A british women has been fined 16000 for downloading a pc game,is the the end for all tho's pirates, hope it is,cause i can't people people getting something for nothing. link........http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/news.asp?c=8453
Why not be realistic about this BS and scare the hell out of her, and make her pay the price of like...maybe 10x what the game is worth. Almost 32,000 dollars is just BS for some ****ty pinball game no one cares about. Hell, she probably didn't even enjoy it. I mean, do these people never learn? The RIAA tried this same crap, with the huge fines to keep people from downloading, and it never worked. What DID work, was the companies pulling their heads out of their asses and realizing that people wanted to be able to download the music, it wasn't as much the cost, as just having such an easy way to pick and choose songs. I'm not saying this is the same thing, but in PC gaming, if you make a good game, it will sell. If you make a mediocre game with high system requirements (Crysis, for instance) no one is going to buy it because it's just not worth it. It's not like all of the PC gaming world is falling apart, good games are released and sell well because those companies know what the hell they're doing. Some crappy pinball game manufacturer...give me a break.
you got it wrong.. not for DOWNLOADING but SHARING. But yes, its a ridiculous amount... And since when they are allowed to spy on p2p networks? Encryption anyone?
Ah my bad... I was reading this: http://computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=195492 And thought it was the link by OP!
What the duck... did she share that game with 160 million people? Because then that fine might make sense. Those crappy pinball games are the type of game given away with a free paperclip. You could safely argue that a pinball game has zero value as a purchasable item. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=flash+pinball because so many people are willing to offer free play. That woman should have had a better lawyer.
Whats wrong with ms pinball? Lol - what a lot of bull, Just because someone downloads some software doesn't mean that they would by it if there was no other means to get it. A lot of software is not worth the price charged.
Seriously.... what the hell's the point on fining THAT MUCH for it? If someone illegally takes posession of your digital property.... make them pay for that digital property. fining someone a couple thousand dollars/pounds.... just screams "WE NEED F*CKING MONEY!!!"
If you don't steal, you don't have to worry about paying a ridiculous settlement. I don't think the amount makes much sense, but I don't think stealing something that isn't a basic need for survival makes much sense either.
yeah... but it makes even more sense to release a demo to let someone try out a game before they buy it. Dream Pinball 3D.... just happens to be one of those games where there isn't much of ANYTHING available, let alone a demo. Now.... i looked on the website for Dream Pinball.... and from what i could gather... it can be purchased for 20€. so.... they're demanding 12,000€ because she downloaded a single copy of a 20€ game? And.... it's not even anything like the ESA like we have here in the US.... that's the GAME DEVELOPER that's issuing the fine. Now, i know piracy is bad.... but a 600x hike in "reimbursement" cost because ONE person downloaded it? Like i said.... this is basically a case of a game developer screaming for money. You know that they probably had someone in the company sharing it to the world somehow or another... just watching the IP addresses connecting to download it. Hell... why don't they fine the employee who was sharing the file? he's the one that allowed her to download it in the first place. Seriously.... if EVERYONE in the world knew that EVERY time you pirated a game, you'd be fined the price of the game.... i think that would probably stop piracy a LOT faster than one person every couple months POSSIBLY getting fined an insanely high amount of money for no apparent reason. I mean... people would think "****... if i download this game from this person... rather than buying it in the first place... i'll have to pay the fine that comes out to the MSRP of the game... and i STILL won't be able to play it online without a retail license. Screw that, i'm buying the game." Hell.... i'll admit it right now. on rare occasion i do download a game. that "rare occasion" being if there's a game that came out that looks really interesting, and if there isn't any form of demo out for the game. Now... i know that someone might say "well, just because they don't have a demo, doesn't mean you can't get an idea for the game by watching trailers and gameplay video's." But you CAN'T get an idea of a game by video's. it's not YOU playing. YOU aren't discovering what the game is like. you're watching someone ELSE playing the game (or in the case of trailers... might not even be watching the GAME). I've bought some games that i seriously regret... the most recent being UT3. UT2k4 was great. UT3 is a serious upset to me. Then there's the one game known as Infernal. Great game.... but INCREDIBLY short. plus no multiplayer.
Is this the way to stop piracy, bring people to jail? Are going to get more money if bring to jail who play with illegal copies?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7568642.stm According to BBC she didnt just download one copy, she was sharing...I guess she left bittorrent on for a long time, potentially hundreds of people benefited from her uploading. Also regarding the high cost, remember that she lost a court case? Of course its expensive, firstly she had to pay the legal costs of the prosecution. So really, the fine was £6,000. Still a lot, but fines are meant to scary. I mean, if it was a low fine, what incentive would there be to not pirate? Even if on the very low chance you were caught, the company taking you to court would actually lose money if say you only had to pay the retail price. It wouldn't be worth prosecuting for such a low amount of money. Yes but that is impossible... you could easily say if everybody in the world knows they will be caught and charged retail price then they are just buying the game as normal anyway. As i've already said, the cost of tracking and hunting down pirates would be greater than the extra money recieved. Why do you think credit card companies don't protect their accounts more? It's cheaper to accept millions of $ lost in fraud each year than to implement more and more security. Something tells me the argument of "there are plenty of free substitutes" is not going to hold up when compared to theft of some company's work who has had to pay their employees etc. I mean, if there is so many free substitutes, why didn't she play those instead of breaking the law? That would be the easy counter argument. edit: I agree that fines are not an effective or fair method of preventing piracy, im just explaining this case
English jails are full already, they even let real criminals go free because of it. If they start bringing downloaders to jails they would end up with half of the country.
My experience about P2P shows that most people who use illegal copies is because can not afford the legal copy. That is why we will soon see people in jail sharing a cell with murderers for play the SIMS, because the majority of users of illegal copies can not afford original games nor fines astronomical. I believe that this verdict is unfair because it is shown that these downloads are a real loss sale for the videogame company, therefore attacking the presumption of innocence of the accused, because an illegal copy is not a lost sale in most cases. This is going out of hand, a companys that use the law as a tool.
That argument makes sense but she would surely be found guilty of copyright infringement and piracy anyway, and as such would be punished for that crime - even if the charge of the business losing sales is arguably incorrect. Even if sales haven't been lost, she has still committed a crime. To be fair, in my experience of piracy of games most people can afford the games. I mean fair enough many cannot afford Adobe photo and video design products, but i'm tired of gamers with very expensive latest hardware pirating. I guess this woman is more of a casual gamer so its a slightly different issue .
