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US Court Gives 15 Months' Jail, $415,900 Fine For Game Piracy
An anonymous reader writes "A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay US$415,900 in restitution for selling video game systems that were preloaded with more than 75 pirated copies of games." If that fine sounds a bit steep, note that his profits on the devices "exceeded $390,000."
It obviously wasn't for "backup purposes only or home brewing. I say serves him right. Gives everyone else a bad name.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Ahh, the wisdom of Florida's courts. This is probably the most harmless white-collar crime ever, and yet the man gets 15 months in prison. No better way to turn an ordinary citizen into a hardened criminal. If it was jail, it would be a little more understandable, but since he is going to a Florida prison (among the worst in the country), may God have mercy on him. Minimum security prisons (if DOC is nice enough to send him to one) aren't a cake-walk either.
Seriously, fine the man, put him on probation with a suspended sentence before sending him to prison for an utterly victimless crime.
...it sounds like a neat little device. Come to think of it, I may have seen a few of these things in malls and flea markets or something similar not long ago. I believe one version of such a device offered a bunch of really old games like Atari 2600 games, and there have been others.
This man did not make these devices. He did not load the software onto the devices -- they shipped to him that way. He sold devices he imported. While for many people born and raised in the US, it would seem very obvious that such devices would be of dubious legality, to this guy it's hard to know whether or not he knew it was wrong to begin with. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" -- okay... especially if you're the President of the United States violating the nation's Constitution. But seriously, this guy just bought and sold. He may not have had a full understanding of what he was selling and that it wasn't legal in the U.S. (It this device legal in other countries? That would be interesting to know!) Supposing this guy had no knowledge that these devices were actually illegal in the U.S., and had no prior offenses, don't you think it would be more fair to simply have the profits seized?
Indeed, who would pay for an aggregation of otherwise free software?
Okay, one of you people that claim piracy is always okay, riddle me this. If this person profited by selling a piece of software that took money, time, and labor to make, how did he not deny someone the money they should have made?
Because these games are old enough that they should be in the public domain. More than a fair return for them has already been made.
Copyright is supposed to be an incentive to create new works, not a license to print money.
Actually, as a citizen of a democracy, it is my right to decide what should be law and what should not.
Unfortunately my rights are being stomped on by people buying my political representatives.
But don't worry, sooner, not later, globalization will end these ridiculous restrictions on trade called "copyright" that the western nations are trying to push as beneficial to the rest of the world.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Where do you get off saying that something that doesn't physically exist belongs to someone else?
The whole concept of copyright is arbitrary. It was arbitrarily decided upon that, to offset the costs of creation, a short term monopoly would be provided on duplication of said creation so that the creator could attempt to recoup the costs of creation, if not make a profit.
However, without this creative work entering the public domain, no one else gets to use it in any way other than as a consumer. Maybe you don't think this is a bad thing, but there are those who disagree with that sort of stance vehemently.
Bullshit. You believe that a work should stay protected by copyright for as long as it sells?
Then the works of J.S. Bach would still be protected, putting music teachers all over the world out of business.
If "relevancy" is the measure of whether a work should have extended protection, pray tell, how the fuck do you measure "relvancy"? Is it relevant if it sells one copy a year? A thousand copies a year? A million? How about five copies a month?
Believing that it's a crime to sell a console filled with pirated video games is a long jump from granting everlasting property rights to "anything that keeps selling".
You are welcome on my lawn.