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Loading ...Is this the UK’s dumbest pirate?
khenry
Piracy’s a hardy perennial issue that never goes away and it recently flared up again when a developer decided to talk to them. The results of his experimental launch featuring an expanded demo and no DRM remain to be seen.
However, the £3000 fine handed down to the pirate bringing his wares in by fishing boat earlier this year was dwarfed by the penalty that a court slapped on one of four pirates successfully sued by Topware Interactive. This unnamed lady uploaded Dream Pinball 3D, a game which is yet to be released on PC (it’s out at the end of August on the same day as Stalker Clear Skies), which was downloaded 1000 times. The total fine and damages means that for a game that you could pre-order for £8.99 at Play.com, she will pay
£16, 086. The three co-defendants in that single case are yet to be fined, but the court obtained 1,000 other names from ISPs keen to take themselves out of the firing line of legal action.
The “price of games” argument isn’t going to work here because the prize was getting to play a game that was already out in the US, up to seven months before its UK release. Whatever the intellectual debate around piracy, it shows that publishers are no longer willing to put up with it, and that ISPs are tiring of covering the backs of their bandwidth- wasting, filesharing army.
The real surprise is that it’s a small to medium publisher protecting a reputedly so-so pinball game, rather than EA and ActiBlizzard protecting Crysis and Cash on Delivery 4. The latter pair of publishers could certainly afford it.
LOL @ Cash on Delivery 4! I own COD4 and Crysis officially as they are worth owning. Wonder how long the company of the Pinball game will survie now.
Looking forward to seeing comments to this story.
They have picked on 1 person do far what about the other 1500 names that that got off th list of the peer o peer software and isp’s. This is the first of many and wont be the last. i wouldn’t say she was stupid and her name is out just google it and you will find it all. All so the total fine was as follows ->
The Patents County Court in London ordered that the woman pay damages of £6,086.56 and combined costs of £10,000 to Topware Interactive. the problem we know face is that isp’s are considering to block all peer to peer software. is this write. what about news groups. look at virgin they allow porn and warez on there on user net servers. sorry but if they allow this then there to blame as much as the normal person. why haven’t virgin media been brought to justice. they are hitting the down loader what about the big company’s who are getting away with it ….
There are laws in place against stealing in every country in the world. There are laws already in place to protect intellectual property. If you were watch someone walk into a store, pick up an item and then walk out without paying for it, what would you call that person? Wouldn’t that person be arrested if caught? Should that person be arrested if caught? Most people who get caught shoplifting (stealing from a store) often had the money in their pocket to pay for the item they took. They just didn’t want to. So it’s strange that a software company is prosecuting someone for “stealing”, seems to bring it ridicule. So is the statement that EA and ActiBlizzard can afford it! THAT is the REAL stupidity. Who actually writes this stuff?