AfterDawn: News

Watch out UK, 25,000 piracy lawsuits coming

According to a report in The Times, five game publishers are set to sue 25,000 UK citizens over the downloading and sharing of pirated games.

The citizens will receive notices demanding a settlement of GBP 300 or be forced to head to court.



The decision comes on the heels of Topware Interactive's victory over Isabella Barwinska who was ordered to pay GBP 16,000 for her part in sharing a copy of the game Dream Pinball 3D.

Topware is at it again, along with Atari, Codemasters, Reality Pump, and Techland and each have appointed the firm Davenport Lyons to take action on their behalf.

Roger Billens, a partner at Davenport Lyons, noted: “Our clients were incensed by the level of illegal downloading. In the first 14 days since Topware Interactive released Dream Pinball 3D it sold 800 legitimate copies but was illegally downloaded 12,000 times. Hopefully people will think twice if they risk being taken to court.”

The most popular download however was Codemasters' Operation Flashpoint, which was apparently downloaded 691,000 times in its first week according to the P2P monitoring firm Peerland.

Lyons has been so far applying to the High Court to have UK ISPs give out the names and addresses of suspected file sharers. According to the Times, personal information for 5000 citizens has already been given out, with 20,000 more coming.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Aug 2008 12:06

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• 22 comments

• lxfactor

  something is going on.. and i dont like it..

  20.8.2008 12:10 #1

• 7thsinger

  Uh oh.
  
  That isn't good.

  20.8.2008 12:42 #2

• tavek

  ROFL, cheap Bstrds, thats what happens to P2P dwnloading & free ware.
  THNK GOD for newsgroups, giganews & the 256-bit SSL Encrypted
  protection, DOUBT ill be getting a lawsuit in my lifetime!
  Worth the $30 a month IMO.

  20.8.2008 13:06 #3

• varnull

  25,000 more votes against an unpopular and dictatorial government that is past it's sell by date.
  
  Everybody should demand their day in court.. on legal aid funded by the taxpayer. the data protection act should protect these people from their personal details being handed out.. I see a procedural nightmare for the courts with criminal cases being pushed into the background on behalf of profits for foreign business. Public outcry will be massive. This country is already seen as being soft on "real" crime while going full on at the easy target of pensioners feeding the birds or not separating their rubbish properly..
  
  Everybody can get a lawyer (at public expense) or use the spoofed or stolen ip defence.. lets see the actual evidence without the spies admitting breaking a heap of other laws to get it! They will find out the British public aren't the pushovers they think we are.. £300 for a £12.99 game.. who are they kidding? That's extortion and they know it.
  
  BTW tavek.. they watch newsgroup encrypted downloads more closely than they watch p2p for evidence of pedo and terrorist activity.

  20.8.2008 13:15 #4

• ZippyDSM

  I wonder if the UK court system will start chairing the media mafia for clogging their court system...

  20.8.2008 13:15 #5

• simpsim1

  @tavek
  
  Only once I've tacked a VPN onto all that lot do I feels even remotely safe. Forgive me for my paranoia, but there are too many horror stories out there.
  
  I myself would definately pursue this all the way through the court system rather than rolling over and playing dead (Not that I am one of these people that they are targeting I might add). The IP address system is by no means flawless and addresses are easily spoofed by people with even minimal knowledge.

  20.8.2008 13:41 #6

• blueroad

  hmm 25,000 u say? dont worry UK the state prosecutor will hav to declare eventually that like germany, UK cannot handle all those small piracy cases and will only prosecute pirates that download over X GB a month. and so i say to the copyrights holders : thy greed would be thy's downfall :)

  20.8.2008 14:24 #7

• grkblood

  hey, atleast yalls internet is a gazillion times faster than ours.

  20.8.2008 14:58 #8

• lxfactor

  300 for a 12.99 game because they had to pay other people to find ur arse

  20.8.2008 15:18 #9

• david89

  this sound bad i thought you guys had a levy where it was ok to download anything you wanted to. but i bet there going try at some point change it and bring in dmca like they did for usa that was one of worsed laws that they ok. because i believe the lawsuits have gone to far allready with suing people and treating us consumers as crooks anyway i hope i am wrong and turns out ok.

  20.8.2008 16:13 #10

• badkrma

  ...Tavek... shhhhh... keep that quite as long as possible don't be too boisterous about it... :)

  20.8.2008 16:21 #11

• simpsim1

  Double post sorry!

  20.8.2008 17:54 #12

• simpsim1

  Originally posted by badkrma: ...Tavek... shhhhh... keep that quite as long as possible don't be too boisterous about it... :)LOL! I think most people know about it by now. Especially with certain people citing Usenet as being a haven of child porn/terrorist activitites blah blah. It's the same old routine I'm afraid, pull on the heart strings or use what we're afraid of to turn others against what "They" don't have control over.
  
  In much the same way, these massive over-profiting companies want to scare P2P users away from their filesharing and the only surefire way to do that is to threaten them with financial loss. Emotional blackmail obviously doesn't work these days (Hurting the artist/developer etc).

  20.8.2008 17:58 #13

• beanos66

  12000 people downloaded the game of those 800 decided to buy the game, makes me think it is a crap game

  20.8.2008 18:12 #14

• varnull

  Just added davenport-lyons email headers to the spam mailservers lists. Might be fun when 200 million people get threatening emails eh?

  20.8.2008 18:23 #15

• pcrazy99

  They are banking on a large portion of these people getting scared and just mailing in a check. If everyone just took this to court and fought it, the courts would be overloaded with cases. I'm sure a large majority would be thrown out.

  21.8.2008 00:45 #16

• susieqbbb

  And I find this funny please let us know how many ip addresses lead to network printers or even abandoned buildings or funnier that lead to china or japan.
  
  This is why people in the u.k rarely get caught because they mask there ip address or change them to printers or abandoned buildings.
  
  And i find even funnier the u.k has been the most pirated country ever and now they decide to do something about it.
  
  Wow talk about to little to late.

  21.8.2008 00:51 #17

• windsong

  I got a letter once..I ignored it. As soon as you reply to them, you become a priority target.
  
  Don't invite the vampire in by opening the door.

  21.8.2008 01:37 #18

• rlessmue

  Let's see...
  If you want to try out a game to see if you like it
  you options are:
  1) Buy the game from the store
  2) Download from the internet
  - or if you are lucky -
  3) Try it on a friends system before you buy.
  ==========
  So if you buy from the store, open and try it and don't
  like it - you can not return it to the store because you
  have opened the wrapper around the CD/DVD.
  Now you are mad at the company that sold you the game and
  might never buy another game from them (read: company looses customer).
  ===========
  If you down load from the internet, you get to try out the game
  and see if you really like it or not. To get the "real" effect
  of the game, most people then go out and buy :) the game (some don't,
  which might because they don't really like the game). No money
  is lost, and the person will most likely buy another game from this
  company (read: company keeps customer).
  ============
  Maybe companies will notice and remember some economics 101.
  Something like: "It takes only one bad customer to ruin your bussiness."
  ============
  Cheers!
  Quote:Those who think they are smart annoy those of us who actually are.

  22.8.2008 15:10 #19

• 45colt

  I think we should let all the politicians know that without us who vote for them and the judges with the supreme court will not be siiting their ass of the judges's chair without the help of the politician who appoints them. Davenport is making a lot of money here taking the case of the capitalist, bureaucrats, and who knows maybe the jusge is in their blackbook too. Show me a politcian who is not crook and I'll pull the hair out of my nostril. The company that davenport represents is nothing but cry babies. Do they really think that they"re going to sell more games by going against the public? oh please! One can go sk a friend if he or she has this stuff and make a hard copy anyways. As far as I am concern davenport might have the privilledge to sue everyone but don't forget identity theft is happening all over the world, If the court approve of giving access to our ip's. I guess it's the same like the judge permit's me to go to his house and take anything I want. How about using a pc in the internet cafe and let the companies involve know that we all can get together and pass the word around not to puarchase any of these capitalist product. It's time to step up with a drastic action.

  22.8.2008 20:16 #20

• ersin007

  Originally posted by varnull: 25,000 more votes against an unpopular and dictatorial government that is past it's sell by date.
  
  Everybody should demand their day in court.. on legal aid funded by the taxpayer. the data protection act should protect these people from their personal details being handed out.. I see a procedural nightmare for the courts with criminal cases being pushed into the background on behalf of profits for foreign business. Public outcry will be massive. This country is already seen as being soft on "real" crime while going full on at the easy target of pensioners feeding the birds or not separating their rubbish properly..
  
  Everybody can get a lawyer (at public expense) or use the spoofed or stolen ip defence.. lets see the actual evidence without the spies admitting breaking a heap of other laws to get it! They will find out the British public aren't the pushovers they think we are.. £300 for a £12.99 game.. who are they kidding? That's extortion and they know it.
  
  BTW tavek.. they watch newsgroup encrypted downloads more closely than they watch p2p for evidence of pedo and terrorist activity.
  Very very well put, and I agree completely.

  23.8.2008 21:06 #21

• Bradderss

  reading this makes me want to download it to see how bad a game it is

  15.9.2008 08:58 #22