Investigators Politely Ask Black Ops Pirates to Quit
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
Allow me to chime in here with a quote I read recently:Woodsey said:
The problem with making statements such as "Pirates are pathetic" is that because of the diversity of the way people pirate, you may be attacking a large group of them unjustly. You can hate them all you want, but the fact is, you are under an opinion when you are stating a fact. It's like calling all black people criminals because the majority of the prison population are blacks, except it's not like that at all because we can quantify that statement with real data. The same can not be done with pirates.
TL;DR: Don't make generalizations without data to back yourself up at least partially.
Someone must have sedated Kotick in order to pull this off. Still not buying (nor pirating) their games, though.
The game WILL make millions of dollars and giving that Activision's image is terrible they're probably just going for damage control.
I think this way will actually work quite well. When you think about pirating (well me at least) you think it is ok cause they aren't likely to find you or single you out of a massive number of people. And that is true, IF they are choosing to sue. What this method allows is an easy way of letting pirates know in no uncertain terms, we see you and know what you are doing.
Most would stop on that premiss alone, but others still would stop on the premiss of, if they fund me with that, then when they are ready to sue they can find me just as easily.
So I think it is a good idea, and one that might work to stem the tide of piracy even if it does not elminate it entirely.
Most would stop on that premiss alone, but others still would stop on the premiss of, if they fund me with that, then when they are ready to sue they can find me just as easily.
So I think it is a good idea, and one that might work to stem the tide of piracy even if it does not elminate it entirely.
mjc0961 said:
It's called a publicity stunt, game companies do that.
Let me be honest, just like how a guy from apple drops a new prototype I-phone in a bar by "accident", game companies release pirate copies of their own games in order to generate hype. One of the reasons why I have a hard time taking them seriously. Understand that keeping track of this stuff isn't all THAT hard, and typically the piracy starts around the time we're dealing with a pre-release information blitz. I've heard a number of pirates over the years in various places talk about how they were virtually handed copies of the game when the review copies were going out.
The politeness involved in this is probably because the idea is to get the name "Black Ops" out there more and to get people thinking about it and so on. When they are operating on a game this level, losing a few thousand copies is worth the Youtube videos they will generate and get people thinking "OMG, I must have that game! I want it even more now".
I'd suspect that one of the reasons you don't see litigation in cases like this is because if things were ever investigated professionally, people would find footprints leading back to the companies despite their whining. Then we have issues with entrapment.
That's my theory, and one I've subscribed to for a while (and mentioned before). In some cases there *IS* widespread piracy, but in other cases it strikes me as a publicity stunt.
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That said, if they ever do want to stop piracy they need to start getting more assertive about it, especially when dealing with countries outside of the US and which don't have extradition treaties, since that is where most of the real stuff starts.
As I've said before, if a company like Activision REALLY wanted to make a differance what they would need to do is put a bounty on some of the more well known pirates in say China, and then send a few teams of Bounty Hunters there to kidnap them and bring them to a country with an extradition treaty to be arrested. The Bounty Hunters of course claiming "oh gee, well I just saw this guy wandering around in this country and knew he had a bounty on his head. No, I didn't go to China or anything, what gives you that idea? Kidnapping? Look this guy is wanted by a major corperation, he'll say anything to avoid facing the music...". That kind of stuff happens, just not with issues like this.
See, in many cases the core distributers are operating with relative imputiny because they feel that they are untouchable, and none of the companies they are robbing have the guts to go after them, so none of the laws they violate matter as long as they stay in their own country.
There are plenty of kids who crack games in the US and such and put them up as torrents, but those guys are by and large small potatoes.
Do something scary, and you'll scare people into chilling out.
Not that I much care mind you, because as far as I'm concerned both the pirates and the game industry are crooks, the only differance is who they exploit. The game industry operates as a cartel for all intents and purposes, and if they were bigger like gas companies are, they would have federal investigators all over them for the same kinds of behavior. The pirates are thieves. As a consumer I feel neither really benefits me, I want to be able to get good quality games for a fair price. Neither of those groups have my best interests in mind in the big picture, especially the game industry which like all businesses wants to gouge me for as much as they can, releasing the lowest quality product for the most amount of money they can possibily get away with, with companies coordinating as a cartel to try and make that a reality.
Such are my thoughts.
First the Gentleman Thief, now the Gentleman Investigation Company. What's happening to the world?!
I reckon they'll likely sue people who don't comply in a friendly manner. I like this new approach to anti-pirating, beats DRM and all that useless stuff that punishes those who buy it.
Blizzard, look at this and do it next time instead of suing people for enough money to fund your own private army.
Yeah I thought that was quite funny my self. "Hello, your son is pirating software, would you please tell him to stop.. Yes I can hand him the phone.."Puddle Jumper said:
Exactly WHO is stupid enough to buy a pirated game weeks before it's actual release AND play it on Xbox LIVE?! Worse, who didn't expect to get "caught" quickly? Thats why they gave up without trouble, they didn't have a legal leg to stand on if they weren't on the Activision payroll.
Seriously? generalizations? your trying to play the diversity card here? saying all black people are criminals is one thing, but calling the willful act of downloading software from anywhere without paying for it is illegal 100% of the time.Signa said: