Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

You don’t even have to be illegally sharing your files to have the gaming firms after you apparently.  Just ask Gill and Ken Murdoch. 

They’re senior citizens who don’t even play computer games and had never even heard the term “peer-to-peer” until they got a letter in the mail telling them they were being accused of sharing the game Race07 by makers Atari.  Their case was eventually dropped, but there are still hundreds of people this is happening to according to a Which? Computing magazine investigation.

We’ve all heard it time and time again.  The arguments over piracy and how big of a problem it is.  Apparently, copyright owners are sick and tired of it and are ready to play hard ball. 

With six million people estimated to illegally share files every year, it’s an issue for them.  They are cracking down even if it means going after the senior citizens, I guess.  They’ve begun watching the more popular P2P networks like BitTorrent, Gnutella and eDonkey.  Some of the game companies have appointed law firms in the ready to prosecute file-sharers. 

Many people think they are safe if they just download or share a couple files.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.  In a case in August, the games firm Topware Interactive won over £16,000 from Isabella Barwinka from London.  Her crime?  She shared a copy of Dream Pinball 3D. 

The companies are using anti-piracy firms like Logistep.  These firms find people pirating using their IP address.  Using this number, they are able to apply for a court order which mandates internet service providers to hand over information about the user.  Problems can arise with this whole theory when a user’s IP is “stolen.” 

For example, someone can piggyback onto another person’s unsecured wireless network.  Prosecutors tried to argue that all users are required legally to secure their network, but Michael Coyle, an intellectual property solicitor with law firm Lawdit, disagrees.  “There is no section of the Copyright Act which makes you secure your network although it is commonsense to do so,” he said.

Then you have the firms that encourage file sharing and make no bones to hide it.  Pirate Bay is just such a firm.  They readily admit to randomly inserting IP addresses into the list of people downloading files.  (Some of these IP addresses belonging to people who probably have never played a game in their life and wouldn’t know how to share a file if you paid them.)  They do this just to waste the time of the investigators checking and searching users.

It’s expected that the music industry is going to be following in the footsteps of the gaming industry.  The crackdown has only just begun, and it isn’t going to be pretty. 

Via [BBCNews]