Game Piracy Nets Jail Term, Heavy Fine
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
so you caught some asian dude selling video games worth $700,000 and let Wall Street steal billions with no punishment. Way to go, FBI.
so you caught some asian dude selling video games worth $700,000 and let Wall Street steal billions with no punishment. Way to go, FBI.
While he completely deserved the punishment (especially after such a dumb error), I cannot help but feel sad how this goes to show that there is a untapped market for PC games in the US. Yet, retailers continue to refuse to stock PC games (buying over Steam is not the same)...
Thank heavens we don't have to deal with such a situation in mainland Europe.
Thank heavens we don't have to deal with such a situation in mainland Europe.
DanielO said:
Ummm, when being rich becomes illegal? They can't 'hunt down' people just because they earn above some arbitrary limit.
It might be because while he illegally earned $700,000, he only(!) had $367,669 left after having bought a car, house etc. with the other $330,000. That's what I assumed having read it, anyway.DaJoW said:
Good. I hope he suffers for the rest of his life, desperately trying to make ends meet, every night weeping over his greed and the price it has exacted from him, before dying alone and unloved in a ditch somewhere. I already have a mad hate-on for normal pirates, but for someone who actively:
1) Burns the games for mass distribution
2) SELLS said games, thus profiting quite literally off of the work of others with NO contribution
3) SCAMS people into buying his pirated BS under the pretense of it being legit (and seriously, if he had 50+ accounts on eBay, dude KNEW he was scamming folks and some of them would lash back for it)
Is actively and willfully harming the industry, and deserves every ounce of punishment the law can provide. Hell, I'd even argue he's hurting pirates in general; every case like this only means they look MORE greed-ridden and guilty-by-association than they already do, and builds more nasty case history against them in the courts. I can't imagine anyone rationally looking at this and thinking this guy deserves any less, on either side of the arguement. It's like that nut-bar who ran a sub-par World of Warcraft server and bilked her clients for hundreds of thousands... people like this make the whole hobby/industry less enjoyable, and deserve the cold hard boot of the law squarely up their backsides.
1) Burns the games for mass distribution
2) SELLS said games, thus profiting quite literally off of the work of others with NO contribution
3) SCAMS people into buying his pirated BS under the pretense of it being legit (and seriously, if he had 50+ accounts on eBay, dude KNEW he was scamming folks and some of them would lash back for it)
Is actively and willfully harming the industry, and deserves every ounce of punishment the law can provide. Hell, I'd even argue he's hurting pirates in general; every case like this only means they look MORE greed-ridden and guilty-by-association than they already do, and builds more nasty case history against them in the courts. I can't imagine anyone rationally looking at this and thinking this guy deserves any less, on either side of the arguement. It's like that nut-bar who ran a sub-par World of Warcraft server and bilked her clients for hundreds of thousands... people like this make the whole hobby/industry less enjoyable, and deserve the cold hard boot of the law squarely up their backsides.
He pirated them. He sold games he'd torrented, cracked, and burned to disk.Jabberwock xeno said:
No sane person will support that.
Ahh.lacktheknack said:
Good then. We actually arest a guy who clearly violated copyright law, as opposed to going after people who may or may not be violating it.
It's no secret that I dislike game piracy and this guy is clearly a douche but the sentence strikes me as awfully harsh. Forfeiture of proceeds I can see (house, car, cash, etc.), that's a pretty stiff punishment in itself, and it's a fair bet that the restitution will end up costing him even more. I have no real issues with that, either, although at some point you have to wonder how this guy is going to manage to actually pay it all and if we're not just saddling him with a debt he'll never honestly pay. But to toss two years of prison on top of that? That's pretty heavy-handed. Hell, that's more time than Johannes Meserle got for actually killing a guy.
Hard to believe I'm the one coming out against this kind of kick-in-the-junk sentencing, eh?
Hard to believe I'm the one coming out against this kind of kick-in-the-junk sentencing, eh?
They tried that, remember? The Republicans started screaming Socialism, the world is ending, persecution, ETC...Then they threatened to shut the government down.DanielO said:
Personally, I think they should have. Let the "welfare for me but not for thee" people see what they voted for.
I agree. Giving the guy a lighter fine may seem like they're letting him off easy, but at least the people who made the games will get something, which is the whole point of the anti-piracy tirade. Saddling him with a debt he'l never be able to pay just goes against that in my mind.Andy Chalk said:
You're by far not the only one. I saw this earlier while I was working, but my blackberry won't let me post in the forums(just in the group chat, what's up with that? >.>). Anyway, this guy is having his assets seized by the FBI, his house, his vehicle, and for the most part all the property held therein as well as likely all his other assets. It's not just what they're taking now; his bank accounts will be frozen, there will be an audit conducted and heavy fines applied to it as well. Then you add in the fines he has to pay on top of that. Add to that that he's going to be in jail for the next two and a half years. If he had a job, he won't when he gets out. Not only that, he's going to be broke, destitute, homeless, and a felon.Andy Chalk said:
Now as much as I'm in favor of piracy, I still recognise it's wrong and I'm not going to shed a tear for those that get caught. Afterall, the first rule of being a thief IS "Don't get caught." However, the punishment levied against him means that his life is over. They've taken everything away from him, they will give nothing back after he's released. He will have nowhere to go except a halfway house, he will have nothing to live on, and he will have no job opertunities for the rest of his life(Check your statistics, NO ONE wants to hire a felon, whether it's rape/child abuse or just simple tax evasion). Much as I hate to say it, it would have been much more merciful to just execute him rather than carry out their sentence to kill him slowly, financially, over the rest of his natural existance.
Sending someone to prison shouldn't be a form of punishment. Prison is really about locking people up because they are a harm to others. Unless he is a repeat offender, there is little reason to make him pay and do community service but only after sitting in a cell for a long time. Plus, he might need a get-rich-quick scheme for when he gets out, so they could just be setting him up for failure.