader has received a demand for a £600 out-of-court settlement from lawyers claiming to have forensic evidence that he illegally downloaded a PC game on BitTorrent. The law firm, Davenport Lyons, is acting on the behalf of German games distributor Zuxxez, creator of the game in question, Two Worlds. The PC Pro reader was given no prior warning to stop file sharing, unlike the usual 'three strikes and you're out' approach adopted by the music industry. The reader says, 'To add insult to injury it [Davenport Lyons] didn't pay enough postage on the letter and I had to collect it from the sorting office at a cost of £1.30. This also used up most of the two weeks that it allowed for a response.'"
Zuxxez wants 600 quid for TWO WORLDS!? They should be paying US to play that piece of shit! Not only was that game completely unplayable, it was buggy as shit as well!
They whined that it was improperly compared to Oblivion. If it wasn't for those comparisons, no one would have even cared about their piece of shit game in the first place. So since they care more about punishing the few people that download the game (or not; we don't know what these "forensics" are) a lot more than making a game that doesn't suck, they can fuck off.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
I have moderator points, but there's no option for 'wrong'.
The current exchange rate is almost US$2 per 1 british pound. At the current exchange rate, it'd be $1158.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
At today's exchange rates, £600 is about $1,173.15. How old are your figures?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
agreed...even after getting through the initial buggy-ness, this game was about as much fun/playable as masturbating with a cheese-grater...I quit after a very short period of gametime.
Everything I've read about both Davenport Lyons and Zuxxez makes them look pretty shady since they are using MAFIAA tactics to extort money from people, many of whom are innocent but their guilty until proven innocent outlook doesn't help. They went after 500 people last year for that stupid pinball game, and even went so far as to ask people for details/documentation about their computers and routers, all outside of court mind you, so it's another story of IP renegades run amuck.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I would ask them for their forensic evidence it was you that downloaded the game. I would also request your ISP for the information that they provided to the company against the Data Protection Act and politely inform them that if they did provide this information then they would be next in line for divulging your personal details. I would request from the lawyers copies of all the details provided by your ISP. I would also be informing them that their collection and use of your personal details without your approval will be met by even more stringent regulations under British law. I would also contact the Citizen's Advice Bureau to discuss with them how you should proceed and for them to put you in touch with a lawyer/association. At the brunt of this, you have to pay for your ISP to have provided the information. This means that your ISP charged for providing them the information, ergo they sold the information to a third-party. I would have their necks if my ISP did this. Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
You're wrong. Gamestop and Blockbuster would have been sued into oblivion if it was. You'll notice that their shelves are stocked full of used games, and Blockbuster sells off 90% of their used movies after they pass out of "new release" status (afterall they may need 150 copies of a hot movie the week it's released, but then a year later they can make due with 2 or 3 copies). Most pawn shops are full of used movies/games/cd's too.
As to the "AA's", evil as they are, I've not heard them challenge reselling of media like this before. I think Sony has grumbled before bout people reselling games, but that's about it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
True, based on current exchange rates, £600 = US$1,168. No wait, $1,173...uh, $1,195. Whoops - now $1,225.
But for a Londonder, £600 today is basically the same as £600 two months ago, or from now. £600 hasn't 'gone up' for THEM, only for people wanting to use US$ to pay that £600.
This illustrates Purchasing Power Parity, a concept that is similar to foreign currency exchange, but that looks at the long-term relative purchasing power of a currency.
Not "how many Pounds Sterling can I buy with 1 UD$", but "how many units of ProductX can I buy with 1% of local per capita annual GDP." Theory says that goods should have identical relative prices in every market, or else there are arbitrage opportunities that people will take advantage of until the prices in all markets are the same (after accounting for transport, etc.)
What happens, however, is that identical goods are NOT priced at the same relative level after currency conversion, because a lot of short-term change in the ForEx markets is due to market movements, not underlying fundamental changes in purchasing power.
The Economist magazine publishes the 'Big Mac Index', which humorously uses the Big Mac as the good to compare relative purchasing power around the world.
So a Big Mac costs 4GBP in London, and based on the exchange rate, it looks like it costs US$8.00. But it really doesn't, because Londoners aren't paying US$, but with GBP, and the Big Mac costs the same to them that it did a year ago, even though a year ago exchange rates would have said the Big Mac costs $6.50.
Did the price of a Big Mac go up? The price of a Big Mac in the U.K. didn't go up for a Londoner, but did for a U.S. visitor. The price of a Big Mac in the U.S. didn't go up for a Floridian, but fell for a U.K. visitor. But in each case, the cost in the local currency was and is 1/10,000th of per capita income. That is purchasing power parity, and shows that shows changes in exchange rates are not the same thing as changes in relative purchasing power. On a PPP basis, U.S-U.K. currencies haven't moved against each other even close to the amount suggested by market currency exchange rates.
Reading the details of the homeless case shows that they tried (inadequately and improperly) to serve him when he was homeless; but that the alleged infringement occurred while he was living at the address they tried to use to contact him.
That's a bad analogy, because if you took a Ferrari then the previous owner wouldn't have it anymore. Now, if you could replicate the Ferrari a la Star Trek, the situation would be entirely different, and the ethics of it would be much less clear-cut.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What about selling them the domains now? if you don't plan to keep them, you might get something from these jerks for wasting your time. You might ask your lawyers about that.
;)
Of course, if you just let them expire, chances are they'll be snapped up by some squatter, and then they'll never get 'em
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 1, Clause 8:
Note the bold part. That's the thing that Congress is given authorization to do: "promote progress." Not to compensate creators for their effort due to some kind of moral obligation, and certainly not to obstruct progress by preventing people from building on previous works! Now, see the word "by?" That means that the remainder of the clause is nothing more than an example of the way in which the writers of the Constitution imagined accomplishing the previously stated goal. It doesn't mean that Congress must do it, especially the way it's implemented nowadays such that it acts contrary to its purpose; it just means that Congress may do it.
The idea of copyright as an entitlement to artists was imported via the Berne Convention, which should never have been ratified because it is, as I just explained, unconstitutional.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
1. The lawyer, at least according to the summary, is from London. He's not posting from overseas.
2. This "recent change" was well over a year ago.
3. The lawyer is a lawyer. (Well, in UK terms a solicitor, but it amounts to the same thing). They send things of varying size by post all the time. The idea that they're not aware of the rules regarding how much postage has to be paid is for all practical purposes unthinkable. If they are aware, they intentionally screwed up so they're malicious. If they're not aware, that means they don't know how much they have to pay to post any given set of documents. Seeing as these rules have been in place for some time and a large chunk of their job involves posting documents, I think it's fair to describe such ignorance as constituting incompetence.