So it's ok to steal if you are poor? No one forced her to go to the torrent sites.
No it's not ok, but I sure as hell wouldn't sue her for a ridiculous amount of money. Only some coldhearted bastard would do something like that.
Are there no prisons? No workhouses? I didn't know that some companies in England were looking at the character Scrooge as a rolemodel.
I have no doubt it is a PR nightmare, but that's not really the point.
That's where you are definatly wrong. This is the point exactly. Like I said before I hate piracy. Do you think I like putting up with DRM or Starforce or only able to load a game 3 times before it blows up? No, I don't and I hate the people who download for free and the nonchalant attitude that they have towards it, however when the companies go after little people like that women then they turn me against them so quick it will make your head spin. It's just flat out wrong to go after the customers.
Keep trying to take down the torrent sites. That is where the real problem is. Make it difficult for the averge Joe (or in this case, Jane) to download products for free.
It doesn't sound like it. You've basically said it is ok for a poor person to steal because it is easy and they are poor.
Sorry, I'm not cold-hearted enough that I can't take into account that she is poor and has kids. If I was, then I would say let her go to jail or find someway to pay that absurd amount of money for downloading a stupid pinball game.
Suing her for $39.99 wouldn't do shit and you know it..
Neither will suing her for 16,000 pounds. Oh wait, it will do something. It will turn consumers against the company.
Bottom line is that they can't take down the torrent sites because they are located in countries that give them legal protection.
For now they have legal protection. I noticed you didn't quote any of the progress in Asia concerning pirating. You really should have because it has bearing in this conversation. The reason Asia is getting tougher on pirating is because the businesses are putting pressure on them. That is how Atari and the others should have done this. To keep putting pressure on the governments to change some of their laws to protect their property. If you think that is impossible then I should remind you that only seven years ago there were brick and mortar shops that dealt exclusively in pirated software and now they are gone. This is in China. A place where you would think they wouldn't care about other countries laws. I'm under no illusions that this is a major blow to pirates but at least this is a real tangible start, that I have seen, to solving the problem.
I know it is difficult for governments to make new laws without infringing on privacy and other rights, but it wouldn't infringe on anyone if there was a law that made distributing copyrighted material or distributing torrents to copyrighted material against the law. Then even Sweden could take down webpages dedicated to file-sharing torrents to copyrighted material.
Take down the source, not the people who use it. Without the source of all this hoopla then the average Joe or Jane won't be able to use it and won't be breaking any laws. There will always be people who want something for nothing but the majority of this problem is that it is so easy for someone not technically savvy to steal it.
Even
Peter Moore isn't 'cool' on this one, putting EA in my good book for once, it's been a while.
It's been a looonnnggg time since I liked anything said from EA (I think the last time was back in the late 80's), but Peter Moore explains perfectly why this is an asinine aproach to solving the problem.