News - Game Pirates check your post! UK publishers sending out 25,000 letters demandi

[Agent]

How does Steam help you catch pirates?

I think Jay was implying that prevention is better than a cure.

[Saracen]

So they go to Civil and say we have the IP that downloaded this game and his ISP says he had the lease on this IP.

He says, does this 100% prove that it was me using this IP? Is it possible that some one else could have the same IP as mine or spoof my IP? - Yes it is.

So where does it go from there?

Who knows? That's for a court to decide and, if you were to get a letter and ignore it, you may be able to enlighten us.

Presumably, Isabela Barwinska thought something along these lines .... that it wouldn't come to anything or that they couldn't prove it. The £16,000 ward against her indicates differently, though.

We don't know what evidence would be presented. Or at least, I don't. But as it's a civil case, is it necessary to 100% prove it was you. It was, after all, your account, and the court are acting on the basis of the balance of probabilities. If you have a credible explanation of why you didn't do it, presumably you'd win. If the court thought you were just trying to use that to slither out from responsibility for your actions .... well, who knows.

If it comes to it (and presumably it won't), in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood ...."you feelin' lucky today?"

[Jay]

yes. I doubt I'll get a letter, but if I do I will fight it because I know I am right and I have never downloaded any games. Its a very strange thing this one, there has to be a better way to do this.

[kalniel]

I think Jay was implying that prevention is better than a cure.

Well of course they're doing prevention work as well, hence all the DRM, digital downloads and what not, but just like speed bumps, you have to back it up with enforcement when someone deliberately gets past prevention.

[Rob_B]

...Some people earlier in this thread have mentioned second hand copies as 'proof of game ownership' (and hence that a licence to the material was granted). However it really needs to be mentioned that second hand games are unlikely to protect anyone, as they are a grey market. Under the licensing terms of most games, you pay for a non-transferable license to install and use the software on typically a single machine. Generally, a blind eye is turned to this grey market, as it helps to ensure that gamers can buy the latest releases (by selling off their old games), and the status of such EULAs has not been properly tested in any court. However I would strongly advise avoiding this line of defence, since the EULA makes clear that no further licenses will be granted after the first purchase to any subsequent owner.

Then I bought it brand new, cash from a shop.

If someone did this with Bioshock (just for example) when it first came out (due to the dodgy DRM) then I see a reason, DRM was 'broken', they owned the legit game so they downloaded a copy to use as 'no-cd'.

If they had gone back to the shop with a game they couldn't install/play then the shop wouldn't refund them, the publisher wouldn't so what is the alternative (ignorning you can downloaded no-cd cracks stand-alone but they are still 'illegal' aren't they?)

There seem far too many if & buts with something like this, that recent case proves that the publishers either had some compelling evidence or the law doesnt understand this type of thing.

Either way I'm all for stopping piracy, I've may or may not have downloaded things in the past *ahem*. If I got a £300 letter (I won't, pinball sucks!) I'd take it on the chin as a 'cheap' let-off considering the value of things I did/didn't download then stop doing it (if I even do it in the first place of course!)

As someone mentioned (or I read, maybe on Hexus news?) Considering console games are more expensive however are pirated less the whole 'they're too expensive' arguement falls flat. Its just plain easier to get away with on a PC!

[Jay]

Rob I had to laugh at that post.... Its like reading a confession by a man with dissociative identity disorder

[Rob_B]

lol, 'My other personality did it m'lud so you can't fine me for his law-breaking'

ooh actually thats a good un!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

haha quality. i buy all my games especialy now that i dont even have a godo pc to play the latest pc games. no point in me downloading pc games when they cant run on my system

[morda8]

Well if publishers sold games for £5 then there wouldnt be any problems with piracy

[mediaboy]

Which is probaly why the brand "Sold Out" makes so much money... and can afford to sell all their games at £5.

And some of them aren't bad games either

I got three of the Thief games (can't remember which ones) for a tenner, and I'm still trying to work my way through the things (As I find it insanely hard to pick locks...)

Also found AoE II for a fiver... meaning that I could afford to have an eight player LAN game for a tenner as well (you need disc/3 players.. so 3 discs for 8.)

Good brand.

However, newer games are higher priced to make more money... it's the way of life. I have to say... the only games I've ever bought for more than about £10 were DMC4 and Oblivion. The rest of them I wait for them to drop to a semi-reasonable price, instead of handing out £20-40 for them.

All my friends tend to lend games to me/borrow them off of me as well though, so it's more like between us we'll buy the more expensive games, or one of us will buy it, complete it then swap it for my copy of, for instance, DMC (as they all want to get the PC version )


However, I think that if all games were sold at £5, it still wouldn't totally cure piracy.
There'd still be a small few sad people in the world that tried to pirate them to save themselves a few quid.

[Ferral]

I usually pick them up 2nd hand unless it is something I really want then fork out whatever the asking price. Other than that I order from Sold Out myself with the older games, even though I have played them previously and traded them in. You can't go wrong with 3 games for a tenner on the £5 range. I won the competition a few months back and won Little Britain, Prey and Serious Sam 2 when they got released on the £5 range. Got a good few hours play out of them.

Also picked up Prisoner of War (which I just can't get to run on Vista due to no cursor on the main page, it was a known issue that was patched in XP but does nothing for Vista), Project Eden which is equally as cool today as it was when first released and also Anachronox which doesn't look overly great by todays standards as it is Quake 2 engine but the playability is still there.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

GAME sell TONS of pc games for two for £15. im tempted to buy a few cracking titles i may have missed

[teh_masterer]

if you have done one or one hundred doesn't really matter does it.

your still GUILTY

That really makes no sense. That's like saying shop lifters and bank robbers should serve the same punishment.

[Andy3536]

If you've downloaded one thing or hundreds is a difference, it is still theft but not at the same degree. And of corse the ISPs are probobly only looking at those in the top few percent of downloads.

Anyone thats downloaded a few is probobly not going to get looked into. When i see what some of the guys at work download and still no letters, I can't imagine anyone thats not downloading stuff constantly getting looked into at the moment. But that will change no dought.