Entertainment Software Association Following RIAA?

cavis writes "My organization just received an e-mail from the Intellectual Property enforcement division of the Entertainment Software Association. It accuses one particular IP address with 'infringing the copyright rights of one or more ESA members by copying and distributing unauthorized copies of game products (through peer-to-peer or similar software/services).' It goes on to name the filename and the application: Limewire. Has anyone had any contact with this group? Are they following the RIAA's lead and pursuing litigation for peer-to-peer piracy? I'm just trying to evaluate what I am in for as I try to battle P2P within my network." Read on for more details. The letter reads in part (with my redactions):

The Entertainment Software Association ("ESA") is a US trade association that represents the intellectual property interests of numerous companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet(hereinafter collectively referred to as "ESA members"). ESA is authorized to act on behalf of ESA members whose copyright and other intellectual property rights it believes to be infringed as described herein.

Based on the information at its disposal on 24 Nov 2008 01:09:08 GMT, ESA has a good faith belief that the subscriber using the IP address [IP address] infringing the copyright rights of one or more ESA members by copying and distributing unauthorized copies of game products (through peer-to-peer or similar software/services), in violation of applicable copyright laws, through internet access that [agency name] provides directly to the [IP address] or through a downstream provider that purchases this access for [IP address].

Comments

Legal advice.

[FooAtWFU]

Get a lawyer and ask them for legal advice.

Slashdot is fine too; asking can't hurt, but don't neglect your lawyer.

Re:Legal advice.

[DarkMantle]

"I'm just trying to evaluate what I am in for as I try to battle P2P within my network." I don't think a lawyer can help him battle P2P in his network.

Re:Legal advice.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always write "Due to legal action...".

Fucking Americans.

Re:Legal advice.

[calmofthestorm]

Um...naive a bit?

1) P2P has lots of legitimate uses (linux much?). I use it more for legal than illegal these days actually.
2) Just because you're not breaking hte law doesn't mean they won't target you. Remember their business model: rather than producing anything of value they send letter, receive money, profit. Reference: all the people without computers getting sued. Reference: that study where they got a cease and desist sent to a network printer

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't say the attorney won't represent them if they get such a letter, you should say that the attorney won't represent them if they break the law, or even scare the shit out of them by saying the company will cooperate fully. Since it's a company machine, you can search it at will. Every job I've worked at has warned me they were keylogging, and while they never actually were, I certainly feel they have that right as long as they warn me.

So don't be a buzzword-based PHB. P2P is not some evil Nigerian pirate tactic for hijacking video game tankers. It's a way of transferring a large file, like Blizzard's WoW updates, Ubuntu CD images, or imaginary property.

Re:Legal advice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...naive a bit?

Illiterate a bit?? He wrote:

P2P has no valid use for our line of business

He's not saying P2P has no legitimate use, just that in that specific job, it has no legitimate use. Even downloading a legal copy of Linux is not a valid use of the companies internet connection to, say, a peon working in the accounting department.

Re:Legal advice.

[Pharmboy]

P2P has great value, but not at most offices. The average desk monkey doesn't need to be downloading the newest version of Knoppix, that is IT's job, and no one worth their salt in IT would be using Limewire. False argument. It is some desk monkey who thinks he knows what he is doing, and he doesn't.

Re:Legal advice.

[Eskarel]

There's nothing wrong with downloading (legal) software, but in most business environments, only a specified subset of people should be doing it, not every tom, dick and harry.
Even then there are usually other ways to get the data, and since most corporate firewalls make P2P difficult, P2P is rarely used in business.

Re:Legal advice.

[MBGMorden]

One thing that I've learned the longer that I've stayed in the industry is that upper management often responds better if you call them a dick when they're being a dick.

Now, naturally you want to gussy it up a bit to not be as insulting, but you have to speak the language that they understand.

In addition to the technical merits of P2P (you might not even want to trump those up that much), basically get them alone and say "Listen, Bob. I understand you're doing what you think is best for the company. You pay me for my experience and knowledge though, and in this situation you're being a little too quick on the trigger without getting all the facts. Peer-to-peer is merely a way for computers to talk to each other, and using it internally is not unethical, or illegal, and it will save us money over time.".

There. Adjust as necessary for the situation (and be ready to accept POSSIBLE rejection), but 99% of the time I've found that if you pull management (or at least, the non-IT portions of management) aside and nicely explain why they're acting stupid, they'll often do what's right.

Get A Lawyer.

[Caraig]

Get a lawyer.

There may be many people in the /. crowd who, rightly or wrongly think any system where lawyers are needed is bad. That's besides the point. You need legal advice. Lawyers provide legal advice.

Get a lawyer.

It's all well and good to ask for input from /. and Groklaw etc., but get competent, professional, legal advice and trust it over what anyone says here. Nobody here is a lawyer. (And if they are, then they're not being contracted by you to get legal advice, and so are not liable; moreover, they don't have the full details of the letter you got.

An example: Someone said 'take it to the press.' Ask a lawyer before you do that. There are all sorts of procedural reasons why doing that could make a court rule against you. What sort of reasons? IANAL.

So before anything else, get a lawyer to sit down with you and go over the letter, have them research and follow up on the letter, and see what your legal obligations are. Is the ESA asking for a name to go with that IP address? Is this a C&D letter of some kind? Are they threatening your company with legal action? Heck, for that matter, does this organization actually exist? (Someone could be pulling an elaborate joe job. Unlikely, but possible.)

In short, get a lawyer.

Re:great...

[Goldberg's Pants]

Ridiculous isn't it. The RIAA are one of the most despised groups in North America now (I want to say the world, but don't know how true that would be), and it's like the software industry looked and thought "WOW! We MUST get a slice of that juicy animosity pie!"

Idiocy.

Re:My reply

[Anonymous Coward]

I go to a canadian university. I've had several of these, forwarded from my school administrator.... when i asked them what to do, they said 'don't do it again ... and if you do, we'll ask you nicely to stop, again... and again... '

Inherently bad?

[MozeeToby]

Are these kinds of investigations really inherently bad in and of themselves or is it just the way the RIAA has handled the court procedings after the fact?

Personally, I think that if you can sanely, rationaly, and beyond a reasonable doubt prove that someone has violated the copyright, you have the right to make them stop and seek some amount of damages. The problem with the RIAA is that they almost never prove beyond any kind of doubt, they violate laws in their investigations, and they seek damages many times what the actual damages are.

Seriously, thousands of people make their living producing the games that I love to play. I see no problem in them charging me to play them and no problem in them punishing people who try get out of paying. You can argue that they are too expensive, or that there are no good demos available, and even that priracy doesn't really affect sales. But that doesn't really change the facts. Yes, people will take what they can without paying but companies should have the right to deter them from doing so.

Re:Inherently bad?

[Shakrai]

Are these kinds of investigations really inherently bad in and of themselves or is it just the way the RIAA has handled the court procedings after the fact?

Depends on if you see anything "bad" with unlicensed investigative agencies using unproven/untested/unverified software written by god-knows-who to track down alleged copyright infringement based on the "making available" argument with no knowledge of whether or not the alleged copyright infringer actually uploaded any copies of the file(s) in question.

they violate laws in their investigations

Wait, so you just asked if these kinds of investigations are really inherently bad and then later spoke of the fact that they violate the law in the process of those investigations? Didn't you just answer your own question?

Re:Inherently bad?

[billcopc]

Funny how they keep whining, they should all be dead and gone by now, since there's obviously no money to be made when everyone are copying their valuable intellectual property.

God, I wish! I miss the good old days when games were made by people who:

a. Like to write code, and
b. Like to play games

NOT c. Like to work unpaid overtime so they can ship a half-baked release that just happens to compile, to appease their foreign shareholders who are going to scuttle the company anyway.

The fact that I see game ads on TV all the freaking time is proof that these companies don't get it. If the game were any good, they wouldn't need to spend 42 bajillion dollars on advertising. The games would sell themselves, because gamers read the rags, troll the forums, loiter at EB... they're not watching Survivor, they're playing their friggin' XBOX!

If anything, I'd say TV advertising actually encourages piracy, because all these non-gamers who DON'T want to spend the money, now they know about this game, and they've been seduced by the misleading FMV clips. They hit Limewire or TPB and devour it whole, while the hardcore gamer's still waiting for his goddamned pre-order to arrive in the mail.

The game houses that do well today, are the ones that are lightweight, nimble and gamer-centric. They don't reskin last year's game and charge another $70 for it, they produce FRESH CONTENT. John Carmack isn't sucking some wall street tycoon's tit, he's writing code! Stardock aren't waiting for the holiday season to release GalCiv 2009, they're producing content-rich expansion packs that deliver real gameplay, not just higher-poly models. Oddly enough, you don't hear those developers whine about piracy much. They drive their ferraris, they pay their staff and taxes, and wouldn't you know, their customers actually have some sense of loyalty.

Re:Inherently bad?

[Firehed]

That's not how statutory damages work. Like it or not (and going by your sig, I'll assume "not"), when you willfully commit copyright infringement, the IP holder has every right to come after you regardless of your intentions - and when you knowingly violated the copyright (downloaded a game being an example, as compared to taking an unreasonably long excerpt from an article perhaps), the damages that company can be awarded increase significantly.

Is that what the law should be? That's a matter of opinion, though I'm actually inclined to go with yes. Have we seen unreasonably high damages awarded in many of these cases? Absolutely. Up to $250k + 5 years for copying a movie is beyond insane.

Having said that, there's no way for someone on the prowl for copyright infringement (which I'd argue is a responsibility of any publicly held company, though it certainly shouldn't become their business model as the RIAA have done) to know whether you're downloading their product to sample or to avoid paying for it because you're a cheap-ass. There's next to no harm in the former, and it can indeed help the company - I do it all the time, and buy the product if I'm satisfied, but the latter definitely IS a lost sale, and damages should be awarded if it can be proven. Not hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, but 5-10x the cost of the product isn't unreasonably high yet should serve a sufficient deterrent against future piracy.

To make it clear: I think the RIAA and MPAA's John Doe tactics are unreasonable, mafia-esque, and should be illegal (and may be - apparently someone's finally going after them under RICO), especially with the payouts they're trying to get - often 300x or more of the value of the product, which is absolutely unreasonable. But it doesn't sound like the ESA is using those tactics, especially as the original question doesn't state anything along the lines of "I looked into it and determined that this infringement never occurred."

Admit nothing

[Locke2005]

Reply with a letter stating "That IP address is a Dynamic DHCP address handed out by an open Wireless Access Point, so I have no idea who was using it at the time. However, we are now putting in place measures to limit access." Then, if you can actually track down the IP to a specific user, beat them about the head and shoulders with a stout cluestick while repeating the mantra "Inappropriate or unauthorized use of the network will be result in severe consequences up to and including termination." Sounds like they're being reasonable here, which means if you can convince them that you are policing yourself, they won't feel the need to come barging in with lawyers to do your policing for you.

Re:Take it to the press

[orclevegam]

Make sure this gets mainstream press coverage. Be sure to sensationalize it and compare it to the RIAA. Watch them back down quickly.

So far it looks like they're being very diplomatic about it. It's somewhat disturbing that they're actually monitoring Limewire for copyright infringement, but as far as possible responses go, sending a letter that essentially says "We tracked someone to your network, we'd appreciate if you'd do something about it." is one of the better ones. It would have been nice if they actually asked for something to be done, instead of leaving it open with the implication of possible legal action, but it's a lot better than saying pay up or we'll see you in court (which is no doubt what the RIAA would do). This approach is similar to the one that the MPAA has adopted in which they send a letter that essentially says "We know you're violating our copyright, we have records of you transferring such and such movie on such and such time from such and such IP. This is a warning, please stop now or we'll pursue legal avenues." (friend of mine received such a letter). Notice that the ESA isn't asking for money, and no where in the letter (at least the portion we're provided) does it say anything about a lawsuit.

Personally, I'd start by tracking down the moron running Limewire on a company system and have a chat with them. Then I'd block Limewire (no reason to be running that period, bittorrent is defensible, but Limewire is just an excuse to get a trojan on your system), and circulate a memo explaining that it's unacceptable to be running unapproved P2P software (to allow for possible valid uses of bittorrent). In the memo I'd make sure to stress the security implications and strong risk of virus infection possible from downloading off a P2P network. In particular make sure to point out that anti-virus software really only defends against well known threats and that it's trivially easy to create a trojan or virus that can go undetected and then distribute it through a P2P network for weeks or longer before AV software becomes aware of it. This nicely sidesteps the whole copyright infringement argument while still pointing our the very real security concern these apps pose for a commercial (or government as the case may be) intranet.

Re:My reply

[Chyeld]

Executive Privilege and a reminder that you can't sue a soveregn entity unless it allows you?

Lost buisness to the game companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to buy Fallout 3, but I wanted to see if it would run on my computer. But damn, no PC demo! What ever should I do? Buy the game and risk wasting $50 on a game that won't run? Or download it, verify it runs, delete it, and go buy it?

Usually, I use option #2, but if the ESA are going to be that much of a bitch about this, I just won't bother buying any PC games that don't have demos. Who looses the money there?

Or, since I am considered a criminal and liable to legal action for simply downloading the game, playing it for 10 minutes to make sure it will run, deleting it, then LEGALLY buying the game at a store, why don't I just download all my games and NOT legally buy them? Then the game companies STILL loose money.

They think these shitty scare tactics will work, but I, for one, am not an idiot.

Old news

[seebs]

http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000195.html

They sent me a nasty note because a mirror of the Interactive Fiction archive contained a file named "doom3.zip". (It was a many-year old text adventure hosted with the permission of the author.) They felt it was most likely a "retail copy of Doom 3".

According to them:

1. They review every message they send carefully.
2. They send hundreds of thousands of messages a month.

That latter estimate is from 2004 -- I can't imagine it's gone down.

I have no idea what they'd do in the unlikely event that their complaint wasn't stupid on its face; in my case, they backed down while telling me how important the work they do is. I consider them subhuman scum who are working actively to completely destroy the PC gaming industry as best they can. Given a choice between their crazy harassment and unauthorized use of my network, and Brad Wardell's high-quality software with no copy protection and good attitude, I think I can safely say I speak for anyone who has ever worked with, for, or on a video game, or who has ever played a video game and might want to again some day, when I say that I sincerely hope the ESA completely ceases to exist and is not replaced. I think they do a great deal of harm and waste a lot of money that could have been put into something with some kind of benefit.