By John Walker on December 15th, 2011 at 10:13 am.
Remember how we all cheered when CD Projekt removed the DRM from The Witcher 2? Although the GoG version was always free of the legitimate-customers-only punishing code, all other sources came with the straitjacket. Post launch, however, they patched it out, letting customers enjoy the game without concern. It seemed an all-round sensible way to behave, and despite piracy they sold over a million copies of the game. A happy story. Except, well, now according to TorrentFreak (and seemingly corroborated here, along with mentions of a few other titles) the publisher is reportedly threatening alleged (but unproven) pirates with ludicrous legal letters demanding large amounts of money.
Reminiscent of the vile threats sent out by delightful legal firm Davenport Lyons in 2008, the practice which TorrentFreak points out a US federal judge described as a “shakedown” has apparently been initiated in Germany, where thousands of letters have apparently been sent out demanding the ridiculous sum of €911.80 from anyone they think has downloaded and shared the game by bittorrent.
The widely condemned practice relies on the process of tracing people by their IP address, as if that’s any useful way to recognise a person using an internet connection. Be generous enough not to password your wifi (or of course not know how to password your wifi, as is obviously the case for huge numbers of non-net-savvy users) and anyone can download via your IP address. Let alone the confusions of housemates, guests, public spaces, and those who know the extremely simple tricks of disguising your IP. The numbers of false positives make what is already a particularly ghastly method of gaining money utterly reprehensible. And it seems it’s happening here, TorrentFreak reports, with people who have never heard of the game receiving these frightening threats.
The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here. To do it is to break the understood laws of many countries, and that is that. But the simple reality is that a pirated copy is not a lost sale. It is deliberately ignoring reality to make this idiotic claim. Piracy is unauthorised duplication, where nothing is “stolen”, but rather copied without permission or payment. (Where those corporations shout, “But you wouldn’t steal a car!” a sensible, level-headed body replies, “No, we wouldn’t. What does that have to do with anything? Because to pirate a car would be to drive off in it, while leaving it behind on the owner’s driveway.”) Those who cannot afford/aren’t interested enough/wanted to try first/just wanted without paying/etc etc have not taken something away from anyone to their immediate deficit, and do not represent a lost sale in any meaningful way. It cannot be proven that were piracy impossible they would have all paid for a copy, and it is of course obviously nonsense that they all would. But this point matters: The language being used is irrelevant to the reality of whatever crime may have taken place, and this incorrect terminology allows room for such hyperbolic and unjustified responses. And therefore, to charge people for the perceived loss of sales they’ve created by uploading a torrent is factually nonsensical.
Again, the legality of the act of unauthorised duplication is not in question. (Never mind the increasingly abundant evidence piling up that demonstrates piracy encourages sales, that is not relevant here.) This is about the response to piracy that has taken place, however wrong it may be to have done it in the first place. And that response is apparently to send out thousands of threatening letters, demanding a significant sum to prevent your having to go to court and face their claims of much more serious charges.
This is a grotesque practice, and one that seemed to be waning after the disgusted reaction from the masses in 2008, which saw Atari (publishers of The Witcher) eventually backing down from their actions. To hear that CD Projekt may be pulling the same awful scheme is a tragedy. They should back out of it immediately, and apologise, to save any face they still have.
We’ve contacted CDP for comment.
15/12/2011 at 10:18 bglamb says:
I remember them forewarning everybody about this at the time.
They said they would release it DRM-free, but would be tracking the torrents and would take legal action against those who pirated.
But, although some innocent people will be getting these letters, surely nobody who is innocent will pay up! The only people who are actually gonna pay that sum are those who are scared of getting caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.
15/12/2011 at 10:21 Sarah83 says:
They did say it before the game was released, yes.
15/12/2011 at 10:28 Colthor says:
So why not send these letters to everyone, for every single media release? You wouldn’t need many people to feel threatened into coughing up to pay for a bulk mailing.
15/12/2011 at 10:29 Sarah83 says:
You do realize they got those IPs from people who torrented the game?
15/12/2011 at 10:31 KikiJiki says:
No, they got those IPs from ADDRESSES that torrented the game. An IP Address is not personally identifying.
15/12/2011 at 10:36 Squirrelfanatic says:
According to German law, the operator of a WLAN is responsible for securing this network via the methods available (i.e. passwords) and is held responsible for any illegal activities performed through his IP (assigned by his network operator at the given time). In theory, you could try to somehow prove that an intrusion has taken place. But in case the judge is not convinced of this idea, you’re in a bad position.
I don’t know how this is handled in other countries though.
15/12/2011 at 10:37 Sarah83 says:
Okay, so I guess you know a lot of people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally? Because I actually do know a few people and they were all “guilty”.
15/12/2011 at 10:38 Colthor says:
As John points out in the article, there are plenty of ways that their list of IP addresses might be entirely unrelated to people who torrented the game.
So why not just get a bulk mail register – the public electoral roll would be a good one in the UK – and send a letter to all of them? Probably some of them pirated it, and this way isn’t limited to catching people who torrented it without covering their tracks.
15/12/2011 at 10:43 bglamb says:
@Cothor Because that would be mean, immoral and largely pointless. You’d hit not even 1% of the time. The method of just targeting the IP addresses of torrenters would have a hit-rate, I imagine, in the very high 90′s.
There aren’t “plenty of ways” the list might be “entirely unrelated”. There are *some* ways that *some* of the entries might be incorrect. But the vast majority, I suspect, will be spot on.
And it will also serve as a reminder to people to secure their wi-fi!
15/12/2011 at 10:55 Persus-9 says:
“surely nobody who is innocent will pay up”
Nonsense, the people who will pay up are the people who are intimidated by legal letters concerning alleged tech crimes. I’d guess most pirates are tech savvy enough to delete their pirated content and claim innocence. A lot of the innocent people on the other hand will be people like my mum who would freak the hell out if she got such a letter, the combination of technology with threats of legal action would scare the hell out of her. If the sum demanded was one she had then she might well just to make the whole thing go away.
15/12/2011 at 10:58 Mechorpheus says:
Also the fact that many BT trackers place spoof addresses in their client lists, randomly generated or somesuch to throw off this kind of measure. I recall a case where this caused another London law firm to send letters to 60-70 year old couples accusing them of downloading some dodgy porn, much to the amusement of the comments threads of The Register.
Also, Persus-9 is bang on the money. My parents were on the receiving end of a letter from Davenport Lyons (and no, they were not guilty of anything), and my mum paid the demanded £350 without even asking me or anyone at all. They sent through a whacking great stack of ‘evidence’ (200 odd pages of total balls), complete with unintelligible legalese language which looked intimidating as all heck, and that was all that was needed to get her to pay.
15/12/2011 at 11:03 Colthor says:
@bglamb:
But slightly more targeted extortion is fine? Will it also act as a reminder to people not to have relatives or house-mates? Or to organisations not to provide network access?
A 1% hit rate would be brilliant (IIRC that’s about what you’d expect for normal, non-extortion letters); bulk mail’s cheap. One in ten-thousand would be well in profit when you’re demanding best part of a grand a time. And you don’t care if they did it or not; innocents’ money is just as good as the pirates’.
15/12/2011 at 11:17 Tams80 says:
I don’t think bulk mail would work any better. It would probably be worse. That and in the UK at least we have rights to not be posted such post. You can have your address not be freely available for companies to buy (which said publisher would have to do), something I have done. If a letter did arrive and wasn’t relevant, it could also be classified as junk; not helping the publisher’s image and possibly having some legal ramifications. People who don’t torrent have a right to privacy and bulk mailing would intrude upon this.
15/12/2011 at 11:20 tenseiga says:
I am pretty torn about piracy stories. Im from India where piracy does not have any stigma whatsoever and it is the norm rather than the exception. Now that the internet has pretty much arrived in everyones house, piracy is pretty much exploding and the touts selling dvds of games with badly photocopied covers are slowly losing business because people just pirate their own stuff. Naturally in a culture like this it is hard for a sub 18 year old to understand why piracy is wrong and ask the parents for money to buy video games. Now that ive got an income of my own I pretty much buy my games and even retroactively buy games that i enjoyed in my pirating days.
The point is, if it wasn’t for the games i pirated when I couldn’t afford games I would never have become a hardcore gamer (and later game developer) and would never have bought anything anyway. Now i actively encourage people to buy the games they like (if not all games). Not justifying piracy but there really is more to the ‘not every pirated copy is a lost sale’ theory.
15/12/2011 at 12:12 Sarah83 says:
@fionny: And a reasonable effort would be not to protect your wi-fi at all? ISPs in Germany only deliver DSL routers with WPA2 pre-configured, by the way.
Again, I don’t really get what we’re talking about here. Maybe 1% of the people who receive a letter haven’t done anything wrong. Alright, that’s bad — but why aren’t we talking about the other 99% who downloaded the game and deserve to pay?
I think it’s funny, PC gamers always complain about DRM and whatnot but when someone actually tries to bug the pirates instead of the buyers, everyone goes crazy.
15/12/2011 at 12:36 tenseiga says:
Probably because over the top DRM is just bad service to paying customers but carpet bombing copyright infringement notices violates the much worse tenant of innocent until proven guilty.
15/12/2011 at 12:42 Optimaximal says:
Were I to pirate the game, all I would have to do is tell my router to ‘reset’ my broadband connection. I’d get a new IP address from my ISP, someone else would get mine somewhere down the line and low-and-behold, I get off scot-free whilst someone else gets asked for a thousand euros.
It’s hardly rocket science.
15/12/2011 at 12:43 Sarah83 says:
@ Optimaximal: Yeah, that’s not how it works.
15/12/2011 at 12:47 Squirrelfanatic says:
Optimaximal: Your internet provider does have a log of IP addresses distributed at any given time, so in fact your access point can be identified pretty easily.
15/12/2011 at 12:55 mentor07825 says:
@tenseiga
Sorry to ask this, but were you actively commenting on a website called Edge awhile ago?
15/12/2011 at 13:06 tetracycloide says:
So there’s a rather large degree of dissonance between this:
” Maybe 1% of the people who receive a letter haven’t done anything wrong.”
And this:
“but when someone actually tries to bug the pirates”
I would think it obvious that these clearly do not align. Furthermore this is not a 99% guilty vs 1% innocent thing. This is a 0% guilty thing or have we completely forgotten about due process and the presumption of innocence? None of these people are guilty until proven so and therefore any punishment is impossible by definition. Meaning the settlements are not punishments, in the absence of guilt they can only be extortion.
15/12/2011 at 13:21 Sarah83 says:
“This is a 0% guilty thing or have we completely forgotten about due process and the presumption of innocence? None of these people are guilty until proven so and therefore any punishment is impossible by definition.”
a) That’s not how (German) law works.
b) They have prove that someone used their internet connection to download the game at a certain time. But that obviously doesn’t count because nobody protects their wi-fi these days and everyone uses open wi-fi connections instead of their own. Right?
15/12/2011 at 13:36 tenseiga says:
@mentor07825 Nope fraid not.
@Sarah83
This story is almost not about piracy, its about any company anywhere coming up to you and saying “pay us so and so amount or we will take you to court where you will pay a LOT more if you lose and will have to pay a whole lot of money and spend a whole lot of time on lawyers and in court whether you win or not. Also we can afford it cos its a company expense and gets passed on to shareholders etc but you obviously cant.” Accept this and you are opening the door to a LOT of very unpleasant things including zero trial take down notices to ISPs which are already happening. It is the equivalent of detaining people without trial. Pirating games suck but this is the equivalent of arresting everyone in the vicinity of a crime, threatening them with legal consequences and a lot of jailtime and fines and a long legal battle if they dont confess, and offering a plea bargain if they do for a smaller (but pretty significant) fine.
15/12/2011 at 13:40 Kandon Arc says:
@Sarah83
Their method of ‘proving’ downloads is inherently flawed, as BT trackers intentionally include random IP addresses as standard. The law firms that send these letters are very much aware that they are targeting innocents: http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-lawyers-knew-they-targeted-innocent-victims-101118/ and they know how unreliable their ‘evidence’ is.
15/12/2011 at 14:40 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Sarah83:
“”Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you.” (Luke 6, 37)
You seem to have much “hate” in yourself. You should NOT just go around and start accusing people backed by some rather weak lead (NOT A PROOF), no matter what the laws are. There is something more important than laws, it’s ethics. And your arguments are sophisms – a few cases doesn’t make a rule and a presumption is not a conviction.
Doing lazy legal work is unethical and…well, stupid. This is not matter of lives, it’s just money – the peace of mind (and PRIVACY, no computer/home check without a good reason) of common people is more valuable than that. Want money? Fine, send me proper summons to court and we’ll see. Not up to it? Then get the hell out of my lawn (and stop accusing me of something you have not proven).
EDIT: I bet they could sue CDProjekt back, if they are innocent and maybe get at least twice as much for defamation. That would be fun :)
15/12/2011 at 14:48 John P says:
Actually some probably will. There are many, many cases of people confessing to crimes, only to be found innocent by DNA or other evidence later. Why? Tough question. But the fact is that innocent people do sometimes confess to crimes they haven’t committed. Another reason why these kinds of letters are ethically questionable.
15/12/2011 at 14:53 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
John P:
yep, maybe they just want peace of mind without being dragged into the courtroom. I think they count on that partially, therefore they use it as a scare tactics which is unacceptable both by law and ethics, as I believe.
15/12/2011 at 15:01 tetracycloide says:
A) German law does not provide for due process, the presumption of innocence, or both? That’s certainly news to me and I imagine it would be news to the Germans too…
B) They have accused only. Proving such would require a trial.
15/12/2011 at 15:04 Lilliput King says:
“a) That’s not how (German) law works.”
You’re not innocent until proven guilty in Germany?
15/12/2011 at 15:22 Bunsworth says:
couldn’t they just take it one step further and determine the MAC address of the person’s NIC card…at least then it identifies the actual machine. However, i’m not sure on the legality of that measure.
15/12/2011 at 16:19 tstapp1026 says:
just take a quick stroll through youtube… head over to “Hacking WEP” and be amazed at how little water these threats hold. Unless you are a certified network architect, it’s pretty difficult to make your wireless connection completely secure. Even the pros have a hard time remaining safe… (just check out some of the people absolutely schooled by Anonymous).
15/12/2011 at 19:40 Synesthesia says:
@ self-righteous anti-piracy white knights.
screw you.
Free snippets of culture/cultural industry/whatever you want to call it are good for ALL of us. More often than not, i try my best to support developers of all kinds, when i can. My currency is not particularly solid in this beautiful totally fair world.
I wouldnt be the cinema/videogame/music freak i am now if it wasnt for piracy, and i wouldnt have got my work if it wasnt for all the training i got from 14 thousand dollars production suites i didnt pay for. I actually dont have that kind of money, believe it or not. And i really am grateful for it. (The piracy, i mean.)
Also, here’s a little pat on the back.
https://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-busted-for-bittorrent-piracy-111215/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29
Merry christmas!
15/12/2011 at 20:35 Kittim says:
@Synesthesia
So what your saying is that through your piracy of a $14,000 production suit, you obtained employment?
Man, I’d be really pissed off if I was your employer, knowing I’d employed a THIEF. I’d be kicking your arse out the door so fast your feet wouldn’t touch the ground. I’d be even more pissed off if I’d been applying for the same job as you and missed out because of your THEFT.
I don’t wish you a merry Christmas at all, I think I’d be banned if I wrote what I wish you.
15/12/2011 at 22:32 hungrytales says:
@Kittim: it IS NOT a THEFT and you CANNOT claim otherwise unless you at least address John’s arguments. But to do this you would be well advised to read the damn article first.
15/12/2011 at 23:50 Ruffian says:
Kittim, you’re the least empathetic person I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading a comment from. Bottom line is the world’s not fair, It’s not black and white, people are poor, sometimes not because of anything they’ve done, everyone can’t have everything, everyone can’t be rich. You’re basically saying that you think that this person shouldn’t have the same right to knowledge as you because they don’t have enough money? That’s a wonderful way to look at the world. I hate people like you who think that just because you CAN pay for some things that you’re better than someone who can’t. You’re not. Piracy may be bad, but pirates aren’t necessarily bad people, how about you go berate someone who’s actually hurting someone. Instead of spewing bile at someone because they got something for free from someone who wanted to give it to them.
I mean I can understand having an opinion that doesn’t support piracy but it drives me nuts when people are trying to openly display their opinions and turds like you come along and start waving your fingers about, shouting “PIRATE” and condemning everyone. You’re not going to change anyone’s mind with your hollering.
16/12/2011 at 03:36 Martha Stuart says:
@Bunsworth
Its actually much easier to spoof a MAC address then it is to spoof an IP. Spoofing a MAC is easy as pie.
20/12/2011 at 01:11 Kittim says:
Hello,
I’d like to apologise for going back to this thread four days after posting, but I had other stuff to deal with. I’m interested to see the two comments I aroused.
I will say my original post was worded very strongly, but I’m not apologising for it. I’ll try and explain myself a little better by addressing the points that were raised in response:
@hungytails:
“it IS NOT a THEFT and you CANNOT claim otherwise unless you at least address John’s arguments.”
Sorry I have to disagree with you, it’s a message I see plastered on every DVD I’ve watched. I can take a verbatim copy of the ones and zeros on a DVD that when interpreted in certain way, will yield images and sounds like the original. The copy I make does not even have to be verbatim, yet I’m still watching a movie. Are you telling me all those messages on those DVDs are lies and can be safely ignored? Piracy isn’t theft after all? I read the article and I disagree. You go write some software/make a movie/produce an album; you make that your soul source of income. Now allow it to be pirated. How would you feel, honestly?
@Ruffian:
I’m sorry if you feel I lack empathy, you are however wrong. When I wrote that post, I put myself in the position of two people and asked myself how I’d feel. Empathy is the capacity to recognise and share feelings (paraphrased from Wikipedia). I put myself in a position of an employer and asked myself how I would feel if I found out I’d given a job to a thief (please see my reply to hungytails above). My empathic response was one of anger, I trusted that this was a truthful and reliable employee and then found that trust was misplaced.
Your next response was that the world if not fair and not everyone was rich. I won’t go on repeating everything as what you said is only a post above this one.
Yes, that was the point, the world is not fair. However, you misunderstood the direction I was coming from. The second person I empathised with was that of a person applying for the same job as this person got, one that did not have the same level of experience with the software due to not being able to afford it but had done the right thing by not to pirating it. How I would feel if I found out that I’d potentially lost out on that job, to someone who only got it as a direct result of their crime? Well, I’d be royally pissed off; you put yourself in that position and ask yourself if you would not at least feel something negative.
I in no way said that I could afford the software, and I most certainly can’t. For example, I’d love a copy of Autodesk 3D Studio Max, there’s no way I can afford it so I do without. In fact my circumstances make me think twice about purchasing a £40 game. As for the right to knowledge, I hate to break it to you, but that knowledge has to get paid for somehow, the state pays for teaching you to read and write, the state gets that money from taxing its citizens. You want to learn more? Sure, but someone pays for college and university. That could be parents, you if you’ve saved up, a loan company or a company paying for a scholarship. Someone pays for those teachers.
The poster has and is hurting someone; his crime is not victimless however much you want it to be. He’s hurt the developers by stealing their software, he’s hurt the people that were applying for that job alongside him. His theft has gained him employment, his dishonesty has been rewarded. Doesn’t that make you annoyed?
To top it all off he comes here and crows about all of it. Yep, a real nice person who deserves so much sympathy.
20/12/2011 at 20:57 Onaka says:
@kittim
So you feel that people should have the right to ownership of information? In my opinion all ownership of information through patents and copyright or otherwise is a detriment to society. Say someone pays a research firm to invent the cure for cancer. All cancer. But he’s a greedy and stupid asshole, and decides to patent his process? What if he then decides to take a licensing fee of 1 million dollars per operation and 200 million per person trained in doing that operation? Is that fair? Is that something a man should have a right to do? For the duration of his patent, he is literally killing people every day, because he didn’t feel like letting people have access to his knowledge.
Sure, CAD software definitely isn’t on the same scale of usefulness as a universal cancer cure, but having access to training for it and not having access to training for it can mean the difference between barely surviving and a comfortable life.
And before you say: “Well they gotta make money somewhere!”, please look at Apache, Gnome, the Linux kernel, and the countless other free (niche!) software out there. Those people are clearly not making money, they are in fact living in cardboard boxes. How are they making money? Everyone has their own way, but none of them include charging a retardedly huge ANNUAL licensing fee unless they’re actually providing a service like customer support.
23/12/2011 at 23:46 Kittim says:
@Onaka
Hi there, thank you for posting Onaka. You make some interesting points there about ownership, especially since you chose a medically related one.
I have no idea of your background so this may not be news to you, I in no way intend this to be condescending.
I’ll answer your question first: Do I feel that people should have the right to ownership of information?
Yes and no :)
Like it or not the societies based around capitalism work round money, it’s the constant flow of it through the system that means that the society can exist and that individuals within it can get some measure of benefit that would not otherwise exist without it. It’s that wonderful little abstract thing called money that makes it happen. From a human perspective, it really does make the world go around.
It also means that absolutely no information is free really. Indeed, there’s a lot of time (and money) that goes into making people think stuff is free when it’s not.
Facebook? Owns everything you put on it and knows where you go on the internet if you stay logged in. Analyse the photos you post there with their timestamps and geotags, it can also know where you go in the real world too. You don’t pay money to them, you pay in other ways. Because to someone, who you are and what you do is worth something. The information you freely gave now has ownership and worth and it is sold. That, I don’t agree with, that’s the No part of my answer.
Regarding your evil cancer cure researcher:
People all over the world are dying now, this minute, because they cannot afford the drugs to prolong their lives or cure their ailment. Pharmaceutical companies charge a lot of money for drugs they have researched, it’s not until the drug has been around for quite a while that we see other manufactures offering it at a lower price. While it’s good that the price comes down eventually, it really sucks if you need it now and you cannot afford it.
The problem becomes one of incentive, it takes a lot of money to research new treatments, pharmaceutical companies are only willing to try and find new treatments while there is a chance of a profit being made. Your cancer cure discoverer would not own the cure, the someone who paid the research firm does, and if they think that they will make a profit by charging $1,000,000 per op and $200,000,000 for each person they train, they will.
And no, I don’t think it’s particularly fair at all, especially if you or a loved one will die because of it.
But, and this is really important, would you rather that something existed now that costs a fortune, but a decade down the line will cost %5 of what it currently does, or would you rather that the treatment was never discovered at all? Although I’m not happy about it, I’d rather a treatment existed; at least it may become affordable to more people in the future. It may not save me, but it could save a descendant.
Someone taking the time and effort to create something that has use, be that for entertainment or serious application should be rewarded. Otherwise where’s the incentive to bother doing anything? The world becomes a very dull place as a consequence. This is where you get a Yes from me about ownership of information. If that information has had hard work and time put behind it, then I don’t have a problem with them charging for it. If I deem that it’s not worth what they are charging, then I don’t buy it.
But then I would not come on a forum, tell people to get screwed and brag how my theft of something landed me a job either.
Free software, this bit warrants a post all of its own, I’ll grant you that there are people who want to create something for nothing, just for the hell of it. And I’m very glad they do, I love free as much as the next person. But, you’re citing the exceptions rather than the norm. For every Torvalds (worth $150,000,000, earns $10,000,000 a year), there’s a million others who would not have a hope of making a 1000th of that going open source. If there was money to be made for everyone by going open source, I would guarantee the many, many software houses out there would be doing it.
Cheers, and have a happy Christmas if you celebrate it.
Kittim.
15/12/2011 at 10:20 pkt-zer0 says:
I’m wondering, have you contacted CD Projekt about this, to hear what they have to say for themselves? If not, that seems awfully irresponsible.
15/12/2011 at 11:06 Moth Bones says:
Read the last line of the article.
15/12/2011 at 11:20 pkt-zer0 says:
That line was not in the version posted initially. Which makes it seem like CD Projekt were given about -2 seconds to reply before the article went up, which would still be irresponsible.
15/12/2011 at 13:12 Deano2099 says:
They have commented to Eurogamer:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-15-cd-projekt-responds-to-demanding-nearly-and-8364-1000-from-alleged-pirates
“We’ve seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally.”
Which is very dodgy wording. Note that these letters are not ‘legal action’. They’re basically saying “yes, we send out tons of letters but we’ll only follow through where we’re 100% sure” while phrasing it so it sounds like “we’re only sending out letters to those we’re 100% sure about”.
Fits my belief that they won’t take any of these cases to court as it’s impossible to be 100% sure. Unless of course, someone pays up, in which case they’ve admitted guilt and could be take to court, ironically enough.
15/12/2011 at 10:20 Sarah83 says:
Why exactly are you defending piracy here?
“Be generous enough not to password your wifi (or of course not know how to password your wifi, as is obviously the case for huge numbers of non-net-savvy users) and anyone can download via your IP address. Let alone the confusions of housemates, guests, public spaces, and those who know the extremely simple tricks of disguising your IP.”
Whoever pays for the internet connection is responsible for how it’s used.
15/12/2011 at 10:25 cavalier says:
They are not defending piracy, they are pointing the the logical flaws of the argument used in order to shakedown suspected pirates for money.
15/12/2011 at 10:26 weego says:
That has absolutely no basis in law, otherwise if you extrapolate that ownership indicates shared culpability then any number of illegal activities would be open to insane rulings.
15/12/2011 at 10:28 Sarah83 says:
“The widely condemned practice is as stupid as it is unreasonable, because it relies on the practice of tracing people by their IP address, as if that’s any useful way to recognise a person using an internet connection” and “a pirated copy is not a lost sale” sound like typical excuses for piracy to me. Just didn’t expect that kind of thinking from this site considering how much piracy has hurt PC gaming and PC gamers.
15/12/2011 at 10:29 vagabond says:
Really?
Even if someone connects to your network unauthorised?
(It might be foolish not to protect it, but that isn’t tacit permission for anyone to connect and start using it)
Oh well, If you forget to lock your car, I steal it, and run someone over while out joy riding, I’m glad you’re willing to go to jail instead of me…
15/12/2011 at 10:32 mondomau says:
I logged in to point out how utterly obtuse and ignorant your viewpoint is, but everyone else seems to have beaten me to it. Piracy is wrong, so is arbitrarily issuing huge fines to people you have no proof were actually responsible for the act. Two wrongs do not make a right.
15/12/2011 at 10:32 Jables says:
@Sarah83
EDIT: someone got there before me. With the same analogy, no less. :)
Cars seem to be a neat enough analogy much used in these matters:
If a sunny day I perchance walked down your street, noticed your car was unlocked, borrowed it and used it as an accessory to my shoplifting habit, or some other crime in my vast reperotoire, but returned it to you without you being the wiser, should you be punished?
15/12/2011 at 10:36 Shadram says:
The car analogy doesn’t work. The better analogy is stealing a DVD from a shop. The physical product itself is negligible, since there’ll usually be dozens of copies and taking it won’t prevent anyone else buying it, but it’s still theft. You’re stealing a movie/game that you haven’t paid for and therefore, legally, have no right to own.
15/12/2011 at 10:37 monsterZERO says:
“Whoever pays for the internet connection is responsible for how it’s used.”
I created an account just to tell you how completely insane, INSANE, this argument is. If this line of thought was applied to everything the world would be a hellish place to live in.
15/12/2011 at 10:39 Sarah83 says:
Again, so you guys personally know a few people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally?
15/12/2011 at 10:42 monsterZERO says:
“The car analogy doesn’t work. The better analogy is stealing a DVD from a shop. The physical product itself is negligible, since there’ll usually be dozens of copies and taking it won’t prevent anyone else buying it, but it’s still theft. You’re stealing a movie/game that you haven’t paid for and therefore, legally, have no right to own.”
How the hell does THAT analogy work better than the car one? Who are YOU to say whether or not the physical product is negligible? Of COURSE it will prevent someone else from buying it. If a vendor has 10 DVDs and is planning on selling all of them, but you stole one, he can now only sell 9, i.e. a lost sale. It’s called math…
If a vendor has an mp3 he is selling copies of, his inventory is INFINITE, so if you steal one no lost sale. Get it?
15/12/2011 at 10:44 Jables says:
What does that have to do with anything?
I don’t have to know someone who got into trouble in order to understand that this is the wrong way to go, and that it is not a good practice.
“So, you know someone who got hit in the face without him deserving it?” “no” “aw, so it must not have happened then!”
IF there is a structural error in a practice, that will manifest sooner or later depending on the size of the flaw. In this case, I’m guessing sooner.
15/12/2011 at 10:45 anteater says:
@Vagabond:
Actually in Germany you might be liable for the damage someone causes with your car if you forgot to lock it and thus “helped” someone driving with your car and causing damage. But that doesn’t mean you are held liable “instead”, he’d still go to jail. Same here, if they find the person who is responsible, that person still has to pay (or you could get your money back from him, if you already paid the company)
-
The problem in Germany is, that those are basically fancy, very expensive “cease and desist” letters and for cease and desist you don’t need any culpability and basically just setting a “cause” for the infringement. And, without your WiFi this wouldn’t have happened in this specific manner. Anyways, for those low requirements the money asked for is quite high. I think there is a german party wanting to change that, but of course lobbies are involved. Lawyers like those c&d letters.
15/12/2011 at 10:46 Aninhumer says:
@Sarah83
Why does it matter if we personally know them? There exist plenty of cases of people receiving letters like this who have done nothing wrong, including that case where a letter was sent accusing a network printer of downloading a torrent, something it clearly couldn’t do. The technology is not reliable, and this kind of extortion on the basis of it is not something that should be permitted.
15/12/2011 at 10:48 monsterZERO says:
“Again, so you guys personally know a few people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally?”
YES. They exist; I’m one of them. Why do you think this is such a big deal? I live in a house with 4 roomates who each have girlfriends. That’s 8 other people in my house ALL of the time, not to mention their friends. I got a letter saying I downloaded some random porno movie (the internet and phone are in my name). I sure as hell didn’t download it, but I have to take the fall. Not fair.
15/12/2011 at 10:48 Colthor says:
@Sarah83:
Anecdotes either way show nothing.
@Shadram:
You misread the analogy; he’s saying that if he stole a car and used it in a crime before returning it, should the owner of the car be held jointly responsible for the crime?
15/12/2011 at 10:49 vagabond says:
“Again, so you guys personally know a few people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally?”
You did not assert that no one who has received one of these letters was innocent of what the letter accused them of, you asserted that ownership of a wifi network was sufficient for a person to bear all responsibility for anything that was done with or via that network, regardless of their knowledge or consent of those activities.
The former is merely highly unlikely, the latter is a ludicrous proposition, which is why everyone has jumped down your throat in the fasion you are observing.
15/12/2011 at 10:54 Sarah83 says:
@ vagabond: Uh, I don’t say it, the law says it. It don’t really get the car analogy but let’s say you own a gun. If you a gun, you have to secure it properly and put it in a safe (at least in Germany). Now, if you fail to do so, somebody steels that gun and kills someone with it, you are partly responsible. That’s obviously a drastic analogy but so is the one with the car.
And I’m just surprised that people are always so keen on defending pirates without personally knowing anyone who has ever received such a letter without doing anything wrong. If it was a common thing, I would agree, but it isn’t.
And considering how much piracy sucks for us, I would have thought more people would be dismissive of pirates but okay…
15/12/2011 at 10:57 Artojas says:
Car analogy works just perfectly.
If I left unlocked car and you stole it, I wont get my insurance.
If I left unlocked car and you stole it and did a crime with it, I’m not going to jail, but I will have to prove my innocence, since law will be coming after me. If i didn’t report the theft, is car is already returned, if there’s no evidence of you driving it and if I don’t have an alibi, I’m definately getting in a lot of trouble instead of you. That’s pretty much the same as with unprotected wi-fi. If they come after you, all you have to do is prove them wrong. They should apologize and leave. I believe there’s lot’s of ways to defend yourself politely even if you actually torented the game. And above all, if your wifi is so public to everyone, be happy that it wasn’t used by some al quaida dudes. You would be speaking about absolutely diferent manner of a shakedowns then :).
15/12/2011 at 11:02 Aninhumer says:
@Artojas
No. You don’t have to prove your innocence. The police have to prove your guilt. That’s what “innocent until proven guilty” means.
@Sarah83
“If it was a common thing, I would agree, but it isn’t.”
Do you have evidence that it’s not a common thing? And why should that matter anyway? An injustice is an injustice.
15/12/2011 at 11:06 Sarah83 says:
@ Aninhumer: What if there’s enough evidence that you’re guilty?
15/12/2011 at 11:08 PodX140 says:
Please, enlighten why “piracy sucks for us”
Is it the ridiculous DRM that publishers put on claiming to prevent piracy, in reality planning to stop used game sales?
Is it the people always using it as a whipping post/scapegoat? “Oh, we didn’t want to port this to PC because we’re worried it’ll be pirated too much.” AKA. “We won’t get more money back than we put in.”
Finally, you’re gun/car analogy. You’ve made your point on securing it, but what about the actual action? Killing someone and using a digital file for entertainment are clearly the same thing you know.
15/12/2011 at 11:08 Aninhumer says:
@Sarah83
If there’s enough evidence to convict you when you didn’t do it, you have a broken legal system. I’m not going to pretend these things never happen, but that doesn’t mean they’re not wrong.
15/12/2011 at 11:08 vagabond says:
IANAGermanL but based on what everyone else is saying, the burden of proof is on the alleged pirate to prove his wifi was misused, which is not the same as “you own the wifi so whatever gets done with it is your fault”. The gun analogy fails because (I assume) there is legislation that dictates how a person must store a gun that you would be in violation of. (I am of course also assuming there is no legislation in Germany that dictates you must lock your car at all times).
Anyway, if what anteater says is true and actually plausible, rather than just a “well, the law could be interpret to mean this, but no one in their right mind would” then I’m left wondering what the hell is wrong with the German legal system.
15/12/2011 at 11:20 RogB says:
“Again, so you guys personally know a few people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally?”
yes, me.
I had a lot of fun sending sarky letters to ACS Law a year or 2 back. However anyone not aware of their shady practices and baseless threats would have had a horrible amount of stress caused by them.
15/12/2011 at 11:20 Tams80 says:
*Sigh*
If we must quote out of context.
“The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here. To do it is to break the understood laws of many countries, and that is that.”
“Again, the legality of the act of unauthorised duplication is not in question.”
15/12/2011 at 11:20 Milky1985 says:
@ Sarah83
Did you actually read the article at all , i quote a line
“The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here. To do it is to break the understood laws of many countries, and that is that. ”
There you go, he is NOT defending priacy, in fact he is activly saying its wrong and against the law.
He is saying that sending out threating letters to everyone on a IP list (an IP list that is seeded with random numbers, with people hiding and faking there IP and some legit ips i should add) is a bad practice due to the false positives.
Hes also saying its based on threatening behaviour to get cash back based on a hit rate (in ye old times i think his is known as the protection racket, give us money or something bad happens to you)
I would suggest reading what has been written before going all daily mail
15/12/2011 at 11:43 Nethlem says:
Why should i need to deliver evidence to you of the current situation in germany?
I’m german, i’ve been living here for my whole live, i’m tech savvy and a person who likes to know his rights.
And i can tell you: This practice is borderline criminal, the evidence they submit is never clear. Yes they may have an IP adress you might have used at some point (most ISP’s in germany use dynamic IP adresses) and they may have seen that IP adress on a torrent network.
But they NEVER ever have complete evidence of you downloading a complete game, simply because they are too lazy for it. They download only a couple of kb of a file from a source and instantly declare “that source pirated the game!”
Problem with this logic: They don’t know if that specific source has the complete file until they download it completly from one single source, but they can’t do that because most people torrenting don’t share that much.
So instead they download 20 kb of a file called “The witcher 2″ from some guy and declare him a pirate without actually checking that files content or if the guy actually has a complete file.
I hope you allready see the problem i’m talking about… if not let me tell you in even more detail how insane the “Abmahnindustrie” has gotten over here.
You can get such a letter for simply missing an “Impressum” side on your webpage, some random lawyer can send you a letter and demand 500€ or sue you infront of court. Simply because you didn’t put your full adress on yourwebpage (or you didn’t do it in the right way).
You can get such a letter for simply posting a picture of food on your webpage, because before you know it you will have an letter in your mail telling you “To remove that picture and pay a 500€ fine or go to court about 100.000€ worth of damages” because somebody claims he has the copyright on your picutre of an piece of meat.
So please excuse me if i’m a little bit offended by you asking for “evidence” about such kind of behavior, i can deliver you tons of evidence if you are willing enough to read german. Until then: You have to depend on what the “locals” tell you as they probably know better what’s going on then you do.
15/12/2011 at 12:00 Sheng-ji says:
You are all confusing criminal and civil law and as such are trying to compare oranges and apples.
To “pirate” by which I mean breach copyright, you are committing a civil offence.
To steal a car, commit a crime, misusing a gun – including not locking it up properly, you are committing a criminal offence.
You cannot compare the two – in criminal law, yes you are innocent until proven guilty by the state.
In civil law there is no such burden of proof. You do however have the right to a fair trial on the issue.
If you take them to court for issuing you with a letter wrongly, the burden of proof is on you, as you are taking them to court!
If you ignore the letter, and they take you to court – the burden of proof is on them.
See how simple it is!
We all know this is a scare tactic and we all know that hardened pirates with good tech knowledge may be angered by it but won’t stop. However, teens and younger whose parents will get involved, those of nervous disposition and those who are not tech savvy enough to know better will be discouraged.
And if a few innocent people get nasty letters, so what. They will achieve an impact on piracy better than any DRM managed and the only collateral damage is some peoples feelings.
Also if you pay for an internet connection in a shared house or family environment, damn well take your responsibilities seriously.
15/12/2011 at 12:01 fionny says:
You are deluded Sarah83 deluded. The car analogy is a perfect one, you cannot be held responsible as long as you make a reasonable effort…. besides you could blame your isp for not securing your connection on install…
IP addresses are to easily faked, you could use any number of VPN services to spoof your location / ip, you could also you a mobile connection on a disposable phone. There are so many methods around.
15/12/2011 at 12:21 ynamite says:
Yep, you’re simply wrong on almost all accounts.
Fact:
- IP address cannot identify a person
- Many innocent people have gotten c&d letters even though they were innocent
- There is no way to prove that pirating a game results in a lost sale
- There is no conclusive evidence that piracy has ruined the PC industry, see previous point
- DRM hurts games more than it helps
- The article is not defending piracy
- The article is condemning the practice of sending c&d letters to random people
- Piracy is illegal in most countries and as such shouldn’t be done if you live in that country.
- In Switzerland, where I come from, pirating (copying of software for personal use) is NOT illegal. Distributing a copy of a game, on the other hand, IS illegal. Therefore, I can download, but not upload. (Un)fortunately, when it comes to torrents (where one uploads and downloads at the same time), there’s a bit of a gray area concerning the law.
Source:
Link to article (on Ars Technica, English)
- Someone I know has gotten a c&d letter from the UK, even though downloading is legal here (go figure)
15/12/2011 at 12:35 Sarah83 says:
“- IP address cannot identify a person”
Didn’t say they can.
“- Many innocent people have gotten c&d letters even though they were innocent”
Source? How many people compared to how many letters sent?
“- There is no way to prove that pirating a game results in a lost sale”
Didn’t say that either. Anecdotal evidence: I know a lot of people who never buy games and pirate everything. I also know a lot of people who buy some games but pirate out of convenience and because they think they don’t have anything to fear — and if others don’t pay, why should they?
“- There is no conclusive evidence that piracy has ruined the PC industry, see previous point”
Give me a better reason. DS and PSP development also crashed due to piracy.
“- DRM hurts games more than it helps”
Didn’t say otherwise.
“- The article is not defending piracy”
It makes some of the same excuses that pirates make.
15/12/2011 at 12:35 Sheng-ji says:
@Ynamite – I assume this is aimed at me, so I’ll respond as if it was.
Firstly, your “Facts”
Facts do not mix well with subjective words like “Many” or subjective statements like “DRM hurts games more than it helps”
If you are going to present a list of facts, please make sure they are factually correct.
Secondly. In no country anywhere in the world is it illegal to download or distribute pirated software. Sadly you are getting confused with the criminal law which prevents you selling faked goods, including copied DVD’s as you are deciving your customer. No-one who torrents can be reasonably assumed to believe they are not pirating the game, thus the law does not protect them.
It is against civil law and there is just as much of a case against someone if they only download or download and distribute or only distribute.
It is wrong to describe something which breaches civil law as illegal – that term, though it has been bastardised by common usage, refers exclusively to criminal activities – thus to break into some-one’s house at night is illegal. To trespass is not illegal.
These letters in themselves are a demand that you cease using copied software and a demand for compensation. I can almost guarantee due to the technical facts we have all mentioned that they will not take anyone to court. However they are not wrong to send them out – they are not being sent out randomly, they are being sent out to IP addresses which they have traced torrent activity too. If you get a letter wrongly, and you can convince a judge that reading these letters has caused you damage – i.e. distress or whatever – you can sue them for it. Do it, if you feel so passionately about it – but remember you will be required to prove that you didn’t actually download the game, nor did anyone else you allow on your account.
15/12/2011 at 12:56 Nova says:
While I wouldn’t say John defends piracy it sounds a bit to one-sided for me. I for one am loosing patience with the pirates that damage PC gaming. Even if you’d like to argue that this damage is not proven it is evident in the way developers and publishers treat the platform.
There have been enough figures (even from indies) that show that piracy is a big problem. Not that one needs these figures. Just visit a torrent site and look at the numbers there. Or at the bunch of people that jump to the rescue here.
15/12/2011 at 13:00 rocketman71 says:
@Sarah83: for someone asking everybody else to back their claims, you sure write a lot of things like they were written by god himself.
Publishers hurt us a lot more than pirates do. And pirates do not hurt publishers. Publishers hurt themselves. Many many games have shown that all you need is a great game and a fair price to make loads of money.
Pirates who pirate everything will keep pirating, whatever publishers do. Customers that are harassed will stop buying and start pirating. And the day the fucking idiots that make the decisions REALLY learn that, we will all be happy. They should completely forget about pirates.
And to back this up with data: I don’t pirate, I buy my games in Steam, and I gift games in sales. I was going to gift The Witcher 2 to three friends this christmas. Now I won’t. CD Projekt is again dirty after this, and I won’t be giving them any more of my money until they recant and apologize.
15/12/2011 at 13:17 tetracycloide says:
Pointing out that the accused have rights is in no way the same thing as justifying the tort they are accused of committing. What an obviously bullshit conflation. If you’re going to open with being so blatantly intellectually dishonest why should anyone even give you the time of day?
15/12/2011 at 13:19 Sarah83 says:
“Many many games have shown that all you need is a great game and a fair price to make loads of money.”
So, basically you’re blaming high prices for piracy or what’s your point? If so, how do you explain 99 Cent iPhone games being pirated?
“Pirates who pirate everything will keep pirating, whatever publishers do.”
What about the people who pirate only some games because it’s – like I said – convenient? What about the people who pirate games because everyone else does it?
“Customers that are harassed will stop buying and start pirating.”
Regular customers don’t get those letters.
“They should completely forget about pirates.”
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea…
15/12/2011 at 13:26 Sheng-ji says:
@tetracycloide – CD Projekt have not accused anyone of committing a crime. That was my entire point which has drifted neatly over your head. If they had accused anyone of committing a crime, my tone would be very different.
Also you clearly don’t understand the meaning of the word conflation.
Being accused of things is a fact of life and has been since before man was classified as a homo sapien.
Yes, I agree they have been heavy handed, but I understand why. If this stops a few people starting down or continuing down the path of piracy, then it has done more good than all DRM efforts combined, and for that I support it.
15/12/2011 at 13:34 ynamite says:
@Sarah83
1. I didn’t say you did, though you did argue along those lines at some point
2. Haha, the source card? Really? Just a second … Sarah83: ” Just didn’t expect that kind of thinking from this site considering how much piracy has hurt PC gaming and PC gamers.” Source?
3. Didn’t say you did, but why be against piracy if not for this reason (because it apparently hurts the industry). Also, I don’t get what you knowing some people who do this or that has anything to do with this.
4. The PC industry is ruined? Oh. Never noticed that. Besides, you’re the one claiming piracy is the reason, I’m just pointing out that there isn’t conclusive evidence that that is the case. Fact. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a debate about it.
5. Also, just pointing it out, never said you did ;) no reason to be so defensive about it.
6. The article is not making excuses, it’s just pointing out that the logic of how CD Project handles this, is flawed. Whether or not pirates use the same flawed logic as an excuse doesn’t matter. Also, if the logic wasn’t flawed, pirates couldn’t use it as an excuse.
@Sheng-ji
It was aimed at the OP.
But … you can’t be serious … Just because you seem to have a better understanding of law in YOUR country, doesn’t mean you have to be all high and mighty. When I say “Many people have received letters” you want me to actually say, 1391 people have received those letters worldwide? Please. As if that makes a difference in any way.
“.. or subjective statements like “DRM hurts games more than it helps””
Oh, but it isn’t subjective. The fact that every game with any kind of DRM has been pirated within a very short time span after the game’s release, factually shows that DRM is ineffective. If it was unpirateable (if such a term exists) it would be effective, it’s not. The fact that even a small percentage of users have problems with the DRM restricitions in place, has a negative effect on the game (however small it is). Thus, my point stands.
And secondly, I don’t know where you live or where you studied law, but you should know that what applies in county A doesn’t necessarily apply in country B and on whatever level of expertise you may think you are, I highly doubt you have a definite understand of the law system in EVERY country.
Thirdly, you can talk legal mumbo jumbo all you want, what counts for me as a layman, is that when and if I pirate, I could face charges (be they criminal or civil, what difference does it make in the end?) depending on which country I live in.
Did you even read the link I posted? In Switzerland, where I live, you don’t under any circumstance have anything to worry about when you download only. Unless you distribute it to other people. ‘Tis a fact, it’s like that and that just the way it is. Read the article.
“To trespass is not illegal.”
That depends, doesn’t it. Firstly on what kind of property it is and secondly on which country you live in, like, heavily. At least where I come from.
“However they are not wrong to send them out”
I never said they were wrong to send them out, though in my own opinion they are and that practice is shady when it’s not 100% infallible because some people may be frightened and end up paying for something they didn’t actually have to. Great!
“they are not being sent out randomly, they are being sent out to IP addresses which they have traced torrent activity too”
Oh but they are. Otherwise everybody getting a letter was actually guilty and everybody who was guilty would be getting a letter, which isn’t the case.
” If you get a letter wrongly, and you can convince a judge that reading these letters has caused you damage”
Again, in my opinion, that’s just wrong. If they believe you did something wrong, they need to prove with hard evidence that you did. I’m glad I live in Switzerland where, by law (whether you believe it or not), I will never be in that position, at least not regarding the downloading of software.
15/12/2011 at 13:45 Kandon Arc says:
@Sheng-ji
This practice is absolutely not OK and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority agrees: http://torrentfreak.com/bullying-anti-piracy-lawyers-fined-and-suspended-110802/
15/12/2011 at 13:49 Joshua says:
This aint about piracy. It is about EXTORTION. The law firm CD Project has used is threatening to pay up, or drag them to court, using evidence which may be fake for all we know. They are actually not interested in dragging anyone to court (that would be too expensive), but rather, using rather shaky evidence to scare people into paying (if they don’t just make up the evidence along the way).
Nobody should agree with this practice, whatever his stance on piracy might be.
15/12/2011 at 14:17 Jabberwocky says:
I thank Sheng-ji for his posts. It’s refreshing to read an opinion on the subject of piracy which isn’t misinformed pseudo-legalize, bad analogies, or pure “from the gut” emotion, which most people seem to resort to when talking about piracy.
15/12/2011 at 14:22 Sheng-ji says:
@ynamite
1: Regarding subjective statements and facts: Let’s focus on this one statement you contend is not subjective “DRM hurts games more than it helps”
This can only be considered a fact if you can provide conclusive evidence supporting it – note conclusive.
But first you have to define what you mean by “hurting a game” and “helping a game”
2. Regarding the law. I know UK an EU law very well. Regarding Switzerland, I’ve checked and there seem to be no international concerns about Switzerlands law, therefore I am quite confident in saying the following applies to all first world countries, including switzerland, most second world countries and even some third world countries:
There is a massive difference between criminal and civil law – criminal law is when you breach the law of the land – the laws which are supposed to protect all citizens from harm. Criminal actions include murder, burglary, theft, assault and the like. You are prosecuted in a criminal court and can go to prison for your actions.
Civil law is about the disputes between two parties – for example between an individual and a company.
Trespass, for example is against civil law because you being on some-ones land is a dispute between you and that person. Here in the UK it is very common to find signs which read “Trespassers will be prosecuted” which is a bit of a joke because you can only be prosecuted of a criminal offence.
Note that if you are found on military or government land, you are committing a criminal offence but it would not be described as trespass.
I don’t believe you for a second that Switzerland excludes itself from copyright. Otherwise, I’ll move out there, set up a car factory, producing cars called Ferrari’s. The reality is that Switzerland has just as robust a copyright law as the rest of the world. Of course it’s not a criminal offence to download a game or make Ferrari’s – you won’t end up in jail for it. However it is a civil offence. That gives the person or entity wronged the right to challenge you in court. That is a fundamental right of every law system in the world.
They have gathered the evidence they feel is required and sent out the letters. They are, by all reports quite heavy handed. They are not being sent out randomly, they are being sent out to the IP addresses which they traced. That’s not at random – not even close, that’s as close to accurate as they can be reasonably expected to do. I accept there may be a language issue at work here, but in english, at random would mean they were literally rolling dice to generate a list of addresses.
So we’ve established that they have the right to challenge pirates in court in most countries in the world and their lawyers have approved the method of generating addresses. They send out heavy handed letters to those addresses.
If someone receives one of these letters who didn’t pirate the game and they pay, I’m sorry, they should probably be allocated a carer as I don’t believe they are of fit mind to look after themselves.
Sure in your opinion, it may be wrong to send out these letters, but fortunately, the law is not made based on your opinion. Fortunately, as I pointed out earlier, the burden of proof in any civil law system is on the person who applies to the courts, not the person they are applying against. Just re-read what I wrote earlier, I don’t want to repeat myself.
So yes, if you downloaded the game, even in switzerland, I believe you can be sued for it. I doubt it will come close to 1000 euro’s + legal fees – I suspect it will likely be closer to 100 + legal fees.
15/12/2011 at 14:42 tetracycloide says:
Yes Sheng-ji, I said crime when I should have said tort since this is obviously a civil case. Thanks for pointing out that mistake as the confusion of the two is obviously bad for discourse. You clearly misinterpreted my post as being directed at you, however, when it was actually directed at the first post in the thread from Sarah83 which absolutely did conflate defending the rights of the accused (accused of a tort in this case) with defending the tort of which they were accused. It’s clear that conflation is the appropriate word to use for this since Sarah83 was, quite literally and obviously, attempting to confuse the two concepts, defending the accused and their rights and defending the tort itself, in their first post.
I think you are unclear on the definition of ‘illegal’ since the law codifies not just criminal statues but civil as well. It is certainly illegal to download or distribute infringing software in many countries and in the US if the distribution is large-scale enough it can actually graduate into being a crime. I think you may be confusing civil law with common law or laws that exist in practice but are not codified by the law.
Copyright does not cover cars either.
15/12/2011 at 14:52 ynamite says:
edit: @Sheng-ji ^^ looks like your knowledge of international law is mediocre at best if the above is any evidence.
@Sheng-ji
1. Well, I simply disagree with you on that. I myself have had issues with DRM and therefore I have conclusive evidence that it hurts more than it helps. I guess we could no go on about what “hurts more than it helps” actually means. But hey, if you want to take that route, feel free to do so.
2. I hate to break it to you, but you’re simply wrong.
Good for you, but doesn’t change the fact. You do realise that EU!=Switzerland and, had you read the article, you’d know that Switzerland only reviewed it’s stance on digital copyright etc. because there was an uproar from the EU. This happened recently and was all over the newspapers (here). There has yet to be a case in the entirety of Switzerland where anybody was sued over DRM infringement.
Yes, yes there is a huge difference between a criminal and civil offense. Again, what matters to me is in what effect a charge of any kind would have on me. Everything else is just semantics.
There we go with the semantics again. Do I care what the law, the Government or anybody else deems as trespassing? Seriously man, get real.
And I said this where exactly … ? Do you actually read what I write or is this a one sided thing?
Alright, random may not be the correct term, but as soon as someone receives a letter who hasn’t done ANYTHING, it does seem a little arbitrary, don’t you think?
Yes, if they can prove that they are pirates, an IP address isn’t proof.
Wow. Just wow.
Where did I say the law was based on my opinions? and as I said before, I initially never mentioned my opinion.
But then, why should they be allowed to send out those letters claiming the opposite. It’s a scam because a lot of people will fall for it. You don’t need to repeat yourself, but your post has been nothing but repeated statements of what you said earlier anyway.
Wrong. Period.
And I’m done here. You want me to take your word for what you think you know, but you are unwilling to even look at the information I’m giving you. As it stands, and this has been discussed numerous times in Swiss media exactly BECAUSE the EU and countries such as America aren’t too happy with it, in Switzerland I can download whatever the hell I want, as long as I don’t make it available to others (especially for a profit) and fuck all can happen to me.
Believe what you want ey. I’m done.
15/12/2011 at 14:52 IAmUnaware says:
Sarah83: “And I’m just surprised that people are always so keen on defending pirates without personally knowing anyone who has ever received such a letter without doing anything wrong. If it was a common thing, I would agree, but it isn’t.”
You heard it here first, guys. It’s okay to be upset about immoral business practices, blind extortion, and general greed and evil, but ONLY if it’s happening to someone you know personally. Strangers? Fuck those guys, they’re not even really human!
15/12/2011 at 14:57 datom says:
@ynamite
But you’ve already addressed the problem with regards to Swiss law: torrenting is (in most cases) uploading. I presume that’s one fo the reasons that the letters were addressed to torrenters, because on that site users are actively sharing the material, not simply recieving it.
That’s presumably why torrenters are the target rather than other filesharing sties etc. – because they are culpable of distribution.
15/12/2011 at 15:17 ynamite says:
@datom
Nope, torrenters are safe also, because it’s still a legally gray area you have nothing to worry about. Unless you are found to be providing the complete game (or media) to others (and especially if you’re charging money for it), then you are most likely in trouble.
15/12/2011 at 15:24 datom says:
Okay, that makes sense. My presumption was that the reason it was torrenters they were after was because they are by nature distributing software. Maybe that still goes for the rest of Europe though.
15/12/2011 at 16:09 Sheng-ji says:
@ynamite
Sorry my words made you so angry. I did realise that switzerland does not equal the EU, hence why I talked about it being a first world country.
Semantics in this instance is very important. Civil law by its very definition is about disagreements between entities, there are no absolutes. So when I read your link I immediately dismissed it as nonsense because it makes exactly no sense. How can a country make a flat ruling that a certain type of civil disagreement will always, no matter what the circumstances be resolved on one parties side. It can’t legally and unless your current government is flouting the many many years of law it has followed, then all it has done is given judges a guideline to follow. This can and I’m sure will be tested over the next decade or two, lets hope you don’t hold quite so much anger on the issue then as now. If your government has decided to bring into effect a prior decision on such cases – congratulations – you are the new China of the world, flouting international law for your own interests.
Oh, you do realise that the media often print things which are factually incorrect right – they print stuff that sells – generating emotion sells – they’ve done a good job with you! Our media is just as bad for it too, don’t worry, I’m not being xenophobic here.
Let me educate you on the issue of subjective statements. Here are some examples:
One plus one equals two – this is a factual statement. it is correct.
One plus one equals three. – this is a factual statement. It is incorrect.
E-books are damaging the sales of printed books. This is a subjective statement. There are two sides and each can provide evidence and arguments to support their theories. It is a matter of opinion if it is correct or not.
So with the outliers cleared up, lets tackle the meat of your post.
You stated “Do I care what the law, the Government or anybody else deems as trespassing? Seriously man, get real.”
I was merely trying to help you understand the difference between civil and criminal law. Given your obvious confusion and given how important that difference is to this debate, I thought a clear example would help you.
“There has yet to be a case in the entirety of Switzerland where anybody was sued over DRM infringement.” A question from me here: Do you mean no-one has attempted to sue anyone else over DRM infringement or do you mean all cases have failed? How does this affect the WIPO ADR centre, based I believe in Geneva – surely they will have to move to a different country if what you are suggesting is accurate.
“And I said this where exactly … ?”
How about here:
I can download whatever the hell I want, as long as I don’t make it available to others (especially for a profit) and fuck all can happen to me.
Or here:
In Switzerland, where I live, you don’t under any circumstance have anything to worry about when you download only.
Or here:
I’m glad I live in Switzerland where, by law (whether you believe it or not), I will never be in that position, at least not regarding the downloading of software.
Or here:
In Switzerland, where I come from, pirating (copying of software for personal use) is NOT illegal.
Or from your article:
unauthorized file sharing is not a significant problem, and that existing Swiss law—which allows for downloading copyrighted content for personal use—is sufficient to protect copyright holders.
“Yes, if they can prove that they are pirates, an IP address isn’t proof.”
You do understand that they don’t need proof to send you a letter accusing you of it right? I mean you do get that these letters are not court summons and even then it’s up to the courts to establish sufficient proof.
“as soon as someone receives a letter who hasn’t done ANYTHING, it does seem a little arbitrary, don’t you think?”
Not if their IP address was implemented, its sufficient evidence. Not proof, evidence – do you get the difference between proof and evidence?
“Yes, if they can prove that they are pirates”
Thats what the court process is there to do – going to court is the end of the dispute process, not the punishment.
“Wow. Just wow.”
So you are saying that someone who pays 1000 euros in compensation for something they didn’t do doesn’t need some level of care. Could I point out that I am disabled and have a carer. It is not a point of stigma for me. I’m in a wheel chair and there are certain things I can’t do as well as others, a carer enables me to live an equal life. Should someone have a mental issue which makes them pay close to a months wage for many for something they didn’t do, they need help and urgently.
“Where did I say the law was based on my opinions? and as I said before, I initially never mentioned my opinion.”
You implied that because you thought it was wrong, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it.
But the real rub is that you talk about damage to gaming. Yet that article you quoted even directly points out that money being saved on pirated games is being spent in the cinema, concerts and merchandising and other forms of entertainment. How does that not hurt gaming?
@tetracycloide
“Copyright does not cover cars either”
Really – you think that if I launched a car from a company called “Ferrari” which used Audi’s logo and the model was called the Focus, the body of the car was a BMW replica and the engine was a copy of a renault engine, the electronics were identical to porshe’s I wouldn’t get into some copyright stickiness…
15/12/2011 at 16:30 Milky1985 says:
I’m begining to wonder if theres some agenda or corperate connections that this sarah should be disclosing at the moment (this is my opinion and I have a right to express it, reason i have added this will be obvious at the end of the comment :P )
Either that or this is the greatest ever troll of the RPS community I have ever seen (again, my opinion), because while lots of people here would agree that piracy is bad (although its true effects are still up for debate, simply because no-one has produced any concreate evidence one way or the other), this is not the point in question. The point in question here is the sending out of letters to ALLEGED pirates, demanding money with flimsy evidence (as IP are flimsy evidence as has been mentioned about 100 times, quite simple to spoof and random ips are seeded anyway).
Oh and as I have seen this in some other places in this comments thread, you cannot say “this person has downloaded the game” you have to say “this person is illeged to have downloaded the game”, if your going to go on about laws and lawyers and money demands how about libel and slander laws? If it can be proved that person X didn’t do this they may have a good countercase (not a lawyer as you can probably tell :P )
[EDIT] Also on a technical level its perfectly possible to torrent without ever uploading, its frowned upon and results in lower download speeds but it can happen, so again the simple fact that they are part of the torrent does NOT 100% mean they were uploading.
15/12/2011 at 16:53 Sheng-ji says:
@Milky – As one of the only other people here taking a strong anti-piracy and pro-these letters stance on here, I’m sure the same accusation will be levelled at me, so I’ll happily declare my interest, as I have basically written it elsewhere in these comments anway.
My best friend was once described by Edge magazine as “The most talented character artist in the industry” His studio shut down after a game failed to make a profit and there was not enough cash left in the coffers to allow them to remain open long enough to secure a deal with a publisher. That game, at the time was one of the most pirated games ever. It is still mentioned as a game that should by rights have sold better than it did and people still remember it fondly.
My friend had a decision to make – uproot his family, leave his friends and find another job in gaming or find a job in a different industry. He now works in advertising after nearly losing his house.
Now I’m not going to blame piracy here, there is no proof that had his game not been pirated it would have sold any better. But while he was fighting off the bank and scrabbling for whatever freelance work would put food on his table. While he cried himself to sleep at night wondering how he could buy a school uniform for his children and the mortgage company was hauling him through the fires there were people enjoying his game, playing it without having paid for it. That is disgusting.
Also disgusting is the antics of Ubisoft et al. DRM does not work, it just ruins the game for legitimate customers.
So I support someone making a stance against piracy which I believe has a chance of actually making a difference albeit a very small difference.
15/12/2011 at 18:15 ynamite says:
@Sheng-ji
I’m not angry at all, just a little tired of you misunderstanding/disregarding almost everything I wrote (on purpose?) and putting words in my mouth.
You seem to have a superiority complex, can’t explain it otherwise.
15/12/2011 at 18:28 HothMonster says:
“@tetracycloide
“Copyright does not cover cars either”
Really – you think that if I launched a car from a company called “Ferrari”[trademark] which used Audi’s logo[trademark] and the model was called the Focus[trademark], the body of the car was a BMW replica[patent] and the engine was a copy of a renault engine[patent], the electronics were identical to porshe’s[patent] I wouldn’t get into some copyright stickiness…”
No, you would get into trademark and patent stickiness but not copyright.
Copyright covers creative works (books, music games ect) trademark is for branding logos, model names that kind of stuff and patents cover inventions, designs(electrical or mechanical) ect.
15/12/2011 at 18:34 Sheng-ji says:
Perhaps you have an inferiority complex? I’m merely confident in my opinion and have a good working knowledge of the facts.
Some questions to ask yourself: Do you have a great need for people to like and admire you? Do you have a tendancy to be critical of yourself? Do you have a great deal of unused capacity which you haven’t used to your advantage? Are you disciplined and controlled on the outside, yet worrisome and insecure inside? At times do you have serious doubts as to whether you have done the right thing or made the right decision?
I don’t want answers to these, they are just indicators of an inferiority complex.
But as you clearly no longer wish to debate with me, for whatever reason, I’ll only continue to debate you if you literally ask me a question. If you don’t do an @Sheng-ji with a question inside that section of your posts, I will no longer respond to you –
I don’t want me being here to deter you from enjoying the website so post away free from me :)
@ Hothmonster – in the context of my original example, I agree I was being a bit silly but I was being silly to make a valid point, that If Switzerland really has made prejudgements on some copyright cases, people are going to start abusing it.
15/12/2011 at 20:21 HothMonster says:
@sheng-ji
I too find it hard to believe that there is no civil recourse for people downloading copyrighted materials. I imagine there is some confusion over civil/criminal. It is not criminal to download a game if you do not upload it in a lot of countries, infringement without profit and without distribution is not a criminal offense. That does not mean the company you are infringing can not bring civil claims against you. Frankly though I don’t care enough about Swedish law to fact check or argue about it. And again frankly I have a hard time believing ynamite after reading that he thinks you are in the clear if something is legally grey, grey just means there are not strict precedents either way it certainly doesn’t mean they can’t try, but again I don’t care enough to argue to read his links.
15/12/2011 at 22:45 hungrytales says:
@Shadram
Very funny.
No, it isn’t negligible. And it certainly isn’t because *there’ll usually be dozens of copies and taking it won’t prevent anyone else buying it*.
If that would render a physical component negligible than I’ll have myself a ferrari. There are for sure more than dozens of copies of those. And then they could only sue me for copyright infringement. Won’t that be rosy?
16/12/2011 at 11:12 Milky1985 says:
@sheng-ji
Nah i wasn’t going to say anything why you are arguing your side of thigns, but ty for being nice enough to give background! Even if i don’t agree with some of the things you say, you are at least arguing the points with attempts to bring in evidence and have given reasons for said things. Everyone has opinions its how things will (and should) be.
That and I have seen your name before in the comments in other threads meaning its not a brand new account :p
15/12/2011 at 10:21 stahlwerk says:
Ah, the good old german practice of lawyers writing “Abmahnungen”. As old as the www itself, really, and if not encouraged then at least facilitated by german legislature.
(Incidentally, most german courts are of the opinion that the burden of proof is on the owner of the unsecured wifi that it wasn’t him doing the deed)
15/12/2011 at 10:33 Ovno says:
Good to see innocent until proven guilty is still going strong…
15/12/2011 at 10:52 mendel says:
“Innocent until guilty” applies to criminal law; seeking damages for unauthorized publication of a game (offering it via bittorrent as you download) is a matter of civil law.
The plaintiff establishes some prima facie evidence that the owner of the IP address in question has downloaded the game (i.e. track their IP address to their household), and then it’s the defendant’s turn. It doesn’t come down to “beyond a reasonable doubt”, it comes down to who has a better case: if the plaintiff says, “our logs show that IP x.x.x.x offered our game via bittorent on time/date, and ISP told us that IP was assigned to defendant at the time”, and all the defendant just says “somebody else might have done it, but I don’t have any evidence of that happening”, who would you say has the better case?
Personally, I wonder whether damages (incl. attorney fees) of €911.80 for a €40 game on a supposed upload/download ratio of 1:1 on bittorrent are justified or a case of highwaymanship.
15/12/2011 at 10:59 Bluerps says:
Yeah, in Germany, if you have an unsecured WiFi Internet connection, you can be held responsible for the crimes that are committed with it’s help (in addition to the actual criminal, of course).
15/12/2011 at 11:39 MiniMatt says:
Curious on this German angle and how it passes European legal standards, unless, as Mendel points out it is only relevant to civil law rather than criminal – otherwise every coffeeshop in the land would suddenly be charged with all manner of criminal charges for illicit conversations, conspiracies and VPN tunnels run through their free wireless.
A burden of proof requiring the owner to show on balance of probabilities that the actions occuring on their wireless is possibly just about workable but given the ability to spoof addresses, requiring an end owner to prove that “their” IP address was spoofed / inserted in a tracker on the other side of the world etc seems a tad harsh.
Oh, an while everyone’s quoting “innocent until proven guilty” can I point out that the line should really read “innocent unless proven guilty” – the former implies guilt on the accused, it only being a matter of time to prove it, the latter correctly assumes everyone innocent unless evidence proves contrary.
15/12/2011 at 12:08 Bluerps says:
Well, I am not a lawyer, so I can’t really explain the legal reasoning behind this.
However, you should keep one thing in mind: All german laws pertaining to the Internet are made by people who have to little to no knowledge about the technology involved, and generally refuse to take expert opinion into account, if it does not fit with their political agenda.
I mean, these are the people who thought that they could successfully fight child-pornography, by forcing each german ISP to display a special “STOP!”-page, when someone tries to access a page on a special list of “forbidden” pages, maintained by the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office). This was only stopped in the last minute, mainly due to a change in public opinion.
15/12/2011 at 12:10 Sheng-ji says:
Also innocent “unless” proven guilty does not apply in civil cases. If you comitt a civil offence, you are not found guilty and are not given a criminal record. You are found liable and have to pay damages.
15/12/2011 at 10:23 Rinox says:
How about we fix the legal system so that this sort of stuff isn’t possible or as easy? While I obviously appreciate the effort to stop this particular case, if we don’t fix the real problem instead of the symptom this is never going away. Class justice ftl.
15/12/2011 at 10:44 Theory says:
You fix this kind of thing by creating an official channel through which it can pass. It’s shared by everyone in the country, has ISP involvement to ensure accurate IP to account holder matching, and has an appeal process.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 Rinox says:
I think the problem is bigger than that. If a legal system allows for someone to say “pay X! Or we will take you to court, and even though we will probably not win if you’re innocent, you’ll have to pay much much more!” it’s become a much bigger issue than which industry uses it or how to control it. It basically means that anyone could throw any vague claim around and extort people to make a settlement of some sort, as long as they have the capital to back up their threats.
That’s class justice pure and simple, and for me goes beyond CDP’s antics. Luckily not every justice system works like this…many European countries make the person who files the lawsuit responsible for much of the legal costs of the trial should the defendant be found innocent (which he always should be on retarded claims such as these).
15/12/2011 at 11:11 PodX140 says:
I completely agree with Rinox here. These cases should have the company pay all the court fee’s involved including any lawyer’s paychecks involved if they lose.
Simple as that, but good luck getting the corporations to back it, and without that, no politician would back it either :(
15/12/2011 at 11:22 Rinox says:
And, sadly, I agree with you too. :-( This isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon.
15/12/2011 at 11:39 Theory says:
I suppose I didn’t say this explicitly, but cheaper, non-judicial hearings are also part of the solution I was talking about.
15/12/2011 at 12:45 Sheng-ji says:
You can’t fix it because by doing so, you would have to apply your fix fairly across the board – including those in the class you deem already unable to access fair justice.
It is everyones human right to accuse another of an injustice against them – that is what they are doing here – they are accusing people of downloading their game without paying for it. They are bundling into that accusation their required level of compensation.
You might not like the tone in which they’ve done it, but by making it more difficult for them to do this – that same difficultly must be applied to you the next time you want to write a letter of complaint to someone.
For example – I bought a box of coke the other day and half the cans were empty. I wrote a letter of complaint to the company and they sent me a voucher for another box. Simple – I accused them of a breach of civil law, they sent me compensation and I accepted it as adequate. I got a few cans for free and they had done the right thing.
Now imagine if I had to have my letter approved by a court official. And they had to pay my legal cost on top of the compensation. I would never have complained and they would have lost a customer. Also justice would not have been done.
The way things are are actually pretty good. Don’t forget that.
Also, let me emphasise in civil cases, the loser almost always has to pay the winners legal costs.
And we have had cheap, yet still judicial solutions for a long time – tribunals, small claims courts etc etc etc then for non-judicial solutions, you have regulators, ombudsmen, you can get free legal advice and sometimes action, you can be backed by a union – for crying out loud, lack of money is no excuse not to access justice – for most people it excuses a lack of motivation but in every first world country you can have justice without having to spend beyond your means and if you win, that money will be repayed.
15/12/2011 at 13:06 Rinox says:
Clearly it doesn’t work like that in every country, though.
And even in a system like that, many people (usually on the lower end of the spectrum of society) will not have the knowledge or courage to consult and exhaust all their options, and will just pay up instead. So it’s still class justice of a sort, since they can’t defend themselves properly not because they can’t per se, but because they don’t know how.
15/12/2011 at 13:15 Sheng-ji says:
In this day and age, ignorance is laziness. I could pick up a phone to citizens advice and find out all my options. I could walk down to my local branch and be seen in a week. This is the same in every first world country and most second world countries, even some third world!
If you are so stupid that you can’t do that, then seriously, you should have a carer who can do it for you because I would argue that your stupidity is actually a mental disability.
15/12/2011 at 14:26 diamondmx says:
@Sheng-Ji Having had the misfortune to need to contact the CAB twice (landlord/renting issues), I can assure you that sometimes they are incredibly helpful, and sometimes they are completely uninformed. It is very much the luck of the draw which kind your town/city gets.
15/12/2011 at 14:56 Rinox says:
@ Sheng-ji
Fair enough. You’re vastly overestimating the ability of most people (not just the underclass) to do those things, though. Many people have a severe problem with challenging authorities and don’t excercise their rights to the full by any means. That isn’t laziness or ignorance per se. It’s a common known fact for example that, paradoxically, people who are better off tend to be much more efficient in getting the most out of say social security, tax breaks and other welfare measures. A large percentage of people who have a lot more need for these measures fall out of the boat or don’t opt in. Why? Because they do not know or do not want to push for it. Call it ignorance, lack of assertiveness, laziness, lack of education…it doesn’t really matter. What matter is that people should not be punished for being any of these things, which is what exactly what this sort of legislation does: it punishes the weak for not defending themselves.
Depending on your social views that may be a good or a bad thing, but in my view it’s definitely not good.
15/12/2011 at 16:22 Sheng-ji says:
I will most certainly agree with you that people, especially those from less privileged backgrounds should be given much more support to get them onto the legal process in the first place, to be shown it isn’t a huge big difficult and expensive thing – yet once someone has made that decision – to challenge the big corporations – the support and processes in place are quite overwhelming.
But let’s make one thing clear – I come from a less privileged background – My parents were given their first TV around the time flatscreens were just becoming popular. It was a 30 year old, black and white job with a rotary dial to change channels. When I hear that a family has a less privileged background then discover they have broadband, mobile phones, cable or satellite TV etc, I have a hard time believing it. There is a point where people’s ignorance is self inflicted, and yet there is still more help for them! You can indeed lead the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!
15/12/2011 at 10:24 Gothnak says:
I don’t like pirates, i don’t like these tactics, but saying they shouldn’t do it because people have unsecured wireless networks which other people piggyback off?
This isn’t 2005 anymore, i am in range of around 20 different networks and none of them are unsecured, every router defaults with a password these days…
As bglamb suggests, people that have NOT downloaded this game will not pay, however threatened they feel. However, i bet a few pirates will.
So, overall, i’m slap bang on the fence on this one, not a nice thing to do, but piracy needs to be stopped.
15/12/2011 at 10:26 KikiJiki says:
>As bglamb suggests, people that have NOT downloaded this game will not pay, however threatened they feel. However, i bet a few pirates will.
Not true. The language of these letters is deliberately misleading and designed to strongarm people into paying up or getting whacked with huge legal bills of 5 figures or some such amount. It’s all very mafia-esque.
15/12/2011 at 10:32 cavalier says:
You are missing the point. An ip address is not an identification of a person, because it does not prove who actually committed the crime. There has actually been a recent court ruling on this in the US.
http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-case-judge-says-110503/
15/12/2011 at 10:33 CVraden says:
How does this stop piracy? Actions like these only seem to exacerbate the problem and alienate consumers.
15/12/2011 at 10:49 bglamb says:
Their initial threats about tracking the prates definitely made me think twice about whether to pirate it or not.
Legal letters would make me think a 3rd time.
15/12/2011 at 10:56 SquareWheel says:
I live around old folks and there are plenty of unsecured wireless networks.
15/12/2011 at 11:13 PodX140 says:
If you don’t pay, you go to court, pay a lawyer 10x the amount they’re asking, and have to take time off work to do all it.
Yeah right no one innocent is going to pay, I’d be shocked if anyone guilty or not WON’T pay.
15/12/2011 at 11:20 vagabond says:
You’re also ignoring the possibility that they have gone off to the torrenter’s ISP and said “who has IP 1.2.3.4?” rather than “who had IP 1.2.3.4 at the following date and time?” and that 2 weeks has passed between them detecting the download and contacting the ISP and everyone has different IP addresses now.
15/12/2011 at 11:31 Snschl says:
There’s more than just unsecured networks around, I know my ISP regularly changes people’s WEP keys to something generic like “12345″ so they wouldn’t have to bother with passwords if they need to make repairs.
Also, I was about to import it from the UK before I decided to download the game to see whether it would run on my computer at all, seeing as we all know how hardware-intensive The Witcher 2 is. No, there aren’t any game-renting services where I live. Of course, it DIDN’T work, I barely got 2 FPS and then it promptly blew the fan off my graphics card. So no, I will not be purchasing or playing the game, and if I had done it, I would have regretted it. I’m still waiting for my letter, though. :p
15/12/2011 at 12:42 Balobam says:
IGNORE THIS.
15/12/2011 at 17:52 Starky says:
reply system fail.
15/12/2011 at 19:47 MellowKrogoth says:
I wish people would stop repeating “piracy needs to be stopped/is evil” and its variations as a kind of self-evident truth or religious mantra. It’s no more self-evident than other religious pretentions like “women must cover their hair”.
Private property of physical objects is natural because we need a good amount of them to survive, and first and foremost a piece of land with a shelter. In the same way freely sharing knowledge and ideas is natural, because as soon as you have uttered them they spread from person to person without anybody losing them in the process.
Digital information is in the latter category, and it is an utter fallacy to pretend that the copyright models adopted by certain countries are the only morally right laws possible. Even said copyright laws like the american ones recognize that fundamentally, knowledge belongs to the people and copyright is only a time-limited exception granted to authors, so the exclusivity of monetary benefits can encourage them to produce more and better works. This deal should be continuously re-evaluated to see if it is appropriate and if the results obtained are worth the loss of accessibility to culture, entertainment and science; instead some people try to hide half the truth and brainwash the population in accepting those laws like some kind of ultimate truth.
We might very well need copyright for economic reasons, but we need the minimum possible of it, and it needs to be enforced in a reasonable manner, without turning our governments/justice systems into insane police states in the process.
15/12/2011 at 10:26 CVraden says:
It’s not that they’re losing money to pirates, it’s that they can make more money by prosecuting them. Purely driven by greed the way I see it. Absurd.
15/12/2011 at 10:29 Sarah83 says:
Sure, because no pirate would ever buy a game.
15/12/2011 at 10:39 CVraden says:
I think it’s safe to say that most people (not all) who pirate a game do not eventually buy that game. Certainly not at full price at least.
15/12/2011 at 10:55 Gunde says:
What you think is safe to say is contrary to several scientific findings where pirates spend more money in general on culture than the average person.
15/12/2011 at 11:08 CVraden says:
I didn’t know pirates willingly participated in many scientific studies. I’d be interested to know what evidence they use to support that claim. If you know of any studies, I would certainly read them.
15/12/2011 at 11:17 PodX140 says:
Sarah, at this point you’re just making a fool of yourself. Why do you think even the humble indie bundle is pirated? Because the convience/actual ability (for countries without easy CC info/paypal) to do so is worth more to them than paying even A CENT.
This is the staggaring majority of pirates. It’s not that they won’t purchase games, it’s that they only will for developers/publishers that they think is worth both the amount of money and inconvience to pay them.
15/12/2011 at 11:50 MiniMatt says:
There’s one linked in John’s article above – following through to this one by the Swiss government: http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/dam/data/pressemitteilung/2011/2011-11-30/ber-br-d.pdf
As stated (everywhere, in John’s article above, and for the record, me too) however, this is not to excuse piracy but rather something to keep in context. Attacking shonky legal practice is not to condone the end behaviour such shonky practice is attempting in a bumbling manner to address.
15/12/2011 at 12:28 MichaelPalin says:
@ CVraden: You have kind of a paranoid idea of what a pirate is. Why wouldn’t they participate in surveys? Surveys are usually anonymous, you know?
15/12/2011 at 12:46 Balobam says:
Just gonna throw my hat in the ring here, at the risk of being berated by anti-piracy peoples.
I pirate, but I also buy shit that I’ve pirated if I liked it.
Subsequently I have so many damn games, tv shows and films that I just have no more space to put them anymore. And I wouldn’t have half as many if I didn’t pirate them first. And whilst I am aware I may be in a minority of pirates here, the whole “not a lost purchase” thing can apply to a fair amount of those pirates, whilst some are just being cheap asses and not buying it.
But I flick through TPB every now and then and look at the PC games, see things like Arkham City, MW3, BF3 etc and I don’t download them, but neither do I own them, and it makes me think “if I downloaded it, what the hell would the difference be to them? I’d own it, yes, but they are no better off than before”.
I don’t buy things straight away because I don’t have shit loads of money to be throwing about, but when I do get that spare cash I’ll buy things I’ve been enjoying. So I really don’t see the harm in piracy for a percentage of people that do it, as otherwise I’d probably only have my collection of Wii games and some Valve games if I didn’t broaden my horizons via piracy.
ALSO, as one last thing, pirating the HIB (which I didn’t, I always pay a decent amount) is probably more beneficial to them than those who pay 1 cent, because that ends up costing them, yet the people that do it obviously do it so they can tether it to their Steam account legally.
15/12/2011 at 13:00 Kadayi says:
@Gunde
That Joe the pirate buys modern warfare 3 (for the multi-player), is small recompense to EIDOS Montreal whom he pirated DX:HR from.
15/12/2011 at 13:07 Sheng-ji says:
Balobam – I am very anti-pirate and you are the type of person I despise.
However, I’ll not let that hatred I have for you interfere with my point.
How would you feel if you made something creative – let’s say you painted an amazing painting. Some toerag takes a photo of it and starts handing out full sized copies of it for free, right outside your gallery.
Sure, many of the people who are prepared to take a slightly poor copy of it probably wouldn’t have come in and bought one of your perfect prints anyway – and maybe one or two will come in and tell you they liked it so much they are prepared to pay for a nicer copy – but how many people will enjoy your hard work without buying the print from you. Is that OK?
What if every painting you paint is do or die – if you don’t sell enough prints of this one, you’re going to go bankrupt. And that little prick is still handing out free copies right outside your door. We both know that many people who like your painting would buy a print yet having been given a free one, now won’t.
You’re telling me you wouldn’t even be a little bit angry at him, want to make him stop?
It is wrong to take someones work for free, unless they are distributing it for free. That is all.
15/12/2011 at 13:31 Balobam says:
Sheng, if I’m the type of person you despise, what about the pirates that don’t buy shit?
Regardless, yeah I’d be pissed off, but I’m not pirating indie stuff, only things from the big developers, and even then, I’m still buying it no matter whether I pirated it or not, but sometimes I have no idea if I’m going to like something.
Take Deus Ex for example, I was bracing for it to be a major flop, then the leak came and I played it, I was so amazed by the intro sequence that I stopped playing it and waited for the formal release to buy it. Had I not pirated it, I never would’ve ended up buying it.
I know plenty of people that don’t pirate because they think it’s wrong, yet they’ll happily download music illegally or buy games second hand, which has just as much effect as piracy on games sales.
I genuinely do not see a problem with what I am doing, it’s a simple process “Pirate > Enjoy it > Buy it”
“Pirate > Dislike it > uninstall and don’t buy it”
I do not see how you can hate that, as without I wouldn’t have spent nearly as much money as I have on games. Even if I bought a game, disliked it and returned it, I’d be in the exact same place had I just pirated and deleted it and they’d be no better off.
15/12/2011 at 13:47 Sheng-ji says:
I don’t hate what you’re doing so much as I hate the excuse you provide for others who do not ever actually buy games they love.
I am certain the vast majority of pirates never buy games they enjoy, a certainty which I will not be easily persuaded is wrong, and many have tried – most people I know in real life who play PC games pirate them. Most of them have fed me the same line you did about using it as a demo any buying the games they enjoy, however, this does not match their actions.
And what exactly is the difference between ripping off an indie and ripping of, say EA? The vast majority of EA employees are paid poorly for their skills and their bonus’ are insulting compared to the actual profits a game brings. Yet should a game do poorly, who loses their jobs? Those guys – it’s them that piracy hurts.
I know full well that the bosses at EA, and all mega corporations get paid unreasonable amounts of money and my anti-corporation streak resents it greatly. But to have a significant impact on those corporations is not hurting the fat cats, it hurts honest hard-working people, like you or me.
And sorry if I was a bit strong, I don’t really hate you as a person, I’m sure you’re lovely – I hate the idea that it’s OK to take some-ones work for free, in any circumstance. I would only do that if it was a matter of survival for me or my family.
If you had bought the game and returned it, you would have my undying praise because you would have sent the correct message. The correct message is “This game is not worth my money – I wanted to give it to you but didn’t” This is not the message piracy sends, it is not the message received and sending that message is not the intentions of the majority of pirates.
I’m sure if you didn’t pirate games, you would have spent a lot less money on games, but you would have also had a lot less entertainment from games. If instead people who actually do use pirated copies as demo’s only bought games they had played a properly released demo for, more games would have demo’s.
15/12/2011 at 13:56 Balobam says:
That’s a fair point. And like I said, I’m fully aware I’m in the minority of pirates here, but I do it because I LOVE having a physical copy of something, I just love the look and feel of it, and if I enjoy a game I want to support the hell out of whoever made it, be it a mega corporation or some guy in a basement.
I mean, I’ve bought Stalker SoC 3 times now due to extenuating circumstances, and I don’t regret it in the slightest.
Don’t know if I said this or not, I do not condone piracy as such, I use it literally as a sort of demo trial, unless a game actually comes with one which is unfortunately not the case with the vast majority of PC games. And obviously you’re going to a somewhat more skewed opinion on people saying that due to what you said your friends do, which is perfectly understandable.
All I’m saying is not all pirates are bad, and in all fairness I probably wouldn’t actually count myself as a pirate, as at this current moment in time I do not have any illegally downloaded games/films/tv shows that I do not also own.
I guess what I’m trying to get at, is it’s not just a black and white matter as so many people try to play it as, but has a lot of grey area too. It’s a hard thing to defend and argue about because whilst I know my intentions, there are those that do not reciprocate and instead use it to get shit for free, which I do not agree with in the slightest.
15/12/2011 at 15:17 Starky says:
Actually Sheng, you’re pretty wrong, there’s been several studies which conclude that the majority of pirates spend more on media than none pirates of simular income levels, when talking pirates from high GDP countries that is.
Frankly anyone living in a country where buying a single new game represents more than 25% of their monthly income can pirate as much as they bloody like IMO.
Anyway…
Every single even half credible study I’ve seen on the subject boils down to the following:
- Pirates tend to spend more of their disposable income on entertainment products than non pirates (as a percentage).
- Pirates however tend to have a much lower disposable income than none pirates.
- Piracy from the US and Europe accounts for around 10% of Piracy (meaning that 90% of total pirates for a game would never have paid for it in the first place – probably couldn’t even if they wanted too).
- Increased difficulty in pirating doesn’t seem to have any positive effective on sales numbers (games that have had successful DRM – successful as in lasted until a few weeks after launch), likewise games with little or no DRM don’t seem to suffer negative effects.*
- Piracy doesn’t reduce total video game spending industry wide, only re-prioritise how people spend their budget (the whole, Joe pirate will buy MW3 for the multiplayer but pirate Deus Ex phenomenon someone else in this topic mentioned).
*I remember one that had a bunch of sales per day over time graphs, with a line showing when each had it’s DRM broken and was available for piracy on major torrent sites – they tended to have a small dip, but nothing significant – wush I could find it to link, but a quick google doin’t find it and I’m too lazy to go a searcvhing just for comment.
15/12/2011 at 16:36 Sheng-ji says:
Starky – I know pretty much everything you are saying is true – but if I were an artist, I would be galled that someone took and enjoyed my work without paying for it and then excused them self by explaining that it’s OK, I spend more on entertainment than someone who doesn’t pirate (for want of a better word) it.
So you get my hard work for nothing, yet it’s fine because you also go to the cinema lots.
That just doesn’t add up for me. It might not be damaging to the industry as a whole, but many peoples lives have been uphauled because piracy has affected their studio and they lost their jobs.
A close friend, a character artist – one of the most talented in the industry according to Edge, now works in advertising because he didn’t want to move when his studio was shut down. His studio was shut down because it’s last game didn’t make a profit – yet it was one of the most pirated titles ever at the time.
That’s real talent lost from the industry. Piracy might not have been to blame, yet it was certainly a large contribution.
15/12/2011 at 16:40 Apples says:
Sheng-ji: how are you supposed to return a game if you didn’t like it? I don’t know anywhere that will let you return something unless it is faulty. If you could do that I expect piracy as we know it now would go down, but most people would buy something, enjoy it, and then take it back saying they didn’t like it. Which is still piracy. Piracy is the only way right now that I know of where you can decide before paying whether you actually want to pay for the product, but also any way you can do that will be abused.
15/12/2011 at 17:00 Sheng-ji says:
To date, I’ve had 17 refunds from steam, and although I have not kept count, probably approaching 40 refunds from Game.
My advice on obtaining refunds for games legitimately, without lying have been quoted by many major publications including this very site (I have a baby feeding at this very moment so I’m kinda one handed and not going to pull up the link, but it was about the from dust DRM issue, it should be easy to find)
15/12/2011 at 17:13 Balobam says:
My stupid internet died so I couldn’t keep up.
So you say that you get refunds, about 17 on Steam, when you return a game, can I ask what is the difference between pirating and deleting a game and purchasing and returning it? The money made is lost, or there was never any money made in the first place, it’s all a mean to the same end.
Plus I like to buy a lot of stuff in cases, because as I said before, I like how it looks. But nowadays, you cannot return physical copies to stores unless there was some fault on their end, like a damaged case or disc, and in which case more often than not they’ll replace it or offer store credit.
And to tie in which what Starky said, out of all my friends, I know one who pirates, he and I spend a fortune on buying DVD’s and games, and out of the ones who don’t pirate, they have no interest in these things, or they do but can’t afford them, and they never get round to getting them. One of my friend buys a game second hand, trades it in to get cashback and then buys another game with the money, and continues that cycle. What he’s doing is completely legal, yet in the eyes of companies, it’s no different from a monetary and sales standpoint than piracy.
And whilst I get what you’re saying about the artist getting their fair dues, I’m going to borrow your analogy, and say that person was handing out the pictures for free, the odds are if its free a lot of people who would have had zero interest in this painting, may take some notice, I mean it’s free, there’s nothing to lose. Some of these people might then find they actually love this picture and want an original, so they go and buy it so they can hang it up, and it looks fantastic. A sale out of nowhere.
And someone who had exhibited an interest in buying it, getting a lesser version for free, would probably still work their way round to buying the legit painting because that’s what they wanted, and they clearly have the money to spend and want to support the devs.
But those who take the shoddy replica and don’t even consider buying the original now, odds are they never had any interest in it in the first place, and just took it ’cause it’s free and why not.
EDIT: You got refunds from Game? How on earth did you manage that? I only get store credit, which is alright, but I’d rather have my money back to buy things from other places when they’re cheaper there.
15/12/2011 at 17:58 Starky says:
@Balobam
In a very real way buying then returning a product is worse than never buying it at all (or pirating it), especially in physical products. First the retailer takes the hit, then if it is something they can fault the manufacturer for they get a replacement – hell some distributors apply a fine to the manufacturer if a product is faulty (more an engineering thing if a company guarantee’s 100% compliance to specifications).
It also carries negative long term effects – someone who pirates your game and finds it a bit crap is probably going to have much less prejudice and public anger (and thus bad word of mouth) than someone who legitimately paid for it and felt ripped off – refund or not.
@Sheng
I kind of agree with you, and in my industry (electrical engineering) piracy (or to be more exact counterfeiting) is a real problem – we have out own “DRM” – using unlabelled components, using encryption on microcontrollers – but in the end it’s all crackable and reverse engineerable by some company in china that can then sell it at a retail price that matches your production cost (so beating it in price would require taking a loss per unit).
That said, I’m a IP/patent reform supporter – I think the current philosophies, laws and practices for intellectual property is detrimental to society and advancement of the arts and technology (more so technology – patent law is literally holing back technological advancement by a few months every year.
I do think there should be some protections, but I think thanks to the dedicated work of industry lobbyists they’ve gotten tangled, and far too much in the interest and power of big business even over the consumer, and even the creator.
It’s a shame that individuals must suffer – though I seriously doubt piracy was the only issue that caused your friends game not to sell – there are numerous factors – and just because something is popular as a free (pirated product) doesn’t mean it would be as a retail product.
Contributed, sure – but I would doubt that piracy was ever the deciding factor in any games failure to find a market, or produce enough profit to keep a studio afloat.
Many things that people enjoy, even really like are not worth a penny – best example off the top of my head are youtube video’s, some get millions of hits but are not worth paying for individually.
15/12/2011 at 17:58 Sheng-ji says:
the difference is that I return a game because my consumer rights had been breached. Take From Dust: It was sold as having no DRM, yet it had DRM. Easy refund.
Take the last settlers game I bought – it was sold as being compatable with my graphics card. It was not. Easy refund.
Take Dead or Alive 3 (or 2 – can’t remember) bought from game – it worked well but was shockingly poor. I explained that one of the quotes on the box described it as game of the year, yet the matching article in the magazine quoted said no such thing. Easy refund.
By the way, the key with game is to deal with the store manager. I am always offered store credit, I explain that I am entitled to a full refund and I understand if only the store manager can deal with it. I have spanned 5 or 6 game stores in my life and I have always found the managers excellent to deal with and never argue about full refunds if the law is on your side. Which is almost always is if your grievance with the game is genuine.
If they ever did deny me one I was entitled too, I would fax their HQ a filled in but unsent application to the small claims court. Only 3 times in my life has that not worked and each time the companies involved did not defend their case and paid my compensation promptly.
Buying a game you don’t enjoy is hardly ever going to allow you to get a refund, unless it has been missold – but a bit of research quite often turns up a juicy bit of publicity for the game which is horribly misrepresentative at best or inaccurate at worst. A missold product entitles you by law to a refund. My advice is always know the law and do your research. What made you buy the game in the first instance – get that piece of publicity. Show how the actual product doesn’t meet the sales pitch – take your laptop in if you are lucky enough to own one and literally show them. Be confident – of course I have the natural advantage of being female – that always helps!
Most of all though, be the most pleasant, polite customer they have had in the shop all day.
15/12/2011 at 18:25 Sheng-ji says:
@Starky – hehe, I ,once madke a living as a producer for a team which makes youtube video’s. If we could apply the same business models to games it would be amazing, and to some extent works in app stores – having a free version with adverts.
I made a publicity video for a game on the app store, the guys who made it were lovely, but they told me they groaned every time someone bought the premium ad free version from the free version because the ads made them an absolute fortune!
I understand your point though – I am really applauding CDP’s attempt to do something a little differently while making the point that DRM doesn’t work. It might not be the nicest thing to do, there may be a small amount of collateral but as long as no-body who didn’t pirate the game is stupid enough to pay the compensation, the collateral is limited to some hurt feelings. I’d like this to be used more in place of DRM which damages my experience with games.
15/12/2011 at 20:41 Starky says:
The problem with these things Sheng, and the reason I am absolutely against them is that they are not designed to use the law in the appropriate way to settle a genuine civil infraction – if that were the case and they had actual evidence that they would take to court and present to a judge in an honest attempt to win the case – then I’d have no issue with it.
It isn’t the case however (at least it hasn’t been in every one of these threat letter schemes). They Don’t collect any reliable evidence, they don’t care if someone is guilty or not, they 99.9% of the time have no intention of taking the case to court – and I know this for a fact in the Davenport Lyon case, because a friend of mine (who represents the firm I work for and is a pretty damned good IP layer) got involved in the case offering people free advice over skype and free letters.
And every single person who even sent a letter protesting the charge (signed by a solicitor with a nice letterhead), refusing the threat payment and showing any willingness to allow the case to proceed to court was almost instantly dropped and nothing heard from again.
These companies don’t want to take this to a judge, they know they have no evidence that a first year law student couldn’t easily dismiss as trivial, they are preying on people who might be guilty of pirating the game (or more often the mother/father of said pirate), and those who are not but are too scared to risk court (and fearful how much worse it could be – the “whole fined up to one million dollahs” lie that gets repeated ad nauseum in all of these types of letter.
It’s using the law as a sodding protection racket, and even if people are guilty that doesn’t matter because these schemes are not designed to punish the guilty, just to make money.
It’s dishonest, and it is wrong.
15/12/2011 at 10:27 nanophage says:
If this becomes a normal and acceptable practice I predict it will not be long before games start being leaked on purpose just so companies can go after the pirates. Just look at the recent rash of games leaked on the internet before release. If I was a conspiracy theorist . . .
15/12/2011 at 10:28 Suva says:
It’s a blackmail scheme. They do not even threaten you with jail or whatever, they threaten you by promising to take it into court if you don’t pay up. So whether you are a pirate or not, it might be more feasible for you to pay the £1000 to avoid the whole court stuff which is gonna take a lots of money and time to prove that you are not guilty.
Let’s set things clear here, it IS a BLACKMAIL operation. It’s not for justice, it’s for blackmailing money.
If they cared about justice they would have sued the people instead of asking them for money with a threat to sue them
15/12/2011 at 10:44 datom says:
It’s also standard practice for many companies (utlity bills, library fines etc) where there is a disputed charge. A letter from lawyers must come with an intent to sue. It’s only blackmail if CD Projekt then don’t ttry to take individuals to court. If they do, it was a threat that they carried out.
I’m not defending this action, which I see as a waste of time (much better to send out a letter saying ‘we are watching you’, which has the added bonus of notifying those whose IP is being misued). But this is what companies that believe they are owed money do.
15/12/2011 at 10:56 Suva says:
Bills and stuff you have agreed to with a CONTRACT. With this they just ask you for an arbitrary sum of money with a threat to make your life miserable.
If you read up on these cases then they usually do not go to court, it’s expensive for both sides and unless they feel that they can win this they won’t sue you regardless of the original threat. Sometimes they pick couple of people for exemplary hanging.
This operation is a borderline legal blackmail scheme for extra profit, it has nothing to do with “protecting your IP”.
15/12/2011 at 14:24 datom says:
Indeed, with one correction. It’s not a borderline-legal blackmail act, until CD Projekt don’t follow up on these threats, it’s a legal blackmail act, which makes it not blackmail.
It may yet turn into blackmail, or more accurately extortion, but we don’t know yet.
15/12/2011 at 14:55 DigitalSignalX says:
I’m curious if this would make such headlines if they had merely asked for the current sale price of the game, say 30 dollars or whatever instead of the rather arbitrary 1,000 or so.
How many people seeing this letter, who are indeed guilty of the piracy in question, would simply pay it to ease their conscious, fears, or whatever rather then see what happens if they ignore it.
My guess is that CDP would get MORE money out of their scheme, AND looks less like extorting assholes for it all together.
15/12/2011 at 20:48 Starky says:
Problem with that is with that low, and reasonable amount these schemes wouldn’t make a profit – and they are utterly about making a profit – not justice, or punishing pirates, not one of these cases ever went to court in which the defendant showed clear willingness to defend themselves (at least in the UK – the only ones that did were a few people who ignored the letters, and then ignored the court summons).
They have to pay the company that mined the IP’s for them, they have to pay the lawyers, and they have to pay for the materials and postage.
Say that’s £300 for 1000 IP’s and letters – they might only get a 1 in 1000 success rate, but that is enough.
15/12/2011 at 10:30 Saul says:
Sigh. And for a minute there, I thought they were the good guys. Never underestimate the sales potential of a good reputation.
15/12/2011 at 10:30 sharkh20 says:
I really don’t see a problem here. If you are going to steal, you should go to jail or pay a fine if caught. Is this not how it works with any other kind of thievery?
15/12/2011 at 10:37 cavalier says:
The issue is there is no proof that any crime has been commited. They are attempting to extort money out of people by threatening to sue. There has been no formal charge in this situation.
From what I’ve heard (at least in the US) is that these letters do not typically end in any sort of lawsuit. Its basically like throwing out a bunch of fishing lures and betting that at lest a few will bite.
15/12/2011 at 10:44 guitarmy says:
It’s really not that easy…
I for one preordered the game on steam and I still pirated (boohoo) it a few days before release.
It’s a convenient custom pre-load, if you want…
Now… Am I a thief? Do I have to pay millions of dollars of damages?
15/12/2011 at 10:45 John Walker says:
Oh please just read the post : (
15/12/2011 at 12:26 Deano2099 says:
Sharkh is right though isn’t he? If you steal something, you should go to jail or pay a fine to the state. And return what you stole.
That’s exactly why this process is silly. I can’t comprehend how people can support this AND take the ‘piracy is theft’ line at the same time. They’re both silly on their own for different reasons, but supporting both at the same time is utterly contradictory.
What happens if I nick something from a shop and get caught? I get arrested, perhaps jailed, and have to give the thing back. What doesn’t happen is that I get a letter from Tesco saying hey, pay us 300x the cost of the thing you stole or we will take you to court.
If my car gets nicked, I report it to the police, I don’t send letters to every car thief I know of requesting 100 cars back in return or else I’ll take them to court.
15/12/2011 at 12:33 MichaelPalin says:
Car analogy to the rescue!!
15/12/2011 at 12:54 Deano2099 says:
Exactly. You can’t say “piracy is just like stealing a car” and then say “a fair punishment for piracy is paying the company you pirated off 100x the value of what you pirated”.
If someone nicks my car I want:
a) my car back; and
b) them in jail.
I don’t want them to pay £300,000 to Ford.
15/12/2011 at 10:30 Colthor says:
This makes me sad that I bought the game the other week, and puts me off spending any money on GOG.
15/12/2011 at 10:42 CVraden says:
I don’t think GoG should be taking any blame in this scenario… This all seems to be on the publisher.
15/12/2011 at 10:52 Colthor says:
CD Project are the publisher, and they run GOG. Certainly they get money from GOG. If I don’t want to encourage their actions, I can’t give GOG money.
Which is a shame, because encouraging GOG’s model is something I really like to do.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 absolofdoom says:
It certainly makes me feel bad I bought the game, especially since I haven’t played it yet.
15/12/2011 at 11:11 CVraden says:
Ah, my mistake. I thought the two entities were separate. In that case, I have to agree with you. I was kind of excited to take advantage of GoG’s latest sale, but I don’t think I can support them in good conscience.
15/12/2011 at 11:21 PodX140 says:
Was not aware they own GoG. Well, there’s an area never getting any money from me thanks to blackmailing business practices, yaaaay :D
Unbelievable. Makes me wonder if any of these PR/CEO’s actually know real business. “If we wreck our reputation, make our sole customers hate us, and show that we’re willing to blackmail people for their money, we can make 20 000 dollars! And without any visible side effects!” -_-
15/12/2011 at 12:00 trevor.longino says:
GOG.com’s head of PR and Marketing here:
For all that we’re sister companies, CDP RED and GOG.com are not the same company. GOG.com is the distributor for the Witcher 2, not the developer. We are not currently involved in any legal actions around that title, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to comment on the legal actions of another company.
15/12/2011 at 12:37 Colthor says:
@trevor.longino:
Thank you for the clarification.
15/12/2011 at 12:38 MichaelPalin says:
Nice to hear, Trevor. And since you are sister companies, you better contact them soon and explain them their reputation is falling through the window at a frightening speed right now.
15/12/2011 at 15:30 Starky says:
I specifically have not bought anything from GoG, or baught TW2 (or pirated it for that matter) since CD Project stated their intention to pull a Davenport Lyons style rubbish – which is basically blackmail, phishing and a total scam.
An opinion of mine which was validated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) when it fined and suspended those involved and the firm for it’s shoddy practices.
It rightfully was raised in parliament by several MPs as legal bullying with disproportionate demands for relatively minor civil infractions.
I hope that this massively backfires on CD Project and that people will blacklist both them and GoG now and forever.
It’s a shame because I really like GoG – but as much as trevor above claims they are different companies (and that may be true) GoG is a subsidiary of CD Project – and I refuse to allow my hard earned money to go towards funding this kind of legal bullying and borderline blackmail.
15/12/2011 at 10:31 Shadram says:
“Those who cannot afford/aren’t interested enough/wanted to try first/just wanted without paying/etc etc have not taken something away from anyone to their immediate deficit… Never mind the increasingly abundant evidence piling up that demonstrates piracy encourages sales…”
As a software developer, seeing you, John, of all people, writing such things makes me sad. You’re supposed to be on our side.
15/12/2011 at 10:36 RF says:
Less QQ, moar making things people will buy.
15/12/2011 at 10:36 Ovno says:
I know writing about evidence is definitely not something a responsible journalist should be doing…
Let alone including a bit of balance in the story by mentioning both sides of the argument…
15/12/2011 at 10:40 Sarah83 says:
Agreed.
15/12/2011 at 10:42 Shadram says:
Plenty of people buy my software. The company I work for is number one in the world for the product we make/sell. Doesn’t make us immune to piracy, though, and doesn’t stop me thinking that anyone who does pirate software is a c**t.
15/12/2011 at 10:45 Gunde says:
If you actually believe that, then you are part of the problem.
Ignoring scientific studies contrary to your view-point simply because you are too obtuse to accept that you are wrong…
15/12/2011 at 10:46 mrjackspade says:
What’s the problem? Everything he wrote was completely accurate. Should he give a biased viewpoint simply because some nice people he knows are game developers?
15/12/2011 at 10:46 Squirrelfanatic says:
Although it is true that pirating software is no theft per se (although, atm it is treated as such by German law as far as I know), there actually IS a potential loss of sales. Of course, the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales surely fluctuates and never will reach 1:1, there are bound to be lots of people who would have bought the game if piracy wouldn’t have been an option.
To take the idea to the extreme, if everybody pirates then there are no sold copies and this of course is a damage done.
I understand that this wasn’t the idea of the cited paragraph (and I don’t want to imply that it was Mr. Walkers intention), but I felt that it might contribute to the discussion.
15/12/2011 at 10:47 John Walker says:
I’m not on anyone’s “side”. I want to discover the truth.
15/12/2011 at 10:50 lhzr says:
thanks for reporting on this, john. and thanks for having a sensible point of view.
also, shadram, go to kotaku if you don’t like people being sensible. they’ll ban anyone mentioning torrents or other similar taboo words, so you should fit right in.
15/12/2011 at 10:55 Shadram says:
I see no evidence given in the linked article that piracy encourages sales. Just that piracy doesn’t reduce the amount of money people spend on entertainment, without really saying what type of entertainment. If everyone’s downloading games for free, and using the money saved to go bowling or whatever, it’s still an issue.
I do agree with the point they make about it being the developer’s responsibility to prevent piracy, and maybe one day they’ll come up with a way that isn’t just more horrible DRM.
15/12/2011 at 10:58 Gunde says:
“Although it is true that pirating software is no theft per se (although, atm it is treated as such by German law as far as I know), there actually IS a potential loss of sales. Of course, the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales surely fluctuates and never will reach 1:1, there are bound to be lots of people who would have bought the game if piracy wouldn’t have been an option.
To take the idea to the extreme, if everybody pirates then there are no sold copies and this of course is a damage done.
I understand that this wasn’t the idea of the cited paragraph (and I don’t want to imply that it was Mr. Walkers intention), but I felt that it might contribute to the discussion.”
And also it’s conveniently ignoring the part of the pirating population that never would have bought the game to begin with but subsequently changed their mind after having pirated it. This does happen and happens far more frequently than most would believe. I could also easily say that that offsets the theoretical amount of pirates that would have bought it if they couldn’t pirate it. It could even be a far larger number than that one.
15/12/2011 at 11:05 mendel says:
Shadram, let’s say hypothetically that you sold a game for $40, and some pirate had made a 200MB torrent of it, and you knew of a user (not that pirate) who had torrented the game, and while torrenting it, had sent out another 400MB of that game (because that’s how torrent works, you give and take at the same time). How much damage do you think that person has caused you? $40? $120? $900? Something else?
We’re talking about damages. We’re not talking about fines or deterrent. What would your actual damages be that this one person caused you?
15/12/2011 at 11:19 Squirrelfanatic says:
@Gunde: True, it’s hard to judge such things without empirical data at hand. “Could have been” is a bad argument in any case, but seeing that the behaviour described by you (trying first, then paying later) requires quite a bit of intrinsic motivation (which often is harder to come by than extrinsic) I’d guess (!) that these figures don’t balance each other.
No idea how effective the additional word-of-mouth advertisement may be though.
15/12/2011 at 11:26 PodX140 says:
You know, it makes me wonder whether you software developers actually listen/go on pirating websites. I hear from my friends all the time “Hey, you should really try this game, I might even buy it!” You know what that means to me from a regular gamer? Not much. From a pirate? “Holy hell the game must be fantastic, I’ll try it right now!” *Day later* Friend: “Hey man, you buy that game?” Me: “I think I won’t eat for a month, I bought their entire catalogue…”
And you want to know how often that scenario happens with my friends that don’t pirate? As I thought.
15/12/2011 at 11:33 SentientNr6 says:
Whoow dude.
1st) I am a software developer too. CAD Software. That software costs depending on features 1k-15k€. And it is being pirated. It doesn’t make me happy but I really doubt that if there wasn’t any pirating it would affect me positively. Probably the money would be spend on marketing, legal or some other software development project I am not involved in. Lots of the money that is made on the software is spent on setting up offshoring.
Hell as a software developer with 15 years of experience I know a lot of developers who pirate. (eg. MS software cause MS is evil!)
So please don’t make it a them versus us fight.
15/12/2011 at 15:59 Starky says:
@SentientNr6
As an Engineer and heavy CAD user I can tell you for a fact (fact in the my opinion I’m 99.9% positive is fact meaning of the word fact :P) that piracy has done nothing but benefit CAD companies, or any company that sells massively expensive industry level software.
Hell, almost every engineer I know pirates CAD software, I have loads of CAD/Engineering programs currently on my PC and all pirated (Autocad, orcad, inventor Solidworks, Multisim etc…)
A few of them, I could have legal licence for paid for by my company (which obviously have licensed copies for us to use) – but it’s often just easier, faster and less hassle to pirate than to bother with DRM hoop jumping.
Anyway, the benefit (and someone Autodesk realized and got on board with – and now basically give all their software away to single users) is that no single user can afford these products. So when students, learners, and individuals pirate these software they may “lose a sale” they’d have never had – but they gain a massive user base and become industry standard – so when companies are deciding what CAD package to use – and 90% of their CAD experienced staff learned on AutoCad on pirate copies – they’re probably going to get AutoCad.
Just last month our Engineering department has had a offer from Corel to get a free licence for their CAD software for the office and all the staff for a year.
Honestly I can think of nothing better for a developer of CAD software to “suffer” massive piracy from individuals and students – because a few years down the line it will make them much more attractive to companies comparing CAD packages.
15/12/2011 at 10:32 mipearson says:
I support them in this endeavour. The carrot was they’d remove the DRM for actual customers. The stick is that they’ll sue the pants of people who use their content without paying for it. If putting the fear of disproportionate litigation into the actual pirates themselves (ie, those who crack / upload the game rather than download it) is what’s necessary to banish the specter of DRM, then I am entirely for it.
The actual issue aside, your argument re piracy (it’s illegal, but it’s not really theft) is flimsy.
I am tempted to scrape RPS and offer it as a ‘free’ RSS feed, no advertisements whatsoever, just to make the point. It’s OK, nothing was stolen, and now your site is so much faster to load!
15/12/2011 at 10:36 Bungle says:
Copying is not stealing and stealing is not copying.
15/12/2011 at 10:39 mipearson says:
It’s alright. As everybody knows, games are pretty cheap to make, it’s OK if some people pay for them and other people don’t.
Can’t wait for Stalker 2!
15/12/2011 at 10:46 Gunde says:
“It’s alright. As everybody knows, games are pretty cheap to make, it’s OK if some people pay for them and other people don’t.”
Of course it is, or are you suggesting that we illegalize *not* paying for games? I.e. force *everyone* to pay for all games, even if they never wanted them?
Yeah, that’ll work…
15/12/2011 at 10:46 thegooseking says:
Copyright infringement is not formally letter-of-the-law ‘stealing’, but it does fit into the broader informal definition of ‘stealing’. To say it categorically is or isn’t stealing is to misrepresent the semantics of the word, and any argument built thereon is therefore a matter of mere semantics.
15/12/2011 at 10:46 Suva says:
Read the article again, they don’t SUE those who got the game without paying.
They blackmail people who allegedly downloaded it from torrent with a THREAT to sue.
1) You either pay up the 1000 euros and nothing happens to you.
2) You will go to court and have to defend your case, you will waste a lot of time and money on defense. Your computers will be taken as evidence and all the HDD contents will be studied. Your internet logs will be analysed by lots of people.
In either case it doesn’t matter whether you got the game for free or not. You are still going to be taken to legal hell if you don’t pay it. Maybe you tried the torrent version and then bought the legit version. Maybe your son downloaded it secretly? Maybe the IP was mistakenly identified. Nothing really matters, you either pay the money or waste at least next 6 months of your life trying to prove you don’t deserve this.
15/12/2011 at 10:47 mipearson says:
Counting down slowly from ten, re-read the article, now a big clarification: What they’re doing isn’t great. That doesn’t make it okay to argue that piracy doesn’t have a net negative effect on content creators, even if that effect isn’t felt at the time (and the jury’s still out on that one).
15/12/2011 at 10:48 FabriciusRex says:
Couldn’t agree with you more. And besides:
One has a moral obligation when you want to use a service whether it be something material or immaterial to pay the producer of that service for their effort. One can not simply copy a game just to “try it out”. You wanna play it? Get informed about it, and make a decision if it is worth your money and time. One does not simply copy it without permission. Any man of reason knows this to be true. But just because of the simplicity of pirating games you seek any means to justify yourselves.
I can not believe what I just read here. A true pc-gamer does not copy games. Nor does he condone such acts or justifies them. He should support the industry.
15/12/2011 at 10:50 John Walker says:
Good heavens, how could I have been more clear? I said it was against the law, I said it was a crime! But it is NOT stealing, and this nuance is essential if there’s ever to be any progress in this whole tiresome debate. But so long as one side just willfully ignores any rationale, and interprets “it is not theft” as “it is therefore lawful”, then we’ll not get anywhere, because I may as well argue with a tree.
15/12/2011 at 11:01 mondomau says:
You are all missing the point: where CD Projeckt crossed the line here is trying to extort money from people they can’t prove did anything wrong. The issue of piracy aside (It’s factually illegal, get over it), it’s the method of ‘punishment’ that’s under debate here.
15/12/2011 at 11:02 Sarah83 says:
I don’t agree that it’s not theft. People have worked for it, they’ve spent time and money on developing the game, some people pay for it and others take it for free although it isn’t. How is that different from theft? Yes, they technically don’t lose a copy but it hurts the developers nevertheless. I don’t get why we have to euphemize it.
@mondomau: They can prove they downloaded the game.
15/12/2011 at 11:02 bglamb says:
I dunno John.
With digital works, copying is part of the process at every stage. They don’t sell the game itself. They sell ‘copies’. It’s inherent in the medium. So when they’re selling copies, and you take a copy for free, that’s pretty much stealing in every way that matters.
I think you’re getting too caught up in legal definitions, whereas common usage of the word ‘stealing’ feels like it should really apply to software taken without permission.
15/12/2011 at 11:04 Gunde says:
“Couldn’t agree with you more. And besides:
One has a moral obligation when you want to use a service whether it be something material or immaterial to pay the producer of that service for their effort. One can not simply copy a game just to “try it out”. You wanna play it? Get informed about it, and make a decision if it is worth your money and time. One does not simply copy it without permission. Any man of reason knows this to be true. But just because of the simplicity of pirating games you seek any means to justify yourselves.
I can not believe what I just read here. A true pc-gamer does not copy games. Nor does he condone such acts or justifies them. He should support the industry.”
And (I’ll indulge in some anecdotal evidence here) the vast majority (probably all) of my friends *are* PC gamers thanks to piracy. Or do you believe that in the pre-steam time access to games was easy and cheap for children? Kids who pirate a lot of games and buy the ones they actually afford will eventuall grow up, get a job and money, and pour a shitload more money into the PC industry. So these people aren’t *true* PC gamers?
15/12/2011 at 11:12 Keirley says:
@ FabriciusRex
I’m so very tired of people backing up claims like ‘One has a moral obligation when you want to use a service whether it be something material or immaterial to pay the producer of that service for their effort.’ with arguments like ‘Any man of reason knows this to be true.’
It’s just tiresome. And obviously it’s not a good way to debate, as it immediately labels anyone who disagrees with you as an unreasonable man. Arguments require reasons, not platitudes to back them up.
And I should say that I DON’T pirate games, or films, or music, or what have you. I DO from time to time lend a book to my friend, or borrow a DVD, however. I personally think that if you can support the creator of something you find pleasure from then you probably should. I don’t however think it’s a ‘moral obligation’, and I fail to see how you can support that (let’s face it) highly controversial claim.
Anyway, the main point here is that the way CD Projekt is going about attacking pirates is unacceptable. To simply say ‘well, piracy is wrong, so I support CD Projekt in this’ is to miss the point entirely.
15/12/2011 at 11:36 FabriciusRex says:
“And (I’ll indulge in some anecdotal evidence here) the vast majority (probably all) of my friends *are* PC gamers thanks to piracy. Or do you believe that in the pre-steam time access to games was easy and cheap for children? Kids who pirate a lot of games and buy the ones they actually afford will eventuall grow up, get a job and money, and pour a shitload more money into the PC industry. So these people aren’t *true* PC gamers?”
When I was still preadolescence I played copied games on my Amiga 500. That pretty much made love computer games. I am 32 now. I wouldn’t act like a child even if It meant saving me some money. And I am glad your friends share my interest in pc hardware and peripherals.
15/12/2011 at 11:49 thegooseking says:
Exactly that. Let’s use a car analogy, because everyone loves them. Saying “piracy is not theft” is like saying “reckless driving is not drink-driving”. It’s technically true, but no-one would try to justify reckless driving by pointing out that they weren’t drunk.
15/12/2011 at 11:56 Kandon Arc says:
@Sarah83
No they really can’t. BT trackers intentionally put in random IP addresses to throw off these traces, so you are certain to have innocent IPs; even if you agree that an IP address is a person.
15/12/2011 at 12:09 MiniMatt says:
@Sarah83
No, they really can’t. They have, at best, a reasonable initial line of inquiry. They don’t have proof by even the remotest stretch of the imagination.
By posting on here RPS operators will have your IP (and mine, and everyone else). Now, if they possess the knowhow (and it really isn’t particularly arcane knowhow) said site operators could spoof your IP and / or insert it into trackers and download a game. By your logic, CD Projeckt now can prove you have downloaded the game. Hope you’ve got a spare 900 euros.
15/12/2011 at 12:13 RaveTurned says:
@Sarah83
Afraid legal precident (at least in the US) doesn’t agree with you. As far back as 1985 in the case of Dowling v. United States it was ruled that bootleg phonorecords (i.e. music under copyright, copied and stored on physical media, sold for money) did not constitute stolen property and therefore stolen goods laws could not be applied. While “theft” might be used in common parlance, copyright infringement falls under a different set of laws. Not sure what the situation is in Germany, can anyone enlighten us?
Regardless of that the central issue here, as stated in the article and by other commenters, is that CD Projekt (or people claiming to represent their interests) are essentially extorting people without any meaningful evidence of wrongdoing and without judicial process.
15/12/2011 at 12:37 Hidden_7 says:
Copying is not stealing because the harm you dish out to the developer by pirating a game THAT YOU WOULDN’T HAVE BOUGHTEN OTHERWISE (important distinction) is the exact same harm you dish out to them by not buying the game or playing the game or having any interest in the game.
I should at this point say that I do not pirate games, if I’m interested enough in a game to want to play it, then I buy it. Lest anyone think I’m trying to justify my own habits and thus try to skewer my argument that way.
It is fact that some pirates sometimes pirate things that they would not have paid for had piracy not been an option. It requires only one piece of anecdotal evidence of the friend who pirates more than they could ever play in their lifetime, or more than they could ever afford to prove this, and most people have a story or two like that. It is unclear what the exact numbers are, that is, how many downloads are actually “lost sales,” so it’s pure speculation to try to put a number on the actual damage being done by piracy. However, at least some pirated copies are not lost sales. They were never going to be sales, or perhaps already are sales (people who pirate when they’ve already got the game pre-ordered to get it early. Again, it only takes one piece of anecdotal evidence to prove that this DOES happen, how often is just guesswork however).
The thing to remember, however is that a lost sale does not necessarily equal (¬[ ]=) theft. If I go to the store, and I’m looking at two movies trying to decide which one to buy, and in the end I buy movie A and not B, then B has lost a sale. They had the opportunity to make money from me, I was a potential sale, but in the end they didn’t. And in deciding against that purchase (and notably then NOT going home and just downloading the movie) I have done as much harm to the company as someone who pirates a game when they could have paid for it. They decided not to buy the thing, and thus became a lost sale. Anyone who decides not to buy something, when they could have, for any reason, is a lost sale.
This is differentiated from theft, where something that someone actually HAS is taken from them, so that they no longer have it. People don’t “have” all potential future sales of things they have. If they did, then your deciding not to buy something would be theft, but clearly it’s not.
Where people get all bent out of shape about piracy, and rather understandably, is that there’s a real sense of injustice to someone being able to enjoy something for free that they should have paid for. It feels wrong. And is. That’s why it’s illegal. However, from an actual “what you have done to the person whose thing you downloaded” standpoint, you’ve done nothing different than just not buy or play their game because you don’t think it looks interesting. They’ve lost nothing other that a possible sale, which they lose every time someone who could have bought their game decides not to.
We get rightfully mad when people pirate, because they should not have for free that which is being asked money for. It’s not the deal we’ve struck with society. Which is why it is a crime, and looked down upon. But it is not theft, because theft isn’t the having of the thing, it’s the taking of the thing. If I shoplift some candy from a store, and immediately throw it in the trash on my way out, it is still theft, because I took it from the store. The store doesn’t have it anymore. No one checks, or cares to check, whether I HAVE candy I’m not supposed to have, it’s whether I took it. You don’t TAKE anything when you copy something, which is why it’s not theft. It’s software piracy.
This may seem like a whole lot of pointless semantics and pedantry to some of you. You see all this as trying to wiggle out of calling piracy what it really is. It’s people “taking” things that aren’t theirs for free, so it’s theft, plain and simple. The problem with that, is that this pedantry is important. It’s distinct from theft in some non-trivial ways. It is a meaningfully different action, and should be looked at differently. That does not mean it is any less wrong, just like theft and assault are both wrong, but not the same thing. Rights holders are very keen to brand piracy as theft, because it is a shortcut, a rhetorical shortcut. Everyone knows theft is wrong, so call this theft, and you don’t need to convince them that it’s wrong, the work will already be done for you. However, one should always be wary when someone tries to cheat them out of an argument or explanation. If piracy is wrong, let it be wrong for its own reasons, show why it is wrong. There is no need to piggyback it on established nomenclature. The only reason to do so is because you fear that an honest examination of what piracy is will lead people to conclude that it is NOT wrong; let piracy be vilified on its own merits, to do otherwise suggests a weak hand.
15/12/2011 at 14:23 Malibu Stacey says:
The irony here is that someone already did this at least once that I recall. It didn’t cause a massive uproar around these parts. Oh wait no it did to the effect of having it’s own post. Hypocrisy in action.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I have been happily subscribing to RPS for a while now & intentionally never run any form of adblock (and also read at work & home so they get double the ad revenue for me for both IP addresses) & I certainly wouldn’t condone the aforementioned behaviour, I just think the reaction is hilarious when someone takes *your* stuff compared to when it’s someone elses.
15/12/2011 at 14:32 Unaco says:
Malibu… do you have a link? Is it still up? I’d be tempted to use it… I run adblock anyway, and there is SOMETHING on the RPS pages that really mess with loading pages, some Reddit widget or Facebook gew-gaw, that I can’t seem to block totally. It means, if I refresh a page I can’t scroll or interact with ALL of the other RPS pages I have open, until the refreshed page is totally loaded (which can take a while).
An ad and widget free version of RPS would be so much better than the current one… better service, no?
15/12/2011 at 10:35 Bungle says:
Fight the power.
15/12/2011 at 12:15 RaveTurned says:
John Walker: Internet Ranger!
15/12/2011 at 10:35 Bluebreaker says:
It is really CD Projekt?
Couldn’t be someone impersonating them for easy money?
15/12/2011 at 10:42 Nethlem says:
My guess it’s whoever holds the rights to “The Witcher” in germany, these people are usually seperate to the actual developers.
And in germany something like this is common practice to make extra money, so i wouldn’t be suprised if the german license holder fo The Witcher 2 didn’t even know of CD Project doing all that “removing DRM crap” and i doubt that CD Project knows what kind of people are holding their lincense over here in germany.
15/12/2011 at 10:36 Charlie Brown says:
I don’t have a problem with them doing this.
Actually, I would be happy if all developers/publishers did this, if it meant the removal of some types of DRM.
15/12/2011 at 11:29 PodX140 says:
You know DRM is mainly incorporated so that used game sales / loaning isn’t possible?
The more you know.
15/12/2011 at 10:36 RF says:
I pirated the game!
…After buying it on Steam only to find it doesn’t fucking working.
There’s also THIS as an issue.
15/12/2011 at 10:37 Trashcanman says:
Bought both the collectors edition of the witcher and the premium edition of the witcher 2. With practices like this however I’ll be sure not to buy any further products of them. Any company that thinks blackmailing is a valid business practice can piss off.
15/12/2011 at 10:39 datom says:
Piracy doesn’t represent a lost sale in any meaningful way? I understand this is a rant, but there’s a logical problem in an argument that makes a statement like this and then says it “cannot be proven that were piracy impossible they would have all paid for a copy”. You’ve jumped from saying piracy doesn’t represent lost sales at all to their not being a 1:1 equivalency in pirated copies:lost sales (which is a strawman if ever I saw one). Everyone agrees with the latter; the former is debatable to say the least. You can make the same argument: ‘Sneaking into a cinema doesn’t represent lost sales in any meaningful way, because very few would have paid anyway”. True, but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be punished for it.
I was an Amiga user at school. I remember when the school pirate left our school, we suddently had to go out and buy games. Frightening times: had to buy three games that term. luckily, a new pirate was found and we could get back to normal. I’m not saying me and my pals buying 9 games a year (rather than out previous 1-2) would have saved the Amiga, but it couldn’t have hurt.
15/12/2011 at 10:49 Gunde says:
And suppose that you never had a pirating friend to copy from?
Would that passion for games have grown into anything at all?
The simple fact of the matter is that with piracy, the worst possible thing that can happen to the producer of pirated content is *nothing*, nothing at all. If someone pirates content produced by me, it cannot affect me in the slightest, but the potential upside is a something. They may decide that they want to pay me money.
So, worst case, *nothing*, best case, I get money. Why the fuck do people still believe piracy is a bad thing?
15/12/2011 at 10:54 Aninhumer says:
The shoplifting argument is obviously flawed because the shoplifted item represents an immediate material loss in addition to any potential lost sale.
15/12/2011 at 10:55 datom says:
I don’t believe piracy to be a bad thing. I do believe it results in lost sales.
I don’t think we have to be overly emotive, but when I lacked access to pirated games, I bought more. I don’t think that’s a radical or ideological position – just for me a fact.
I used to have access to lost of other guys’s record collections, and copied their CDs all the time. I spent more on conert tickets then, more on albums now I don’t have access. Record companies are rightly concerned with the latter, I think. My spend was more on the industry, but more into the hands of corporate entities now.
15/12/2011 at 10:56 datom says:
I knew the shoplifting argument was a bad idea. What I meant by it was simply because there’s no ability to pay, it doesn’t mean the crime is not a crime. Sneaking into the cinema is a much better example.
15/12/2011 at 11:30 PodX140 says:
Gunde speaks truth. Kudos to you.
Datom: Sneaking into a cinema sadly does not apply to piracy. One: You take up a seat that may be able to be sold. Two: You are interfering with the atmosphere of the cinema (packed cinema vs. empty).
With piracy, you have affected nothing.
15/12/2011 at 14:10 datom says:
No. The worst thing that can happen to a publisher is they lose the opportunity of a sale that they otherwise they could have made. That’s pretty clear, no? If I have two options for obtaining a computer game – one for free, one for cash – and I choose the free one, the company has lost its opportunity to make cash, regardless of whether I’d have bought it otherwise. It’s the loss of opportunity.
People are getting remarkably emotive about this issue. I have no interest in whether piracy is a crime or not, or morally right, or ethically right. These issues are for individuals involved to judge. I do think that it’s fallacious to argue that because there is clearly not a 1:1 relationship between piracy and lost sales it’s ok to suggest there is no relationship whatsoever.
As long as we presume that any >0% proportion of pirates a) do spend some money on computer games per year and b) play more games than they pay for in a calendar year, we can presume some relationship between piracy and sales. It could even be a positive relationship for the industry – pirates give more money to good games than bad games – but it still means money is being diverted away from individual publishers. There has to be a loser somewhere.
I don’t care if piracy is good or bad. I do care when a frankly excellent writer like John Walker puts together an argument that lacks logic. It plays into the hands of the publishers who want to see us all as ‘pirate-sympathisers’ and a lunatic fringe that can be ignored when we complain about DRM.
15/12/2011 at 20:31 PodX140 says:
You’re making a very large (and frankly wrong) assumption: That you would have payed for it in the first place. The vast majority of pirates I know spend maybe 200 dollars total a year on games, regardless of multiplayer or whatever, it simply comes down to whether they think the game is worth their money, and they won’t buy it without pirating it first. And it’s smart, because they get to see the quality of the game BEFORE they have to pay for it.
Long story short, don’t assume that because someone downloaded something they would have had enough interest to buy it. 99% of the time that is false.
15/12/2011 at 10:39 Nethlem says:
Oh come on…
Stuff like this has been going on for nearly 10+ years over here in germany, CD Project/Atarti are not the only one doing this, basicly EVERYBODY is doing it.
Even right holders to porno movies like to do this kind of shit, they write people “Hey you torrented the file dirtyDONKEYfuck.avi! We Now demand you pay 600€ or we will meet infront of a court and everybody will know you watch donkeyporn!”.
Over here in germany this has allready gotten so bad that we call it the “Shakedown industry”…
These people don’t act on any real legal grounds, they are shaking down people in MASSES and just count on a few of them paying.
And it’s working… a lawyer office who’s notorious for this kind of behavior recently tried to sell a huge bounch of these “outstanding depts” worth around 90 million euro because they can’t handle the flood anymore.
This business is like priting money and it has NOTHING at all to do with helping developers getting what they deserve. Because the huge majority of shakedowns like this happen to people that never did anything wrong on their own or ended up accepting some shady hidden ToS on a website that now wants them to pay 200€ a year for cooking reciepes.
The problem is we as customers can’t protect against this kind of bullshit… the content industry has lobbyists all over the place that enabled them to do this kind of bullshit in the first place. And this shit is getting worse year by year while publishers keep telling us gamers “to put up with it” while they use the whole fucking piracy lie as an excuse to rip off people.
If you want to know more about how crazy this whole licensing and content stuff has gotten over here in germany you should look up the “GEMA” they are basicly the mafia for musicians… but no musician ever asked them to be that…
I’m all for paying creative people for their work, but the gaming industry has reached a point where greedy assholes profit from the creative work of other people by using it to BLACKMAIL good unsuspecting people who did nothing wrogn. And THAT i can’t stand…
15/12/2011 at 10:56 Trashcanman says:
This. It’s blackmail pure and simple. Any company that decides to adopt a business model based on blackmail is not deserving of my money.
15/12/2011 at 10:40 WMain00 says:
It’s actually very difficult to piggyback onto someone else’s network nowadays. Most new installations of wireless networks come pre installed with either WEP or WPA security, with the customer advised on how to use them. Network access has become wizard-one-click based, so many people who are not tech savvy are finding it easier to secure themselves.
Further more though, actually connecting onto someone’s wireless network from another location is a fairly pointless exercise. You might see the connections on your screen when you’re connecting to your own wireless network, but neighbourhood routers are some distance away and are usually behind brick walls and wood, which would hamper transmission rates, if you’d be able to connect at all.
Finally most router Firewalls and Windows itself are able to detect the odd computer trying to connect to the router and will either alert the administrator of a new connection, or just bounce it back.
15/12/2011 at 10:49 Gunde says:
Yes. Because piggybacking on WEP is clearly impossible…
15/12/2011 at 10:55 bglamb says:
You try living in a shared house and telling all your house-mates they can’t log onto your mega-fast internet, and need to not only buy their own connection, but their own phone line as well, because you don’t want to be held legally responsible for their downloads.
Try telling that to your girlfriend too. And all your friends who try and use your wi-fi for their phones when they visit.
Gonna be a cold and lonely place.
15/12/2011 at 10:59 WMain00 says:
“Yes. Because piggybacking on WEP is clearly impossible…”
If you have an exceptional amount of time, a good amount of tools and patience, then hell, knock yourself out. Personally though I imagine for all that hacking you’re putting into trying to access a WEP connection, you’d be better spent just using your own connection.
15/12/2011 at 11:03 Squirrelfanatic says:
Although it is true that handling WLANs has become more and more easy recently, it also is quite easy to intrude poorly secured (meaning less than WPA2) systems by sniffing into the encrypted data, have a program look for the snipped containing the (also encrypted) password – EDIT: to gain knowledge about the participants involved in the transfer – and then brute-forcing the (often very simple) password. MAC-filters might help a bit, but MAC-addresses are easily cloned.
Given the performance capabilities of today’s PCs (see http://www.lockdown.co.uk/?pg=combi&s=articles) one should consider changing passwords regularly.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 Gunde says:
““Yes. Because piggybacking on WEP is clearly impossible…”
If you have an exceptional amount of time, a good amount of tools and patience, then hell, knock yourself out. Personally though I imagine for all that hacking you’re putting into trying to access a WEP connection, you’d be better spent just using your own connection.”
It’s not that time consuming, as long as you’ve got two wi-fi cards in a laptop et c.
But the ease of it is not the point, it’s that the burden of proof is being shifted towards the owner of the wi-fi network proving their innocence. That’s not the way a functioning justice system works.
An IP address is not personally identifiable and cannot be used for these purposes of blackmail. And if someone breaks the WEP on someones wi-fi and pirates shit, should the owned be sued into oblivion for it?
15/12/2011 at 11:59 Milky1985 says:
“If you have an exceptional amount of time, a good amount of tools and patience, then hell, knock yourself out. Personally though I imagine for all that hacking you’re putting into trying to access a WEP connection, you’d be better spent just using your own connection.””
I believe WEP encyrption is basically pointless now because its been rainbow tabled (and has other security issues to dow ith packet sniffing), so cracking the encryption on it days minutes rather than anything (and can be done while just sitting there).
WPA 2 is better but certain versions of that are cracked, basically all wireless is possibly breakable atm (given enough time, and enough time here isn’t years its months, unless the new WPA-2 has solved that)
15/12/2011 at 12:33 RaveTurned says:
On cracking WEP – from a 2007 academic paper.
Higher-bit WEP encryption doesn’t help much – the protocol is inherently insecure and computers get more powerful all the time. WPA and WPA2 are better, but no security system is unbreakable.
15/12/2011 at 10:41 Artojas says:
It is perfectly clear to me why people always remember „You will never steel a car“ add, when defending themselves and comparing what’s real, with what’s virtual. They do it, before they usualy does not create anything valuable enough to be stolen this way. It’s rather strange to hear such arguments here, though. If I understand correctly, I’m quite allowed to copy whole content of RPS and dump advertising prices for example. Or maybe release russian version of it. I won’t be taking anything from you, all your content will remain in tact. Russian version won’t even impact your stats. Can I start tommorow?
„It seemed an all-round sensible way to behave, and despite piracy they sold over a million copies of the game.“ This line is ignorant. All of us know that sales had to be bigger (in general and in comparison), but of course it is not clear in this situation if piracy is to blame. Inexperience in marketing on major markets might be a case as well. But still… There’s lots of pirated Wiedzmins out there.
Legal pursuing and attempts to take actions is always unpleasant. Even if those are done with strong evidence. For example when taxmen send notices of unpayed taxes and demands cash, nobody feels that they are doing the right thing. Everyone actualy has arguments about how poorly their taxes are being used, and how there’s no reasons to pay up. It’s natural humane reaction, as it’s natural human behaviour to pursue any chance to get cash, you believe is yours. Perhaps CD Project could do it in a more subtle or sensible way, but hey… I wouldn’t go ranting and calling them names, while no one except them is hurt. Because there is a fact that game is pirated and there’s no proof of any legal misconduct.
15/12/2011 at 10:56 bglamb says:
Am I the only one who saw that advert and thought:
“I would totally download a car!”
15/12/2011 at 11:37 PodX140 says:
Reading RPS without ads: Sure, go ahead. Nothing legally wrong with it, and if you don’t feel their writing is worth the advertisements by all means do so. Hell, I have an RSS set up and I admit I often only click the posts I’m interested in. Maybe some people would morally object, but legally? They don’t have a leg to stand on.
Copying RPS to Russian: Without crediting them, you’ve now commited plagarism, and if you’re profiting off of ads, you’re now also stealing their money that they may have gotten from russian users using Google translate or whatever. Point is, you are now profiting off of their work, and by extension, are losing them money.
Two VERY different scenarios (Piracy vs Selling pirated copies).
15/12/2011 at 12:41 Artojas says:
Torrent sites are usually profiting from add’s and donations, especially those with registered user systems.
Every person using torrent with upload/download measurements profits from uploading files, since only this way they are allowed to download more.
By the way it’s pretty much the case in Lithuania where I come from, since our largest torrent sites have registered user system and tracks upload download ratio. They are popular because of speed, you can have whole witcher 2 on your HDD in few minutes, so everyone is downloading everything, especial most popular files. For example non gamer, movie fan might have witcher on his HDD just for seeding, because he needs to level his ratio to download more movies. If you fail to maintain upload/download level you are entitled to „donate“, so by seeding you’re actually saving those „donations“. And I’m pretty much sure it’s more or less the case of profiting in every other case. I don’t believe in some community only interested to share (even what’s not theirs) only because of good will. Pretty much everyone get’s something out of it, perhaps not in cash, but satisfying your needs while using someones work/property is a kind of profiteering too.
15/12/2011 at 10:41 mondomau says:
There was a bit of a shitstorm about this on reddit a few days ago and I got into it with a particularly thick-headed chap that called me all the names under the sun for daring to suggest CD projekt have a right to protect their work and did not, as several people on the thread seemed to believe, give up all rights to their IP by removing the DRM. I was flabberghasted at this bare-faced entitlement and said so. This immediately branded me a a nazi apparently, though I was careful to express my own disgust with the methods CD Projekt have used in this instance.
My point is this – we must be careful not to mix up why they are doing this with how they are doing it. Otherwise we end up with instances like these kneejerk accusations of RPS being pro-piracy because they do not support such spurious prosecution methods.
Conversely, the tone of John’s article does at times seem to be implying that CD Projekt have somehow ceded the moral highground to pirates by instigating this (loathsome) practice, which is not a logical argument either.
15/12/2011 at 10:42 Xaromir says:
People whine about high/unfair prices* and DRM, CDP cuts out both, i wonder why people still DL it as a torrent. CDP should sack it and find a better way, i approve of getting to those that seed though.
*I like to point out that when a game costs 60$ we over here pay 60Eur which is 80$, CDP doesn’t do that.
15/12/2011 at 10:54 Nethlem says:
The joke about all this is that most of these people probably didn’t even download it.
The anti-piracy companies who track down this stuff have a VERY poor record of delivering solid evidence on who did what.
Problem is: Most people don’t care they did nothing wrong, they see a letter with a 500€ fine threatening them “If you won’t pay this will go to court and we will label our damages as high as 100.000€!” and they get scared and just pay up 500€ even when they know they did nothing wrong.
Simply because they are scared of facing off infront of a court against a corporation that has unlimited funds while you as a regular citizen have to pay for all your legal fees and the damages are labled as high as 100.000€.
And yes in theory you might have the law on your side, that is if the right holders didn’t game the system like they allways do.
All these cases for example allways end up infront of the same few courts and judges, and these judges are known for completly ignoring technical realities because they don’t understand them. So these judges will never question that poor evidence the anti-piracy companies deliver.
Anybody who thinks this is something “good” or should happen “more often” should read up more on the situation. This whole practice is far from beeing uncontroversial…. but there is so much money in it right now that all the right people are willing enough to just look the other way.
15/12/2011 at 11:19 Xaromir says:
I agree. With “they” i meant CDP, i edited that. Well, it’s sad indeed, i also posted in the official forum telling them to cut it out. Threatening people doesn’t do much, aside from ruining their reputation real quick. Sorry if that sounded wrong.
15/12/2011 at 10:45 cavalier says:
This is why you use direct downloads.
15/12/2011 at 10:45 winterwolves says:
You know John, I’m not sure that quoting TORRENFREAK as a reliable source of the theory that “piracy helps sales” is a wise move LOL
15/12/2011 at 10:54 Belsameth says:
And Torrentfreak actually links to the source sudy, tho it’s not in english…
While pro piracy, they actually do cite a source in their claims. Unlike those involved in these silly shakedown attempts.
Legalized Theft is what it is, regardless of the fact that piracy in itself is wrong as well.
15/12/2011 at 10:58 John Walker says:
No, why consider their meticulous and sourced journalism because they keep on doing pesky things like asking questions. Good point.
15/12/2011 at 11:17 Aninhumer says:
I wouldn’t call TorrentFreak meticulous journalism, they present a lot of evidenced points, but they’re not above using logical fallacies or misdirection to support their arguments as well. And I say that as someone who agrees with a lot of what they say.
15/12/2011 at 12:20 MiniMatt says:
As pointed out, Torrentfreak quoted a study by the Swiss government:
http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/dam/data/pressemitteilung/2011/2011-11-30/ber-br-d.pdf
(also available in French and Italian if you can’t read German).
Now while Torrentfreak may or may not be a biased source, claiming the same of reports commisioned by the Swiss government in this regard is perhaps a little harsh.
15/12/2011 at 16:14 Starky says:
Agreeing that there is nothing wrong with quoting torrent freak, sure it may clearly be a biased report (but then ALL news reports are biased – been written by people who have opinions and biases), is often guilty of jumping to the pro-piracy viewpoint – but it doesn’t hide it’s bias and it sites it’s sources.
Which is all that is needed for any journalism to be considered reliable really – to freely admit any bias and site sources.
15/12/2011 at 10:45 monsterZERO says:
“Again, so you guys personally know a few people who got a letter like this without downloading anything illegally?”
YES. They exist; I’m one of them. Why do you think this is such a big deal? I live in a house with 4 roomates who each have girlfriends. That’s 8 other people in my house ALL of the time, not to mention their friends. I got a letter saying I downloaded some random porno movie (the internet and phone are in my name). I sure as hell didn’t download it, but I have to take the fall. Not fair.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 Sagan says:
So there are three things you can do here:
1. Either the person responsible steps forward and pays the fine because he is a nice person.
2. Otherwise if your roommates are cool you should probably split however much the fine was among everyone. Since everyone is sharing the internet connection, it isn’t fair that one innocent person would have to pay this.
3. If everything fails you cancel the internet and say that you will no longer have the internet under your name and one of your roommates has to do it instead. That may mean that you are without internet until someone is willing to be responsible for it. Just do it. Despite all your fears you will find that you actually can live without the internet for a couple weeks. It just takes some getting used to.
In any case you shouldn’t just take the fall for someone else doing something illegal with your connection. Whoever was responsible will probably just continue doing what they’re doing if you do. Don’t think that they feel sorry for you having to pay the fine. Since they were pirating stuff in the first place they probably don’t have much of a conscience.
15/12/2011 at 11:17 mendel says:
Go talk to an attorney! If you can produce solid evidence that these people use your internet access all the time, yours could be one of those cases with a solid enough defense.
15/12/2011 at 11:22 MichaelPalin says:
Do these things even work in court? I’d probably just trow the letter in the trash.
15/12/2011 at 11:37 ankh says:
Yeah I would just throw the letter in the trash too. I’ve done it before, I got a letter from my ISP saying I’ve downloaded House M.D.. i didnt read any further.
15/12/2011 at 11:40 PodX140 says:
Great! He has a solid defense! Now he only needs to pay a lawyer, take time off work, and hope he wins! Nothing wrong here at all!
I’m sorry, but the sheer- I can’t even speak anymore, I’m unbelievably dissapointed RPS, I thought we had better here.
15/12/2011 at 10:48 ulix says:
Good that I pirate all my games nowadays from One-Click-Hosters :)
15/12/2011 at 11:18 MichaelPalin says:
I despise the ethics of people like you! Piracy should be done through P2P, so you are actually “sharing” and promoting a horizontal and democratic transmission of culture. Booh!, I say, booh!
15/12/2011 at 11:39 ankh says:
Apartheid
15/12/2011 at 10:49 Sagan says:
Seems pretty reasonable to me. Release the game without DRM so that paying customers won’t be punished. But then go after the people who you catch torrenting.
It doesn’t even matter whether the pirate represents a lost sale or not. They were doing something illegal. If you believe in copyright, then surely it is fine to fine people for breaking your copyright.
That they choose to ask people for more than 900€ is a bad move though. I’d be interested in how they come up with that number.
That they have false positives is also unfortunate. But a) the article presents those accusations without any evidence. Not even a quote from a person saying “I have never even heard of the game,” and b) what are you going to do if you were CD Project? You watch traffic and as far as your evidence is concerned that connection is doing something illegal. You can’t then just sit back and do nothing. There is pretty much no other option except to sue the person who owns that connection.
As far as I am concerned this is exactly how this should be handled. No DRM for paying customers, but if someone is torrenting, sue them. The only thing that they should have done differently is having a lower fine.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 DodgyG33za says:
Holding the IP account liable for a crime is no different from prosecuting the owner of a toll road for a traffic offence.
The logical conclusion of this is that free wifi will become a thing of the past. Is that a good thing?
15/12/2011 at 11:21 mendel says:
“it is fine to fine people for breaking your copyright” — no, it is not. They are seeking damages, which is civil law and not criminal law, and they’re supposed to only get those damages that you actually caused (their attroney fees etc. also count as damages). If you’re a bittorrent user on DSL, your torrent upload/download ratio is probably less than 1, so if you downloaded teh whole game, you probably published (unlicensed copy!) even less (mathematically, the average ought to come down to 1:1 for everyone), so the damage should be at most twice the value of the game, plus fees. If CDproject sends out letters to hundreds of users, then tracking fees and the attorney fee to write up that one letter once shouldn’t amount to much. So how are they legitimately claiming €900 in damages, is what I’d like to know.
15/12/2011 at 11:47 Sagan says:
@DodgyG33za:
I don’t think your example makes sense. Here is another one: “Holding the IP account liable for a crime is no different from prosecuting the owner of a disco because someone was openly dealing drugs in his establishment.”
Which is an example that makes slightly more sense to me. You probably knew what was going on but did nothing to prevent it. Yes, maybe it wasn’t your fault, but chances are you were at least complicit.
As for free WiFi: The companies that offer free WiFi would not pay the fine and take this to court instead. Where they would say “we have an open WiFi, therefore it wasn’t us,” and they would win in court. This would happen once or twice, then the company that CD Project has hired for this would know not to waste their money suing places that host free WiFi.
Also most companies that offer free WiFi don’t set it up themselves. I don’t know much about network administration, but for example at my old school bit torrent was blocked. I imagine the companies who set up WiFi for businesses would also know how to do that. Yes, there are probably ways around that, but most people won’t know how to do that.
@mendel:
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that. How do you calculate the damages when it comes to copyright? Let’s say I post an article from a website with a paywall somewhere else. How do you even calculate how much money that caused in damages? What about copying an article from a website that makes money through advertising? If I do it repeatedly you may eventually be able to prove that I cost them a couple dollars. But you probably will want to be able to do something against me way before that.
Also what about punishing the person who committed the crime? If I can only sue for the value of the game plus fees, then you have pretty much just purchased the game for a little extra. (assuming mass mailing of this stuff so fees aren’t a lot) In that case there is an incentive to pirate the game because I get it for free, with a small chance of having to pay the full retail price because that is the most that I can be sued for.
15/12/2011 at 11:54 scorcher24 says:
DodgyG33za
In Germany, the owner of the Internet Account can be held liable. It is called “liability for interference”, roughly translated. He might get not get a penalty from a court when it is about criminal law (since copyright infringments are a criminal act in Germany), if he can bring evidence that it was a child in the household or someone else using the wide open WLAN, but he might have to pay the fee and be held reliable in civil law.
15/12/2011 at 12:05 Kandon Arc says:
@Sagan
The unfortunate fact is that the methods they use to find these IPs will ALWAYS return some IPs that didn’t download anything. BT trackers intentionally put these innocent IPs in to defend against copyright enforcers.
15/12/2011 at 13:43 mendel says:
@Sagan : If you stole a car, the most you would be liable for was the cost of the car – if you gave it back, the incidental cost of not having the car for a few days. That’s what you’d get in civil court; you’d get fined in criminal court.
So if I produced 3 unlicesensed copies of your software, the maximum damage seems pretty clear to me.
If you post an article from a site with a paywall, the damage is usually what you would have paid for a license to repost; failing that, it shouldn’t be more than the number of pageviews times the page price, don’t you think?
If you want to punish the person who commits the crime — if there is a crime, last I heard violating copyrights privately, without intent to gain from it, isn’t much of one — you need to apply criminal law. Personally, I want the people charged with administering criminal law to spend their efforts on more important matters.
16/12/2011 at 01:49 Josh W says:
Hang on a second, Bit torrent trackers put random non-participating IP addresses in?
If that’s true, then the link cannot be assured. You might not be the person referred to. You could be “framed”. Doesn’t that count as reasonable doubt?
15/12/2011 at 10:50 ronniecross says:
Whilst I myself am not a pirate, this is terrible practice! I mean, ok. So firms go after pirates, that’s a given. But CDProjekt, through numerous press releases were practically encouraging it! Yes, they did announce before hand that they would release it DRM free and later go after those who have pirated it. But this wasn’t highly publicised by the media – ok, can’t blame them for what the media publicise – but nor was it highly publicised by themselves.
What WAS publicised were numerous claims at several points that they feel unharmed by the pirates due to the sales that they actually ARE getting (I think the above statement, “It cannot be proven that were piracy impossible they would have all paid for a copy, and it is of course obviously nonsense that they all would.” expresses this well) whilst being able to assure that the quality of the game isn’t dented by the effects of DRM.
The whole article does actually make me think this was a very well thought out scheme by CDProjekt to make a fast load of cash. What they have failed to realise is that a fast cash boost is in opposition to a constant cash stream, and this could severely affect their future.
I personally haven’t purchased… or downloaded The Witcher 2, though was planning to do so at some point when I have the finances to do so (sometime after christmas) purely through word of mouth and inspiration by their ways of thinking forward about how DRM punishes the buyers more than the pirates. Personally the game had no appeal to me – I’d have given it a go, but it would have been more of a ‘kudos’ purchase.
On second thoughts, scrap that.
15/12/2011 at 10:56 Bozzley says:
For a company that made a website that sells old games without DRM and with bundled extras to entice purchases, going after suspected pirates by demanding relatively vast amounts of cash shows a distinct lack of using the imagination they clearly have available. Surely they can think of a better way of getting more customers? Or is GOG getting too popular and they want to lose some of the goodwill they’ve accrued up to now?
Thinking about it (and please feel free to correct me if I’m spouting bullshit); isn’t one of the benefits of buying off GOG is all the extras you get with each game? If pirates gonna pirate, why not sell Witcher 2 with the bonus bells and whistles, and ask the torrent sites to remove any torrents that have them bonuses included? That way, pirates get the basic game only, customers get the game and bells and possibly whistles too, and CD Projekt / GOG get to see just how many more customers they get when trying to turn pirates into customers nicely.
15/12/2011 at 10:57 Apples says:
I pirated the game because everyone was raving about it and I didn’t like it. Got rid of it after playing for a few hours. Glad I didn’t pay for it! That’s why this kind of thing will end up punishing people for the company’s own mistake (i.e. not releasing a proper demo).
15/12/2011 at 11:00 Trashcanman says:
Frankly I am amazed that CD Project decided to go ahead with this ponzi scheme. It’s a great way to sour customer relations and create a public relations nightmare. Not to mention what this will do to their reputation.
No. I am not against devs defending against piracy. I am however against devs using dodgy legislation to take part in what has become a homegrown German industry. The shaking down of people through legal threats. Its blackmail. Pure and simple.
15/12/2011 at 12:06 Kandon Arc says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
15/12/2011 at 11:02 grobitbox says:
I dont realy care about the whole “the ip addreas may not be that of a pirate” argument, the fact is that threatening anyone with such a large fee, even a “pirate”, is a horrible thing to do. What bad thing have “pirates” done to deserve such a thing anyway? They have chosen not to pay and thats their choise. They have not made a positive or negative effect on the company.
15/12/2011 at 11:02 PodX140 says:
Mr. John Walker, you deserve more than a beer, you deserve a damned keg for your ability to stand up to the sheer idiocy surrounding piracy and the stupid practice of charging 100x the value of a single product.
Sorry to tell everyone, but a pirated copy is NOT a lost sale. God knows how many hypothetical pirated copies of games that I would legally own I would store, due to fears of drm and whatnot. And you would call me a thief/lost sale?
15/12/2011 at 11:02 MichaelPalin says:
Wow!, a game journalism site mentioning that Swiss study on the effects of piracy. My respect for RPS has increased a few points right now.
By the way, “According to his own accounting some 4,5 million copies were shared on BitTorrent alone. Although this is a few million more than TorrentFreak’s tracking systems report…” Anybody knows what the TorrentFreak tracking system is about?
15/12/2011 at 11:05 Zeewolf says:
I really wish you hadn’t waded into the dumb debate about what piracy is and isn’t. It takes away focus from the main issue, which is the awful practice CD Projekt are employing to “fight” piracy.
Though I did like the final bit, which I’ll “quote for truth”:
“This is a grotesque practice, and one that seemed to be waning after the disgusted reaction from the masses in 2008, which saw Atari (publishers of The Witcher) eventually backing down from their actions. To hear that CD Projekt may be pulling the same awful scheme is a tragedy. They should back out of it immediately, and apologise, to save any face they still have.”
I haven’t visited GOG since I found out about this. I’m not planning on boycotting them forever, but I’ll think twice before buying from them until CD Projekt publicly states that they’ve stopped doing this, (and preferably adds that they’re sorry they were such shitheads in the first place).
15/12/2011 at 11:09 monsterZERO says:
“I haven’t visited GOG since I found out about this. I’m not planning on boycotting them forever, but I’ll think twice before buying from them until CD Projekt publicly states that they’ve stopped doing this, (and preferably adds that they’re sorry they were such shitheads in the first place).”
Same here. Well said…
15/12/2011 at 11:06 RevStu says:
Oh for god’s sake put a sock in it, you embarrassing bunch of pious, goody-two-flippers wankers who’ve never broken a law in your lives.
Piracy does NOT damage the videogames industry. Never has, never will. It’s a flat-out myth. Videogames have never been more pirated than they are now (did you ever see a bootleg Atari VCS cart?), yet the videogames industry is vastly larger and generates vastly more money every year.
The only even vaguely serious practical research ever done into piracy suggested that the number of “lost sales” is approximately ONE for every THOUSAND pirated copies.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
And if your company goes bust because it only got 99.9% of the money it would have made if there was no piracy, then it would also have gone bust if your second graphics artist got the flu and missed two days of work. Shut the fuck up.
15/12/2011 at 12:02 AbyssUK says:
I agree you you, man every other industry has to deal with shit much bigger than this, that causes much more damage… perhaps you know game companies could stop paying your designers so much money and stop making such fancy offices… then shit you’ve recovered your money already!
15/12/2011 at 12:05 Sagan says:
Well but this is in an environment where piracy is illegal.
I believe that if the stigma attached to piracy was less strong, the situation would change drastically. Many more people would pirate games and you would start losing way more sales. I think that once people start thinking “piracy doesn’t really hurt sales” more people will pirate games.
Also the analysis is missing reasons for why so few pirates would otherwise buy the game. If you discover that for every 1000 pirates playing your game, only 1 would have bought it, I’d be really curious about those numbers. What is the reason for why the other 999 people didn’t buy the game? Obviously they were interested enough in your game to play past the free trial. So why aren’t they interested enough in buying it?
Wasn’t it Valve who said that if you offer better service than the pirates, a lot of people will actually buy the game? I mean if that is the reason that pirates aren’t converted to purchasers, then those people are potential customers.
15/12/2011 at 16:38 Kieron Gillen says:
This is one of my standard riffs, so apologies for people who’ve heard it before.
That 1000-1 research shows absolutely no details of how they reached the 1000-1 figure. As far as we know, they could have pulled that number out of thin air. If it was saying there was a 1-1 results, the comments threads would have tore it to pieces, but since it supports the argument it’s entirely unexamined.
(If memory serves, the figure emerged circa the World of Good Piracy is 92% (and later, extremely conservatively 82%) number turned up. That one was torn to pieces for anything in its methodology, whilst the 1000-to-1 figure has never had a serious critique I’ve ever seen)
Generally speaking, the industry is hopelessly pro piracy-is-a-problem and the consumers who actually *care* are hopelessly pro piracy-isn’t-a-problem. I wish there were commentators interested digging into both sides of the debate with equal determination.
KG
15/12/2011 at 17:33 Guvornator says:
@ Kieron Gillen Well said. Personally I think the games industry fucked up big style when they decided to make the issue about game sales numbers. Regardless of whether or not that’s the issue, it made them look greedy. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, only 4% of video games actually make a profit*, which is why they’re after the lost earnings from piracy, which are potentially substantial. There is a vast market for pirated software outside the western hemisphere and not all of it goes to folks who are interested in making an (relatively) honest buck. THAT to me is a better reason to avoid piracy.
*according to the industry and I’ve no idea if they’re including freeware games, which would obviously skew the figures
16/12/2011 at 00:30 mendel says:
Kieron, did you catch teh followup article on Gamasutra (linked to in the comments of the article cited above) where Reflexive gave more of the numbers? They’re also “the industry”, not the gamers, so your assignment of sides on the issue and who provides which numbers is not very accurate.
15/12/2011 at 11:07 Sinnorfin says:
Also, downloading torrents is not allways illegal, i could’ve downloaded the witcher 2′s warez version because a site said that it is free..in this time of free things i could’ve believed it is a free version..How could they know that when i saw that it needs cracking and whatever i did not delete it?
Also how do they know if i even unpacked it from the rar? or even knew what’s inside Rld-Wthc2.rar?
or what an .iso file is?
Not that i am not fully aware of all of this myself , but i can picture lamers download something like this.
15/12/2011 at 11:26 mendel says:
“i could’ve downloaded the witcher 2′s warez version because a site said that it is free.” — If you have a dated screenshot of that site, the judge might even believe you. If you have no evidence, why should he?
15/12/2011 at 11:44 PodX140 says:
And why is it that he must show he is innocent? I thought it was innocent until proven guilty? The accuser should have to prove that the above case was NOT the case, not the other way around.
15/12/2011 at 12:10 Kandon Arc says:
@Pod
All the accuser has to do is prove you committed the crime. He doesn’t have to prove that you didn’t have a good reason for it.
16/12/2011 at 00:25 mendel says:
@podX140: “Innocent until proven guilty” is a rule from criminal cases. We’re talking about a civil action, where different rules apply. The plaintiff needs to show he suffered a damage, and that you wree liekly the one who caused it (prima facie evidence). To defend yourself, you need to explain how you were likely not to blame for it: in this case, you’d need to actually be able to show the site and convince the judge that you had teh impression it was a legal copy. However, if the plaintiff show that somebody offered teh game via bittorrent, and which IP offered it, then they’ll already have shown the damage, i.e. somebody distributed their game without a license. Typically, they’ll have received a hash of that torrent from the torrent user, and then they’ll connect the IP of that user with an actual subscriber, and that’ll be enough prima facie evidence that probably the subscriber caused this damage. The burden of proof then shifts to the defendant to show that he didn’t do it, or rather that somebody else could equally likely have done it.
Don’t get your legal eductaion from TV, even Wikipedia works better in that respect!
15/12/2011 at 11:07 JCJensen says:
Actually, a car analogy is completely wrong when it comes to stealing video games. Car as a product is an object, a physical form, while a video game can be classified as an entertainment; in marketing product is classified in many forms, like a service, information, you can sell an event (concert for instance), even a person (Elvis Presley name is selling millions even after his death, and his name is copyright)..
You can easily put a similar analogy with a visit to the Disneyland: if you jump over the fence, you wont be arrested because you didn’t pay for the ticket as a piece of paper, but because you consumated the entertainment inside without paying for it. DVD cases, and discs itself, have no value, it’s just a way of transporting what’s important, a content inside it, and when someone consumate it without paying, he is stealing..
Also, I don’t agree with the thought that a pirated copy doesn’t equal lost sale. I know at least ten persons who would’ve bought Witcher 2, if they could not have it for free..
P.S. Sorry for my english. I was in a hurry..
15/12/2011 at 12:20 Belsameth says:
10 people is a rather small sample group. Even besides the fact that it’s actually already widely proven to be untru. The fact that a download = a lost sale, I mean.
15/12/2011 at 11:09 Nim says:
Would it not be a better idea to simply make the pirates customers instead?
This entire situation seems like a PR-killer because anyone even receiving these letters are going to talk shit about CD-project for quite some time. This move even makes paying customers talk shit about the company. The amount brought in from these pirates in this manner have to make up for the future potential loss of customers resulting from this move.
A much better solution even if blackmail letters had to be sent out would be to demand that the alleged pirates purchase and show proof of a legal copy of the game instead. Such a move would have been fair. Instead of paying 1000+$ or similar or going to court the pirate would have paid like anyone else, received a legal copy in return and there would be a ton less shit-talking about CD-project.
EDIT:
Furthermore, I pirated both Witcher 1 and Witcher 2. Since then The Witcher EE box set rests in my drawer which I paid 50€ for and The Witcher 2:Assassins of Kings is found in my steam library which cost 30€. Am I a filthy pirate or a paying customer? Should I get one of these letters as well?
15/12/2011 at 11:23 Aninhumer says:
“A much better solution even if blackmail letters had to be sent out would be to demand that the alleged pirates purchase and show proof of a legal copy of the game instead. ”
All that really changes is the amount they are extorting. The complaint here is that innocent people are being threatened. Changing “pay €900 to settle” to “pay €40 for this game” doesn’t make it any better, when the person is innocent.
15/12/2011 at 11:32 Nim says:
Yes, innocents should not be made to pay a single cent. The manner how guilt is determined is up to the company trying to send out these letters. I could have been more specific earlier. What I proposed should only affect those who can be proven guilty without any doubt of downloading and using the product without a valid license.
15/12/2011 at 11:09 Nighthood says:
Boy, I sure am glad all developers release demos, otherwise we wouldn’t be sure if we could run/enjoy certain games!
Wait, they don’t? Oh.
Boy, I’m really looking forward to game X!
Wait, it’s on steam, and steam is blocked in my college. Oh.
I pirate, and feel no regret.
15/12/2011 at 11:10 playthatfunkytuba says:
It’s the claimed fee that really kills me when I read stuff like this – if it IS a lost sale (not my own opinion, I hasten to add), why not just demand the price of the game at release?
EDIT: @Nim got there first…
15/12/2011 at 11:19 Nim says:
When you alone come up with an original idea, it’s often a stupid one.
When you and many others come up with the same idea, it’s often a brilliant one.
15/12/2011 at 11:34 Apples says:
I think the reasoning behind charging silly amounts of money is that the pirates were sharing (uploading) as well as downloading. Therefore they are not only responsible for one lost sale of however-many-euros, they are partially responsible for many many others as well.
It doesn’t really make sense because you only upload part of the game, unless you seed properly (nobody does this come on) so arguably you have just uploaded some gibberish data. But they don’t see it that way.
edit: well that’s not the whole reason obviously, part of it is just to try and scare people.
15/12/2011 at 12:50 NathanH says:
It makes sense to require more money that would have been paid to acquire the product as a penalty. The option “pay for the game” is clearly dominated in money terms by “pirate the game and pay for the game only if you’re caught”, so it’s reasonable to want to make the penalty higher. Maybe not as high as they are going, though. You shouldn’t be able to get away with saying “OK, you caught me being crooked, but I paid it all back now so that’s fine”. Unless you’re a Member of Parliament, then that seems to be OK.
15/12/2011 at 16:45 Milky1985 says:
I woudl agree with some of hte people below saying it should be a bit more than the cost of hte game (to stop the peopel who will say “i’ll download and just pay if caught”)
But it should be that, a bit more than the cost of the game ,maybe the game cost x2! Not the game cost x 200 which seems to be the current asking price.
Oddly if they looked into the cost of these things they would probably get a better return on there letters if they lowered the cost :P
15/12/2011 at 11:12 Skyhigh says:
Dont know if this has been posted before but as far as I know in germany, the companies who think they have been pirated and their lawyers, take the case to court right away, then they convince the court that the “pirate” has pirated commercially, meaning the pirate is making money with the stuff he downloaded, even though it is clear that is not the case. Then they blackmail the “pirate”.
In germany there has been a court ruling from 2008 or so that says that the maximum amount of money that can be charged from someone who did not pirate for commercial reasons (or downloaded a single song/movie) is around 100€, in order to protect the people from this ridiculous blackmailing scheme.
The companies that feel pirated circumvent this ruling by saying the “pirate” downloaded for commercial reasons and the courts in germany always seem to follow this argumentation, although, as I said above, in most cases it is clear the “pirate” did not download stuff to sell it on the blackmarket or whatever. So when using bittorrent, one usually has to upload in order to download, and what they use as evidence that the pirate is pirating commercially is data that shows he was uploading stuff, even if it was only for a minute with 10kb/s.
So it is a money making scheme in my opinion and many people also download stuff they already own on DVD/CD, but it is the uploading part that gets the companies who try to protect the copyright of their product all excited, at least in germany as far as I know.
15/12/2011 at 11:14 SentientNr6 says:
If I would pirate I would pirate content I wouldn’t buy anyway. And some content that I buy I don’t even play.
What’s ironic in this case is that I bought the Witcher 1 but stopped playing it due to its sloppy inventory management and an announced patch that would fix that. When the patch was released you had to register. Mhmm no fun. But also a problem because my box didn’t contain a registration code. (ordered via play.com) So I contacted Atari, the publisher, never heard anything.
Moral of the story: I bought a game from CDProjekt and got screwed, but do I threaten to take legal action? Of course not: I am a reasonable guy. Unlike this company. (Ok I am also a small guy with limited power, who alone cannot achieve anything against companies, and it only cost me 35€)
Anyway Never considered Witcher 2.
As a software developer myself I have no love for Pirates but the practice on display here is loathsome.
15/12/2011 at 12:52 NathanH says:
You didn’t really get screwed though, did you? The Witcher was a perfectly serviceable game before the extended edition patch. Let’s try to be reasonable shall we.
15/12/2011 at 11:15 Rudel says:
I bought the game legally (loved it btw) but people who use torrents today to download stuff do not deserve better… it’s like shoplifting stuff and leaving your ID in the store.
15/12/2011 at 11:24 Tams80 says:
Only that ID could be the ID of the one of the old couple down the road, or anyone else.
15/12/2011 at 12:58 greenbananas says:
Only that stuff you shoplifted would still be in the store after you took it.
For Pete’s sake, you’re a smart person, you know how electronic devices work well enough that you can use one to post a message on RPS, now can you please stop doing the copyright owner’s “job” in trying to perpetuate this idiotic notion that copying equals theft?
15/12/2011 at 11:18 Maldomel says:
I’m surprised to hear of such a case from one of my favorite studio. I mean, they’re asking for a lot, and considering the whole IP stuff where you can have free wifi from unsecured networks, I don’t know if it can go far. Also, that is one way of shooting yourself in the foot, by passing for the bad guys here.
I don’t defend piracy, I have downloaded illegaly many games in my days (but I stopped for several personal reasons unrelated to the rights and wrongs of being a pirate), but this kind of stuff is a bit extreme, and won’t really solve anything at all…
15/12/2011 at 11:19 kuddles says:
What is it called if you take someone’s car out overnight and return it to them the next day in the same condition you found it? Theft. What if you copied a corporation’s ideas for a new product but left all the blueprints and plans in their office. Theft.
Piracy is stealing, and stating otherwise is ridiculous. But then, so is saying “piracy is not a lost sale”, which I don’t understand how anyone can continue saying that without their brain bubbling out of their head. Yes, if tomorrow pirating movies, music and games were impossible, I’m sure millions of people who push the piracy-to-sales ratios unbelievably high would just say “Well, I guess I’m not going to watch any movies, listen to any music or play any games anymore.”
Also laughable is the incredibly poorly researched “study” that torrent sites love to quote, which just shows that defenders of piracy will throw any excuse at the wall in hope that it will stick. “Pirates would never have bought the game anyways! Also, they actually do buy more games than regular consumers do as well! That’s totally not contradictory, and we know it’s true because we asked pirates who weren’t anonymous and they said they totally purchase things all the time!” Give me a fucking break.
15/12/2011 at 11:42 Sic says:
Not only do you provide completely ridiculous examples/analogies that has no merit in this discussion, you’re even blatantly wrong about what “theft” is.
15/12/2011 at 11:42 Max.I.Candy says:
if i break into an authors house and steal the only copy/manuscript for a new novel he has written, that is theft.
if i break into his house and photocopy that manuscript and leave (leaving behind the original), that is copyright infringement.
same thing with games.
THEFT is to deprive someone of their property permanently.
edit.
ignoring the breaking and entering part obviously!
15/12/2011 at 11:56 Aninhumer says:
“Piracy is stealing, and stating otherwise is ridiculous.”
Stating otherwise is pointing out the FACT that they are treated differently legally. Most of the people pointing this out don’t claim that this makes it okay, just that it makes it different, and that difference should be accepted if we are to have a useful debate.
“That’s totally not contradictory”
Can you point out how it is contradictory? Pirating something is not mutually exclusive with purchasing it. The argument is that the greater exposure to content made possible by piracy leads to people being aware of the quality of something they might otherwise have been unaware of and purchasing it. Do you have any evidence to oppose this other than baseless assertion?
15/12/2011 at 12:38 Deano2099 says:
“What is it called if you take someone’s car out overnight and return it to them the next day in the same condition you found it? Theft.”
Err, no actually. In the UK it’s called TWOC or Taking Without Consent, and is an entirely different crime to theft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWOC
15/12/2011 at 23:30 kud13 says:
As a second-year law student, I can competently inform you that majority of elected law-making bodies around the world tend to use different words to define “theft” and “copyright infringement”
Copyright infringement ==piracy
Copyright infringement=/=theft
therefore
piracy=/=theft.
15/12/2011 at 11:24 Persus-9 says:
I really hate this tactic. DRM hurts people who pay for the product a little but those people have a vested interest as consumers in the health of the games industry so I’m willing to put up with it as long as it doesn’t get too insane like requiring an internet connection for sp. This tactic on the other hand hurts a few people who are completely innocent and completely unconnected to industry very badly. The few non-tech savvy people who receive this letter out of the blue without having pirated the game are entirely innocent and they should not be subjected to trauma of threats of legal action for crimes they don’t understand.
There will also be two other classes of people who are hurt by this those are child pirates and their parents. I would imagine a great deal of piracy is done by children in their early teens, now I’m not saying parents don’t have a moral responsibility to know what their kids are doing on the net but the fact is that it is a very hard challenge for a lot of the non-tech savvy parents of tech savvy kids. I don’t yet have children but thinking about it I’m daunted by the prospect of how to protect them without grossly violating their privacy, restricting their freedom to much or turning looking through browser histories into a full time job. It doesn’t seem fair that some parents are going to receive this entirely disproportionate letter when their only crime was not understanding technology and having a child who understands technology well enough to do something which although in many cases wrong is widely considered morally acceptable by their peer group.
15/12/2011 at 11:24 Thoric says:
Well, i pre-ordered TW 2 from GOG, but i also pirated it at one point.
Where does that leave us?
15/12/2011 at 11:26 Moth Bones says:
Just commenting in support of RPS. Its writers come across as responsible, energetic journalists who don’t tend to exaggerate or cry foul without good reason. I’d go so far as to suggest it’s a computer game equivalent of The Quietus (music) or When Saturday Comes (football). So I don’t believe this article would be posted unless they were satisfied there is substance to this case.
I’m very glad that there are still journalists who are prepared to ask questions and get to the bottom of things. What CDP are accused of is basically corporate extortion; reprehensible bullying that, as someone pointed out upthread, is most likely to get money out of frightened people who are not sure of their rights, whether or not they are guilty. Three cheers for John Walker for pursuing what is potentially a very serious case.
15/12/2011 at 11:30 iLag says:
err… what exactly makes this newsworthy? this is how it goes in Germany, in fact many publishers do it. here’s a list of stuff: http://www.abmahndatenbank.de/Gesamtliste%20abgemahnte%20Werke.html (never mind all the porn, good people). yes, pirating Machinarium could get you in trouble!
so if this stays restricted to Germany… well, nothing out of the ordinary, move along. if this happens in other European countries, it may quite cause a stir with all the pirates out there
15/12/2011 at 11:48 Max.I.Candy says:
this is news to me……so that makes it newsworthy.
15/12/2011 at 11:31 Nidokoenig says:
If piracy is bad because it results in lost sales, then doing this is bad because it’s about to lose them $50 from the potential sale of the stuff I have in my GoG basket. I’m kind and/or lazy enough to leave it in there while we wait for an official statement, see if this is directly authorised by CDProjekt or by some dickhead publisher they won’t be using again.
As for essentially criminalising open wifi, criminalising sharing something is downright stupid, and it being encrypted is no protection, lots of routers are very easy to crack(There was a feature about this on BBC News a while back), and who knows best how to get the tools to crack secure programs? Yeah, if you don’t encrypt your wifi you’ll get letters, if you do encrypt it, you’ll still get letters and have a much harder time proving it wasn’t you to a judge who probably has his secretary print out his email for him. If that argument holds, then any publisher that gets their stuff pirated is an accessory on the grounds that their encryption was insufficient.
15/12/2011 at 11:34 Suva says:
The negative publicity is a calculated risk, they are expecting to rake in more money from the blackmail project than they expect to lose on the lost sales because of the publicity.
15/12/2011 at 11:35 Sic says:
Excuse my ignorance, but how exactly do they know where to send the letter?
All they get from trackers are a slew of IP addresses. Don’t they have to either do illegal snooping or get a court order to legally extract this information from ISPs?
15/12/2011 at 11:35 Teddy Leach says:
So it’s a bit like this then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztwjgD10Yw
I just wanted an excuse to share that video.
15/12/2011 at 11:35 wodin says:
Doesn’t your IP adress chnage anyway every couple of months?
15/12/2011 at 12:26 MiniMatt says:
Depends, most home users get a DHCP (dynamic) address from their ISP which will indeed change every so often, though could conceivably retain the same lease for years, or just days.
One would hope that the instigators of such legalese blackmail would at least be asking ISPs “who had x.x.x.x address at such and such a specific time”, which ISPs will have logged, rather than a straight “who has x.x.x.x address?”
15/12/2011 at 11:35 mendel says:
Mr Walker, do you know for certain that CDproject are behind these letters? Have you asked them?
German law has a concept called “Negotiorum gestio” (look it up on Wikipedia), which basically means anyone can send those letters, even if they never talked to the copyright holder. The shysters in the business are know to work that way.
15/12/2011 at 12:02 JB says:
“Mr Walker, do you know for certain that CDproject are behind these letters? Have you asked them?”
Last line of the article.
15/12/2011 at 11:36 NathanH says:
This is a grim day: I like to see pirates slaughtered, but I don’t like these threat scams. I’m not so worried about the “my housemate did it” argument, although it does suggest that the system of having an account in one user’s name is too restrictive, and it should be possible to have it in everyone’s name with everyone sharing legal liabilities for something like this, then at least you don’t have to pay up all yourself.
I am more worried by the fact that you can send these demands on the basis of very little evidence and probably get some money out of it. This happened to my mother a few years ago, where there had clearly been some car caught by a speed camera and they couldn’t quite work out the number plate, so they targeted some people who it might possibly have been. Fortunately the system here worked quite well, the exchange being:
Authorities: You were caught speeding, pay some money or we will take you to court and make you pay more money
Mother’s lawyer: My client was not at that location on that day, please provide your photographic evidence
Authorities: We now accept that your client was not at that location
Mother’s lawyer: my legal fees are £x, please pay them
Authorities: OK
If the legal system you’re in supports the last step, everyone involved in these scams should do it and the scams would probably stop. If it doesn’t support the last step, this is a flaw that needs addressing.
15/12/2011 at 13:14 Guvornator says:
Indeed, it’s not on. However, seeing as there’s a lack of political will and knowledge on the subject I’m not sure they have a choice. It’s either go draconian with some bunch of dodgy ambulance chasers or let it lie, letting years of work and effort hit the net for free without a by-your-leave.
Also, congratulations for having an anti-CDProjekt view which doesn’t involve insults, wild exaggerations or anything that makes me think what you’re really pissed off about is someone’s taking away your God-given right to free stuff that someone poured their life into for 3 years. You, sir, are champion.
…but that’s just my personal opinion.
15/12/2011 at 11:41 Holkeye says:
Ok, so I’ve been a huge fan of RPS for years and years, but have never read a story that I felt warranted a comment from myself until this one:
I bought this game the day that it came out. In fact, I had it preordered for months. Unfortunately, when I ripped it open and tried to install, my DVD drive wouldn’t recognize the disk. Of course, I immediately looked for information online, and uh-oh! 25% of DVD drives won’t read the backwards disks that CDP chose to master their game on! I was a little concerned, so I captured screenshots, scanned my receipt, and went to CDP’s website for some help. After waiting a week, I said screw it, and downloaded the game from a torrent tracker. I still have not received a response from CDP about my failed disks.
tldr; If you’re going to bitch about piracy and go after people who pirate your games, you had better make damn sure that you do EVERYTHING in your power to help the people who are actually purchasing from you.
15/12/2011 at 11:45 foda500orama says:
If everyone had a single, unchangeable, IP address I’d be perfectly fine with this, since that’s not really the case it’s not hard to see how wrong this can go.
Edit: And anyone that pirated Witcher 2 should get kicked in the fucking teeth.
15/12/2011 at 11:51 Max.I.Candy says:
“And anyone that pirated Witcher 2 should get kicked in the fucking teeth.”
oh look,another person who thinks piracy is black and white.
15/12/2011 at 12:17 foda500orama says:
I should have been more specific, it should have been “anyone that has pirated Witcher 2 and did not buy it afterwards should get kicked in the fucking teeth”.
15/12/2011 at 11:46 ranunc says:
Am I the only one who has worked in the software world who threw up a little after reading this?
If not, help me out: would you be fine if a game co. sold one copy and everyone else “copied” it for their own use? After all, there would be no lost sales, would there?
15/12/2011 at 11:51 Megadyptes says:
Just the same old tired shit that always gets spouted out to try and justify piracy.
15/12/2011 at 11:59 Ichi_1 says:
@ranunc
Building straw men just weakens your argument. You know as well as I do that piracy has never caused any software to end up selling only one copy. Piracy is basically good old capitalism. If you charge ludicrous amounts for software then people will pirate it instead. So either lower your prices or stop winging. I know some people will pirate regardless of price but if that’s the case then what have you lost? If they were never going to buy it in the first place then you’ve lost exactly ZERO SALES
15/12/2011 at 12:01 edit says:
Just as some food for thought, some of these “pay what you want” indie bundles, for instance, have been ludicrously successful. I get the feeling if you (content creators in general) extend some generosity, trust and positivity to your audience they will be much more willing to support you than if you are trying to fight them to pay your determined price and punish them if they don’t.
15/12/2011 at 12:03 Apples says:
I think it is phrased badly (in that a pirated copy CAN be a lost sale), but I also think it’s true that one pirated copy does not EQUAL one lost sale. Because you can’t be sure what the intention or reason of pirating it is. In fact it could be more than one lost sale, or a lost sale but only in that the person would have bought it and felt dissatisfied with it and has used pirating to make a more informed decision, or not a lost sale because they would never have bought it.
Would I be fine with it if that company sold one game and everyone who, in some alternate universe without piracy, would otherwise have bought it didn’t? No. But if everyone in that alternate universe would not have bought it anyway and only pirated it because “hey it’s free, why not”, yeah I’m cool with it. But we don’t have that alternate universe in real life so you can’t simply go “LOST SALES OMG EVIL PIRATES” because we DON’T KNOW whether they were lost sales! And definitely not with enough certainty to try and charge people ludicrous amounts of money over it!
15/12/2011 at 12:08 Aninhumer says:
@ranuc
“would you be fine if a game co. sold one copy and everyone else “copied” it for their own use?”
No I wouldn’t be fine with that. However that doesn’t happen, so your point is meaningless.
As a developer, what you should care about is actual sales. If piracy reduces your sales then it is a problem, but there is evidence to show that this might not be the case. Maybe you should consider both possibilities, instead of blindly asserting that there is a problem.
15/12/2011 at 12:11 thegooseking says:
I’m sure some people would buy it if they couldn’t pirate it and I’m sure some people wouldn’t buy it even if they couldn’t pirate it. But estimating the relative proportions of those two camps is total speculation without any kind of evidential basis. It might be more accurate to say “a pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale” but if you’re going to try to quantify the degree of probability associated with that, you’re essentially limited to pulling numbers out of your a- out of thin air, which isn’t very helpful.
15/12/2011 at 14:18 Llewyn says:
@Ichi: Another claim that piracy is caused by the oh-so-evil, oh-so-greedy developers, eh? All those poor, innocent little pirates, forced into their nefarious misdeeds by the cruel overlords at CDP. Makes my heart bleed.
Oh, no, it doesn’t. It’s just another whingeing little pirate who lacks even the balls to take responsibility for his own behaviour. How pathetic.
15/12/2011 at 11:47 netizensmith says:
I don’t agree with quite how they are detecting the pirates but this IS, fundamentally, the best way to go about protecting your IP. DRM assumes that I am a pirate. When I installed Skyrim it assumed that I had an illegal copy and made me put in a code to prove I wasn’t. When they fucked the patch up and I tried to reinstall without being connected to Steam the installer assumed I was a dirty pirate trying to get around DRM and wouldn’t let me. You know the people who didn’t have any trouble with the 1.2 Skyrim patch? Pirates.
Getting a threatening when you’ve done nothing wrong means that their system is broken of course, I’m not defending that.
15/12/2011 at 11:49 Ichi_1 says:
@Sarah83
You keep banging on about how piracy is affecting pc gamers and pc games but you haven’t given any explanation. Care to elaborate on why piracy is so evil?
And just because something is law does not make it right. If people just accepted every ridiculous law from the beginning of history we’d still have black people being forced to sit at the back of buses and gay people would be hung. These may be extreme examples but people should decide on whether a law is just, not the other way around
15/12/2011 at 11:49 Megadyptes says:
Oh wow, a car analogy!
“The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here.” Then a full paragraph on the morality of piracy. lol.
15/12/2011 at 11:53 PodX140 says:
Sorry to tell you, but morality was not discussed, just simple marketing, and I’m not claiming it’s morally good or bad, and neither is John. All that was pointed out was the mechanics of the matter. So please, next time read the article properly before posting your drivel on one of the last good journalist gaming sites. I’m amazed the writers can put up with this kind of (practically – I find) harassment.
15/12/2011 at 12:08 Guvornator says:
I know, right? Personally I would have felt a bit more comfy if this was two articles, one on the news itself, then the other on John’s thoughts on it, but that’s just a personal opinion. Incidentally, I’d like that last phrase to be mandatory for all internet discussions i.e.
“Oh for god’s sake put a sock in it, you embarrassing bunch of pious, goody-two-flippers wankers who’ve never broken a law in your lives.”…but that’s just my own personal opinion.
Seriously, people, lets all just try and have a little respect all round.
15/12/2011 at 11:50 edit says:
That’s a shame. I’m not going to rant or get into arguments… I will simply no longer shop at GOG (alas, I even have items in my cart). I did not pirate the game and have no intention of pirating any game, but I don’t support this kind of action.
15/12/2011 at 12:01 JCJensen says:
And how is this affecting YOU?!
15/12/2011 at 12:47 Nidokoenig says:
Some people don’t like supporting unethical practices, regardless of whether they’re a victim or not. Some even consider it a civic duty to oppose unethical practices. Mad, I know.
Even if every last IP address matches up exactly with the person who downloaded a copy of the game, 900 Euros is a ridiculous figure far beyond what damage they might actually cause to sales. It’s about twenty times the asking price, so unless this is limited to people with a 10:1 share ratio or higher, it’s ridiculous. This is a shakedown, even if you’re blind to the fact that wifi is easily hacked and most people live in households of more than one person, this stinks.
15/12/2011 at 11:51 alundra says:
This nothing short of terrorism committed by corporations based on the sole ground that the average person will not be able to answer in court, who’s going to take it against a multi million corporation?? These people have pockets deep enough to have any country’s legal system write laws that work on their favor.
That is the very same reason why this can’t be just fixed, it’s fixed already, in their favor, and anyone justifying this kind of behavior is either shilling in favor of private interests or just a very disgusting human being.
15/12/2011 at 11:52 Megadyptes says:
No, it’s nothing at all like terrorism. Grow up.
15/12/2011 at 11:54 PodX140 says:
Terrorism – the act of spreading terror.
Making people fear that they have to pay a company or pay a lawyer even more? That sounds like spreading terror to me.
Not saying I agree with the label, but it is technically correct.
15/12/2011 at 12:01 Ichi_1 says:
Ah good to see that some people still only associate terrorism with people blowing themselves up
15/12/2011 at 12:13 alundra says:
@Megadyptes
I always love when someone pops in and validates my argument.
If you don’t think this is terrorism, fine, you’ve no idea what terrorism is then, why don’t you ask Jammie Thomas-Rasset how she felt when she was fined with 1.92 million usd for downloading 24 songs?
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/riaa-jury-slaps-2-million-fine-on-jammie-thomas/
As for the grow up bit, yeah, it was very mature and all, specially coming from someone who has no grip of what terrorism is.
15/12/2011 at 12:20 Lobotomist says:
Its not terrorism , but its corporate bullying.
Basically putting people in position where no fair trial can be achieved , because one party has infinite resources.
Welcome to Cyber punk apocalypse
15/12/2011 at 12:50 Guvornator says:
Yeah, man, it’s TERRORISM, man! Fight the power! Hell, it’s not like CDProjekt own a site where you can download games DRM free for a tiny amount of cash….oh, wait…
…but that’s just my personal opinion. Incidentally, what do you think RPS’s advertisers are going to make of Mr. Walker’s stance on this issue?
16/12/2011 at 11:35 Milky1985 says:
Terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. “, so while there is no violence here and that seems to be the deciding factor you could still claim this ( but I wouldn’t because there is no actual violence involved here). But as its not against a nation and its from a corp its seen as OK and possible corperate bullying.
I guess its mostly what side of the debate you are on effectivly, as they say , one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.
15/12/2011 at 12:12 Lobotomist says:
I remember CDR said they will do this, long time before the game was even out.
Retarded and scary that it was. But they gave the warning…
Just saying.
15/12/2011 at 12:37 Ninja Foodstuff says:
By the way I shall go and urinate on some people later. Cheerio!
15/12/2011 at 12:13 mr.ioes says:
I’ve read the article on Torrentfreak and now on RPS and I still think this is a hoax.
If literally “thousands” ( ~Torrentfreak) people would have received such letter, you could find lots of forum users complaining and asking on various platforms.
Just type ‘abmahnung web.de’ or ‘abmahnung gothic 3′ for instance. That’s how it looks when people receive those malicious letters.
It’s really suspicious that there are lots of “official legal help” (apparently the only thing RPS & Torrentfreak can link to in order to back up their story) out there but not a single user to find.
I can’t believe that I’m the only one to see that something’s fishy here.
Think about it.
15/12/2011 at 12:13 JCJensen says:
How dare they demand money from those who have STOLEN their property..
CDP have a wonderful treatment to their legal customers, unlike any other company out there. Witcher 2 was cheaper than most games, although of higher quality, and it came with a box full of goodies while other companies just put a black and white ten paper long manuals. Also, DRM was removed very fast, and now they are suffering because they put their customers in the first place..
I am one of those customers, and I don’t give a fuck what will happen to someone who, despite all the things I mentioned, pirated the game like some cheap idiot..
15/12/2011 at 12:25 Holkeye says:
This is just not true. See my earlier comment.
15/12/2011 at 12:27 Ichi_1 says:
There is ZERO EVIDENCE to suggest that they have lost out on sales because of piracy though. If you could point me to some figures I’ll happily take a look.
Until that event this is all nothing but baseless conjecture and hyperbole. Has the game done badly? Last time I checked the Witcher 2 had recorded impressive sales figures and the company was very successful commercially.
They are taking action against a problem that doesn’t actually exist. If Witcher 2 had recorded poor sales despite reasonable pricing and critical acclaim then we’d have something to discuss. It’s like you saying I need to be arrested because me being out in the world is detrimental to your well being, despite no evidence to support the claim
15/12/2011 at 12:53 Apples says:
Well yes it might have come with some extra baubles, but I still didn’t like the game. I would be annoyed if somebody came round trying to get me to pay 1000 times its retail price, just because I wanted to try it out before deciding whether I thought it was worth supporting with my money or not (I decided it wasn’t). Maybe I’m a cheap idiot, or maybe I just don’t want to throw money at companies without knowing beforehand whether the product is worth it!
Requisite car analogy: there was no test drive for the car. I drove a friend’s car of the same model for free and decided it was rubbish. I didn’t buy the car. Lost sale!?
15/12/2011 at 13:00 JCJensen says:
Zero evidence??? LOL!!!
I already told you I know a lot of people who wouldn’t miss a Witcher game for a world, but they didn’t bought it, because it was available for FREE!! And they have money..
What evidence do you need here?! It’s just common sense.. Most people who pirate are the ones who think like this: ‘Why should I pay for something when I can have that for free, and spend that money on something else?’
15/12/2011 at 13:02 Apples says:
Hmm yes “common sense”, that always holds up in court. How do you know that most people will not buy a game they pirate? All you know is that some of the people you know won’t. Which is what studies (i.e. evidence) is needed for.
15/12/2011 at 14:49 Belsameth says:
So, by your logic I would’ve bought dozens, if not hundreds, of rubbish games?
because, clearly, I would buy every game I have pirated. (Yes, I also have a steam library of 150ish game, not to mention the stacks of console games).
Someone earlier up in the comments linked an artikel (by a game developer!) where they clearly state, backed up by actual numbers, that (with their game) every 1000 pirated copies converted to 1 lost sale.
Silly man :)
15/12/2011 at 15:36 Apples says:
Do you understand the difference between statistical likelihood and a single person doing something? Saying “most people buy the games they pirate” (which I did not do; I said that we don’t know whether they do, or whether the opposite is true) has nothing to do with you, personally, buying a game you pirate. You can say “Well I don’t, therefore no-one does” and I can say “Well I do, therefore everyone does” and we can both go absolutely nowhere; or we can both say “We’re not sure yet”, which is the truth.
The article is a single study on a single casual game I’ve never heard of. I am not an expert on studies about pirating and I don’t claim to be, but I do know that a single study is not enough to come to a conclusion, and that there is a big difference in the audience (and audience’s attitudes towards games) between Witcher 2 and Ricochet. So I don’t think that one thing is enough to say “Yes lost sales are real”. It’s not very convincing.
also not a man. i might be silly though.
15/12/2011 at 12:21 Unaco says:
1. Piracy is illegal.
2. Piracy is a problem… it hurts the Game Industry, Developers, Publishers etc.
3. No one really seems to be prosecuting Piracy, not in any great extent, and no one from the State as it were.
With #3 there, it’s quite obvious that Private companies are going to start making what profit can be made from chasing and threatening Pirates and suspected Pirates, filling the hole in the market. I’m sure there are going to be some false positives, some mothers who can’t believe their son would do this, etc etc. The innocent should have nothing to fear though. If they’re innocent, it can’t be proven in court.
It’s a shady tactic, but so is Pirating a game… especially one that had the DRM removed.
DRM in the its current state, in the way it’s used by most devs/pubs doesn’t work, we all know that (unless it’s STEAM), so it’s hardly surprising that companies like CD Projekt will look to other methods to protect their work. Personally I think low prices and swift digital downloads have been the best weapon, which CDProjekt had for The Witcher 2.
15/12/2011 at 12:41 SquareWheel says:
Many things wrong with this.
“1. Piracy is illegal.”
First, define piracy. Then let us know the country and locality, because different areas obviously have different laws. Then we can talk, but blanket statements like that are useless.
“The innocent should have nothing to fear though. If they’re innocent, it can’t be proven in court.”
Nothing can be proven in court because tracing IP addresses does diddly squat. It’s frivolous and proves nothing. Of course those in power don’t understand this because the internet is a complicated system, and copyright-enforcer groups like these intentionally spread misinformation. They honestly have no idea who pirated what, they are guesses used to extort money. These people are scum.
“DRM in the its current state, in the way it’s used by most devs/pubs doesn’t work, we all know that (unless it’s STEAM)”
Uh no, Steamworks DRM has been broken since Steamworks DRM has existed. Steam as a PLATFORM is successful due to convenience, the server-side checks before you play your game are not the reason for Steam’s success.
15/12/2011 at 12:57 Unaco says:
On Piracy being illegal. From the article…
“The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here. To do it is to break the understood laws of many countries, and that is that”
On nothing being proven in court…
Even with a Dynamic IP, almost all ISPs these days have to keep records of which customer had which IP at which time. It can be proven which customer had the IP used to Pirate the game. In Germany, the locality under discussion, you are held responsible for anything that goes on with your internet connection.
On Steam…
I see Steam as Good DRM… it asks a customer to be online (unless using Offline mode) which is asking something of the user and is slightly negative… but it offers so much to go with that (chat, friends, achievements, stats etc), so much positive in return, that the Steam version is a better version than the Pirated one. People want to use Steam… as GabeN says “Offer a better product/service, and people will want to use it, even if they could Pirate”. Because people want to use it, developers want to get their games on it… it gives those developers a DRM solution that isn’t a poison pill for customers.
The Steam DRM is the connection requirement AND the extra service provided by the Platform. And customers like it.
15/12/2011 at 13:12 Kandon Arc says:
There are guaranteed to be IP addresses included that didn’t download anything though. BT trackers include random IPs as a matter of course.
15/12/2011 at 13:43 alundra says:
“The innocent should have nothing to fear though. If they’re innocent, it can’t be proven in court.”
And yet another ignorant remark, do you have any idea how the legal system works nowadays?? What?? you think an appointed public lawyer will be able to compete against a AAA private legal bureau with more money at their disposal than what you will see on your whole life??
Good luck paying your defense expenses and cross fingers and tighten butt that you win and have only to pay your defense and not losing and they bill you for every second of court time.
15/12/2011 at 14:12 Unaco says:
Many countries have things similar to Legal Aid, which provides lawyers for those who can’t afford them. In addition, I would assume that if an innocent was taken to court, and it was proven that they were innocent, that the litigators would have to pay the defendants Legal fees. The Legal system should protect those falsely accused.
15/12/2011 at 14:52 Belsameth says:
Use google.
There’s tons of evidence all over the place that this is a mass shakedown and not IP protection.
There’s also tons of evidence that innocents are being hit en mass by these kinds of practices.
16/12/2011 at 03:03 SquareWheel says:
“Even with a Dynamic IP, almost all ISPs these days have to keep records of which customer had which IP at which time.”
Doesn’t matter, it can be spoofed or you could just have an open wifi.
“I see Steam as Good DRM… it asks a customer to be online (unless using Offline mode) which is asking something of the user and is slightly negative… but it offers so much to go with that (chat, friends, achievements, stats etc)”
Steam can provide those features without the server-side checks. You can even add non-Steam games to get the overlay/friends list. The DRM adds nothing.
15/12/2011 at 12:24 Suits says:
This hurts them more than the pirating..
15/12/2011 at 12:27 MadTinkerer says:
My brother and I download un-legit things all the time. In our case, it often leads to sales that the original publishers would not have otherwise gotten. Sometimes we download things to try them out. Sometimes we download things because there isn’t a way for us to pay for them (Japanese-region only games + fan translations, for example, and American and British games that aren’t in stores anymore and not on GoG yet, as another example). Sometimes we download things because we haven’t heard of them and we don’t know whether they’re available or not and then we track down the company’s web site and get a legit copy (particularly in the case of games, books, and DVDs with limited releases).
I’ll tell you right now, publishers have profited greatly from our ability to easily access un-legit versions of their products. Yeah, there are plenty who just grab and grab and don’t think twice about never compensating the publishers, developers, and authors, but we are not like those people. I’ve never torrent-ed The Witcher 2, but even if I did, I do have a legit copy as well so it isn’t possible for me to owe them any more money. So forget about it, CD Project, and just be happy I’m buying Ultima VII on GoG even though I have three legit copies of it already. ;)
15/12/2011 at 12:28 Innovacious says:
Dynamic IP addresses.
As far as i am aware the majority of people do not have static IPs. Ive seen it many time, someone connects to the internet or restarts their router, goes to a website and it says they have been banned. They got unlucky and got a banned members old IP.
Also, someone sent me this the other day. http://www.youhavedownloaded.com
Its a list of things they have seen your IP downloading via trackers. There is only one thing listed for me, and i have absolutely no idea what it even is, and it was over a month ago. Any number of people could have used this IP address since then.
15/12/2011 at 12:57 Apples says:
ISPs keep records of who is allocated what dynamic IP at what time though, don’t they? I assumed that companies would ask the ISP for that info rather than going after random dynamic addresses.
15/12/2011 at 12:29 Kevin says:
So maybe copying isn’t “stealing,” regardless of semantics, I still think a guy pirating a copy of The Witcher 2 is being an ass. That guy is still depriving CD Projekt of some well-deserved money after all the hard work and passion they put into making that game.
15/12/2011 at 12:40 Ichi_1 says:
I think we need to differ between people who just download a pirated copy of the game and those who crack games and put those pirated copies on to torrent sites. The former are not really the cause of the issue and therefore are not the ones who should be persecuted. This is why this type of action is wrong. It will not affect the people who have cracked and distributed the game
15/12/2011 at 12:58 Apples says:
There are a lot of people here mixing up “I liked the game” with “EVERYONE SHOULD BUY THE GAME!!! EVERYONE!”
15/12/2011 at 13:40 Blackcompany says:
Firstly, disclosure: I have never pirated/obtained for free a single video game. Ever.
.
I think we need to clarify exactly what it means to be a “pirate” in this context. Because I clearly remember buying CD’s (you know, those funny looking frisbee shaped things with music on them) and then loaning them to friends. I clearly recall ripping and burning them onto other, blank CD’s in order to play them in my car without wearing out the original, pressed copy. I also remember making copies for friends.
.
I loaned console games. Hell, we are legally allowed to resale our console games and to buy used copies of them in stores. After all, someone bought them brand new, played them or didn’t and since they OWNED their copy of the game, were free to do with it as they pleased.
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And that, dear chaps, is the key here: do we, or do we not, own the games we purchase? We bought the game. We paid full price for our very own copy to play any time we wished. Talk EULAs all you want; don’t care. My concern is an ethical one not a legal one. We bought it plain and simple, and we therefore own it. Period.
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Video game developers are incredibly immature. They whine and cry about lost sales and lost profits to the point of the ridiculous. Despite, as this article points out, absolutely no evidence of lost sales. How do they know the people who pirated their game would have bought it? As this article points out, assuming such things is simply stupid. Its also childish whining to boot.
.
I mean c’mon, Skyrim sold millions of copies at $60/copy. Do the math. Bethesda are surely hurting from all the ‘lost sales’ pirates caused them. Ditto for CDProjekt. One million copies at between $25 and $49.99 each. Certainly they are not exactly starving for profits here.
.
I understand both sides of this argument. Really I do. devs have to eat; some of these games take years to make and they can work on nothing else the entire time. But for a smallish dev team to pull down between 20 and 50 million in profits for 2 years worth of work….I think they can get by.
.
Of course, behavior like this will help to ensure it will be the last time they do pull down profits like this, too.
15/12/2011 at 14:40 Guvornator says:
@blackcompany not sure about your argument on that one. About half of that money goes to publisher of every game sold, with the rest going to the retailer, distribution, platform royalties etc. Of that half, a portion of it has to go on development costs, which is dependent on the time and costs involved. Only 4% of video games make a profit. That means games which do make a profit are supporting games which don’t (or to put it another way, MW3 is directly responsible for whatever junk Activision decide to foist on us next year).
Piracy is worth billions. Bare in mind that piracy doesn’t just cover downloading from the net, it also covers the illegal selling of games and applications in DVD in places like China, where copyright laws a barely enforced at all. Some of that money gets funnelled into the criminal underworld. They get their illegal copies from the same place the casual pirate does – the internet. It is, when looked at in totality A Bad Thing. Now, whether CDProjekt’s actions are proportionate is another thing altogether, but I think it’s understandable that they’re trying to stamp it out.
..but that’s just my personal opinion.
http://kotaku.com/5479698/what-your-60-really-buys
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/202380/report-only-4-of-games-make-profit/
15/12/2011 at 12:35 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Yee-haa! In your face filthy pirates! And you too Grandma, don’t give me any “what’s an ip address” nonsense. See you in court bitch, and bring your pension book.
15/12/2011 at 12:45 Guvornator says:
Where the hell is the recommend button on this thing?
15/12/2011 at 14:57 Belsameth says:
You, sir, deserve at least 1 statue. Possibly more.
How bout reshaping Lady Liberty in your image?
15/12/2011 at 20:38 PodX140 says:
I believe I may have thrown up from the amount of hate and self-righteousness.
15/12/2011 at 12:47 Hoaxfish says:
I see the problem with using an IP to demand money.
But, hey, it’s still better than a lot of the forms DRM takes (mainly the ones which actively deny legal owners from their game via various “offline/online” faults).
15/12/2011 at 12:48 Deano2099 says:
Here’s the thing. If CD Projekt want to sue people that pirate their games, then I think it’s a little arsey of them but I can’t question it. Totally their right. People shouldn’t have pirated. They deserve it. It’s fair.
But that’s categorically NOT what they’re doing.
In the UK Davenport Lyons sent thousands of these letters. They took three to court. ACS Law took up the mantel. Neither of them every proved a case in court, as the only ones they took to court were those where the accused ignored them, then didn’t show up for the trial at all, so they won by default. It’s unknown if they every got the money from them – for all we know the only cases they won were against dead people.
This is absolutely key. These companies are not in the business of proving the guilty guilty and receiving fair recompense. They’re in the business of intimidating people into paying up without having to make any effort to prove something. That’s not how the law is made to be used.
For those stating that having an IP address linked to the torrent is enough and they’d obviously win, no. That was the argument ACS Law made to the courts in requesting summary judgements on all the cases (ie – judgement made without a full hearing purely on evidence provided by each side). They were denied this. Maybe you know better than a judge. Probably not.
It ain’t hard. If you want to sue people, sue people. Don’t dick around with threatening a ton of people in the hope someone pays up.
I stand entirely by what I’ve just written, but I’m 100% ready to retract this statement. If more than 1% of these cases actually go to court I’ll turn on a dime.
15/12/2011 at 13:44 Blackcompany says:
Whether or not people did or did not “pirate” the game (since when did sharing something you own with other interested parties become ‘pirating?) CD Projekt is not trying to prosecute them within the boundaries of any international law of which I am aware. Not within the boundaries of any law at all, actually.
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In the U.S., unless you are a politician, blackmail and extortion are illegal. (If you are a politician, by contrast, apparently nothing is illegal, though cheating on your wife apparently matters.)
.
If these claims are true then CD Projekt are attempting to blackmail and extort money from individuals who may or may not be guilty of some alleged crime. They are, in other words, using illicit methods in order to deprive people of their hard earned money without due process of law.
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In our nation we have this little document says you can’t do that. Period. Something they might want to consider lest they decide to take this to the international stage.
15/12/2011 at 13:53 Kandon Arc says:
You know this goes on in the US too right?
http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-case-judge-says-110503/
15/12/2011 at 12:48 rocketman71 says:
It’s sad. Even if CD Project thinks they’re defending their property, lawyers will always be lawyers:
Anti-Piracy Lawyers Knew They Targeted Innocent Victims
And since those are the ones that sued in 2008 regarding The Witcher (the original one), I doubt CD Projekt doesn’t know what a fuckup that was. Just ask the judge.
Bad bad bad CdP. I guess no Witcher 2 gifts this Christmas then.
15/12/2011 at 12:50 Nihi says:
They learned from French Laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI
George Orwell here we come.
15/12/2011 at 13:04 Guvornator says:
Yes, it’s totally Big Brother to make you have to pay for stuff you want to play and has cost the developer millions to make, not to say the long, long hours spent crafting code into a form you enjoy playing. Oh, yeah, and the years spent begging publishers for money from publishers, and time spent away from family , and the emotional drain.
Holy shit. If I was a games developer reading some of the stuff on here I’d either slit my throat or go cap in hand back to Maccy D’s and beg for a fucking job.
…but that’s just my personal opinion.
15/12/2011 at 13:22 Ichi_1 says:
Well I AM a games developer and piracy really doesn’t bother me. As long as a game turns a healthy profit it really doesn’t matter. It all comes down to greed.
If your game earns 10 million profit you can’t complain about pirates affecting your commercial sales when it’s a totally unproven fact as to whether piracy hinders or aids sales
15/12/2011 at 13:43 Nihi says:
Well, i don’t defend piracy, of course it’s wrong. But the way they react is wrong too.
I LOVE, CdProjekt, but it’s the first time they disappoint me.
It’s not about money or anything, it just makes no sense to sue “IP Adress” (and this is why this French law is so controverted).
Piracy has always been here, maybe even more at the beginning of gaming, the problem being, games are expensive to DO, and that’s the problem, you can’t fight piracy, you can try but you’ll just piss off customers. When some companies have hundreds of employees working on ONE game, of course it gets hard to make some benefits.
Again, i really love CD Projekt, have a dedicated collector and i support them, but not this time.
15/12/2011 at 13:54 Kandon Arc says:
Funny you should mention HADOPI. Look who was accused of breaking it today: http://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-busted-for-bittorrent-piracy-111215/
15/12/2011 at 13:07 JCJensen says:
I seriously hope this thing does well for them, not because other publishers and developers should follow, but because The Witcher 2 did everything right. It had no DRM, it was a beautiful game pushing hardware sales and it was an awesome role-playing game. They pretty much made the game PC gamers craved for and still it was pirated to hell and back.
15/12/2011 at 13:28 Ichi_1 says:
You hope that people who may or may not have pirated the game have to pay a ridiculous sum of money? Even if someone did pirate the game that isn’t a reason to sue them for 45 times the retail price of the game. This is nothing but another successful company trying to earn revenue through dodgy methods.
This trend really needs to stop. What with this, DRM and companies like EA trying to kill off the second hand game market by forcing people to buy codes for content they should already be entitled to. Pretty soon we as gamers will have no consumer rights
15/12/2011 at 13:10 hanfastolfe says:
Ha! I spent my evening trying to patch my pirated version to 2.0, got frustrated, saw it on sale on Steam and bought it!
PIRACY LEADS TO SALES, PEOPLE.
(piracy does not lead to salespeople, so, win-win)
15/12/2011 at 13:36 Llewyn says:
But in your example, only foiled piracy leads to sales – the implication is that if you’d been able to patch your copy to 2.0 easily then you’d never have bought the thing.
The only thing piracy always leads to is feeble attempts at self-justification from pirates.
15/12/2011 at 13:40 RogB says:
alternative outcome: Say you managed to patch it incredibly easily, would you have bothered buying it then?
(edit) Llewyn beat me to it
15/12/2011 at 17:02 Milky1985 says:
“alternative outcome: Say you managed to patch it incredibly easily, would you have bothered buying it then?”
What if he never pirated it at all? If he didn’t pirate it he wouldn’t have had problems patching it so never would have seen it on steam sale and bought it!
If you are going to ask questions ask all of em.
15/12/2011 at 20:42 PodX140 says:
To be honest we can’t tell what would have happened if he didn’t pirate the game at all, and that’s. the. point!. Seriously people, there is no concrete study saying that piracy hurts or helps sales. None. So stop going on gut feeling and “it feels wrong” and go by the facts of THERE ARE NONE, so drop the topic!
15/12/2011 at 13:22 deke913 says:
It is rapidly getting to the point to where you almost have to have all your media on a digital file.
Many of my older games ( and I have hundreds) on cd, I have made into image files. However, there are many of them I cannot simply because my computer won’t even recognize the cd.
According to every legal statement I have found about this, you are allowed to have 2 copies of any game just so long as you own the original copy.
There should be no legal backlash against me if I download a torrent of a game that currently exists physically in my home.
15/12/2011 at 13:37 johnpeat says:
Wrongity Wrong…
By using the BitTorrent system, you are not only downloading a file but also – at the same time – offering it for upload.
That is illegal and you can be prosecuted for it – regardless of whether you own the original or not.
As for owning copies – the legality of this varies country-by-country and depends on the means of acquiring the copy (as reversing copy protection to do so is illegal under US law – for example)
The fact that file sharing tends to involve people/systems from multiple countries also further complicates any attempt at calling it ‘legal’ – bottom line is you’re almost certainly braking copyright law somewhere by making/keeping copies of stuff.
16/12/2011 at 11:38 Milky1985 says:
“By using the BitTorrent system, you are not only downloading a file but also – at the same time – offering it for upload.”
Nope, you can configure a client to not upload. You can say that someone probably uploaded (as that is the default, as scroungers are frowned upon and get slower speeds etc) but it is possible to download without uploading (or just uploading crap deliberatly)
15/12/2011 at 13:28 Velvetmeds says:
Maybe if Witcher 2 had been remotely good…
Focus on making something that isn’t a turd and then you’ll have my respect Cdprojekt
15/12/2011 at 14:56 Hoaxfish says:
Given the popularity and general reviews of it, I’d say your advice is perhaps a little irrelevant.
15/12/2011 at 13:37 deke913 says:
I here what you are saying Balobam, but it also sounds a lot like “If I determine something to be in my best interest I should be allowed to do it”.
Many a fine folk in prison today for just such thinking.
Being able to do something, and not doing it because in your heart you know it to be wrong, is what defines the man.
15/12/2011 at 13:39 johnpeat says:
p.s. 7 pages in can I just say
People still use BitTorrent – I mean – WTF – put a sign on your house saying “I pirate things” whilst you’re at it :) :)
15/12/2011 at 14:09 Hodge says:
Of course people still use Bittorrent. Right now I’m (legally) torrenting the recent Humble Bundle and helping them out with their bandwidth costs.
15/12/2011 at 14:20 johnpeat says:
I meant for purposes which are non-legal (although as an aside, unless the Torrent is official, it’s still illegal ofc).
There’s a difference between “legal” and “not likely to get prosecuted for it” :)
15/12/2011 at 15:00 Hoaxfish says:
Bittorrent is legal. Now if you say “I’m surprised people are still pirating” it’s a little different, especially given there’re all manner of random anti-piracy misfires (suing innocent people, judges call you out for nonsense claims, etc). Piracy is thriving because it’s still rather hard to really pin it on anyone with absolute certainty.
Hell, people still steal cars, or riot, even when that’s actually a lot easier to prove (given the physical objects involved, and CCTV etc)
15/12/2011 at 13:40 JKjoker says:
“Every time a new media technology has been made available, it has always been ‘abused’. This is the price we pay for progress. Winners will be those who are able to use the new technology to their advantages and losers those who missed this development and continue to follow old business models,”
this quote from the Switzerland article should be framed and repeated in every single drm article ever
15/12/2011 at 14:00 Kandon Arc says:
QFT
What surprises me is that so many newspapers, political parties and pressure groups that are normally always saying let the free market sort it out, decide that in this case, outdated business models must be defended.
15/12/2011 at 14:03 merc-ai says:
That is not nice on their side.
And to think that I was planning on buying Witcher 2 next week to support “a decent company”, hah.
No way they are getting a sale from me now.
15/12/2011 at 14:12 pipman3000 says:
these thieves and criminals must be telling the truth right
gokusephiroth69 told me cd projekt held a knife up to his mother’s throat and demanded he hand over his credit card info
15/12/2011 at 14:19 Kandon Arc says:
‘Thieves and criminals’? You mean guys like this? http://torrentfreak.com/bullying-anti-piracy-lawyers-fined-and-suspended-110802/
15/12/2011 at 14:21 barrytheferret says:
I have registered to give people a little legal knowledge here. Computer games are actually written programs and are in fact classed as books when it comes to copyright (in the UK). The whole purpose of copyright was invented to stop people reproducing books without permission of the publisher.
When an author writes a piece of work they go to a publisher and enter a contract. The contract will say that only the publisher can manufacture and reproduce the product. Anyone else copying and reproducing this work is in breach of contract that the author and the publisher have entered.
Sharing and reproducing written files is not theft but a breach of contract and is therefore illegal as only the publisher has the right to do so.
The problem come when actually identifying someone via an IP address as such a thing is so easily faked. If they could cross reference the time of day with your MAC address it would hold up that it was that specific machine but still not the actual user. Even if they took your PC for evidence it doesn’t mean you put the data there as you could have been hacked or a virus could have been running in the background. Identifying the actual perpetrator is next to impossible unless you catch them in the act.
15/12/2011 at 15:02 Llewyn says:
Oh, Barry. Barry, Barry, Barry. Where to begin? At least I can’t argue with the “little” part, but I have to take issue with “knowledge”.
Contracts can only be breached by parties to that contract. If you, barrytheferret, assign specified intellectual property rights to a publisher, erictheweasel, then the two of you have a contract. If weaselly Eric tries to exert rights that you haven’t assigned to him then that might constitute breach of contract. However anything nevilletherat does is completely unrelated to your contract – he’s not a party to it, nothing he does will directly breach it and neither you nor Eric will be able to take action against him for breach of contract.
MAC addresses are layer 2 identifiers. They exist* only on the local network, not on remote networks. Yes, your ISP will be able to see the MAC address of your router/modem if you’re using a PPPoE connection but they will not be able to see, without having access to your router, the MAC address of your PC or any other device connected to your network. And MAC addresses are easier to spoof than IP addresses – most devices will explicitly allow you to do this, and certain network behaviours rely on it.
Bonus marks for public-spiritedness though!
*In very general terms.
15/12/2011 at 14:21 Hodge says:
I think pirates are acting like complete pricks.
I think CD Projekt are acting like complete pricks.
Is it OK if I post here? If you like, I can come back after I’ve developed a tabloidesque, with-us-or-against-us mentality.
15/12/2011 at 14:27 datom says:
But what are your views on car theft ?
15/12/2011 at 14:24 kataras says:
It’s amazing to see so many people here defend intellectual property rights…
I loved Witcher 2, I pre-ordered it but that doesn’t mean the current use of IP concepts and legislation is not very problematic. Instead of discussing why we need IP, why we cannot find another model where people get paid in a way that is disassociated from their production, IP legislation is used to bully and censor and always for the benefit of business, never for that of culture or that of creative people (and not industries)…
What is it called? The Stockholm Syndrome?
15/12/2011 at 14:38 alundra says:
“IP legislation is used to bully and censor and always for the benefit of business, never for that of culture or that of creative people (and not industries)…
What is it called? The Stockholm Syndrome?”
Yeah, that pretty much defines it:
The phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stockholm_syndrome
15/12/2011 at 14:27 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I don’t quite understand why one would get so upset about this. I understand downloaders are protected, but really, what else could CDP do to tackle piracy? Is there a way to adress people uploading/distributing games and the like?
If not, well.. I understand where CDP’s coming from and I feel that if that is the case we need less severe DRM and more protection of digital products themselves.
15/12/2011 at 14:31 Jabberwocky says:
I am inclined to support a publisher who is:
1. Anti-DRM
2. Anti-piracy, including legal action against those whom they deem pirates.
I don’t think this stance necessarily makes CD Projekt the bad guys.
Also, just because an IP address isn’t 100% iron-clad proof of an illegal download, does not mean it is wrong for CD Project to initiate a legal process based on probable evidence. The accused can defend himself, should the action proceed. This is what courts are for.
15/12/2011 at 14:32 alundra says:
This about CDP is proof of how removing the EFF from the HIB 4 couldn’t have been done at a worse time:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/why-ip-addresses-alone-dont-identify-criminals
15/12/2011 at 15:28 datom says:
Indeed.
See also DNA for proving the presence of an identifier being taken as proof of guilt. Fun fact: the unique nature of fingerprints has never been empirically proved, or even proved beyond reasonable doubt..
15/12/2011 at 14:32 GepardenK says:
Old news, but this is the CEO of valve’s take on piracy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk
This is the right way to look at it from a publisher perspective. Pirated copies are not lost sales, they are non sales. Focus on how to bring inn as many actual sales as possible, that’s the important part. According to Gabe, the answer is not DRM or lawsuits.
Relative to number of consumers PC games were pirated and copied more in the 90′s. Piracy didn’t kill PC games – Consoles with cheap hardware and good smooth graphics for everyone did.
And these letters are nothing but clever blackmails, many people get scared and pay – even if innocent. Companies have freelance lawyers that do this on a regular basis. It’s the same reason why Apple sue all of their competitors (and even business partners like Samsung): They know they will loose 90% of the cases, but the settlement money on the 10% they don’t loose makes it all worth it.
15/12/2011 at 14:50 Jabberwocky says:
Steam goes to an awful lot of effort to prevent piracy. You can’t just copy a steam game from your hard drive and give it to somebody else. So obviously there is some correlation between piracy and lost sales, or else they wouldn’t bother.
15/12/2011 at 15:02 GepardenK says:
Steam is a service that sells games. Thats why they want you to log on each time you play; so you can see their latest offers. It has nothing to do with piracy other than making sure it’s not too easy for the average joe
15/12/2011 at 15:10 Jabberwocky says:
The executable for a steam game on your computer will not run on a different computer. This is absolutely 100% designed to prevent piracy. Sure, it is aimed at “average joes”. But it’s anti-piracy none-the-less.
15/12/2011 at 15:16 GepardenK says:
True, but as long as it dosent hurt the consumer, who cares? They must have some protection to get publishers to post their games on steam, anti-piracy is all the rage these days.
The point is that valve/steam don’t go out of their way to force-prevent piracy, simply because that’s not how you make good money on the PC
15/12/2011 at 14:40 JCJensen says:
Gabe is a GOD among men, but he is also a prominent figure in PC gaming, and 90% of his inocome comes from Steam, so he is not completely honest here. If Valve was just a developer/publisher, he would’ve sang a different song..
P.S. Why does some individuals here so strongly defend piracy?
15/12/2011 at 15:00 GepardenK says:
I don’t think most people directly defends piracy, it’s more that they are sick of all the hysteria and how it affects the honest gamer; DRM etc. There is also some serious uncertainty around if piracy hurts sales on a grand scale or not. For example; if a guy was never going to buy your game in the first place you rather he pirated it; that’s free PR you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Truth is that as long as software is stored locally it will always be piratable. There is no way around it. But if you work with it and produce quality products with (more importantly) a good and easy service people will buy your game. Money is always never an issue as long as it is easy. Heck, my steam account is chock full of games that I never even would have bothered to pirate. In fact, I haven’t pirated a single game since I started using Steam and later GOG
EDIT: Oh, and it’s true that Gabe probably got his views because of the position that he is in, but that dosen’t make his points any less true. Starcraft 2 did well despite being a non steam game, and for 3 reasons: Great legacy, quality product and good/easy service
15/12/2011 at 14:51 Eclipse says:
I’m all for CD Projekt, they said they were going to do it, and they’re tracking only IP address that downloaded the game from known torrent trackers, there’s almost no possibility of a false positive.
And the story of someone letting the wifi open is a bit stupid, even if you let your wi-fi open the cases of someone not only connecting, but downloading The Witcher 2 from your connection are very, very low.
15/12/2011 at 15:01 Kandon Arc says:
Newsflash: BT trackers intentionally add spoof IPs. Therefore you are guaranteed to have false positives.
15/12/2011 at 15:29 Wulf says:
I hadn’t even thought of the spoofed IPs angle. Oh gods…
Okay, need to leave this, this is actually making me feel a bit queasy. I just worry that there are poor people out there who might actually pay this rather than having to deal with any other fees, which may cost more.
15/12/2011 at 14:57 DigitalSignalX says:
All of this is a good reminder that whole disc encryption is free, easy to use, and offers little or no performance hit on computers newer then 5 years or so.
15/12/2011 at 15:01 Falstaff says:
I’d be curious to know if the rest of the RPS staff share the viewpoints expressed by Mr. Walker in this article.
If so I’d like to suggest no more posts about how Acme Co’s latest and greatest AAA title either isn’t coming to PC or complaining how Acme Co. didn’t invest enough dollars to differentiate PC from console sku’s.
Simply put, Mr. Walker’s arguments are bankrupt:
1. Upon birth no person shall be assigned a permanent IP address, therefore, an IP address is not a person nor a person an IP address.
(But…but…but, my flatmate used my computer….but, but, someone hacked my wifi. Look Buddy, these
are – statistically speaking – outliers. You know it, I know it, and sadly, I’m afraid even Mr. Walker knows
it. These are arguments are more tired and worn out than the village….whor…than the…um…woman who loves lots of men.
2. “A pirated copy is not a lost sale” to suggest otherwise would be “ignoring reality to make this idiotic claim.”
(Well…hmmm…let’s see here, I suppose I was going to argue to the contrary but you can understand my hesitation lest I be labeled an “idiot” or perhaps that I wasn’t a “sensible, level-headed body.” So in conclusion, it is my contention that 100% of smart people would all agree that piracy is in fact a lost sale, and to suggest otherwise would imply that you sir are nothing more than a knuckle dragging philistine.
You’re not a knuckle dragging philistine are you? WELL! Are you?
15/12/2011 at 15:25 Wulf says:
What? …what? You…
Gah.
You’ve just made me very angry, but I need to hold my tongue because I don’t want to get edited to hell and back. But frankly, you’re a very, very ignorant person who hasn’t a clue of what they’re talking about.
People who get their wifi hacked are outliers?
Oh my gosh. Are you serious?
First of all, there are millions of routers which aren’t protected in the first place. There are three of them near me, and I can hop on them at any time. Friends of mine have also mentioned the same, and we’re all incredulous about it. People have even made use of these without fully understanding why hopping on someone else’s router is bad. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
WEP routers are also amazingly common. For every one completely open router, there are hundreds of WEP protected routers. This is due to consoles and such requiring a router to use WEP. And WEP? WEP can be cracked in an hour or so. Believe me, I know, because I experimented with cracking my own router and I got in in under an hour with the right tools. You have no idea how simple it is. You obviously don’t.
Not to mention, as I said, malware that allows people to piggyback off the computer of an innocent person, which happens all the time too. You’ve never heard of a botnet then, I assume? Obviously, you never have, and I can’t believe it. Which is why I’m wondering why you’re even talking.
Please, don’t accuse someone of having a bankrupt argument if you don’t have the first clue yourself. You clearly don’t. Have the first clue, that is.
(Oh, and read up on BitTorrent and spoofed IPs, too.)
15/12/2011 at 16:47 SiHy_ says:
1. Even if those cases are outliers (I don’t agree but let’s assume) the law must prove your guilt. It’s not up to you to prove your innocence. Non-static IPs, spoof IPs and potentially unsecure routers could be accountable for any infringment of the law and it would be very difficult to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt otherwise.
2. I don’t really see your counter argument here, just insults. However it’s always going to be up to the individual choice of a person whether they pay for something that’s available to take for free. To say that a pirated copy is a lost sale is to assume the worst qualities of people – if they like it the hope is that they’ll want to support the developer so they can make follow up games. If they hadn’t pirated it they may never have played it to begin with.
However, whatever your opinions on this controversial subject there’s no need to fly into a rage-addled rant that expresses your emotions more than your point of view.
15/12/2011 at 17:56 Deano2099 says:
@Falstaff
If you’re that certain, post your IP address.
After all, it’s totally impossible for anyone to spoof that and then go download The Witcher 2 from Pirate Bay right?
15/12/2011 at 15:02 Shooop says:
This wouldn’t last more than a few hours in court.
Almost no average home internet user has a static IP address because of the costs. So using IP addresses is a hilariously unreliable way to track anyone on the internet.
15/12/2011 at 15:10 Kandon Arc says:
Which is why these cases never go to court. The law firms take the money from those that are scared into paying and ignore the ones who call them out. It’s a very easy business model.
15/12/2011 at 15:46 GepardenK says:
Yup, kandon got it right. Its very sad, and unfortunately not uncommon. This kind of mass lawsuit practice is not limited to piracy cases
15/12/2011 at 15:17 Rider on the Storm says:
Never understood why people pirate games as 9 times out of 10 they are a nightmare to get running and some of the files also host viruses, etc.
I’d rather just pay the money for a legit, virus free version of the game. Plus, you’ll be helping the developer too into the bargain.
Gamers piss n’ moan about DRM, but it’s the gamers who pirate games that have brought this on all of us.
15/12/2011 at 15:36 kataras says:
The problem is that it’s not a pain to get them running. It’s actually very easy, a lot easier than a legally bought game which has 3 layers of DRM (like Batman AC). That is what the companies don’t understand! And why GOG is doing well.
At the same time no one mentions the piracy on consoles. Look at any release site, the Xbox or PS3 versions are out days before the cracked PC version. They need to change their business model and realize that the Internet makes restrictive technologies more and more obsolete, whether they want it or not.
As for viruses, some common sense and an AV will protect you, just like for everything you do on the Net.
15/12/2011 at 15:44 Apples says:
I have literally never received a virus from or had trouble installing a pirated product. As long as you don’t just randomly download any old file this will not happen 99.9% of the time. In fact half the time I’ve downloaded something it’s because I can’t be bothered to faff about finding and swapping physical discs for something I’ve already bought.
And of course there’s the small problem of a game being actually impossible to install legally until it officially comes out in your country, and being in the UK that can be from a few days to over a week. Why wait?
(Also the idea that pirates brought DRM upon everyone is very funny considering that pirates are the only ones who do not suffer from it, so it’s clearly completely ineffectual and only brings more people over to pirating)
15/12/2011 at 16:30 Rider on the Storm says:
Games are too expensive at their current prices £30/40. That’s a lot of money to waste if you don’t like the game and if you’ve purchased the game via digital there is no way of trading it in or getting a refund.
New releases should be £15 max, therefore it’s not going to burn a hole in your pocket to try out a game you may or may not like.
15/12/2011 at 16:35 Rider on the Storm says:
The developers who created the game have every right to put DRM on their game. If you spend years creating something only for people to steal it, you wouldn’t be too happy, would you.
A hard stance would be for the developers not create any PC games at all…
15/12/2011 at 16:49 kataras says:
@Rider, I never said they shouldn’t get paid. They should get paid of course, how and when and if it should be associated with sales is another matter. But when they make it hard for someone who paid for the game to run it, and there is a free, easy-to-use solution, who is on the losing side?
I m guessing the dev who put so much work into his/her product only to see it locked inside a DRM, not the ‘Pirates’.
15/12/2011 at 18:05 Malibu Stacey says:
Which is ironically a stance which also upsets the writers here. Seems like some people want their cake & also would like to eat it too.
15/12/2011 at 15:20 Wulf says:
And they’ve already had a number of false positives, even including people who’ve never even heard of the Witcher. Really, my opinion of CD Projekt RED has plummeted, here. Sorry fans, you know me, one of the most important things for me has always been developers treating people like human beings, and not walking wallets/pay days. This makes them no better than thieves, it’s incredibly spiteful, it’s just insidiously manipulative and exploitative.
What if a poor person who’s never even heard of these games gets hit with one of these? It could be because of an IP mix-up, or because they’ve only protected their router with WEP. (WEP is far, far too easy to crack. You can crack a WEP ‘protected’ router in an hour or so.) Or it could be because someone has cleverly slipped them malware and is piggy-backing off them as part of a VPN. This isn’t even including instances where an ISP may drop the ball.
This just isn’t funny.
I’ve talked about this before, why systems that rely too heavily on false positives are bad, and why innocent people suffer because of them. For every 1 pirate they may catch, they’re going to get 10 to 20 false positives. And I can guarantee you that that’s a fact. There are loads of reasons why an IP may turn up in the wrong place, but that doesn’t necessary mean that a person is implicit in crime. It’s just so very flawed to work on a basis like this.
It’s sort of like arresting everyone within a mile of a crime scene. Sure, one or even a few of them might be involved in the murder, but you’re wasting the time and money of a lot of innocent people in the process. That’s exactly what this is like. If this system was flawless then I could get behind it, but due to false positives it’s not.
Oh, and here’s a funny one for you: Someone could get accused of piracy for using a torrent to download something after buying the game on GoG and being driven crazy by GoG’s frequently crap speeds, which a torrent can easily outdo. I can’t count the times I’ve heard of a person doing that, when they’ve bought something from a provider like Direct2Drive and then pirated the game because they were getting 100k/s or less from the official provider.
So there’s that, too.
The more I think of this, the more the false positives pile up at the back of my mind and it just makes me feel ill that anyone would even do this. I’m going to stop thinking about it. But it’s horrible. It’s… parasitic. I just don’t have the words to describe how much this bothers me. Sorry, CD Projekt RED, my opinion of you just went through the floor.
15/12/2011 at 15:28 Kandon Arc says:
I have to agree. My distaste is mainly directed at the law-firms that make a profit out of this, and it’s nice to see them get (sadly too lenient) punishment for it: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/solicitors-fined-20000-sending-intimidating-letters
But at the end of the day CD Projekt knows exactly what these firms are doing, and more importantly how they are doing it, and still unbelievably claim that these methods are ’100% sure’. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-15-cd-projekt-responds-to-demanding-nearly-and-8364-1000-from-alleged-pirates
As much as I appreciate their No DRM stance, it doesn’t make up for stuff like this.
15/12/2011 at 15:33 Wulf says:
It really doesn’t. And as has been mentioned before, aside from what I already covered, there’s IP spoofing too where you can just pretend to be another person. The ways in which a completely innocent person could get caught up in this are ridiculous.
Then you have to consider that in other countries there are people who might pay this rather than paying legal fees for advice, that it might even work out cheaper for them. And when I think of that, that makes me queasy. See, this… this is just criminal. This is racketeering. This is showing up in a person’s home and telling them that it would be terrible if something were to ‘happen to it,’ and then demanding protection money. That’s what this is.
And I’m just going to leave this alone, really, because it’s already making me far, far too angry. Especially at the… uneducated types who would defend this.
(But yeah, I do agree with you and understand what you’re saying, just to make that clear. That might not be coming over in how angry I am about this. This comment is me agreeing with you, I just went off on a tangent since I can’t stop thinking of why this makes me angry.)
15/12/2011 at 15:49 HisMastersVoice says:
“Really, my opinion of CD Projekt RED has plummeted, here.”
Check your facts before jumping off the bridge. CDPR is a developer entity owned by CDP, the corporate entity, which would be the one instigating this mess.
15/12/2011 at 16:09 greenbananas says:
@Wulf
+10 for the OP
“But it’s horrible. It’s… parasitic.”
That’s copyright in a nutshell.
In this case, I reckon the most egregious thing is the sheer amount of people willing to support the act of a non-natural person walking over the rights of real people (not only someone else’s rights but their own as well) in defending this despicably greedy, take-no-prisioners attitude towards the hypothetical unlawful appropriation of something whose real value is close to, if not zero.
15/12/2011 at 15:26 D3xter says:
I wonder what would turn up if someone did this on CDProjekt’s IP range with them being located in Poland and everything… http://torrentfreak.com/busted-bittorrent-pirates-at-sony-universal-and-fox-111213/
Then again, they might not be dumb enough to use Open Trackers.
15/12/2011 at 15:27 endtime says:
I’m not reading 8 pages of comments, so I don’t know if anyone posted this already, but acquiring software illegally is actually a criminal offence in Poland.
15/12/2011 at 15:33 datom says:
But stealing cars is legal, right? IT’S A CRAZY INVERSE WORLD.
15/12/2011 at 15:44 endtime says:
my mind is blown
15/12/2011 at 15:29 woodsey says:
“Piracy is unauthorised duplication, where nothing is “stolen”, but rather copied without permission or payment.”
Well no, piracy is stealing, just in a particularly modern sense. But you’re right, a pirated copy doesn’t necessarily equal a lost sale.
15/12/2011 at 16:17 greenbananas says:
“Well no, piracy is stealing, just in a particularly Somalian sense.”
Fixed that for you.
But if you meant what I think you meant, then you’d better not have CTRL-C / CTRL-V ‘d that message onto the comment box, otherwise you’re gonna get a letter in the mailbox.
15/12/2011 at 15:32 D3xter says:
Also some interesting links as food for thought on the matter:
https://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111121/07305616860/eu-commissioner-kroes-copyright-is-tool-to-punish-withhold-new-business-models-not-more-enforcement-needed.shtml
Together with “Pirate Parties” and similar surging all over the world with electoral successes like in Germany, I don’t think we are too far away from a breakthrough on this and actual reviews of both copyright and patent laws for the digital age at some point soon.
15/12/2011 at 17:57 Malibu Stacey says:
if you think the current system is bad, relaxing the laws will only make companies embrace stuff like DRM & always online requirements even more fervently.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine developers only making ‘F2P’ games – forever.
15/12/2011 at 15:49 Brun says:
I think the most important point made in the article – and what publishing execs need to get through their thick skulls – is that “a pirated copy does not necessarily equal a lost sale.” Think about the (potential) reasons that someone would pirate a game:
1) They can’t afford it.
2) They aren’t sure if it will run on their hardware.
3) They aren’t sure if they will like the game.
4) They are evil, immoral people who subscribe to a philosophy of “If I don’t have to pay for it, why should I?”
This is just a short list. Now imagine that there was some mythical, infallible DRM system that forced players to pay money to play your game and was 100% effective. Here’s what would happen:
Category 1 would not buy the game at all. Period. So no lost sale here. Category 1 would either pirate your game (for which you would receive no money) or not buy it (for which you would also receive no money).
Category 2 would have to consider the risks of buying the game without knowing they could play it. The outcome would vary by individual, but a decent percentage of people would just not buy the game. The rest would buy the game, be unable to play it, and be alienated.
Category 3′s response would be similar to that of Category 2. Note that both Category 2 and Category 3 could be mitigated by the distribution of a free demo that is an accurate representation of the game in both performance and gameplay.
Category 4 is what publishing executives think all pirates are. It’s impossible to say how many of these people would be converted into sales if DRM were infallible, but it would be less than 100%. Likely far less, as effective DRM would simply push them to pirate other games.
Note that I am not defending piracy in any way. I am merely pointing out that pirates are far from one-dimensional and as such you cannot conclude that a pirated copy is equal to a lost sale. The reality is likely far from that 1:1 ratio.
15/12/2011 at 21:30 Jabberwocky says:
I agree, as I think most people would, that piracy is not a 1:1 ratio to lost sales.
But it is a1:x ratio, we just don’t know exactly what “x” is.
But you need to consider the likely substantial category of people who can afford to pay for at least some of their video games, but instead pirate everything because it’s free.
16/12/2011 at 15:00 GepardenK says:
You have to consider that people are spending far more money on games, even PC games, than ever before. Independed studies (not founded by hysterical publishers) have concluded that piracy probably don’t affect how much money we spend on games in any meaningful way, piracy is just something people do in addition to buying games. Furthermore; people who pirate games also spend more money on games than people who don’t pirate.
I’m not saying piracy is moraly defendable or should be legal, but evidence show that this fear of piracy is a hysteria and not something that is worth worrying about. Why spend millions on DRM that ends up alienating your customers? Both the movie, films and games indusry is doing better than ever before, and people are using more money; despite piracy…
15/12/2011 at 16:05 Pinky09 says:
Ahh CDprojekt.. you sold more than a million units on pc only, despite being a relatively obscure game company, and now you’re going to release the same game on consoles and get more money, and this is how you try to get more money? Greed is dangerous, it’ll probably lower your sales in the end…
15/12/2011 at 16:29 JCJensen says:
They are a company, and they don’t want just to settle with a descent sales, they want to maximize it as much as possible. Million copies is nothing to brag about for a game of this quality, and when they realize that at least five to six more people pirated their game, instead of buying it, of course they are going to be pissed about it..
Second, I still don’t see how is this affecting legitimate customers, and the outcry of some people is ridiculous (if they’re not pirates themselves)..
15/12/2011 at 20:56 iainl says:
Customer or no, it affects anyone whose IP number gets spoofed in the tracker. Also, seeds hang around in trackers hours after they’re used, by which point the ISP may have given it to you. Our only hope is to stop buying their games until the company dies.
15/12/2011 at 16:18 sbs says:
Usenet <3
15/12/2011 at 16:29 Bahoxu says:
What is interesting is that they somehow got peoples email or even physical adress from an IP-number.
That is stalker-level creepy.
15/12/2011 at 16:55 Shooop says:
All they did was probably contact their ISP.
Which explains why there’s so many false positives – most residential ISP services use dynamic IP addresses.
15/12/2011 at 18:33 HothMonster says:
Yeah shoop but they log times for when that IP address was assigned to a person. So when they request the address connected to the IP the lawyers have to provide an IP and the time it was being used. If they just have an IP that info is useless.
15/12/2011 at 16:30 ttcfcl says:
I’m totally ok with them doing this. DRM-free != pirate with aplomb.
15/12/2011 at 16:30 TODD says:
CDR did say specifically that they would be pursuing pirates aggressively at the same time that they advertised the zero-DRM gog.com version. Why is this such a shock to John Walker? Why didn’t he make a stink about this back in April? Did he think that CDR would magically come up with a foolproof way to prosecute torrent downloaders?
No, he’s just hopping on the bandwagon. This whole article reads like a comment on Reddit — complete with anticipatory ad-hominems (like calling anyone who would dare disagree with him an idiot) and tired, easily debunked aphorisms (like “no instance of piracy is a lost sale”).
15/12/2011 at 16:33 Guvornator says:
In England, we call that “a Clarkson” ;-)
15/12/2011 at 16:47 Apples says:
He didn’t say “no instance of piracy is a lost sale”. He said “a pirated copy is not a lost sale”. That is, not all pirated copies are automatically lost sales.
15/12/2011 at 16:56 TODD says:
No, Apples, my paraphrase was completely accurate. Walker went on to write, “Those who cannot afford/aren’t interested enough/wanted to try first/just wanted without paying/etc etc have not taken something away from anyone to their immediate deficit, and do not represent a lost sale in any meaningful way.”
15/12/2011 at 17:00 Apples says:
Again, though, he is listing several categories of people who might pirate and do not represent a lost sale because they would not have bought anyway, as examples of why a pirated copy is not equivalent to a lost sale. I will say that his opinion leans towards supporting pirates but I don’t think he is legitimately wrong on that particular point.
15/12/2011 at 17:22 TODD says:
Alright, I see what you mean. To me it seemed like he was trying to include all categories of pirate under “not a lost sale,” which is the same as saying that no pirated game is a lost sale. Given the apologetic tone of the rest of the paragraph, that interpretation was reasonable.
15/12/2011 at 19:01 HothMonster says:
I think he was just trying to point out that their is a lot of grey area in this whole debate. Anti-piracy people like to claim that every download is a sale that company lost out on, when that’s clearly not the case. Some people do legitimately try before they buy, or play before they can afford or just pirate because the torrent came out before the game did without canceling their pre-order. Certainly there are a ton of other reasons piracy is not necessarily a lost sale.
On the pro-piracy side though you have people claiming this is a vicitimless crime because nothing is stolen its just copied. But the people who created whatever you pirate are not getting your money, period. You can try to take some moral highground like I won’t buy it cause its on steam, or I am pissed because they have day 1 dlc or what not but if you like the game and play it they deserve your money. I have heard people claim they wont pay for Skyrim because its too buggy, but they sure play it, or wouldn’t pay for Crysis 2 because it wasn’t good looking enough, but again they played the shit out of it.
The truth is clearly in the middle somewhere. If people don’t support games they like there will be less money to fund games they like. People who work to create our entertainment deserve our money pure and simple. However all piracy isn’t bad. The longer both sides refuse to admit this is not a black/white issue the more extreme each side gets. Game companies enact stricter and stupider DRM and gamers refuse to pay for anything that isn’t absolutely perfect, advances graphics to new milestones, has 0 bugs, has nothing but free DLC, released through their retailer of choice, by the 1 publisher they think is legit, ect.
Until everyone is willing to admit that yes piracy has its upsides, every download is not a lost (and may lead to a sale that would not have happened otherwise) AND that developers deserve our money pure and simple. If you like it buy it, not “I like it but I have this niggling issue with it so I will just pirate it and play it for 80 hours”.
People and companies have to be honest with themselves if we want to prevent either corporations from destroying the internet to eradicate a “problem” or game developers shuttering and/or making crap because they don’t get enough money.
15/12/2011 at 20:55 TODD says:
Hoth, I stopped reading here: “Anti-piracy people like to claim that every download is a sale that company lost out on…”
See if you can guess why.
15/12/2011 at 22:57 HothMonster says:
because you are close minded and willfully ignorant?
15/12/2011 at 16:30 Rider on the Storm says:
Games are too expensive at their current prices £30/40. That’s a lot of money to waste if you don’t like the game and if you’ve purchased the game via digital there is no way of trading it in or getting a refund.
New releases should be £15 max, therefore it’s not going to burn a hole in your pocket to try out a game you may or may not like.
15/12/2011 at 17:12 diamondmx says:
The solution here is not to reduce the price of the games, but rather to provide:
A meaningful demo descriptive of the quality of the whole (as opposed to the ridiculously short, often misleading demos currently produced)
And for games companies to start respecting customer rights to return a faulty product, with faulty being a good description for So Many Games on day 1. Bugs, we can live with, but games which are unplayable for days, weeks after purchase, with no guarantee that they will ever be fixed other than the company’s good will? GTA4 *still* doesn’t work on it’s claimed recommended specs, it never will.
At the moment, gamers are dependant on review sites and word of mouth, and that means pre-orders can’t be an option, nor first day purchases. That’s not good for anyone.
15/12/2011 at 17:34 Malibu Stacey says:
Alternatively you could wait until the price comes down to something you’re more willing to part with. But y’know whatever helps you justify being a dirty pirate.
15/12/2011 at 17:43 Rider on the Storm says:
@Malibu Stacey
Who said anything about pirating the game you degenerate prick! Read my comment properly, dumb-dumb!
15/12/2011 at 16:32 SiHy_ says:
I thought CDP understood… I was wrong.
15/12/2011 at 16:41 Battlehenkie says:
Exactly my sentiments.
Boo CDP. Fucking boo.
15/12/2011 at 16:33 cjlr says:
I love the smell of piracy threads in the morning.
One time we sent legal warnings, to 12 thousand people. When it was all over I went over and you know what? Not one person. We didn’t stop one, not one stinking pirate. That smell, that gasoline smell. Smelled like… Victory. Someday this war’s gonna end.
15/12/2011 at 16:34 Brun says:
Someday, this war’s gonna end…
15/12/2011 at 17:05 Provender says:
Has there been any analysis of the method CDP or their agents used to identify the infringing IP addresses? If the test was along the lines of connect to an IP offering a (confirmed working copy of) Witcher 2 torrent and download (at least a section of) the game then that would seem a reasonably watertight approach. AFAIK it wouldn’t be subject to spoofing, although others may know different.
If that IP address can then be linked to a particular individual/entity at that time through e.g. an ISP then surely CDP have a legitimate right to ask questions of them? I’d imagine many IP addresses will only lead to dead-ends like VPN exit points, open wi-fi etc but not all of them.
That said it does look like a PR disaster the way they’ve demanded money with menaces, and I say that as a supporter of CDP who bought 2 copies of the game.
15/12/2011 at 17:14 Milky1985 says:
Eurogamer are reporting that CD Project have not denied that they are doing this now, so hopefully a follow up RPS story soon!
15/12/2011 at 17:29 Malibu Stacey says:
“Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”
“‘No,” says the ‘commentors’ on RPS, “it belongs to everyone who wants it without paying you for it.”
In any other profession, if people ripped off you for the work you do, you’d be entitled to be pissed off. In software development you’re expected to bend over, smile & enjoy the shafting.
15/12/2011 at 17:34 Shooop says:
If you read them, you’d notice most the complaints are not about CD Projekt being unhappy with piracy, but about their method of dealing with it being ludicrously dumb.
15/12/2011 at 17:41 Unaco says:
It’s not as dumb as DRM that hurts ALL of the Legitimate Customers.
15/12/2011 at 18:13 Malibu Stacey says:
They released a game with very little to no DRM & what was there on certain copies was removed shortly after release. Their game was reasonably priced & has been reasonably discounted on various digital download services negating the main arguements for piracy & yet their game still gets pirated.
What would you have them do? Just bend over & take the shafting or actually use the system which is supposed to protect them?
15/12/2011 at 18:19 Guvornator says:
@Malibu Stacey
Total agreement. Anybody want to make a valid argument FOR piracy? Let’s check them off one by one.
“There are no lost sales due to piracy”. There are many, many people selling pirated video games right now. Go to Hong Kong, Singapore and you’ll see them selling freely on the streets and market places. And where do they get them? In many cases, the same place you got yours – the torrent site. They’ve pretty much excluded the local official market for video games. There’s your lost sales, right there.
“It’s too expensive” What are you, a crack addict? WAIT! It’ll get cheaper. Unless you’re dying of a horrible disease that somehow retains all the motor functions you need to shoot an fictional something in the face, that’s a child’s argument.
“It comes out a week later here than in America”. Seriously? See above.
“DRM” Hmmm, and why do you think it exists? Now I’m not saying it’s not a massive pain in the arse because it totally is, but it’s the sheepdog, you’re the wolves.
“It doesn’t work in my DVD player/I broke my disc etc.” OK, I have some sympathy with that argument. However, if anything it’s an argument for better customer service. I remember when I broke my Fifa 2004 disk. In the back of manual it said I had to post a £7.50 cheque and the broken disk back to EA. I did, and a few days later I got a shiny new disk back – and my cheque. The note that came with it said they didn’t need the money. So at least TRY to do it by the book – I find threatening to return the item or mentioning the Office of Fair Trading tends to get results if things get sticky.
15/12/2011 at 19:37 Shooop says:
I don’t think you quite get what they’re doing here or you’ve misread my post.
They’re using IP addresses to determine who they send the letters to. Most ISPs give residential customers dynamic IP addresses because static ones are more difficult to maintain.
So not only is their method completely and laughably ineffective because it wouldn’t hold any weight in a court, there is a chance of false positives since IPs are reused by different users.
Calling the piracy an issue is not dumb (and damn any RPG fan who didn’t buy this game), but the method CD Projekt might be using here is.
15/12/2011 at 19:42 Aninhumer says:
@Guvornator
“Go to Hong Kong, Singapore and you’ll see them selling freely on the streets and market places.”
Do you think all of the people buying from those vendors would pay full price if they didn’t exist?
“WAIT! It’ll get cheaper.”
So if I pirate it now and pay for it when it gets cheaper, is that still bad? The outcome for the company is the same as if I’d just waited.
““DRM” Hmmm, and why do you think it exists?”
Because content industries desperately want to get back their nice comfortable product model, instead of having to deal with the fact that the world has changed. In the process they cripple their own product with annoying hoops that must only be jumped through by the legitimate consumer, making the pirated version more attractive before even considering the cost.
15/12/2011 at 20:43 Guvornator says:
@Aninhumer
Hi, first off, thanks for addressing my points without going nuclear. Genuinely appriciated.
My first counter counter argument would be some would be yes. Not all, but a lot. Hong Kong is one of the banking capitals of the world, so I’m guessing someone’s got the dough to buy a 30 quid game, and if they can afford the hardware, why can’t they afford the software?
“So if I pirate it now and pay for it when it gets cheaper, is that still bad? The outcome for the company is the same as if I’d just waited.” Not it isn’t. In one you are creating and feeding a demand for piracy. The more damand there is for, the popular it becomes, and the more people use it and the more acceptable it is and then you end up with the situation in Hong Kong and Singapore where it is culturally institutionalised.
““DRM” Hmmm, and why do you think it exists?”
Because content industries desperately want to get back their nice comfortable product model, instead of having to deal with the fact that the world has changed. In the process they cripple their own product with annoying hoops that must only be jumped through by the legitimate consumer, making the pirated version more attractive before even considering the cost.”
What, exactly, has changed? Piracy was around way before the internet, and DRM was, if anything, even worse then (if you think UBI DRM is a bugger try finding the 8th word of the 5th sentence of the 12th paragraph on the 18th page. And don’t get me started on Flashback’s system). Their business model seems to rely on people paying for stuff they make – a business model shared by every other commercial venture. What do you think pays for all those games to be made in the first place?
Two final points. First off, I’m a veggie (hence my massive smug, self-righteousness:) ). As a veggie I often am shouted at be folk who go on about how meat is vital to live (it isn’t), how I’ll be protein and vitamin deficiant without meat (I won’t) and how there is no good reason to eat meat (there are). But the real, ultimate reason they get so emotional about it is because IT TASTES SO GOOD. It’s the same reason people people defend piracy and Jeremy Clarkson denies Climate Change. It’s not any of the reasons they say, it’s because it just tastes…soooooooo….gooooooood…
Secondly, on a more personal note, I work in the creative industries affected by piracy (not video games) and if I ever found someone downloading something I’d sweated blood to make I’d skin them, gut them and wear their balls as ear-rings. Which I think is something to consider…
15/12/2011 at 17:45 Rider on the Storm says:
As you know, we aren’t huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers – the same group of honest people who decided that our game was worth its price, and went and bought it. We don’t want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems.
However, that shouldn’t be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn’t only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry.
^^This
15/12/2011 at 19:07 zeroskill says:
Harassing and threatening innocent people out of their money? That’s pretty sad. Not going to buy anything by this company ever again, out of principle. I never actually thought their games are any good to begin with.
15/12/2011 at 19:44 Shooop says:
Accidentally.
Because apparently they forgot to bring an IT staffer into the meeting before green-lighting the measure. He/She would have pointed out how futile it would be with the widespread use of dynamic IPs.
Don’t pull a knee-jerk “BOYCOTT!” yet. Because yes it’s a dumb idea and they probably will end up scrapping it.
15/12/2011 at 19:13 Big Daddy Dugger says:
Only kids pirate on torrents where you can easily be identified and chances are kids don’t have 1,000 euros. Bulletin boards are where you do it, they’re anonymous.
15/12/2011 at 20:03 deadly.by.design says:
…and here I thought Europe was the land of generous vacations and pirate-friendly legislation.
On one hand: The tactics mentioned in the article are pretty iffy.
On the other hand: Don’t pirate stuff and you shouldn’t have to worry about it. Pretty simple. (unless you have a shady housemate or loose network?)
I used to pirate things back in college, but have since stopped. Even if developers are signed under a crappy publisher, they still have to eat. Also, so many folks think they’re entitled to play anything whether they pay for it or not. It’s just silly and selfish. The only pirating I see as justifiable is downloading games without demos, trying them out, then deciding whether or not to buy. (NOT keeping them installed to play the whole way thru)
15/12/2011 at 20:07 kemryl says:
I’m glad RPS is reporting on this, but the ugly, repetitive, completely futile piracy debates just spoil the otherwise positive image of the site. It’s most annoying that people are arguing over things John said were not up for debate here. Congrats RPS readers, you have earned an unhappy face from yours truly.
>:(
15/12/2011 at 20:25 Shooop says:
What amazes me is how badly some people are missing the point of WHY this is distressing and just assuming it’s the usual “DRM or no DRM” situation.
15/12/2011 at 21:06 iainl says:
FAO: CDP. Smother your games in DRM from now on, please. That way I can avoid your idiocy by simply not buying your tedious RPGs. With this, it’s entirely possible my ip will get faked in the logs.
It’s all a good job RPS are decent, honourable people. Each post has an ip recorded against it on their server. Shoving those attached to posts believing it impossible in the spoof list of a tracker would be cruel. But funny. For about ten seconds.
15/12/2011 at 21:28 DrGonzo says:
I honestly wish I hadn’t bought this game now. I will not be buying anything from CD Projekt ever again.
15/12/2011 at 21:50 Devan says:
Here’s an interesting exercise:
Let’s imagine a situation in which CDP had some 100% certain way of knowing exactly who pirated the game (downloaded and installed without having paid for it). So in this hypothetical case, all piraters of the game receive the letter and nobody else does.
How much money do you think would be appropriate to demand? What do you think?
15/12/2011 at 22:07 Belsameth says:
Probably twice the games price, max, assuming it’s settled and not going to court (after which it becomes a different cookie)
The sad reality of practices like this, however, is that they often hit innocents in the process as well, as is well documented all over the net. Worse, the people doing these shakedowns know very well they target innocents as well, but just don’t care. Money is money, after all.
15/12/2011 at 22:43 FunkyBadger3 says:
The matter of the moral or legal nature of copying a game is not discussed here.
Yet their anti-piracy actions are grostesque and ghastly?
Mmmm, okay.
15/12/2011 at 23:06 Devan says:
@FunkyBadger3
CDP’s actions are reprehensible not because they are anti-piracy but because they are unjust. They are unjust because the letters will be received by people who did not pirate the game, and in addition to causing distress, the letters may cause people to lose money undeservedly.
That’s why the article is discussing the morality of such legal practices, rather than the morality of copyright infringement itself.
16/12/2011 at 11:42 Milky1985 says:
“Yet their anti-piracy actions are grostesque and ghastly?”
Because its hitting people that have not pirated or even heard of the game, that is the nasty thing about this, if it was a 100% rate then fine, but its already seeming liek it isn’t (for reasons lots of people have already mentioned).
besides it not even a anti-priacy action at this point, its a legal shackdown IMO.
15/12/2011 at 22:58 kud13 says:
you know, I got to about page 7 of these comments, and then I couldn’t read anymore. the argument is circular.
This is actually really cool stuff, b/c I’m a law student, and i’m currently writing a paper on copyright. My thesis is that the law of copyright is basically an imposition of governments to protect the interests of publishers, and that its arrival largely coincided with the development of capitalism.
now, I’ll confess to biased to this: I am a pirate. I was introduced to PC gaming in Ukraine in the 90s, where I literally did not know of any places in my home city where I would be able to purchase “licensed” games. They simple weren’t rmade. Everything was pirated, and the people, used as they were to the lack of copyright in the Soviet Union times (all copyright, patents etc automatically belonged to the state at the time), really saw it as the only way things could be done. Goods were avaialble to everyone, dirt cheap, and if you had any problems running them, well, you get what you paid for, the system worked.
I came to canada in the end of 1999. I started pirating games when I was 15, I think, aftr a tech-savvy friend (also Ukrainian) introduced me to Morpheus (the Gnutella filesharing network). To me, it seemed natural to pirate, I knew I couldn’t ask my parents for money to buy games (they’d laugh in my face and tell me to go study instead), and having a part-time job wasn’t something that ever crossed my mind, not because of lazyness–but because of the same post-Soviet mindset of “kids go to school, then University, then they get a job”. So yes, I pirated. It was a crime (In Canada, copyringht infringment IS a crime, that carries penal consequences in extreme cases, and fines up to 250k to the state. it is also a cause of action for civil suits, where damages can go up as high as the people want them to).
Now, once I got a job, and had income, I started buying games. I’ve spent over $300 dollars in the Steam Summer sale, I’ve spent a decent chunk of money on GOG (and I currently have a not-quite filled basket that’s worth another 30). Does that justify me pirating when I was younger? I’m not gonna try to answer that, since it’s subjective.
I’ve actually received one of these letters once–well, my mother did. It was for obtaining a file, entitled “2006 African Drumming Competion.mp3″ or something along those lines, obtained via an ed2k protocol. now, the funny thing was, I did download somehting via emul on that day, but, scouring my entire PC as I could, I could not find that file. So I emailed the “enforcer company” back, saying that my router was unprotected (it was the first router i’ve ever gotten, and for some odd reason, it refused to function when the network was password protected. After struggling with it for a few hours, I just left it be), that I put on a password, and it shouldn’t happen again. Never heard from them again.
the funny thing about Witcher 2 is, I bought the game. in fact, i’ve pre-ordered it form GOG. the day I got it, I also torrented several sizeable folders labelled “the Witcher 2″. why? because I played the Original in Russian, where they used TV actors to do voices. and when I heard dwarves speaking with a Scottish acccent, I couldn’t play the game anymore. so I downloaded the Russian voice and text files, since there was basically no legal way to obtain them in canada, bar ordering a DRM-riddled copy from Russia. which would mean giving away my credit card info to some shady people. So yes, I torrented the Witcher 2. If I was in Germany, they’d probably charge me for it. Should I have to pay?
the funny thing is, as spoken by several people here, the money gained from such suits usually doesn’t make it to the actual developers–I mean the coders/artists/etc. the money lands in PR/Marketing/Human Resources/Legal–and to top it all off, it’s usually the publisher (or parent company) that get the money. So I don’t consider this a “defence of the artists”. which is ALWAYS the main thrust of any anti-piracy argument. Yes, I agree, this rationale applies to self publishing smaller artists, but almost never to major companies.
As such, i’ve always been highly-sceptical of the whole “crusade against piracy”. Naturally, it’s a question that needs to be addressed, but the only constructive way to adress it is for publishers to realize that pirates have to be viewed not as criminals, but rather as “dissatisfied consumers”. yes, I’m expecting replies from people saying “90% of pirates wouln’t have bought it EVER”, but I concede that what i’m saying is a generalization. However, it’s a generalization that creates a framework which allows us (as a society) to have a constructive dialogue. Ofc, in order for this to happen, we’d need to exclude the militant people from both sides–kind of “we’ll concede piracy may have an impact on sales, if you concede piracy is not theft, but the crime of copyright infringement”–you know, a compromise? from that point, you can start thinking about how to address the situation
In terms of PC gaming specifically, i’d love someone to do a study to see if there’s any relationship between the rise in the rates of piracy and the demise of the demo as a concept.
Also, last point to bring up: I don’t think boycotting CDPRed and GOG is the right move here. I fully support GOG in its radical stance against DRM, and that deserves my money. Until we have people like the creative director of Witcher 2 on record saying what’s being done in Germany is a good idea, I suggest we keep the distinction between publishers and artists in mind and not punish the latter.
oh, and one very last thing, for those still reading this:
there was a case in Canada in 1996. two kids stole something from a big chain retail store, but were caught (so, shoplifted), both took about 50 worth of stuff, and both were caught at the store and all items returned, undamaged. The store then proceeded to sent a letter to the parents of the 2 kids, saying that the Store has a cause of action to claim restitution from them, with an offer to settle out of court for 225 dollars (so, roughly 5 times the amount that was taken. note that all items were returned in the same condition, so the store suffered no damage). the Mother paid the money, and then sued the store to get it back. The court found that the lawyers had no valid claim against her, and got the money by misleading the mother, so she was refunded with interest.
now, this was a common law case, and I know Germany wouldn’t treat it the same way, but still, food for thought.
16/12/2011 at 00:54 jaheira says:
It would be interesting to find out what the other RPS writers think of this issue.
16/12/2011 at 01:56 tempfoot says:
Damned if they do…etc.
Put pain in the ass DRM in and Amazon reviews get lit up.
Take it out and pursue actual infringers reasonably believed to have made an illegal copy and get whiny columns and comments.
The tone of this article and many comments appears to suggest that devs should simply do nothing about piracy/infringement. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t see anyone making any realistic or cost effective suggestions for another course of action – other than ‘suck it up’. No – IP addresses are not perfect, but they are reasonable. The amount demanded, or actually settled for is entirely up to the parties involved, and each has to weigh its own cost-benefit.
Maybe the whiners should just stick to free open source games that fit with their personal view on what rights others have to control their own works.
16/12/2011 at 04:26 Walter Heisenberg says:
Sounds like your mind was made up years ago by identifying anyone that takes issue with these practices as “whiners”.
16/12/2011 at 11:04 GepardenK says:
The problem is that companies spend millions on DRM solutions and lawsuits that ends up hurting their honest costumers. Anti-piracy has become a business in itself. Some companies have even left the PC for the consoles to “escape” piracy.
Fear of piracy is a hysteria that has gone way out of proportions (like fear of non-organic food or brain cancer from mobile phones). Several studies have shown that:
1) Each person is spending more money on movies, music and games than ever before, even when inflation is taken into account. Some studies conclude that pirating does not affect how much we spend on entertainment at all, its simply something people do in addition to buying stuff.
2) People who pirate games spend much more money on buying games than people who don’t pirate. Some studies say this is because they use pirating as free “full” demoes and that they end up buying more games than they otherwise would have. I say its because they are nerds:)
So, is pirating immoral?
Yes, you are getting entertainment you didn’t pay for. Whenever it’s stealing or not depends on your definition of stealing; nothing of physical value is removed from the original owner – but a sale is potentiality lost.
Is pirating hurting sales in a meaningful way?
Very hard to say, studies can’t prove it one way or another. On one hand some people who did pirate would have bought the product if pirating wasn’t available. On the other hand the mass spreading of your product on torrents is valuable viral marketing. What we do know however is that the amount of money people spend on digital entertaniment has never been as high as it is now.
Is pirating all bad for the society in general?
No. Pirating also has it’s positive sides. Old unsupported games are being kept alive because of torrents. Games like Age of Empires 2 is still very popular on illegal MP servers thanks to pirating. It has over 2000 players playing at any given time on one of those servers alone; that’s more than most new games.
Bottom line here is that Gabe of Valve got it right. You need to work with the marked as it is today, not spend millions on DRM that doesn’t work. Making big money on the PC is very possible, pirating might take some sales from you but its effect on the entertainment industry is grossly overrated.
16/12/2011 at 15:25 tempfoot says:
Agreed that DRM burdens and inconveniences buyers, but perhaps “hurt” is overstating the case.
As primarily a PC gamer, the fact that devs leave the platform because of piracy fears, whether overblown or not, is harmful. I’d rather see a game come to the PC with DRM, or without followed by some reasonable enforcement actions than not get the game at all.
As for each person generally spending more – that might be correct in the aggregate, but the fact that someone buys five other games and downloads a copy of one does not help the one at all. As for people who ‘pirate’ spending more – I don’t know about that study. I buy the games I want to play unless I can’t. Abandonware is as close as I’ve ever come to what is called ‘pirating’ software.
Frankly ‘d rather see individual publishers make decisions about lawsuits that some slimy collective like the RIAA or MPAA.
I think it’s fair to ask the interesting questions about the social value of pirating. I also think it’s fair that those who download copies of games face the possibility of legal action for doing so. The amounts demanded here pal compared to the RIAA seeking 150k per song.
16/12/2011 at 16:51 GepardenK says:
Well, it depends on your defentition of “hurt” i quess. But go take a quick look at any forum for a ubisoft game released this year, many simply can’t play the things they have paid for. And even more people get disconected and loose progress at random times – in a singleplayer game… Then there are all those xp games that simply don’t work on newer operatingsystems anymore because of outdated starforce protection
Here’s a quick article of a study that concludes pirates buy more games:
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/12/swiss-government-study-online-piracy-benefits-artists/
I’m taking a big guess here and assume you’re a more or less normal dude. You say you only download old games that are not avalible anymore while buying the new stuff – I’m the same way, and I think that goes for most people. Gamers in general are a very proud bunch, they support the developers and games they like – and if it ain’t worth supporting, it ain’t worth playing in the first place, so no reason to pirate.
16/12/2011 at 02:04 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Everything else aside:
“Those who cannot afford/aren’t interested enough/wanted to try first/just wanted without paying/etc etc have not taken something away from anyone to their immediate deficit, and do not represent a lost sale in any meaningful way.”
John, this staggers me. Statements like that (which are silly and indefensible without resorting to being obviously and lamely disingenuous) have no place in this article (of which your claims make up roughly 34%), which should be about CD Projekt’s publisher being dicks. What. The Fuck.
(Despite myself I have to add anyone who believes that argument spits in the face of writers, artists, designers, game developers, etc etc and is implicitly saying they don’t deserve to be able to make a living doing what they do. It’s just basic fucking copyright. Sure, the legal system does silly things but the basic premise of copyright (and please for the love of Horace dont nitpick on this) is so people’s shit don’t get ripped off. Jesus. Don’t you people LIKE playing video games?!?)
16/12/2011 at 02:53 kud13 says:
i’ll just reiterate a point i’ve made on a different forum
the printing press was invented in the 1400s. The first statutes about copyright (creating the law of copyright) were passed in England and France in the late 1600s.
there is nothing “inherent” about the idea of copyright. moreover, the way it works now (the way it was intended to work from its inception), the law protects the interests of publishers first, artists an very distant second.
does that justify piracy? no, it doesn’t. But it does make big publishers screaming about starving artists’ right (the main supposed premise of copyright) along with lost sales (which is an unconfirmed assertion at best) and labeling piracy as “theft” (which is plain untrue) seem a bit disingenuous, seeing as said publishers are the ones who decide the prices, putting the product out of range fora large chunk of potential customers in poorer countries, as well as fostering things like DRM and these extortion schemes, which is something that mostly hurts those who can afford their games.
and who said that there’s no suggestions being made? look at Valve. Valve decided to look at pirates as potential customers, who are dissatisfied with the current offerings for one reason or another, rather than viewing them as immoral thieves. Look at GOG itself.
if you want to alleviate the situation wrt to piracy, do market research. look at why people pirate. look at what age groups pirate. see if there are any specific motivations to pirate (Ubi-DRM comes to mind)
Piracy is an issue. that’s a fact. It’s also a complex issue, which isn’t all black and white.
there are also a lot of kids who pirate, who grow up to become spending customers. I’m one of those. As a former pirate, when I hear about stunts like this pulled by the publishers, I look back and think about why I pirated, then I think whether these measures address those reasons. they usually don’t, and what’s more, it earns them the ill will from the portion of their paying customers. the only exception to this rule, to date, was valve, who made purchasing easy and affordable for me.
but of course, rather than try to figure out why your potential customers aren’t creating incentives to buy (like demos, extra stuff with the boxed copy), it’s so much easier to label them as immoral thieves and fan up the hatred by sobbing about billions of dollars worth of lost sales.
btw, for people who are wondering why this is relevant, since it’s apparently common practice in Germany: there’s a bill in the US COngress right now, endorsed by both parties called the “Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). should it pass, it would allow copyright holders to sue Internet Content hosts, who allow copyright infringing material to be hosted, and order them to shut down the offending sites. If you think about that statement for a second, it will essentially mean that any content host anywhere in the world will now have a duty to check everyhting that’s being uploaded onto their sites to ensure it does’t infringe any copyright. To put it simpler, the basic assumption will be “everyone who uploads things is a pirate. Until we check to make sure he’s not”.
talk about your presumption of innocence….
16/12/2011 at 05:16 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
“there is nothing “inherent” about the idea of copyright. moreover, the way it works now (the way it was intended to work from its inception), the law protects the interests of publishers first, artists an very distant second. ”
Ye-s. That was the nitpicking I attempted to pre-empt. Yes. I know. I agree with most of what you say there. (And don’t think there isn’t rage burning in my heart for all that legit customer punishing DRM out there.)
The copyright act was passed for a reason. One of the things it does is protect artists.
If you pirate you MUST accept that what you are doing is morally dubious. It is stealing. Enjoying the fruit of someone’s labour without making the agreed payment is actually stealing. If you wouldn’t have bought it anyway then you wouldn’t have pirated it either. It’s really very simple: Dont want to buy it? Dont buy it!
So, again, you MUST accept that. As I said not to is just attempting to making justifications to try to lie to yourself and others so that you feel better (harden up). The question after that is are you OK with doing that morally dubious thing. But please, let’s keep the living in elaborate fantasy worlds in the games.
16/12/2011 at 02:29 HeavyStorm says:
I disagree with the article. Sorry.
Yes, a pirate copy ins’t a lost sale, necessarily. But it might be, in many cases. People who “shared” the pirate copy should have some responsibility over the matter, since they facilitated the act. It’s like disclosing privileged information.
Game companies have a hard time defending themselves from the onslaught of piracy, having to choose between DRM, online only content, or sending letters to people who may or may not have downloaded the game. If we bash them when they use aggressive any feasible strategy, how should they behave?
If you think piracy isn’t a problem: I have many friends (hypothetically) who own X-Boxes, probably 5 of them. None of them own a single genuine copy. And I don’t know of any home user who hold a Windows license if their computer was bought in a shop — only those who owns dells, toshibas and HP, who had no choice in the matter.
The math IS wrong: not every pirated copy is a lost sale. But a relevant percentage of them are.
As long as CD Projekt doesn’t force any person who actually owns or never downloaded Witcher to pay the sum, then, I think it’s in their right to try and defend their product. After all, I want to see a Witcher 3, not another cancelled Stalker 2.
16/12/2011 at 03:03 kud13 says:
no one is arguing that they have a right to defend their copyright.
the issue is about the method with which they pursue it. and at this point, it’s obvious that at the very least they didn’t think it all through.
wrt to GSC: until we hear from the studio, I’m not jumping to any conclusions about “piracy killed S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2″. I love GSC, but after making SoC, which took them forever, and probably wasn’t all that profitable, they’ve released 1 shoddy game (CS), 1 good game (CoP), as well as buying a license to a fantasy series and releasing Heroes of Annihilated empires, an RTS, which tried to bring Cossacks-style gameplay into a WarCraft 3-esque fantasy setting, with a mix of RTS and RPG (also ripped off WarCraft 3), which basically bombed so bad they never made the other 2 games (it was planned as a trilogy). Whilst I love the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, and i’m a huge GSC fanboy, realistically, they were never on an extremely sure footing, financially.
16/12/2011 at 09:26 naismith says:
More pirates!
http://torrentfreak.com/busted-bittorrent-pirates-at-sony-universal-and-fox-111213/
16/12/2011 at 15:12 Melf_Himself says:
You know, it’s likely that they *can* be 100% sure about the IP addresses they’ve chosen to serve. This is because they have two independent pieces of info
1) IP logged when game torrented (ok it may have been some decoy or whatever)
2) Game servers connected to from same IP
Sounds pretty easy to prove, however…. the sum of money being asked for is just ridiculous. I think these lawyers should go and die in a fire, and I have absolutely NFI why CDP would dirty a good name they’ve worked hard to build up by associating with these filth.
16/12/2011 at 22:54 Trousers says:
I bought both the Witcher 1 and 2, never pirated either. I’ve also bought games from GOG. I will probably never buy anything from them again now.
18/12/2011 at 14:21 The13thRonin says:
Don’t want to do the time…
Then don’t do the crime…
Simple.
20/12/2011 at 01:08 Kittim says:
Oops, wrong place.