If it wasn’t enough that the RIAA and MPAA started hunting down individuals for piracy – we now have Activision following suit acting with aggressive action on a case-by-case basis.
According to public reports, Activision has sued a New York resident for allegedly copying Call of Duty 3 for the Xbox 360 console and other, unnamed games. Activision is seeking between $30,000 to $150,000 in damages “for each infringement of each copyrighted videogame.”
GamePolitics managed to dig up six other instances of piracy-related Activision lawsuits. Settlements in those cases ranged from $1,000 to $100,000. They also noted that five out of the six defendants lacked any type of representation.
Why haven’t more people been talking about these cases? Apparently, clauses in the settlements are forbidding the defendants from making any public statements that are inconsistent with any term of the Stipulation to Judgment and Permanent Injunction. Enough to make almost anyone remain quiet about the matter.
Unless James R. Strickland of New York is mass pirating video games – hitting him up for $30,000 to $150,000 clearly shows that Activision is at this point making examples out of people – much like RIAA and MPAA did. Notice how the RIAA and MPAA ordeal has significantly tapered off? It is a no-brainer that piracy does indeed cost these companies a lot of money – but when they jump on individual consumers for large sums of money, then slow step back into the woodwork it is obvious they are just using the legal system to recover lost money. It is definitely an unfortunate situation for both sides of the story – a lose-lose situation for the win.
In the end, it is no real big surprise to see the gaming industry big-wigs doing this sort of thing. Over the past year or so several large industry players such as Epic Games, id Software, Crytek and Infinity Ward have all expressed great concerns about game piracy on the PC. Some sounded off more than others, such as Crytek. Can we blame them? No.
Strangely though, all the aforementioned lawsuits seems to be about console game piracy.
