The First Pirate Bust Of 2009

[mattttherman3]

Well its good to know that if I only download a few songs(less than 200 actually), then people might not ho for me!

 

[capnjack]

Such illegal activity can pose real health dangers for the public and certainly deprives gamers of any proper quality control*.

Remember, folks, if you want to live a long, healthy life, avoid piracy. No carb diets and not distributing copyrighted content will help you live a long, healthy life!


*Because DRM makes your games super-duper high quality and the pirated versions online are definitely worse. Especially Spore.

 

[Beetlejooce]

This is the kind of piracy that should not be respected, as it was depriving the companies of money, and it was just for his own gain.

People like aXXo (the guy that rips DVDs and posts them on torrent sites for free) is a good pirate. He does it for free and gets nothing. If he ever gets arrested it'll be a shame.

 

[orifice]

Once again, police prove they are more interested in protecting corporate interests than public ones.

Well yeah, but the thing is, the police force was set up to protect the property and interests of rich people from the sticky fingers of the grubby poor! (seriously!)
This reality is still evident today. When a mugger bashes an old lady on the head and steals her pension money, they make a token effort to find the mugger and if they do, he'll probably get less than three years in prison. If however the same criminal steals from a large corporation or rich individual, he's going to jail for seven years plus.
So us poor people should learn our place and only commit crimes against other poor people!

 

[Unusual_Bulge]

Such illegal activity can pose real health dangers for the public and certainly deprives gamers of any proper quality control*.

Remember, folks, if you want to live a long, healthy life, avoid piracy. No carb diets and not distributing copyrighted content will help you live a long, healthy life!


*Because DRM makes your games super-duper high quality and the pirated versions online are definitely worse. Especially Spore.

As I said earlier in this thread, I think he's referring to the fact that a guy doing unauthorised electronic work on consoles with no proper quality control (as you have on a factory production line) definitely holds the potential to be a risk to health.

This is the kind of piracy that should not be respected, as it was depriving the companies of money, and it was just for his own gain.

People like aXXo (the guy that rips DVDs and posts them on torrent sites for free) is a good pirate. He does it for free and gets nothing. If he ever gets arrested it'll be a shame.

So its ok to cause companies (and thus the people within them) to be given less money than they deserve for the media they put time, effort and their own money into, so long as you aren't pocketing the difference yourself?

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

why were two Agencys that seem to do the same thing Needed to conduct said raid, or why were they needing Forensic evedince beyond 'hey can we buy some burnt games, we can?, cool'

 

[Beetlejooce]

Such illegal activity can pose real health dangers for the public and certainly deprives gamers of any proper quality control*.

This is the kind of piracy that should not be respected, as it was depriving the companies of money, and it was just for his own gain.

People like aXXo (the guy that rips DVDs and posts them on torrent sites for free) is a good pirate. He does it for free and gets nothing. If he ever gets arrested it'll be a shame.

So its ok to cause companies (and thus the people within them) to be given less money than they deserve for the media they put time, effort and their own money into, so long as you aren't pocketing the difference yourself?

No, It's just not selfish. This way you can at least consider yourself to be giving a service to the community. Someone who copies and sells it to make a lot of money without really doing anything is little more than a common thief.

People who upload films so that people might watch them for free is like a internet Robin Hood. Maybe they're not doing the right thing, but they get nothing from it. What's wrong with sharing?

 

[Samurai Goomba]

I'm generally in favor of small-time piracy (like, say, the guy who pirates an old GBA game he could buy for five bucks that doesn't sell new anymore, so the devs couldn't profit either way), but there's a limit. It'd be one thing if he had 100 pirated games, PERIOD, but when you have 1,000+ pirated games that you're making a profit off of, that's just too much. And these are games that still sell new (mostly), and don't contain DRM (again, mostly) so this guy is just being a selfish little copyright infringing thief.

I mean, I don't condone labeling all pirates as "thieves" (because not all piracy directly costs developers money or deprives them or others of a physical object, which I would define as theft), but this guy is straight-up making a profit off of somebody else's full-fledged idea.

So yeah, no sympathy for this guy, but hopefully his horribleness won't inspire others to begin the Anti-Piracy Crusades that the Entertainment Industry seems to be pushing for.

 

[Unusual_Bulge]

People who upload films so that people might watch them for free is like a internet Robin Hood. Maybe they're not doing the right thing, but they get nothing from it. What's wrong with sharing?

There's nothing wrong with sharing, but I'd argue that placing DVDs/games online for anyone to download isn't sharing. It's distributing. And I don't feel we can compare Robin Hood, who fought against the unjust taxes and rule of a tyrant, to people who distribute for free the entertainment material that others work extremely hard to create for us.

 

[Ghost]

i lol'd, he had it coming

 

[edinflames]

Would have to agree, piracy is ripping stuff to give for free, this guy is making a 100% profit, almost. Although wouldn't be surprised if he stole those systems and original games in the first place.

100% profit? Seeing the backup games are usually sold for very little I doubt he made a huge profit. Console chipping is usually done at a reasonable price too.

The guy isn't funding potentially violent criminal organisations or anything. Also I find it disgusting how the authorities made out they are protecting the consumer from "health dangers" or lack of quality control.

That's what really annoys me, I hate that kind of BS. Its like they are trying to persuade everyone to give up piracy by making BS claims. They should just tell the truth: Microsoft has given us loads of money and is putting pressure on us to crack down on Xbox 360 piracy and since chipping 360's is a crime we can actually solve and thus improve our statistics, we don't mind one bit.

The reality is, for a lot of industries piracy is too pervasive to prevent altogether although there are some clever systems like Steam that provide protection. Devices like the BBC iPlayer mean that I don't need to illegally download BBC programmes that I want to watch. They need to get smart like the pirates, not just get stupid and call the police.

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

It doesn't. It's just bullshit

Wrong, its possible as he chipped games consoles. Although he'd have to be really really bad at it to, at most turn the console into a firehazard.

 

[santaandy]

The one thing people on both sides of this argument should not disagree on is physical counterfeitting. It's always wrong. Selling fakes is definitely a crime and should definitely be punished. With counterfeitting, you actually *are* defrauding a legitimate sale.

Thats what pisses me off about this country the most, defraud corporations or the government and the justice system will be all over you, but if you rape, murder or steal from innocent people the police and the courts couldn't give a shit.

While this guy obviously did something wrong, sadly this is all too legitimate a concern nowadays. Human life is now less of a concern than money. Seeing things like this (the human life being worth less than money thing, not the punishing actual criminals thing, punishing actual criminals is good) make me ashamed to be a human being.

 

[Zephirius]

Michael Rawlinson, managing director of ELSPA, has said "Our team in the Intellectual Property Crime Unit (IPCU) will step up its fight against counterfeiters and illegal chipping services in 2009.

Well, if you guys have legal chipping services available, you need a new marketing department.

 

[TerribleTerryTate]

Piracy is of course, wrong. He's making quite a financial gain by indulging in it too, so he deserves to be punished. I can't help but feel though, that up to 10 years in prison and an unlimited fee is...harsh. I also can't help but feel that maybe the finances and manpower that went into pursuing the guy, could've been put to better use for criminals who are undoubtedly doing far, far worse things.

I'm glad he's caught, but something seems a bit odd to me, about how you can get around the same amount of time in jail for pirating games/consoles, and raping or murdering someone. Ah well.

 

[Agayek]

Unless you have a 360, which seem to be criminally easy to mod.

This is entirely because 360's don't need anyone to brick them, they do it themselves plenty.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

When someone steals stuff online, who you gonna call? Angry police men!