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.'"
I would call that horribly ineffective service. I hope the court would agree. You should never pay to know you're sued ;)
SIG: HUP
Don't do it. Don't engage in the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials. No joke, no troll. It's an expensive offence to commit, due to its often exponential growth in damages, and most people can't afford it. If you can't afford the thousands it takes to settle these cases, then just stop doing it right now. Go on. If you "need" a game, have a look at some of the free (in either sense) games floating around on the internet, or buy some quality second-hand, or older, cheap, but still very good games at your local games store. It's going to be a helluva lot cheaper than paying any settlement, believe me.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And Americans tend to swap the currency signs when pricing things for sale over here ...
"Because anybody who thinks that something intangible is "property" has shit for brains."
Bull fucking shit.
I believe that trees are common property of everyone. It is good for the world and I don't care who's land it belongs on...thus anything made of wood should be up for the taking. Anyone that thinks something tangible should be property has shit for brains. I don't care how you frame it, the only thing that belongs to any of us are our thoughts. As such, the only real property is intellectual property.
You see how this works?
Just because you can create an opinion doesn't make it so. Property is a social contract in ANY sense of the word. You don't believe in it. So what. Doesn't matter. You belong to a society that has enacted rules and regulations that say it is property, thus it is. Again, it is a social contract. As a part of society, you can disagree with a rule, but that doesn't make it any less of a rule unless that rule is changed.
So the point is, grow the fuck up. You want YOUR intellectual property given away for free, GPL it. Or CC it. Or otherwise. Maybe if enough others feel the same, you can turn the tide, but that doesn't make the fact that you own your ideas any less significant.
There has to be a reason I don't come to Slashdot any more. It is pretty bad when Digg and Reddit has more mature comments these days...
If you don't think it is worth the money, you just don't buy it. You don't obtain it illegally. I don't think Ferraris are worth the money either, but I can't just go take one from the dealership or someone else that has one. I know we're not supposed to compare physical objects when discussing music, but this is software and comes in a box when purchased legitimately.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Additionally: Many times the demo is fake, or a misrepresentation of the game's quality. For the best example of this, play Dungeon Lords (or better yet, don't. Also don't buy Dungeon Lords 2). They finished exactly as much content in the game as was in the first dungeon+town. Later towns lacked anything except a random structure with a NPC in it, and at least two times during the story the player had to enable no-clip to proceed due to unfinished parts of the game.
The reason you're not supposed to compare physical objects and digital objects is that they're nothing alike. It's like comparing a Ferrari and a dodo to figure out how mass transportation ought to work. It's complete nonsense.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
No, your argument is bullshit.
On the contrary, property is the natural consequence of the physical fact that two people can't use the same tangible artifact at the same time. This is exactly the opposite of so-called "intellectual property," which not only naturally duplicates itself and is almost impossible to prevent from duplicating itself, but also only becomes valuable as a consequence of the duplication itself! (For example, would Shakespeare's plays have had any value whatsoever if he had never communicated them to anybody else? No!)
In other words, real property is based on, and compatible with, physical reality. "Intellectual property" is based on lawyers' imaginations and is incompatible with physical reality.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz