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Music industry on game devs fighting illegal file-sharers: you're on your own |
Listed in: Tags: Atari, Codemasters, piracy, Reality Pump
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Earlier this morning, news came out that five British game companies are taking 25,000 pirates to court for illegally downloading their software from file-sharing services. The big five are Codemasters, Atari, Reality Pump, Topware and Techland.The Times reports that they are seeking £ 3,000 (about US$ 5, 600) in payment, apart from demanding contact details from ISPs and preparing to take to court the first 500 of those who refuse to pay. That makes pirate # 501 very lucky, indeed.
Apparently, the legal action was incited by a landmark court-ruling that was held earlier this week, with a file-sharing gamer, Isabela Barwinska, being forced to pay £ 16,000 damages to Topware for downloading Dream Pinball from a file-sharing website.
Now, even before the day has finished, the music industry has given their own two cents on the issue - another victim of piracy - and surprise, surprise, they're not backing the gaming industry on this one.
Matt Phillips, director of communications of the BPI (formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry), says "that working with ISPs to educate consumers is a more effective way of combating illegal downloading" instead of punishing those who file-share.
This issue of file-sharing has been growing in significance especially with the boom of the Internet industry. Unfortunately, there is still no sufficient jurisprudence that will streamline the rules and policies defining when an act of file-sharing is held illegal. Piracy, though now a generic concept, remains vague and evasive, and so it is fairly easy for any one to fall in the pitfalls of this title.
But since both industries of music and gaming are the most hurt in all this, and also the movie industry, it would probably help a lot of they take on a united stance on the matter. Unfortunately, with this obvious distancing move of the BPI, it looks like even the industries themselves are not exactly certain yet as to how to deal with the issue of file-sharing. How can we expect to finally kill of the alternate-industry that's killing off the legit industries when they themselves are at a dissonance?
We'll be updating you more on this matter, but in the meantime, make sure you're not downloading any illegal files. You just might wake up one morning one of these days to find an invitation to court waiting for you in your mailbox.
Related articles:
- Nintendo, 54 companies slap lawsuit on Japanese R4 distributors
- BioWare to address piracy with DLC, multiplayer support
- Reeves: PS3's future lies with full-game downloads, Sony to avoid piracy with massive DRM scheme
- TMP encryption chip hope against piracy, says Bushnell
Via Develop Mag
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make good games people want to buy or die trying.
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@Orlyeh: "make good games people want to buy or die trying. " - that phrase pwnd
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"How can we expect to finally kill of the alternate-industry that's killing off the legit industries when they themselves are at a dissonance?"
the games industry is not in anything even resembling the position of the music industry.
the only reason it got so bad for the music industry is they rested on their laurels. they chose to ignore and then try to crush the tech that could of kept them in the money. instead they squandered the opportunity and are now playing catch-up.
as games continue their natural progression toward digital delivery, piracy inherently becomes much harder.
IF connections were fast enough for anyone to download games like they did mp3s on napster, AND the games industry was completely ignoring the distribution method... i could see your point. however at this point it amounts to little more than sensationalism.
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I be one of thems bildgrat psphacking Pirates aghrrrrrr!!
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Ben
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Direct downloads are what are going to kill you!
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Thats not correct the court action was a default judgement no claims or evidence was provided from the defendant. So Topware/Davenport Lyons didn't need to back up there "evidence"
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None of you should really be blaming the enterprises behind prosecution of the individuals committing criminal acts. You should be blaming the individuals for being ignorant in basically throwing their credentials right into the hands of investigators. They aren't doing enough to even protect themselves, so why in the hell are they even pirating in the first place?
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your average cd costs 24 bucks, contains 12 tracks, thats two bucks a track, each track in mp3 form is about 4-5 megs (decent quality.) so, so we come in at about 2 bucks for 4.5 megs.
but what the industry loses is the price of the cd when a potential buyer just pirates the cd. about 24 bucks each.
now, the gaming industry loses ~ 60 bucks when a game is pirated.
now a good music label may have 2-3 prominent artists on their roster, pumping out 2-3 albums every 2 years. come to 2-3 "good" products A YEAR.
the average game development company is much slower at producing products. so the downloads maybe dont hurt them quite as bad, so i see your point.
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I don't agree with those who profit of other peoples property, but I don't agree with bullies either.
Freedom of information I think is required for the growth of human intelligence and anyway how else are you supposed to tell if a product is good or not unless you try before you buy.
You should only pay for something that is worth the price you pay for it.
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damn concisest!
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but some people still prefers Hard Copy stuff since you can lost data easy.
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Really? Well, I'm sorry that you happen to be so ignorant, but you can download pretty much anything on Usenet that you find on torrents.
I've downloaded over a terabyte in the last three months.
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they can take THAT to the court!
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