Computer games industry threat to downloaders: 'pay up or we'll sue'

Computer games industry threat to downloaders: 'pay up or we'll sue'

technology.timesonline.co.uk

The computer games industry has launched an unprecedented assault on illegal downloads, demanding payment from thousands of families who obtained the latest releases over the internet without paying.

Five of the world’s top games developers will serve notice on 25,000 people across the UK, requiring each one to pay £300 immediately to settle out of court.

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Related News Links:
www.theregister.co.uk
arstechnica.com
www.paidcontent.co.uk

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[edit on 20/8/2008 by Mirthful Me]

There was a thread that someone started a little while back that is now closed. I read the reason for the closure, but this is now breaking news, so I felt it was worth it to revive so that those who felt that Davenport Lyons was not going to go ahead with, or had the authority to, prosecute in the name of the companies involved were in fact hired by the games companies to go after illegal game downloaders.

technology.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Mod Edit: Breaking News Forum Submission Guidelines – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 20/8/2008 by Mirthful Me]

I think it's about time people realize the difference between the Internet and the way the world system works, the latter having a foundation of money being traded in order for things to happen. I'm tired of people stealing music, games, movies. Why they can't figure out it REALLY DOES COST MONEY to create these things is beyond me. Even if you create one of the above with the help of home software and so forth, money is going to change hands at SOME point. Myself, I'm involved heavily in the music side of it and people just have no clue what they are doing when everyone has the music yet one person bought the CD and only a quarter of them went to the concert. I understand sampling a game, sampling music, previewing, but people just don't know when to stop and it's concerning how relative right and wrong is perceived in that area.

Making copies for your own use is one thing, but to make copies to benefit financialy is totaly differant. Making a site to copy others work without proper remuneration is totaly wrong. If you get caught, then you need to pay. People work long hours and use vast amounts of brain power to create works of art or music or anything else that is of value. Its not for free.

Zindo

Five of the world’s top games developers will serve notice on 25,000 people across the UK, requiring each one to pay £300 immediately to settle out of court.

It is nothing but a stunt.It has no legal basis and could never be proved.
Anyone can send anyone a letter of demand for something.
They have to first file the complaint in a court, with evidence, to make it official which, there has been nothing been filed in any court.
Because if it was filed in court, they would first have to go to court, in order to settle out of court.
5 people cant take up a class action against 25000 people.
They have to individually sue each and every one of them.
Which of course is preposterous.
Can you imagine if the game developers actually uploaded the game?
Then everyone downloaded it then they sent them the bill?
That would be fraud.
Are they going to start charging every person for every song and album, who attends a party where someone is playing music?
Are they going to start charging someone who rents a dvd or game, extra licenses, for his friends coming over to watch it or play it?
Get into reality!
This greedy scum is just trying to manipulate and cash in on another market and control it.

Originally posted by Orion Crystal Ice
. . . I'm tired of people stealing music, games, movies . . .

When I stop getting gouged $20 for a cd with maybe 3 good songs, and stop paying a royalty on every blank cd, I will stop downloading music.

When I don't have to pay $60 dollars for a movie ticket plus another $60 for refreshments, and not by bombarded with 30 minutes of advertising before the movie, I will stop downloading new releases.

When I am not charged $25-30 for a DVD (that any novice can put together for 1/4 the cost), I will stop downloading movies.

Games . . . I buy them because the devs worked on it.

Music . . . the label gets most of the money. Want to support an artist? Go see them live and buy their merchandise. That is how they make money that the label can't touch.

Movies . . . there is no hope.

reply to post by ZindoDoone


Whats your take on the following notion of mine?

Information, however you encapsulate it, cannot be controlled. In fact, the point of a medium to exists is to carry information, and like highways, the more lanes you put in, the more traffic you get. Some percentage of that information will inevitable be proscribed. In this case, they were more concerned about those are nickle and diming them by playing without paying. I suspect that the increase in what they see as stealing is the very same as it always was, taken as a function of global bandwidth consumption.

((The real culprit however, is an entire overseas industry that makes this stuff available (unless I am mistaken).))

But no matter who the culprits are, it is absolutely inevitable. People will communicate, trade, share, and otherwise excersize their own judgment about anything they come to posses, and no amount of 'user agreement stipulation' is going to change that. No medium is safe, no encryption unbreakable, no amount of 'clever' that another more clever cannot overcome.

That all is true, and it might just be a stunt, but, when they did it here in the states they forced the help of a few ISP's to gather enough evidence to get quite a few verdicts.

Zindo

reply to post by Maxmars


Max,
I agree. Its all in the ethics of the end users. If your going to become a crook then you will....if caught!!! When I was a kid I used my tape recorder and made miles of tape of music I liked and kept it for years. I would send copies of tapes to my buddies in the jungle so they could hear the latest when they felt like it instead of having to wait for Rabbit to go on the air!LOL!!!


Zindo

These guys didn't get the details legally.They have been using an "illegal" virus program made by logistep.
Which has been known to "print" these threatening letter to people printers.
It has been banned in many European country's for invasion of privacy.
And some lawyers who have used it have been banned from practicing law.
It is just an illegal profiteering excersise.
If people can afford to buy it, 99% will.
Therefore they are not lost revenue to begin with.

A lawyer who sent out hundreds of thousands of threatening letters demanding that alleged file-sharers pay 400 euros, has been banned from operating for 6 months. Elizabeth Martin, who had been working with Swiss anti-piracy outfit, Logistep, was condemned by the Paris Bar Council.

The organization responsible for privacy protection in Italy has declared that Logistep has been operating illegally. The Garante della Privacy says that the anti-piracy company breached the privacy of thousands of P2P users when it tracked and reported them to media companies. It has 14 days to cease and desist.

The infamous anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep has been criticized by the data protection commissioner in Switzerland for helping to breach the privacy of people on file-sharing networks. Logistep, who track file-sharers all over Europe, has 30 days to stop collecting data, or face further action.

When I stop getting gouged $20 for a cd with maybe 3 good songs, and stop paying a royalty on every blank cd, I will stop downloading music.

Ouch, that really hurts. I, for one, can prioritize a purchase, but I understand some of us can't and therefore demand that all prices go down to suit our needs.

By the way, ever hear of amazon.com, or myspace? Lots of stuff on there to hear from hundreds of thousands of albums, and reviews to match, before you buy anything.

Music . . . the label gets most of the money. Want to support an artist? Go see them live and buy their merchandise. That is how they make money that the label can't touch.

Yeah. I did mention people not going to the show being part of the problem. Do you realize though that a CD registers as a 'unit' sold? And those units help establish where a fanbase is? And a band who wants to look out for their money and expanding their base does not want to risk playing somewhere where there isn't a fanbase that may yield a quarter of itself to the ticket buying?

Also, where do you think marketing money (posters, promo copies for reviewers, etc), money to pay the artist who did the work on the CD face, the CD booklet, and the CD cover, money to pay the photographer, money to manufacture the CD's, money to pay the engineer and recording studio, etc...all comes from? What about the best gear money can buy, which is the standard for putting on a professional show that will make you money in the future from repeat concertgoers, where's alllllllllll that money coming from?

?

Why not get rid of your house and car too, the factory workers and builders don't make as much as the fat cats do. It would be better just to take ALL the money out of their pockets. Books..who needs them? Let's completely abolish the printing press, too much $$$ changing hands. It's just not fair that we have to pay for anything since we have the Internet and the real world has suddenly converted into an anarchic utopia.

[edit on 20-8-2008 by Orion Crystal Ice]

welll im glad its just in the UK

thats a sigh of relief


not for me, but for....my friend...who had a dream about it....

Why do people constantly title these sorts of articles with "downloading" and "downloaders" when its simply not the case - its people who are uploading (and with p2p youre downloading at the same time, but thats nothing to do with it) who are in trouble here.

While I think it is proper to remunerate for the product or service being offered if that's what the creator of it expects, my sense is that the claims made of losses because of pirated units become exaggerated. Every unit illegally dowloaded does not necessarily correspond to a unit that would have been purchased legally. Some gets deleted and some would simply not be acquired without it being free.

The industry should address the problem that a band can only output two or three good songs on an album. That's just sad. With any band I really like, I don't feel that way at all however. Then again, while I like a large scope of musical styles and genres (potentially anything), most of the material sold is awful.

Edit: There is one reason for illegal downloading that I think has a legitimate defense. Some material is too obscure or rare that it is nearly impossible to get through any other means. If it isn't thought of as worth it to continue publication then it follows that it isn't thought of as commercially valuable.

[edit on 8/20/2008 by EnlightenUp]

[edit on 8/20/2008 by EnlightenUp]

reply to post by EnlightenUp


I agree. The albums for the most part have two hooks and the rest filler. I miss the old days that had at least 5 "A" songs and the rest at least B+!!

Zindo

reply to post by EnlightenUp


very good poitn enlightenup

to further that idea

lets say person A copies software and distributes it to 300 different people

thats 300 cpies of the same license out on the black market

why should the software company be entitled to restitutions for all 300 illegally downloaded copies...if it only lost out on - say - one sale?

Real simple solution, subpoena your ISP with the names and addresses of people you downloaded from.
Then contact those people and ask them for a signed document stating they charged you a penny for each download.
This then becomes a transaction which is perfectly legal.

Once you have those signed documents there's nothing they can do anymore
(although I grant getting them to sign documents wont be easy)

reply to post by TallWhites


but if they sign that contract, now the software company can come after them with full steam.


there's no way in hell they'd sign that contract.

Ouch, that really hurts. I, for one, can prioritize a purchase, but I understand some of us can't and therefore demand that all prices go down to suit our needs.

By the way, ever hear of amazon.com, or myspace? Lots of stuff on there to hear from hundreds of thousands of albums, and reviews to match, before you buy anything.

The point still stands that the money goes to the record company . . . not the artist.

With Myspace . . . more like more trash to go through to find the diamond.

As for prioritizing . . . what in the Hades does that have to do with anything?

Yeah. I did mention people not going to the show being part of the problem. Do you realize though that a CD registers as a 'unit' sold? And those units help establish where a fanbase is? And a band who wants to look out for their money and expanding their base does not want to risk playing somewhere where there isn't a fanbase that may yield a quarter of itself to the ticket buying?

You tour to build a fanbase. Every artists knows that. That is at the root of getting big.

Also, where do you think marketing money (posters, promo copies for reviewers, etc), money to pay the artist who did the work on the CD face, the CD booklet, and the CD cover, money to pay the photographer, money to manufacture the CD's, money to pay the engineer and recording studio, etc...all comes from? What about the best gear money can buy, which is the standard for putting on a professional show that will make you money in the future from repeat concertgoers, where's alllllllllll that money coming from?

It comes from the big labels . . . it used to anyways. Now bands can easily do their own professional thing without the label. yet many bands get pulled into the rhetoric spewed by the labels to lure then in . . .

Why not get rid of your house and car too, the factory workers and builders don't make as much as the fat cats do. It would be better just to take ALL the money out of their pockets. Books..who needs them? Let's completely abolish the printing press, too much $$$ changing hands. It's just not fair that we have to pay for anything since we have the Internet and the real world has suddenly converted into an anarchic utopia.

My house was given to me by my parents and I have never owned a new car. Not to mention the fact that a novice can't build a car or house. So your point is moot, as anyone can put together a cd/dvd with liner notes and sell it (which is what the labels do).

When I start getting charged $50 to read The Cat in the Hat, I will start downloading books too. The price of books is fair. The price of CD's is not.

Apples and oranges.

---------------------------

Argue with me all you want . . . but you will not change my mind. I have stated what will get me to buy cd's and movies again. That will not change.

People need to realize that the music and movie scene has changed . . . and the labels are fighting it because they can't scam us like they used to.

reply to post by Andrew E. Wiggin


I think it is natural for the legal team to claim the worst case to maximize the returns in lawsuits. It's impossible to know for sure which proportion would really have been a bonafide sale.

I was just pointing out that the figures given should be adjusted downward a tad (probably a big "tad" these days) in order to approach reality.