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ESA Sent Takedown Notices For 45 Million Infringements In Fiscal 2009
eldavojohn writes "The Entertainment Software Association has released this year's fiscal report (PDF), putting out their numbers to level the finger at new targets. Following up on last year's published report, this one has a whole bunch of new numbers to ponder. The top five P2P game piracy countries this year are: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland. The ESA's anti-piracy program notes, 'Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.' But don't worry, they've expanded to other countries. 'The ESA sent takedown notices to ISPs covering more than 45 million instances of infringement of member company games in more than 100 countries worldwide.' They also strive to show they are actually doing things, like endorsing 43 bills aimed at regulating content or controlling access to video games — with not a single one of them making it into law. They did put some into effect at the state level; mostly making it a crime to sell mature games to minors. You can also find their activities localized to you, as this report has sections arranged by state and country. Conspicuously absent this year are any global numbers of what piracy cost the entertainment industry, so unfortunately Ars Technica will have to find someone else to audit, although Venture Beat has a good breakdown."
' They also strive to show they are actually doing things, like endorsing 43 bills aimed at regulating content or controlling access to video games -- with not a single one of them making it into law. They did put some into effect at the state level; mostly making it a crime to sell mature games to minors.
Go go nanny state!
And here I was thinking that kind of thing is reserved for cyberpunk dystopias.
You have that backwards. The ESA is against these laws because it would limit their sales numbers. They're the ones suing to have these laws repealed.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
'Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.'
I feel so much safer now knowing the streets are clean of those terrible video games.
1.427 notices per second assuming they work constantly...
Course they probably don't work weekends or holidays: more like 2.075 notices per second with taking time off. Oh... wait! They only work 9 to 5, right? Assume an hour for lunch... that takes it to 7.143 notices per second!
I don't really know how long an individual notice is in words, or how many are sent through email. We can probably assume that for any given delivery it gets printed out at least once... so that makes about 5400 trees worth of copy paper.
Once again, assuming it only takes one page, and assuming they are using a relatively efficient printer... this works out to what? $1,800,000 worth of ink just to print all this out once?
I guess it really didn't say 45 million notices, just infringements. So I guess I'm also assuming from all this that one infringement = one notice. I'm sure that I'm also being conservative that one notice also only takes one page.
Well, you know, don't pirate games, it will not be an issue.
Look, this issue is fundamentally different than the RIAA/MPAA issue. Here we are not talking about making backups, or having reasonable control over something you bought and paid for. We're talking about pirated goods, like fake Gucci hand bags and what not. Selling fakes is wrong, unlike the RIAA/MPAA concept of "stealing", this hits closer to the real definition.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.
It sounds like you could get the same thing from raiding any dorm hall on my university campus. This is a sound bite, good for news media to repeat, and to me it makes what could be a completely legal community sound like a gang of high profile game-pirate-for-profit lords.
I live in Spain and the 80% of my torrents peers are from EEUU. Uhmm! RIAA/MPAA and partners are pushing governement to convert in criminal actions the right to share contents. Now in Spain, for now, is legal to share, because we pay a tax for the 'private copy right': The right to made private copies and share-it.
Perhaps game devs should tone down the violence then. It's getting absurd how much violence is going into games lately. It's no longer enough to show a blood splat and have the enemy fall over, no, you have to show all the organs being ripped out in every detail.
Anyway, there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated. Nintendo is known for making great games that you can give to a child without having to freak out.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Don't tell me there is another thing called ESA that is spoiling our Space Agency's good name...
First you say this:
Perhaps game devs should tone down the violence then. It's getting absurd how much violence is going into games lately. It's no longer enough to show a blood splat and have the enemy fall over, no, you have to show all the organs being ripped out in every detail.
then this...
Anyway, there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated. Nintendo is known for making great games that you can give to a child without having to freak out.
If there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated, then what's the problem?
I've worked in the game industry for well over a decade now. I have yet to work on a game that wasn't Teen-rated or lower, and I've made no special effort to do so. The simple fact of the matter is this: like you said, there are a HUGE NUMBER of great Teen-rated or lower games out there. And yet a small number of M-rated games get so much of the attention. Why are you blaming developers for that?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
We got one of those once. We host a mirror of the IF Archive (text adventures), including three games named Days of Doom 1, Days of Doom 2, and Days of Doom 3.
Here's the local copy:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 seebs users 116471 Oct 17 1999 Doom3.zip
They sent us a threatening letter because they believed this was the retail version of Doom 3.
I assume the rest are comparable.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
the European Space Agency did what!?!?
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
They bought it, it's theirs. Sure they were pirating games and that's illegal, but there is nothing wrong with modding the hardware. I'll bet they learned a bit about electronics in the process. I'm sure they were aware that they voided their warranty.
There is nothing wrong with modifying hardware you own!