cynicalsaint1 said:
Milanezi said:
Heh, I don't feel they were doing wrong at all. Why were fans with LEGITIMATE copies angry? (not going into the "they might get me by mistake" scenario) I mean, fact is piracy is ILLEGAL, this is not a game under the Creative Commons rules, CD Projekt OWNS the rights, and just like anyone has every right to sue someone who, say, damages their property or the fruits that come from it in any way, so does CD Projekt carries every right to sue the pirates for infringing the law.
If the pirates "steal" the software to resell it at a lower price, then they are smuggling it, and using CD Project's PROPERTY to create their own fruits (profit from sales in this case), this means trillions of people enjoying The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings and no accurate feedback to the owner, which might prove to be a worse matter than the profit itself, since it might give the wrong impression when it comes to the success of a game in the market.
Maybe the pirates will just take the software, nut not profit from it, which is the famous "Robin Hood" scenario, they're doing it for the good of all who can't buy the game at full price, blahblahblah, fact is, again CD Project gets damaged, say 3000 people are playing the game, they're loving it, but only 1000 bought it, so as far as feedback goes, CD Projekt only "reads" 1000 purchases, which might mean the failure of a franchise depending on the damage and size of the company.
All in all, CD Projekt is not acting against the law, I don't understand how acting within the boundaries of law gets negative response.
There are a couple of issues with this practice really:
1. There's always the issue of proving that the person actually pirated a copy of the game. IP addresses can be spoofed and such.
2. The whole practice of the "Pay us or else" letter is pretty shady in general. Especially considering that much of the time the people who're sending them out probably can't actually afford to prosecute everyone they mail the letter out to.
3. Furthermore if there are false positives the cost for someone defend themselves against the claims will probably out weigh the cost of just paying up, meaning its a lose-lose proposition for anyone who gets falsely accused.
Its at best shady as hell, at worst extortion.
The constitution of most countries carry a certain principle where EVERYONE has a right to "access the judiciary", which means: as soon as you prove that you cannot afford a lawyer the State MUST pay you one, with no losses to you in terms of legal costs whatsoever (unless it rests proven that you acted out of malice, that is, knowing for sure that you were wrong/have no reason), so you'll always be legally protected. I'm a lawyer, believe me, in most countries, no matter what the fuck happens, you are legally protected.
Just to make it clear, you might LOSE, and still not have to pay ANY legal bills other than the amount the judge decides is to be executed to repair the damages.
It's not a matter of "pay us or else", that would be extortion, it's a mater of "we can try to reach an agreement (which legally implies an arbiter AND a contract that will prove that everything has been settled) OR we will see you in the court (which as said before, might mean no cost at all for the accused)". That is the way everything works in the world. If anybody ever crashes into your car you can settle personally at any given moment, but if the person refuses, you will most surely SUE the bastard, after all, it was an ILLEGAL act.
Problems with identifying IP will lay with CD Projekt, usually, if the accuser has no proof he has no case, even worse, in terms of IP, you can almost say he has no way to IDENTIFY the author of the crime. Most countries will then simply go on investigating, and eventually drop the case, all the accused part must do is DEFEND from the accusations. That said if you say "Milanezi hacked my account", the law will reply "Prove", once you (or the cops or anybody) show up with acceptable proof the lawsuit will be built and I will be required to defend myself of your accusations and nothing else. That's the big deal with Pirate Bay doing the whole cloud thing, they might have become impossible to grasp. Finally by saying the proof must be acceptable it means that it can't come out of illegal means, such as torture, or infiltrating a computer data without legal authorization, etc, if one does that one IMMEDIATELY loses EVERY single proof that derived from it, and most likely ends up with an extinguished lawsuit (it's nicknamed "theory of the rotten apple").
So yeah, I recognize it might be hard to pinpoint who it is, and I recognize the NSA won't get their staff looking for game pirates. But that doesn't change the fact that CD Projekt is merely protecting their property, they aren't the villains, actually they seem to be pretty light headed, most companies everywhere, in all areas of any industry wouldn't be going through all that trouble and would just be locking the product with all sorts of safety precautions not to have the trouble they are having, like that Blizzard token and such.
