Earlier this morning, news came out that five British game companies are taking 25,000 pirates to court for illegally downloading their software from file-sharing services. The big five are
Codemasters,
Atari,
Reality Pump, Topware and
Techland.
The Times reports that they are seeking 3,000 (about US 5, 600) in payment, apart from demanding contact details from ISPs and preparing to take to court the first 500 of those who refuse to pay. That makes pirate # 501 very lucky, indeed.
Apparently, the legal action was incited by a landmark court-ruling that was held earlier this week, with a file-sharing gamer, Isabela Barwinska, being forced to pay 16,000 damages to Topware for downloading
Dream Pinball from a file-sharing website.
Now, even before the day has finished, the music industry has given their own two cents on the issue - another victim of
piracy - and surprise, surprise, they're not backing the gaming industry on this one.
Matt Phillips, director of communications of the BPI (formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry), says "that working with ISPs to educate consumers is a more effective way of combating illegal downloading" instead of punishing those who file-share.
This issue of file-sharing has been growing in significance especially with the boom of the Internet industry. Unfortunately, there is still no sufficient jurisprudence that will streamline the rules and policies defining when an act of file-sharing is held illegal. Piracy, though now a generic concept, remains vague and evasive, and so it is fairly easy for any one to fall in the pitfalls of this title.
But since both industries of music and gaming are the most hurt in all this, and also the movie industry, it would probably help a lot of they take on a united stance on the matter. Unfortunately, with this obvious distancing move of the BPI, it looks like even the industries themselves are not exactly certain yet as to how to deal with the issue of file-sharing. How can we expect to finally kill of the alternate-industry that's killing off the legit industries when they themselves are at a dissonance?
We'll be updating you more on this matter, but in the meantime, make sure you're not downloading any illegal files. You just might wake up one morning one of these days to find an invitation to court waiting for you in your mailbox.
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2008-08-21, 12:00 PM
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