Soldato
A lot of things that people download would not be purchased anyway
Being Sued by Atari/Davenport !
- Thread starter lakitu
- Start date
A lot of things that people download would not be purchased anyway
Man of Honour
Any proof for that? Either way, its crap justification for what is morally theft.
Burnsy
No it isn't. You can say it as many times as you like but piracy still won't be theft. Theft is to take somebodies property without permission with the intention of depriving them of it's use.
Piracy is Copyright infringement, nothing more.
so you have honestly never borrowed a game , movie or album from a friend that you would not have bought yourself?
in the companys eyes you would have bought it if you didnt borrow from your friend.
yes piracy is wrong, no its not theft , people download stuff they would never waste money on in the first place but that doesnt make it right it just means a lot of downloads are not loss of earnings like they claim
From PCPro....
A firm of London lawyers claims it's "stepping up the fight" against people who illegally share computer games.
We revealed in May how legal firm Davenport Lyons was demanding in excess of £600 from people accused of illegally sharing a single game.
At the time, Davenport Lyons refused to discuss the issue with PC Pro. Now it's hired PR agency Bell Pottinger Business & Brand to trumpet its crackdown.
The firm says it will launch proceedings against 100 people from the UK "suspected of illegally uploading a number of copyright works."
It further claims "several thousand names and addresses have already been ordered by the High Court of London to be released by the internet providers concerned" and that another application waiting to be issued is demanding an additional 6,000 addresses.
Until now, there has been precious little evidence that Davenport Lyons was prepared to follow through on its demands for payment if accused file-sharers refused to pay up.
However, the company claims a recent decision at the Central London County Court resulted in four people being ordered to make an interim payment of £750 and pay costs, in advance of a final judgement. PC Pro has been so far unable to verify these claims.
Daveport Lyons' clients include Topware, makers of Dream Pinball 3D, and German game company Zuxxex.
A firm of London lawyers claims it's "stepping up the fight" against people who illegally share computer games.
We revealed in May how legal firm Davenport Lyons was demanding in excess of £600 from people accused of illegally sharing a single game.
At the time, Davenport Lyons refused to discuss the issue with PC Pro. Now it's hired PR agency Bell Pottinger Business & Brand to trumpet its crackdown.
The firm says it will launch proceedings against 100 people from the UK "suspected of illegally uploading a number of copyright works."
It further claims "several thousand names and addresses have already been ordered by the High Court of London to be released by the internet providers concerned" and that another application waiting to be issued is demanding an additional 6,000 addresses.
Until now, there has been precious little evidence that Davenport Lyons was prepared to follow through on its demands for payment if accused file-sharers refused to pay up.
However, the company claims a recent decision at the Central London County Court resulted in four people being ordered to make an interim payment of £750 and pay costs, in advance of a final judgement. PC Pro has been so far unable to verify these claims.
Daveport Lyons' clients include Topware, makers of Dream Pinball 3D, and German game company Zuxxex.
Man of Honour
You can get compensation for lost earnings, cost of services etc, but you're right, the UK doesn't have punitive damages.
Burnsy
I'm amazed they can get a 30 quid game up to 500.
(well actually i reckon a judge would hopefully throw them out the court and disbar them, like the French ones did for mis representation/threatening.)
Man of Honour
You can by abusing laws meant for something completely different and by making false assumptions. That's what campaigns against P2P piracy are based on.
Say you've downloaded downloaded a game from a P2P network. It's 2GB.
i) Make up a number for the number of people who downloaded any part of the game from you. This number is entirely fictional, but people who fileshare are funding <insert bad thing of the week> and are stealing more money than most bank robbers!1111oneone!!!111OMG! The judge probably won't know any better.
ii) Make the entirely false assumption that anyone who downloaded any part of the game from you downloaded all of the game from you. The judge probably won't know the difference.
iii) Make the entirely false assumption that anyone who downloaded the game would otherwise have bought a new copy at full RRP. This silly lie has been repeated often enough to be believed by enough people.
Voila! The costs are now <make up a number> times RRP. Call it £20000. Call it £50000. Call it anything - it's completely fictional. The judge probably won't know the difference. Plus legal costs, with some padded bills to ensure a big profit for Davenport Lyons as well as the game company.
Assumption number two is particularly good, because it allows dozens or even hundreds of people to be fined for the same download by establishing the precedent that anyone who provides any part of any file for someone else to download is responsible for the whole of that person's download. With a large and popular file, that could easily be a hundred people to fine for the same download - a potentially huge profit for the Davenport Lyons and the game companies who hire them.
There are plenty of...arguments of dubious merit...on both sides, but the ones from the people who stand to profit the most from piracy, i.e. companies like Davenport Lyons, are the worst.
That's why they are taken to court for uploading rather than downloading as they could be contributing to tens or hundreds of other pirated copies depriving the programmers, publishers and retailers of their revenue....I'm amazed they can get a 30 quid game up to 500.
All the "bet you never do more than 30mph" stuff aimed at people that condemn piracy here is misleading at best. If the law is the speed limit is 30 and you get caught doing 39 you take the points and fine and chalk it up to experience as you know you were doing wrong and got caught. You took the chance and so you live with the results.
The problem with people ripping off games, music and video is because they do it from the relative privacy of a bedroom or study and the internet they don't associate it with anything illegal and so they're not prepared to take the consequences if they get caught. They know it's wrong but try to justify their way out of any kind of consequences by trying to paint it as a victimless crime. Would a valid defence for getting caught doing 39 in a 30 be that you never hit anyone so it was a victimless crime? How about if you proved no one had ever been injured on that stretch of road? Of course not. The simple option is if you're not prepared to risk getting caught, don't take the chance in the first place and don't imagine just downloading the "odd game" from you bedroom means you won't be held to account..
If you want to rip off someone elses work then fine, that's up to you. Just don't try and play the victim if you get caught.
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Man of Honour
The the absolute maximum loss would be determined by the amount the person had uploaded, and it wouldn't be much. Even that wouldn't be the real amount of loss of revenue, because it's ridiculous to assume that everyone would otherwise buy a copy of everything they pirate.
Say a game is 2GB. While downloading it from P2P, you also upload 2GB of it, in the form of many small pieces of it to numerous people.
You personally have uploaded 2GB of copyrighted data with respect to that game. To put it another way, you've uploaded one copy's worth of that game. The maximum actual loss to the copyright holder is therefore the profit they make from the sale of one copy of the game. Which is, what, £10? £20? Assuming that all of the people who got copyrighted data that's part of the game from you would otherwise have bought the game, which is rubbish, and ignoring any sales that might result. Some people do buy stuff as a result of pirating stuff, either a legal copy of whatever they pirated or a related product (e.g. pirate number 2 in a series of games, from last year, buy number 3 as a result).
It is simply wrong to be talking about huge sums of money as costs, loss of revenue or however anyone wants to phrase it. It is untrue.
What is being advocated is punitive fines. If someone agrees with that, fine, but they should be honest about what they support.
RIAA and mpaa or whatever there called dont check if you upload or download they just gather a list of IP's
some american university not so long ago tested it out by faking the ip's of laserjet printers onto a torrent and had cease and desist orders saying the ip's belonging to laserjet printers had downloaded indianna jones and the crystal skull and something else lol
What if you leave your machine seeding and uploading after you've downloaded it yourself? Granted the prosecution would have to prove that you'd done that but to automatically assume the most you could upload is 2Gb is you download 2Gb seems a bit of a leap.
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Man of Honour
Yes, you are. If the IP address alone is considered sufficient evidence of a 'crime', and I was feeling sufficiently malicious (which obviously I'm not) then for example I could trawl the logs from my website and pick a random address. Inject that into a torrent server that the RIAA/MPAA are watching and the 'victim' gets a cease and desist order for something they never even heard of. You could probably call that DoS by proxy.
they didnt download or upload anything
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu
merely pointing out that the people sending these letters dont even know if someone has downloaded more than a single 1kilobit of data if anything at all , yet they sue them as if they stole 10+ copys from a shop
its like arresting anyone who walks into a bank for robbery because they stepped through the doors
Man of Honour
Oops. Careful with that post reply button. 
No argument there then. As with anything it's down to the prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Of course if cases ever reached court without the required level of proof they should be thrown out and the prosecution carry the costs.
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Man of Honour
That's not the point though, is it? With the likes of Davenport Lyons throwing their weight around, a lot of people will settle just to avoid the hassle. These things rarely get as far as a courtroom.