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Game Makers Accusing Innocent People of Piracy In the UK
eldavojohn writes "It's a topic that a lot of game makers like Atari don't want the public hearing: game makers wrongfully accusing clearly innocent people of piracy. From the article, 'According to Michael Coyle, an intellectual property solicitor with law firm Lawdit, more and more people are being wrongly identified as file-sharers. He is pursuing 70 cases of people who claim to be wrongly accused of piracy and has spoken to hundreds of others, he told the BBC.' If only a few are coming forward after receiving extortion letters ('Pay £500 OR ELSE!'), what's the actual number of those out there being wrongfully accused?"
Lawyers figured out this is a way to print money. Why am I not surprised?
Its cheaper to pay them off than hire a lawyer and defend yourself. Many have no other choice.
Send out letters, receive money. Such a deal. Par for the course for for lawyers.
Proudly trying to match or outdo the US in hostility towards own citizens, since 2001.
They have been accusing innocent people of copyright infringement for years. Although this was limited to just their customers and potential customers. Of course when sales drop you have to expand your target audience.
Shared methodology of most content makers lately:
Old plan: Compete and make a better game. Get people to part with their money on the basis that your content is best. Convince them your game will improve their life.
New plan: Produce garbage no one wants. Restrict it so much it's unusuable. Treat your customers like criminals when they don't buy. Sue people almost indiscriminately (on the flimsiest evidence) to make up for short fall.
What the fuck happened? It feels like I'm in the twilight zone!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
And this amount of "70 cases" is relevant how, seeing that of course, the world only consisting of honest citizens, everybody rightfully accused of filesharing copyrighted content, would immediately admit to it?
I BUY all my games. I even have games that were only installed for an hour or less and are sitting on my shelf. This DRM crap, these accusations, this treating the customer as a criminal is fucking outrageous. I bought Far Cry 2. I could have downloaded it at least a week before it was even released. And, yet, me--the legal customer doing the right thing--has all these stupid DRM restrictions. I can accept that. If worse comes to worse I will get a pirated version of the SAME GAME, because I paid for the damn thing and I will play it on my computer any damn way I fuc*ing feel like. Why am *I* being punished for giving the game companies money? It's one of the most ridiculous situations in the gaming society. My LEGAL copy of Doom 3 I cannot play online 'cause someone (probably using a keygen) has MY serial number. I am sick of it. I am sick of the game companies hiding behind this masquerade. I am sick of being treated like a 2nd class citizen because I do the right thing.
I'm gonna sue because someone else used my IP address of 127.0.0.1 in their anti-piracy logs.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
What, precisely, is the downside for ATARI's troll? Yes, they could have to pay [taxed/controlled] defense legal costs. But the defendant would have to put up all the money first, then try to recover the judge's award included in the verdict.
Please tell me again, what is the downside? Judges may well fume. But they can do nothing. The letters are not extortion, but an "offer to settle" that might even be excluded from evidence as such!
The UK legal system mostly works because of self restraint. And poorly when that fails. Sometimes you can find a barrister who doesn't mind egg on his face. Solicters live there.
enormous number of Joe Six-Packs who perceive it as their god-given right to committ theft via Lime Wire
It's not theft. Period. End of argument, by the way. If you want to call it theft, you are wrong, and the discussions needs to halt right there until you can start using words correctly. And no, that doesn't mean I approve. And no, that doesn't mean it's not wrong. But it's not theft, and we can't have a cogent argument when we're using false, and incidentally biased, terms.
Are they the companies that voluntarily provide products and services that you can choose to purchase or not
You need to check in on your definition of voluntary.
Ironically, the DRM schemes designed to protect against piracy are more and more likely to make honest customers turn to piracy. The whole thing lends credence to the idea that what the game makers REALLY want out of DRM is to remove first sale rights, not combat piracy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You know you are getting old when your instinct is to argue with that.
Actually, the older I get, the more strongly I believe in opposing measures like that [the curfew].
Whether or not any one person enjoys or otherwise benefits from something is not the point, and must never be allowed to become the point. The important thing is that everyone should be free, by default, to do absolutely anything they like. Restrictions should only ever be imposed by law on behaviour that is actually harmful in some way, and any restrictions that are imposed should only ever be proportionate to the harm that would be done.
This is probably the important principle of any fair justice system, because without it, governments are free to set arbitrary laws for their own political (or worse) purposes. This leads to blanket laws, such as (to pick some common, controversial examples): speed limits and banning mobile phones while driving, instead of prosecuting dangerous or inconsiderate driving; trying to ban whole electronic communications networks, rather than either going after people who abuse those networks to infringe copyright or mandating restrictions on the networks that are reasonable and consistent with prohibiting just the illegal behaviour; or, as in this case, restricting the freedoms of a whole group of people on account of the unacceptable behaviour of a small minority (which is effectively guilt by association).
In each of those cases, the law probably does do some good, in the sense that it does inhibit harmful behaviour by some people. The problem is the collateral damage: the law also catches people whose behaviour would not have been harmful and punishes them anyway, which is unjust. Of course, it's easier to impose blanket laws, both for enforcement (increasingly mechanically; whatever happened to "man shall not be judged by machine"?) and for scoring political points ("Speed kills! Look, we imposed a new low limit to make the road safer outside your home, so now your kids don't have to stop, look and listen before they cross").
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.