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).

Comments

Re:So?

[Sasayaki]

Undoubtedly.

Nobody is contesting their legal rights in this case- at least, not me.

I am, however, contesting how *wise* this decision is. Game companies produce a lot of crap. The signal to noise ratio is extremely low, especially when considering just how many games are produced for the PC every year. So how do we know what's good?

Well, we could seek reviews- but many reviewers are paid for their submissions, have an agenda, or simply have different tastes. Or we hear about it from friends. Or... we pirate them and see for ourselves. If the game is crap- nothing wasted. If the game is good, we're going to want its expansion pack/online play/multiplayer/box art/full colour manual/bragging rights/etc.

In almost all cases, such "piracy" doesn't constitute a lost sale. Either the "pirate" couldn't afford it anyway, or wouldn't buy it if she couldn't "pirate" it. Think students, working mums, etc. Not all of them are- but most.

But these pirates give you something money can't buy- legitimate word of mouth advertising. You can't buy it, it's the BEST form of advertising short of beaming ads into people's dreams and it's generally free. And it's one of the three ways people decide if a game is good or not- and as stated earlier, it's generally the most telling.

So: you can excuse acts of individual not-for-profit piracy and write it off as free advertising. Or, you could hunt down anyone who pirates even a single game and charge them for a crime with punishments quite often worse than rape.

Are people going to buy more of your games, or fewer?

Re:$30k - $150k?

[spire3661]

The reason being is that copyright law was setup to fight off larger scale pirate operations, back when reproducing material was alot harder.