Game sharers face legal crackdown (UK)

[Darksaviour69]

A British woman who put a game on a file-sharing network has been ordered to pay damages to the game's creator.

Topware Interactive has won more than £16,000 following legal action against Isabella Barwinska of London, who shared a copy of Dream Pinball 3D. Three other suspected sharers of the game are awaiting damages hearings.

The test case could open the floodgates for litigation against thousands of other Britons suspected of sharing the game. In the case heard at London's Patents County Court the game maker won damages of £6,086.56 plus costs of £10,000.

"The damages and costs ordered by the Court are significant and should act as a deterrent," said David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons who acted for Topware. He added: "This shows that taking direct steps against infringers is an important and effective weapon in the battle against online piracy."

"This is the first of many," said Mr Gore. "It was always intended that there would be a lot more." Mr Gore said details of "thousands" of suspected file-sharers of the game who might now face legal action were known.

Topware Interactive started its campaign against pirates of Dream Pinball 3D in early 2007 after legal action forced 18 British net firms to pass on details of suspected pirates that it had identified.

Following this it sent out about 500 letters to Britons it had identified as making the game available via file-sharing networks such as eMule, eDonkey, Gnutella and many others.

In the letters the company asked for a payment of about £300 as a "settlement" figure that would head off further legal action. Some of those accused of sharing the game chose to fight the legal action and it was in one of these contested cases that Topware Interactive won its claim for damages.

Full story BBC News

[wraggster]

ouch and double ouch

[any1]

Dream Pinball 3D you say? Hmm... might have to download that one later.

[Darksaviour69]

Dream Pinball 3D you say? Hmm... might have to download that one later.

have to say thats a pretty funny first post.

[Sonny_Jim]

How on earth can they prove these sorts of things? Isn't this just a case of your logs against theirs? If anything this is just a great advert to make people share their wifi:

Police: "We believe that the IP address xx.xx.xx.xx has been used to share/download illegal files"

me: "I run an open wifi access point to which anyone can connect to, can you PROVE that it was me that 'stole' those files?"

The point is, if my car gets stolen and used in a ram raid, unless they have some other proof they can't arrest me for it.

[wraggster]

yeah that makes me wonder if i should close my wifi access but then it makes it harder for my ps3,psp etc to connect

the same could be said if they accused you of say Child Porn and in reality if someone was tapping into your connection and downloading without your knowledge

[alanparker05]

As far as i know it's still legal to obtain a backup as long as you own the original so as long as you take the time to write a short disclaimer with the files you share then you should be able to share away because if copy protection stops you creating a backup yourself or you don't have the hardware to copy then you have to download and they would be legally responsible if they've not got original and i'd like to see how the law deals with that

[Sonny_Jim]

I think it really depends what the EULA is. The 'standard' used to be one original, one copy. Trouble is, do you classify the code running in RAM to be a 'copy'? In 99.999999% of cases you aren't allowed to make any copy, regardless of what 'disclaimer' you care to put on it.

@alanparker05:
You are allowed to use full stops and commas occasionally. Always read what you are about to post aloud in your head to stop yourself sounding like a babbling 8 yr old.