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Activision Goes After Individual Game Pirates
brunascle writes "Activision has begun suing individual pirates of console games. Edge Online is reporting that they are going after a New York resident for allegedly copying Call of Duty 3 for the Xbox 360 and other games, seeking $30,000 to $150,000 in damages for each infringement. GamePolitics has also uncovered six other lawsuits with settlements between $1,000 and $100,000, in five of which the defendant was unrepresented."
Activision's lawyers specifically told GamePolitics that the lawsuit wasn't targeting file-sharers, so they probably mean that the alleged pirate was reproducing and distributing physical copies of the game. The court complaint is available here (PDF).
Going after filesharers INSTEAD of pirates is completely nuts, looks like Activision has the right idea. /.ers are software pirates (correctly used here, look up the word if you feel like complaining).
I really don't see how this is "your rights online" unless you assume all
Doesn't Activision have the right to recover their development costs and profit from the risk they took to produce the game?
... playing the world's saddest song, on the world's smallest violin.
I have little sympathy for people who get busted doing the wrong thing and pirating games. It's not like games are a human right or anything. As a developer myself who depends on our software being SOLD FOR MONEY to make a living (as opposed to peace and love and lentil burgers, as the freetard hippie commie FSF crowd would have us do).
Frankly, if somebody is dumb enough to get caught not paying for something that cost somebody a lot of time and effort to make, then they probably have it coming.
If it's not related to file sharing and, presumably, is targeting people who make copies _for sale_, then good - they should be sued. As soon as you make a profit from someone else's copyrighted work, without their permission, you don't have a hint of a leg to stand on. You deserve to be sued and, hopefully, the copyright holder will win. You can make whatever argument you want about it being acceptable but, as soon as you turned a profit from the piracy, every argument you make is false. You're a crook and deserve to be punished. Period.
The reason being is that copyright law was setup to fight off larger scale pirate operations, back when reproducing material was alot harder.
Good-bye
The penalties for copyright violations were actually written for cases like this. The assumption is that someone selling a pirate game/movie/book/CD has sold many of them, and they're doing it to make a personal profit. The only way to stop the crime is to take the profit out of it - if he sold them for $20 each, and the fine was only 500 bucks, he'd only have to sell about 25 to make up for each time he was caught. He probably sold a hell of a lot more than that, if he's like many of the pirated goods dealers I've seen.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Because the fines for copyright infringement aren't based on how many of Album/Game/Book X you copy, but the infringement of the rights of the copyright holder.
Put it another way; if you steal someone's stuff and sell it, the punishment isn't "pay for what you stole and we'll leave it at that". You have to go over and beyond that to deter people, otherwise it'd just be a sale through force.
I write bullshit
The worst part is when you get it home and discover that it's actually crab porn
Oh, and nevermind the problems he had returning one of the discs that didn't work.
In china at least, the street vendors selling bootleg copies would be happy to exchange a bad disc for you. The legit shops however wouldn't. So for 1/100 of the price you get 100x better service and convenience. Not to excuse this or other piracy, but if you treat your customers like pirates they're more likely to become pirates.
NO. They have a right to TRY.
.
If Activation fails to make a profit they have the right to abandon the market.
The small independent producer lives on even tighter margins - and doesn't have a significant backlist of titles to carry him through hard times.
The thing is though that people who pirate and purchase pirated games aren't in their market to begin with.
Generally people who pirate games can not afford more than 1 or 2 games a month. But if they pirate them they can try 10 a month.
If they can afford to buy one game a month, then they can get a membership at Gamefly or their local Blockbuster and play far more games for the same amount of dollars.
http://crummysocks.com