Witcher 2

Same, but it is a shitty thing from them to team up with scammers, something I would not expect from that kind of company.

 

Who says they are teaming up with scammers? Do you have any proof for that? AFAIK nobody knows as of yet who they will hire or how and with what intensity they intend to pursue priates.

Actually in the original article that appeared on eurogamer and that nobody here apparently had the idea to look up, they stated:

 

No one says CD Projeckt shouldn't go after pirates, but they shouldn't sign up to this kind of speculative invoicing that is designed to extort money from innocent people as a form of revenue. These scammers don't care if you pirated the game or not, they just want money from you. They threaten innocent people with the loss of their homes, with the worry of losing all their savings with the threat of expensive court cases.

I don't have to give my money to that sort of company just because they make PC games. If extortion of innocent people with no evidence is the way they want to go to keep the PC gaming market alive, then it's better they go bust. The fact that CD Projekt make PC games doesn't give them an automatic pass on being part of a dishonest speculative invoicing scheme.

It's a basic ethical choice not to buy products from companies that are run in ways I don't like, regardless of whether I want the product or not. Do what you like, make your own choices, but don't expect others to follow just because CD Projekt make some nice games on the one hand whilst committing this kind of letterhead mugging on innocent people with the other hand. If that's the future of PC gaming, then I want no part of it.

 

There isn't anyone running this kind of speculative invoicing that has a shred of legitimacy or has ever managed to produce proof. It's been banned in several countries, and one lawyer was even disbarred. A couple of firms are in the UK being disciplined by their regulatory authorities.

There have even been lawyers suing other lawyers for the copying of their legal pleadings, and lawyers suing lawyers who product patten defence documents in these money grubbing speculative invoicing wars. They've been caught copying other sites, using copyright images without permission, copying each other's names, etc.

Even the non-legal scammers have gone in on the act, sending out fake lawyers letters to get people to send them money, claiming IP theft and liability from people. The whole thing is one dodgy, grubby, scummy industry.

 

Haters gonna hate. Smh.

 

Witcher 2 isn't even out..... whos recieved a paybill for pirating Witcher 2?

 

Innocent people received bills for Witcher 1. How do I know they were innocent? Because no evidence was ever produced beyond "we have your IP address". You might as well pull phone numbers out of a phone book or just put letters through every door in town. It's one of the notorious cases that got Davenport Lyons in front of the SRA and led to them dumping the speculative invoicing scam to ACS Law.

And here we have CD Projekt saying they are going down the same road again.

 

How can we be sure they where really innocent? Many lie saying someone else hooked up to their router. Not saying the companies can have sent out false accusations but either way it aint a crystal clear situation.

 

Where in that article that I've linked to did you read anything about speculative invoicing? Or maybe you do know something about CDProject's plans that I don't know, then I would like a link. Or are you a mind reader?

And what is your rant about black sheep in the business supposed to prove? Is there a point borrowed in there somewhere?

 

You can't prove you didn't do something. Could you prove that you didn't pirate Witcher 1? It's the job of a legitimate lawyer to produce evidence of guilt, and none ever did. They couldn't even identify who the infringer was, but merely went after the account holder, making threats with no legal standing to get money.

Like you say, it isn't a crystal clear situation, but since when did we stop considering that people were innocent until proven guilty? Since when did we assume that people were guilty and must be lying, without producing any evidence? In fact, lawyers on this scam have avoided court, for fear they would have to explain their weak "proof", and would then have to prove damages far, far below what they are asking people to pay up.

But this whole thing is not about proof. It's about getting a portion of the targets scared and intimidated enough to send money, so you can make easy cash from nothing more than writing a few letters. Just look at the ACS Law leaked emails to see the attitude they took and what their real aims were.

 

Meaning? We should stop prosecuting criminals altogether?

I can! I have the box still at home!

In germany the account holder is responsible for criminal actions commited using his account unless he can prove someone else used it. And I guess it's the same in many other countries. In germany you are even required by law to encrypt you wireless network. BTW it's the same with cars. If someone causes an accident with your car and it cannot be verified who actually drove and you cannot prove the car was stolen, you'll be held responsible. So nothing new here.

 

Meaning you should have proof. That's why scammers don't go to court - because they don't have evidence.

You've already fallen at the first sentence by using the word "criminal" when copyright infringement is a civil offence. This has nothing to do with letting criminals go, it's about making a new revenue model by threatening people with expensive court cases unless the pay up easily.

That doesn't prove anything. It proves you bought a copy of the game, not that you didn't share it on P2P networks. Maybe you bought the game after you got caught sharing it? Maybe you bought the game in order to share it?

See how things go when you don't need evidence? And these arguments were used by Davenport Lyons and ACS against people who had actually bought the game but were still incorrectly targeted.

Not here. You can no more be held accountable for the actions of others if they steal your wireless, or if they steal your car, or break into your house and commit other crimes.

There was a recent case in Germany were someone was fined a few tens of euros for someone else using his wireless to torrent, as this was seen as actual damages. Exactly what the scammers don't want when they would rather ask for hundreds of Euros.

That's not true at all. If your car is stolen and used in a robbery, you don't have to prove you were not driving - the police have to prove that you were. People don't get put into prison for robbing banks just because they were the owner of a stolen car and can't prove they were not driving. Unless you can identify who did what, you can't just make assumptions.

 

Aren't you contradicting yourself here? On the one hand you are saying you can't proof you are innocent, on the other hand you say the scammers don't have evidence. So why defend yourself when the other side has no evidence in the first place.

It is a criminal offense in Germany.

Doesn't matter anyway. The scammers have no evidence. You just wrote that. Didn't you?

You are sure of that? If someone breaks into your home and dials the speaking clock in Tokyo, you will still have to pay the bill. That's because you have a contract with the phone company. And even if they catch the burglar, you will still have to pay the bill, but then you can sue the burglar for compensation.

That's someting different. It's called "Störerhaftung". The point is, he was not held responsible for the copyright infringement because he was able to prove that he didn't do it himself. (I wonder how he did that, since we all know that is impossible) He was held responsible because he didn't secure his wireless network and so enabled another person to commit copyright infringement using his wireless network.

You should read more carefully what I wrote. Let me quote it for you and bold the important part here:

If have a party at your house and pass out drunk on the floor and one of your guests takes your car and drives into your neighbour's living room and the driver cannot be found, the damage will be your problem.

Back to the topic. I still wonder where CDProject said anything about contracting any scammers to go after innocent people. Would you care to show me? Or does innocent until proven guilty not apply for CDProject?

 

It's impossible to prove a negative. Basic logic 101. You can't really continue this discussion until you understand that. For instance - prove that you didn't torrent Witcher 1. You can't do it. That's why in law there has to be evidence that people did something, not just an accusation and that they cannot prove that they didn't do something. Maybe you can prove you were somewhere else, but that is proving a positive again and is not accepted by these lawyers who simply say you accessed your systems remotely.

The reason why people defend themselves against these scammers is because they get scared. They don't know the facts, many of them don't even know much about computers. The simply get an official sounding letter telling them they have been identified sharing something, they are responsible, the evidence (though never shown) is infallible, and that they either pay £500 or go to court to defend themselves which may cost tens of thousands. People get upset and stressed out, and just pay up to have it all go away. That's why it's easy money and the scammers do it.

If you look at what has come out from the two main companies in the UK doing this, even they know that the do not have any evidence, but are happy to keep sending out the letters demanding money as long as they can get enough cash from those who just pay up. The same thing has been happening in the US.

 

Exactly that happened to my collogue from London!
He downloaded Witcher 1 torrent file and enjoyed game very much. After couple of weeks he received letter from one of above mentioned firms asking for a payment. He rang me seeking some advice and eventually sent them a letter saying he has wi-fi router and gave access to his network to few friends. Obviously letter was denying any wrong doing on his side and the case was drop.

I wasn't proud of his actions because his earnings are good enough to buy couple of AAA titles each month from what he normally spends on other pleasures. Good thing is, he learnt a lesson and now tends to buy games instead of downloading them...

Anyway I think this thread should be more about the game I will buy instead of bashing developer for actions they didn't even commit yet (I mean Witcher 2, because they might have learnt a lesson after engaging with dodgy lawyer firms last time).

 

Fair enough. I agree.

Your idea what to do with 10k+ source torrent of your intellectual property, please

 

You banned the products of a company for the name of one of their graphics cards.

Anyway as far as I can tell noone is really going after the developer. It is infact the publisher they are targeting for previous unethical behaviour. As far as I can tell the developer is unfortunately an innocent party in all this.

 

In this case I believe the developer is the publisher

 

A difficult question. I do know that the way to deal with it is not to simply throw away important things like due process or evidence, or to allow companies to bully and threaten innocent people with desperately flawed methodology that is just there as an excuse to demand money with threats.

It's also fallacious to think that one download = one lost sale. That's been pretty much disregarded by even the likes of EA.

Personally I like the Valve Steam model. Instead of trying to deal with the symptoms and spend a lot of money in court to get back a lot less (as the music industry has found out), you deal with the source. You stop being adversarial, and build up a relationship with the people that want to give you money, and stop driving away legitimate customers whilst concentrating on those that don't give you their money. Sales, convenience, a presence on your desktop to sell you more stuff, etc.

Valve have done this very well, and although they still get piracy, it's not what drives their actions - getting more opportunity to sell stuff is what moves them successfully forwards.

It would also help if devs and pubs put out good quality products that arn't rushed out. This engenders the adversarial relationship again, where a company screws over the customer with a poor or faulty product, and so the customer then is happy to screw over the devs/pubs next time around.

So I don't think there's one single solution, I think it's got to be a combination of things, and a change of focus from the non-paying pirate, to the paying customer.

 

I bought a copy of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition back in '08. It was a great game. Flawed in the story, but still great.

I will not be buying this game due to this new bullshit. I will not pirate it either. You act like this is a bad thing. I boycott Activision games for the bullshit that publisher pulls too, and I boycotted EA for close to a decade.