The First Pirate Bust Of 2009

[Damolition]

The First Pirate Bust Of 2009

including 700 Xbox 360 games, 300 Wii titles and 100 PlayStation 2 games. Three Xbox 360 and two Nintendo Wii consoles were also seized. The man admitted to running an illegal chipping operation via his Gumtree.com site for nearly two years.

They should write that on the xbox products.

"7 out of 11 pirates prefer xbox"

 

[Samah]

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.

Cue Charles Bronson...

 

[Dys]

I honestly doubt its any were near 100% profit and just because the guys a pirate doesn't mean he's a burglar.

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.

100% profit means that in his line of business, buying games, copying them, chipping 360s; he is making almost a complete profit. I am not saying 100% profit in that he is making millions of dollars, I am simply stating that he has almost no expense, only profit. But he is not making 100% entirely, as buying games and systems do come in effect.

He makes nowhere near 100% profit, it is ludicras to suggest that.
For me to pirate an xbox 360 game myself (no, I don't because I have the shit xbox DVD drive, But I assure you if I could my original games would never touch the drive), it would cost me around $4.

Dual layer disks are still really expensive. There is alost the cost of his burning equipment and the mean loss caused by faulty disks or currupted burns. If he wasn't buying the games he pirated, I'd be guessing a 20% profit would be close, given that I've never even heard of a pirated game selling for more than $6. Usually less if you buy a bunch together.

Not saying I agree with him selling burned games, I honestly beleive it should be legal for him to modify the console. Although I'm Australian, unmodded console = censored games where I'm from, as you cannot play NTSC formatted games on a PAL setup, and most games are region coded as well (ps3 doesn't do this, but I don't own one. Also sony introduced the first modchips, and made them popular).

 

[bkd69]

Here's what I don't get.

How is anybody in the chipping business also stupid enough to engage in copyright infringement as well?

I realize there's the greed factor, but if the greed factor outweighs the legal risk factor by that much, surely there's other, more profitable endeavours than bundling some illicitly copied games along with your clients' newly chipped consoles.

Idiocy gets what it deserves.

Oh, and allow me to also add a WTF to the 'health risk' comment. I mean, really? Hyperbole much? (though I realize it's probably standard boilerplate meant to apply to counterfeit pharmaceuticals and the like, but really, a bit of proofreading before releasing the statement might help. I'm just sayin')

 

[Dommyboy]

That's a huge amount of Xbox360 games, though I am guessing it is an exaggeration. How can anyone stand that many shooters?

 

[Ronwue]

What really annoys me about stuff like this is the stupidly high punishment for this and the bullshit crap about him being a "health danger".

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.

There is no money loss to the government in those.

 

[Skrapt]

And in my book, piracy is stealing. You wouldn't walk into a shop and pick up a copy of Gears o' Death 5 without paying. Profit or not, pirates are criminals.

The problem is that there's is a grey area, pirates are not stealing a physical copy of the product, they are copying it and distributing it, which while copyright infringement isn't exactly theft. Since the only thing the producer of the product loses is 'potential profit' which is difficult to count as 99% of pirates would not pay money for what they are downloading anyway. A better analogy would be:

You walk into a shop, pick up something of some sort, copy down the ingredients/content etc. on paper you've brought then you go home and reproduce the original product. The problem is that you're not really stealing anything, as you're not stealing a tangible product from the owner, but reproducing the object and distributing it freely.

Piracy is copyright infringement, but as far as classifying it as actual theft? Would be quite difficult to do.

 

[Playbahnosh]

Such illegal activity can pose real health dangers for the public and certainly deprives gamers of any proper quality control. Furthermore, it can cause the industry to lose vital income and with it jobs across the UK.

I call *male-cow excrement* on this one. What health dangers? What quality control? What vital income and job loss? Oh, please!

Why not just say "They make us look bad". There is no lost income in pirated games, because the majority of the people who get those games wouldn't buy them with real money in the first place. (if any, the corporations get free freggin advertising for their product.) People tend to confuse "copying" and "stealing". While stealing takes the original product and makes it unavailable for others to own, copying leaves the original intact on the self, doing no harm whatsoever to anybody. Oh, an for the ones riding on the "intellectual property" bandwagon: that term was invented by corporations to get more profit by making stuff unavailable to others. I won't even comment on the health dangers and quality control part, because it's so obnoxiously retarded. People are brainwashed by corporations, being fed the gospel of *male-cow excrement* for their own profit. But I'm not getting into that topic. You can read. Do so.

 

[Thirdman]

Such illegal activity can pose real health dangers for the public and certainly deprives gamers of any proper quality control. Furthermore, it can cause the industry to lose vital income and with it jobs across the UK.

I call *male-cow excrement* on this one. What health dangers? What quality control? What vital income and job loss? Oh, please!

Why not just say "They make us look bad". There is no lost income in pirated games, because the majority of the people who get those games wouldn't buy them with real money in the first place. (if any, the corporations get free freggin advertising for their product.) People tend to confuse "copying" and "stealing". While stealing takes the original product and makes it unavailable for others to own, copying leaves the original intact on the self, doing no harm whatsoever to anybody. Oh, an for the ones riding on the "intellectual property" bandwagon: that term was invented by corporations to get more profit by making stuff unavailable to others. I won't even comment on the health dangers and quality control part, because it's so obnoxiously retarded. People are brainwashed by corporations, being fed the gospel of *male-cow excrement* for their own profit. But I'm not getting into that topic. You can read. Do so.

Quite right. If you built a house exactly the same as your neighbor down to the last brick, then sure the architects might be a bit upset but its a far reach from running into their house, guns blazing and taking it by force. Rather an extreme example but it made my point i think... kinda

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

100% profit doesn't mean he's making a huge profit, it means that 100% of the money he makes is profit...which is a true statement.

Bit of a tautology isn't it though? Seeing "the money he makes" after expenses is in fact his profit. So you are just saying his profit is his profit?

Dual layer disks are still really expensive.

Not when they are bought in bulk which this guy would have done. I've seen pirated games on good quality dual layer dvds for 3.50 each. While not on the dirt cheap level of single layer ones its still not bad.

 

[Galletea]

Well it shows that they are actually doing something to stop this kind of piracy, which surprises me a little. Maybe a few more busts like this will go some way to help prevent people getting involved in piracy.

 

[Playbahnosh]

Well it shows that they are actually doing something to stop this kind of piracy, which surprises me a little. Maybe a few more busts like this will go some way to help prevent people getting involved in piracy.

I don't think so. IMHO, if any, this will make people think "wow, he got away with this for so long, and even made money. Interesting...". Or more like "Woah, there are FREE games around? And they are THIS easy to get? How come I didn't know about this? Now, what site was it on...."

What these anti-piracy guys don't understand, that they are promoting and advertising piracy more than any pirate ever did. Before these BSA and RIAA and whatever, piracy was an underground thing, only accessible for people "in the know". Now, that they're showing off piracy in the mass media everywhere, they are actually working against themselves by letting people know, that there is alternative to buying horrendously expensive software (which is expensive because of some corporation says it is). Isn't that interesting?

 

[Dys]

100% profit doesn't mean he's making a huge profit, it means that 100% of the money he makes is profit...which is a true statement.

Bit of a tautology isn't it though? Seeing "the money he makes" after expenses is in fact his profit. So you are just saying his profit is his profit?

Dual layer disks are still really expensive.

Not when they are bought in bulk which this guy would have done. I've seen pirated games on good quality dual layer dvds for 3.50 each. While not on the dirt cheap level of single layer ones its still not bad.

Even so, even if he was getting them for $2.50, he would still be a long way from the 100% profit people seem to think he would've been getting.

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

Even so, even if he was getting them for $2.50, he would still be a long way from the 100% profit people seem to think he would've been getting.

Yeah, I reckon its more like 40% profit overall. I don't think many people on this thread know about this kind of piracy in much detail. Which seems to have lead to a lot of misconceptions and exaggerated claims. Don't think the man deserves the sentence/gigantic fine he'll get either, seeing rapists and drink driving killers get less sometimes.

 

[moeroris]

Prior to the official raid, investigators set up a sting operation where they visited him to have their Xbox chipped and purchase pirated games. The console and games were then forensically examined to provide the evidence needed to obtain a search warrant.

Entrapment.

I *think* chipping is legal in Australia. Given that there's a store down the road from me that advertises it...

The problem with an entrapment defense is that, in order for it to work, in most countries you have to show the accused would not have committed a crime in the absence of actions taken by law enforcement. It isn't entrapment if you are willing/planning to commit a crime, and the police convince you to incriminate yourself. Entrapment only covers a situation where the actions of law enforcement cause a person who would not otherwise commit a crime to commit one, with the intention of arresting them for it when they do. [N.B. Not a laywer, just a layman's understanding of entrapment.]

 

[Grampy_bone]

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