Valve Drops the Hammer On Infringing Dota 2 Mace

[Arqus_Zed]

There is no excuse for plagiarism. None.

What he did was deplorable and I'd say he got what he deserved. Hell, I would have given him a fine on top of that!

 

[Jumplion]

He would be fined up to $250,000 and face up to 10 years in jail for felony plagiarism, which it would be if he earned more than $2,500 from the act. Otherwise, up to $50,000.

What is the difference between being fined $X for something, and being fined with losing $X worth of video games? Why is one fair, and the other one unfair? They're digital downloads of video games, which means they're not unique or valuable beyond their face value. Not irreplaceable, either.

Again, because one side of it includes taking away what could be considered property (if the ban includes taking away his games). Hell, if the guy guy did end up getting fined up to 250,000 with 10 years, I doubt most people would think "too harsh, dude!" mainly because this is, after all, a gaming website.

 

[maninahat]

Full on plagiarism and you think being locked out of steam is too heavy? If you were caught doing this at university you'd be banned from graduating. There are many cases in the real world where you get charged thousands of dollars for this sort of willful infringement. I think he got off lightly really.

As plagiarism isn't strictly illegal, businesses are required to devise their own punishments. He should consider himself lucky, considering this guy won't be getting any legal action taken against him.

 

[Do4600]

HOLY SHIT 2.50 US DOLLARS THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT THAT ARE GOING TO BE SO POOR
okay enough of sarcasm lets just derail the thread here with the BS steam TERMS AND CONDITIONS basicly you fuck up you lose your games the reason why they banned the person games is because valvae couldent be bothered to give back the money and make the guy give back his share of the pot but NOOOOOOOOOOOO we "have" to punish him why? there is no point people who want to punish him are just dicks if he payed back all that was done and was left with what he had at the begginging then why punish him? its because people in the world are dicks and it feeds their ego SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much to be dicks to other people in the past we used weapons to be edicks to people now we use pieces of paper to leave people with NOTHING

now i might get shouted at called names and tolled to piss off because i posted MY opinion and WHY I say it but no because of of the reason i put forth in my opinion.


http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/4760/mofodg7.gif

What you're saying broadly is that people who exploit others to make money through fraudulent means should be forgiven if they can pay back whatever they earned from it.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

I would hate to have my steam account banned. I guess their heavy handed banning model seems to work.

 

[Awexsome]

With the confusion over whether his ban resulted in the loss of his games or not I'm not sure which is true, but I would hope he lost all his games.

That's called a punishment people. One that's very fair for committing a very illegal act like this. Don't commit fraud on this scale and you'll never have to worry about every getting banned like this.

I know some escapists like to question the validity of copyrights but we can all agree that direct copies with no alterations whatsoever should at least be protected.

If Origin had did it I would be saying the same thing. Punish people who abuse the services with illegal act like this. Punish them hard.

 

[Lyri]

I would never condone plagiarism, but that's an awfully harsh punishment and one that I don't think necessarily speaks well of Steam. Transgressions must be punished, but stripping someone of games he's rightfully paid for is a little too heavy-handed for my liking.

The guy stole assets from another game and used it to make money. Thus, he should suffer a monetary penalty: the loss of his Steam games is a tidy way to do it without dragging in an army of lawyers and trying to sue him for money he likely doesn't have.

If someone like, say, a writer were to plagiarize work in real life, the penalty for that would be getting blacklisted by publishing houses for the rest of your life. Even the accusation of plagiarism can be enough to ruin many people's careers in the creative arena. And that's BEFORE the lawyers get involved.

By comparison, the loss of this dude's Steam games is a slap on the wrist.

He lost more than that, he lost the earning which was approximated at $15,000.
I think what happened to him was incredibly justified considering the amount of money Valve was going to pay him thanks to his breaking of copyright law.

 

[Ledan]

Too many people in this thread seem to keep forgetting this, so let's review:

1) Guy commits illegal activity.
2) Guy gets caught, but well after $60k has changed hands and 24k people have been ripped off. Valve is forced to hastily replace the art to avoid lawsuit by NCSoft.
3) Guy could easily be turned over to police and be charged with fraud, instead is just forced to give his cut of the profits back and is banned from Steam services (NOT from his games).

Sorry, what he did was wrong, and when you defend this guy's punishment as "not fair", you are inadvertently defending his act of plagiarism, a crime for which the punishment in the real world is exceedingly severe in every instance it's come up.

No, I am not defending plagiarism nor is anyone else who says his punishment is unfair. When I argue against the death penalty I am not defending the murderer's actions. In case you do not understand that analogy: Discussing the punishment for a criminal does in no way mean that you are defending the criminal, it means that you are discussing what punishment he should receive for the agreed upon heinous act.

Wow, that's a lot of people defending steam. I'm not saying all of you are overzealous fanboys, but I'm pretty sure if we replaced Steam with Origin, there would be a lot less of you defending them.
Yes the dude did something illegal, but we don't take his legal property away for committing a crime. Jail him or fine him, but don't take his house, games, car, fridge, telephone, etc. If he has to sell them to pay for his fine, that's okay.

How is it any different? Please do explain. In both cases the articles have been assigned monetary value and that monetary value is taken from the user as compensation for the illegal actions he committed.[/quote]

If someone is in debt, they choose what to do to pay of that debt. The party that the debt is owed to does not get to choose what the person in debt has to sell. If you owe me 5000 dollars, I can't demand want your bed, your chairs, your TV, and a box of oreos. I can't demand a specific piece of jewelry, you get to choose how you pay me back. That is your legal right, to keep what you value and sell what you personally feel that you can do without.

Now some of you are going to say that he doesn't own those games, that steam is just a service. Well here in Europe he legally owns those games as his property. The EULA is not a binding legal document either. So if he is in the EU he can take Steam to court for basically stealing the games that he paid for.

And he would lose for two reasons:
1) He's not been denied access to his games. As others have pointed out, Steam account bans do not actually prevent you from accessing your games, they prevent you from purchasing more and impose other restrictions on your ability to function within the Steam community. I'm guessing it limits your ability to run multi-player through their servers as well, which is most definitely within their rights because it's THEIR servers.

If he still gets to keep his games, then that is fine.

2) Even IF he was banned from his games, he'd be obligated to take Valve to small claims court because the monetary value of his account wouldn't be nearly high enough to merit a full blown court case.

There are people with several thousands worth of games on Steam.

So Valve could either settle the case and pay virtually nothing, or fight him in court with a counter-suit and crush his very soul, since he was banned for committing a criminal act using their servers and resources. He'd end up paying his lawyer more money to get his games back than they're worth. And I wish this plagiarizing shit the best of luck trying to convince a court of his peers that he shouldn't be punished after cheating 24k other people out of their money and using someone else's work for his own profit.

In this theoretical case he would have lost his games. EU laws would have forced them to give them to him. The court case wouldn't be about his plagiarize,that is a separate case, but that they stole his property. They don't have to provide him with their service, but they have to provide him acces to his games. If steams current ban policy is this, then he has no reason to go to court.

He's lucky he wasn't instantly charged with fraud.

He should have been.

I don't give crap if taking his games away is "a slap on his wrist", that's not steams call to make, that is not within their rights, and that is now how the legal system works.

Actually it is. They have every right to deny a rule-breaker access to THEIR servers and THEIR resources, what with them owning those things. And that's all he was banned from. He still has his games, if the prior mentioned article is correct. So yeah, you really have no leg to stand on with this argument.

Except that he always has a right to his games. That is the basis of my argument, that is my point, and that is the leg that I stand on. Steam isn't taking away his games. Great. They are doing the right thing. If they weren't, which until recently that is what a Steam ban would have been, then they would have been infringing on his property rights.

The only thing he's being denied is access to Steam services, and guess what? Their property, their rules.

Yup, he is not entitled to a service. He is though to his games.

-snip-

Good job reading the article. I'll go ahead and bold the part you obviously missed.

"A user submitted a mace for Dota 2, and based on strong community ratings, the mace was made available in the game as 'Timebreaker' in Sithil's Summer Chest. 24,603 users spent money on keys to open the chest and ultimately receive the mace," it said. "Recently it came to our attention that this mace was in fact a copy of a mace from the game Aion. The copying has had negative consequences for everyone involved: users lost the mace and received an alternative weapon instead, the contributor has been banned and will lose out on any proceeds from the sale of the item, and it took a lot of time for us to investigate and remedy the situation."

So they DID make him give the money back.

Secondly, Valve gets to keep the profits because the only other option is to refund 24k individual purchases, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had to give some or all of that money to NCSoft to placate the lawyers. Regardless, the incident almost put Valve into lawsuit territory. I don't think it a problem that they get to keep the money (assuming they do get to keep it and it doesn't end up going to NCSoft instead) considering that the $60k they made almost cost them a major lawsuit that would have been far more damaging. $60k's a drop in the bucket by that meter.
[/quote]

Third, he committed a crime. What he did was illegal not only under the terms of service for Steam, but also illegal in the sense that it's actually a criminal act punishable by fines and jailtime. People who plagiarize in college are usually thrown out and blacklisted from colleges in the area, professors who do it are lucky to keep their jobs. This is a SERIOUS crime in the real world, bud. Losing a couple of games is comparatively minor, and it's entirely within Steam's right to deny you access to their servers and resources if they so choose.

Plagiarizing on an intellectual level of academia, and making an art asset aren't the same. It's a similar difference of nicking an album and robbing a bank. It also doesn't matter if losing a couple of games is minor, it's still a crime. The law doesn't look over infractions because they are minor in comparison to other crimes. If a petty thief is hit by a car driven by a drunk driver, both the reckless driver and the thief are put on trial for their respective crimes.

Fourth, as some have pointed out, a Steam account ban would not necessarily mean he's lost access to all of his games. It would just prevent him from being able to buy more.

Why do you repeat the same thing over and over? You have already stated that Steam bans don't result in a loss of his games. Obviously he has no inherent right to Steam's services. Obviously he does have a property right to his games.

Honestly though if this is the case, he deserves to be punished far more than he was.

Hopefully now you're slightly more educated on this situation than you were when you made that post. >_>

And that's why we let courts decide on the punishments for crimes.

 

[Lyri]

I don't know how much money the guy made off the mace (and will thus lose) but the part that really stings is the ban from Steam,

It was approximated at 15,000 USD, considering there are 24,063 maces iirc (I happen to own one so I was curious as to what happened).
The steam ban to me doesn't seem that bad considering the sum of money he would of made from stealing the visuals.

 

[Vigormortis]

It still baffles me that people on this site are all-but fucking defending this guys actions and proclaiming that Valve's actions were "too harsh" or "unwarranted".

Christ people. HE BROKE THE LAW! He's lucky he didn't end up in court, paying tens of thousands of dollars in fines and court fees.

Seriously, the occasional lack of perspective around here is striking.

I think it's partially due to the fact that it might just look like "a mace" to some, and therefore not as big of a deal if he would have plagiarized an entire book and passed it off as his.

Also, after VALVe changed it's ToS policy, they essentially held everybody's game library hostage until they agreed, this might be seen as an even harsher reminder that digital services can just take away somebody's property, regardless of the actual context in this particular case. I will admit, it is a bit worrisome to see this kind of power in action. Even if VALVe bans your account when a hacker got it, they cannot unban the account. They might transfer your games to a new account, but all it takes is a misunderstanding and you're shit out of luck, your games are gone, screw off. (I may be wrong on the unbanning part, which I hope I am)

You are. If a mistake is made or your account becomes banned for an illegitimate reason, Valve can (and will, often times) unban your account. It happened to a friend of mine.

She had her account hacked, via phishing. The person who stole the account tried to use it to dupe and scam games through the gifting system.

Needless to say, the moment Valve caught on they banned the account.

Also needlessly said, my friend was devastated. However, because she was able to prove it wasn't her committing the act (completely clean Steam usage record for 4 years), and because she had been using Steam Guard (thus allowing Valve to verify that the egregious activity was indeed perpetrated from a system other than the primary system she registered with), they were able to quickly unban her account and reapply her original Steam Guard settings.

This won't always be the case, of course. There will be times when someone may end up having their account banned, whether by their doing or a hackers. And, it's probably a case of two strikes and your out. As such, it's always advisable to safe-guard your information. Accounts, passwords, etc. But, I can't see Valve just arbitrarily banning someones account on a whim. I think people need to lighten up a tad. Valve IS a business, sure, but they're not "evil". They've nothing to gain from randomly banning accounts "for the lulz". If anything, they only stand to lose by doing that.

 

[Itsthefuzz]

Big Ol' Snip

I hate making long winded posts to explain to others, like Ledan, how their logic on the subject is flawed.

I love it when people like you say it all for me!

Captcha: On the ball (Which you are)

 

[Vigormortis]

I looked it up and from what I can find on the net the cost of the item is apparently about $2.49 (for the key that opens that chest you get the item from).

So 24,603 users times $2.49 = This guy essentially committed $61,000 worth of fraud.

... and losing his steam library is too severe a penalty?

Exactly.

Some people just seem to lack perspective. Seriously.

Oh my God guys! This poor shmuck got banned from his Steam account! He can't play his games anymore! That's too harsh a punishment! Valve is evil! This is why digital distribution is bad!

Yeah. Losing anywhere from $1.00 to a few hundred $$ worth of software titles is so much harsher than facing a $500 to $50,000 dollar fine, court fees, extraneous legal fees, customer damages (for the items sold, totaling around $15,000), and fees for any other "damages" incurred as claimed by any parties involved (i.e. NCSoft, Valve, etc).

Yep. Way too harsh.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

Too Harsh? This guy puts Valve in huge risk of lawsuits and you consider him not being able to use their service harsh? This is a slap on the wrist when it comes to this sort of plagiarism.

 

[Username Redacted]

Exactly.

Some people just seem to lack perspective. Seriously.

Oh my God guys! This poor shmuck got banned from his Steam account! He can't play his games anymore! That's too harsh a punishment! Valve is evil! This is why digital distribution is bad!

Yeah. Losing anywhere from $1.00 to a few hundred $$ worth of software titles is so much harsher than facing a $500 to $50,000 dollar fine, court fees, extraneous legal fees, customer damages (for the items sold, totaling around $15,000), and fees for any other "damages" incurred as claimed by any parties involved (i.e. NCSoft, Valve, etc).

Yep. Way too harsh.

Amen. Threads like this make me wish that there was a test prior to posting titled something along the lines of "Plagiarism, the Law and You: Things you need to know before spouting off on things you don't have a clue about". Failing the test would result in a person only having viewer privileges in the topic. Incidentally my captcha is 'rocket science' in that it isn't rocket science to see that plagiarism is illegal and that under any reasonable perspective this guy got off incredibly easy here.

 

[Ledan]

No, I am not defending plagiarism nor is anyone else who says his punishment is unfair. When I argue against the death penalty I am not defending the murderer's actions. In case you do not understand that analogy: Discussing the punishment for a criminal does in no way mean that you are defending the criminal, it means that you are discussing what punishment he should receive for the agreed upon heinous act.

You're defending the punishment as unfair, but that isn't defending the action? How exactly does that strain of logic operate? It especially bothers me that your analogy jumps right to "murder" instead of another crime of similar nature, because you're escalating the scale to exaggerate your point. Sorry, but if you're actually going to come out here and say "I think he's being unfairly treated", then you are defending him. It doesn't matter if you are defending the action specifically or the individual in question, you are still defending the indefensible. You can try to twist the mental logic however you like, but this is very cut and dry.

Dafuq? no, and a thousand times no.
Person A steals money from an orphanage. He is flogged publicly for a day and a half. I can argue that the punishment is unfair without defending the criminal's actions. The criminal is a criminal, and should be punished, but not by this specific punishment. Are you seriously suggesting that in this theoretical case I am in favor of people stealing from orphanage? Since you've already stated that, let me try to make this even simpler.
Paul commits action A. The legal system punishes him with action B. I disagree with action B. I think we should have done action C instead. At no point to I defend action A. I say that action A was committed, that it was bad, but that action B is to severe.
This is very cut and dry. I am not defending his right to plagiarize. I am not defending his actions. I am arguing about the punishment inflicted upon him.
As for me exagerating the point, I was taking your logic and applying it to a case I hoped you would understand.
When people argue about the death penalty, they are not defending the criminals actions. Do you understand? There is a difference between saying "this man is being treated unfairly" and "i agree with what this man was doing".
I can condemn someones actions and condemn their punishment without endorsing their actions.

If someone is in debt, they choose what to do to pay of that debt. The party that the debt is owed to does not get to choose what the person in debt has to sell. If you owe me 5000 dollars, I can't demand want your bed, your chairs, your TV, and a box of oreos. I can't demand a specific piece of jewelry, you get to choose how you pay me back. That is your legal right, to keep what you value and sell what you personally feel that you can do without.

Except that this wasn't a legal matter unless the case went to court (which it didn't). Steam chose to settle it outside of court by using their Terms of Service (terms you agree to follow when you use their services). So you really have no right at all to complain about the manner of punishment Steam chooses to inflict upon you (unless the punishment violates another law), since you agreed to the contract.

Steam still does not have the legal authority to dictate what assets of yours should be sold to pay the fine. That is still your perogative. Maybe things are different in the US, but here in Europe no corporation can say "You owe me 5,000 dollars, give me your grandmothers earrings and your collection of SEGA games to pay me off".

And please, spare me the "EULAs aren't legally binding" bit. Steam's Terms of Service are not an EULA to begin with. They are a legally binding document whose terms you agree to follow or the service in question will be denied to you. While EULAs have been challenged in some small courts, the Terms of Service for Steam have not been challenged in court and overruled yet, which means they ARE legally binding until established otherwise by court of law. That is how a contract works.

In this theoretical case he would have lost his games. EU laws would have forced them to give them to him. The court case wouldn't be about his plagiarize, that is a separate case, but that they stole his property. They don't have to provide him with their service, but they have to provide him acces to his games. If steams current ban policy is this, then he has no reason to go to court.

No. People are already misunderstanding what that court ruling means, and I swear it's going to drive me absolutely batty.

One single court case in one country in the EU does not mean that every single court everywhere across the European Union must acknowledge all EULAs as null, first off. EULAs have been brought up many times in US law and the jury is still out about whether or not they're legally binding, since some have ruled in favor and others against.

Second, the ruling specifically applies ONLY to the "no resale" clause. It does not have relevance beyond that.

Third, Steam's services are not covered under an EULA but rather a Terms of Service contract, so the ruling is completely irrelevant to this case.

Fourth, even if it was relevant, the ruling in EU has no bearing whatsoever on the case unless the individual in question is an EU citizen (and there is no confirmation what country he is from, or even if he is a he at all).

Did you misquote this, because it has no relevance to the paragraph you quoted. Im not talking about EULA's or terms of service. What exactly are you complaining about?

Except that he always has a right to his games. That is the basis of my argument, that is my point, and that is the leg that I stand on. Steam isn't taking away his games. Great. They are doing the right thing. If they weren't, which until recently that is what a Steam ban would have been, then they would have been infringing on his property rights.

Games that are run out of their servers can be denied to him without legal recourse. This is how companies like Blizzard are able to ban cheaters from World of Warcraft without having to face a lawsuit every time they ban someone.

There is a fine line between digital games and digital services. Games that require servers, dungeon defenders, cod multiplayer,etc can be denied to him. He should still have access to Skyrim, Deus Ex human revolution,etc.

If they were physically taking the game from the user, that's a different story....but if it's a game he purchased that runs on their servers, they have every right to say "no, we won't let you use our servers because the last time you did, you broke the law and nearly got us into a major lawsuit".

Again, though, irrelevant since he still has his games.

Not irrelevant to the point I was making. You seem to ignore that I'm not arguing about this case specifically, but using it as an example to argue how things should be.

Yup, he is not entitled to a service. He is though to his games.

You got really bothered by me repeating the phrase "he hasn't lost access to his games", and yet you keep repeating the phrase "he has every right to his games" even though we know for a fact that he still has access to his games. And you wonder why I feel the need to keep repeating myself?

Yes, he still has bloody acces to his games. Can you for a moment think beyond this specific case and understand that I'm talking broadly about peoples (well, to be fair EU citizens) right to their digital games as property?

Plagiarizing on an intellectual level of academia, and making an art asset aren't the same. It's a similar difference of nicking an album and robbing a bank.

No, they're considered identical in a court of law. You would be charged with fraud and subject to the same fees and penalties. However, many cases of plagiarism are settled in-house rather than involving the courts because it is much faster and allows the victimized party more control over the situation. Universities typically opt to settle matters of plagiarism in-house, and Steam has every right to do so as well. The charges are only filed if the victimized party chooses to pursue the matter in court.

Ah yes! I completely forgot that plagiarizing an entire book and one small art asset are exactly the same!

It also doesn't matter if losing a couple of games is minor, it's still a crime. The law doesn't look over infractions because they are minor in comparison to other crimes. If a petty thief is hit by a car driven by a drunk driver, both the reckless driver and the thief are put on trial for their respective crimes.

You're still operating under the notion that the EU court case applies at all to this situation. It doesn't.

And once more I find it necessary to repeat that his games were not denied to him. Your next statement is incredibly ironic considering that you keep repeating this false assertion over and over.[/quote] Do you understand the word theoretical? Do you understand that I'm arguing that games are property, and can't be taken away from you even if Steam didn't take away his games this time? Are you blind, or did you willfully ignore the times when I agreed that his games had not been taken away from him?

Why do you repeat the same thing over and over? You have already stated that Steam bans don't result in a loss of his games. Obviously he has no inherent right to Steam's services. Obviously he does have a property right to his games.

I have to keep repeating it because people (like yourself) keep misunderstanding it.[/quote]
And what pray tell is it that I keep misunderstanding?
-That he didn't get his games removed.
-That he did get his service with steam removed.
-That steam has a legal right to terminate the service, but not his access to his games.

So what exactly is your point? Your whole argument centered around him having every right to his games (which he didn't lose), so without it....what exactly are you arguing about in the first place?

Do you understand the word theoretical? Do you understand that I'm arguing that games are property, and can't be taken away from you even if Steam didn't take away his games this time? That is my point. That games are property and can't legally be taken away from you. They were not in this case. Does not change my argument that games are property and can't be taken away from you.

As for me centering on the EU: I live here. I agree with its morals and values. I agree with many of its laws. I find many of the US laws repugnant. I agree with the EU's decision that digital games are regarded as property. There is surely a fine line between digital games and services, such as MMOS.

 

[beefpelican]

Not only do I agree with the ban but Valve should also hand all information to the owners of Aion in case they wish to pursue legal action. In-fact Valve really needs to be careful about this themselves. Viacom sued Youtube for 1 billion dollars for a rather similar act. User submitted materials that happened to be copyrighted.

At-least Youtube wasn't selling these videos while Valve is indeed selling these copyrighted materials. The deciding factor what gave Viacom victory over Youtube was that it was clear Youtube knew it was taking place even if they did not wish or promote such. Now Valve has admitted to the same thing knowing it is happening.

If I was at Valve and the one to make the call I would issue a apology to the copyright owner. I would throw that little bastard under the bus and make fully support him being sued. I would create a instant DMCA notice take down option on all submitted content. Letting any company/person to file and instantly take down anything that was filed against and if countered filed it would go for review.

It seems to me that this is kinda what Valve is doing already. Basically by making an example of one guy they prevent future incidents and also show Aion that they take the matter seriously enough to prevent a lawsuit. If Aion does pursue legal action I think it's safe to predict that Steam will give them any money that they got from the crates, if they haven't already.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Hey guys did you hear that if you steal a priceless diamond you might be put in jail for it. I can't be living in this country if they can just put you in jail for simple stuff like that.

That is how silly some of you sound. The guy broke the law, the punishment he got is even more lenient than what could have happened. It doesn't mean Steam are going to take all your games for something tiny. It means that if you break the LAW, you will be punished.

 

[Risingblade]

Call me old-fashioned, but I equate this with, say, EA sending a guy over to your house to take away all the games you legally paid for because it caught you making copies of one you didn't. I don't think any of us would stand for that, so why is it okay for Valve to take away legitimately-purchased Steam titles for an unrelated matter?

You forgot the part where he would be selling the copies of the game claiming that they were his own work.