Publishers to fine 25,000 game pirates

[Shrygue]

via Eurogamer


Five games companies are to demand 25,000 file-sharing internet users to pay GBP 300 immediately or risk going to court.

The users are being targeted for downloading and sharing games illegally, according to The Times.

Atari, Codemasters, Reality Pump, Techland and Topware Interactive have appointed legal brain Davenport Lyons to take action on their behalf.

Operation Flashpoint by Codemasters was apparently downloaded over 691,000 times in one week, according to internet watcher Peerland.

"Our clients were incensed by the level of illegal downloading," said Roger Billens from Peerland.

The quintet make their stand after the successful prosecution Isabella Barwinska, who has been fined GBP 16,000 for uploading and sharing Dream Pinball 3D by Topware.

The group will begin by targeting the first 500 file-sharers to ignore the GBP 300 demand, and have applied to the High Court to demand internet service providers deliver the names and addresses of all 25,000 breaking the law.

According to The Times, 5000 addresses have already been obtained.

[JKKDARK]

Nice job. Of course, there are a lot more of these pirates there.

[goity]

While PC gaming piracy is getting a bit crazy, fining everyone £300 each is quite mad. The punishment hardly fits the crime; what game costs £300? If I were a company and this happened I'd make my product easy to pirate because you'd make more profit this way than if every one of those downloaders bought it in the first place.

[trugamer]

Yes but these fines are put in place as a deterrent- £300 is a lot of money. I wouldn't pirate anyway but now I know you can be caught and fined its definitely not worth doing.

It is also to compensate for the loss caused by piracy as a whole, not just by the individual.

[goity]

But you aren't allowed to put fines in place as a deterrent for this sort of thing, as the money is supposed to be damages. Clearly, £300 is unreasonable for damages in this case.

[icecoolwas]

wow man, this is just crazy, Off course I want pirating to stop to allow more games come out and stuff but why dont these pirates learn?

1. stop pirating or 2. keep gambling your luck and get a anoymous proxy downloader and get a torrent client which does not upload or does not display an ip..

wow £300 is like $620.

[Khorney]

well, then you take it to court, but risk loosing even more (like that other unfortunate woman). sneaky tactics for sure, have there been examples of this in other industries?

[Gold Line]

I let my friend borrow my mario kart wii last week but thats ok because its completely different from sharing games over the internet.

[icecoolwas]

@ Khorney yes thats why i said risk gambling at the start of my post.

@ gold line thats completely different from pirating, say if you dumped the game and then you let ur friend have the copy thats pirating but that way no one finds out anyway.

[agenericperson]

Now when my room mate stole some of my stuff and I called the police, they came and told me that I was basically screwed. I could file a police report but nothing would probably happen. But when some big company gets something stolen they get the price x10 or more?

On top of that, I can imagine its easier to prove my room mate had stuff that i purchased (since its all tangible), than some person really was using that IP address to download or upload some intangible software. People have friends and families. People share networks. I don't get how they can prove any of this. It sounds like guilty before innocent.

I'm not saying piracy isn't bad. But I'm sick and tired of laws protecting only the rich of the world.