Activision Targeting Individual Pirates
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.
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raithedavion I buy almost all of my PC games. The only ones I don't buy are the games that are no longer available. As an owner of a legal license for certain games like Command and Conquer: The First Decade, I would expect that I would have no legal recourse for downloading a copy of the DVD, and using my purchased key. Disks get scratched. I like having a digial copy of my games. It is either that, or go with a digital system like Steam, where no matter how many times I reformat my PC or I lose and break a disk, I can always get my game back.Reply -
one-shot Steam is great. I just bought the HL2 Episode Pack. The other games I've bought are always available when ever I want to download them when I reformat my OS. +1 to Steam and the guy above me^^^Reply -
megamanx00 Yeah I didn't originally like steam but I guess it's better than the alternative. I don't really know if that's going to put any dents in piracy, but I guess game companies just wanna do something.Reply -
Cloned Its sounds like they are targeting the people that post multiple games for download. I would much rather have them go after pirates than put restrictive DRM on games that I buy. Don't punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.Reply -
bf2gameplaya The real issue is your ISP acting as an agent of law-enforcement, for a non-criminal activity.Reply
Copyright infringement is complex and civil, not criminal.
You would have a fit if your ISP ratted you out for adultery, or tax evasion...but for copyright infringement? Pathetic. No wonder that industry is in full on fail mode. -
mdillenbeck Why would Activision want to silence those that they successfully prosecuted? After all, if their aim is to deter people shouldn't they want the public to know what is going to happen to them if they break the law? Maybe they prefer to make their money through litigation than selling their product.Reply -
bittoe MDillenbeckWhy would Activision want to silence those that they successfully prosecuted? After all, if their aim is to deter people shouldn't they want the public to know what is going to happen to them if they break the law? Maybe they prefer to make their money through litigation than selling their product.Reply
Perhaps what they are doing is suing and winning then allowing the offending party to forgo payment in return for silence. This way they get the word out w/o actually screwing their client-base -
noobe1981 It simple you don't go around telling people you're sueing.. For the simple reason its a grey area for a lot of people. And not many people like to see the big guys push around the small guys. Even if they got some justifaction for doing so. But 1000+ anyways is a load of crap. It should be the cost of the game unless they can prove their selling it. But they got lobbyist and naturally pirates don't. Go figure.Reply -
captaincharisma i was introduced to steam too when i bought half life 2 and find it good sense one of my disks got scratched and couldn`t install anymore so i just download it now. and i got an extra bonus too. when I entered my cd key for my old copy of half-life GOTY edition i was able to download all the old half life games like blue shift and counterskrikeReply -
cruiseoveride Game companies don't want my money, so why should I buy games?Reply
If they don't make games for Linux, its like saying "We don't need money from Linux users"
I'll download my games thank you. And Windows too, just to play the game. That's what I keep my handy dandy 80Gb hard drive for.