Activision Lubes Up And Sticks In

Apparently, Activision has begun to target individual “pirates” of their…now here’s the kicker… console games.  Everyone knows piracy is rampant on PC’s, mainly the fault of publishers themselves (lookin’ at you EA), but fewer are aware of the ease of piracy for console gaming as well.  Granted, console pirating takes an initial buy-in fee because of Mod Chips and DVD-DL’s but that hasn’t deterred very many from going through with it.  Now Activision has targeted some of these console “pirates” and slapped them with tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of dollars in lawsuits claiming “damages for each infringement of each copyrighted videogame.”  The folks over at GamePolitics are currently watching this as it develops and if you want good coverage head on over there.

What really astounds me is the audacity of Activision to pull the same stunt that the record companies pulled a few years back when they went after individual music downloaders, typically grandmothers and tweens.  Real smooth Activision, just wait for the PR blowback on this one to explode and rake in the negative press.  The other thing that astounds me is that, in all but one case, the defendants are without legal council and are having to settle out of court for tens of thousands of dollars.  Wow, a multinational corporation suing people who can’t afford lawyers, classy.  The other really fishy thing that everyone needs to keep their eye on is that Activision hasn’t released how they have targeted the individuals they have.  At the moment it just seems like a completely random assortment of titles and instances, though CoD3 seems to feature prominently.  Here is a run down of the cases so far uncovered:

Shawn Guse of Federal Way, Washington. Guse, unrepresented by counsel, agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Wii, CoD 3 Xbox 360) to settle the case. Read the Guse settlement.

Chris Hyman of Abbeville, South Carolina. Hyman, also unrepresented, agreed to pay Activision $25,000 to settle the case. (CoD3 Wii, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Xbox 360). Read the Hyman settlement.

George Laflin of New Jersey. Laflin, apparently the only defendant who had an attorney, agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Xbox 360). Read the Laflin settlement.

Maryanne Leach of Northome, Minnesota. Leach, with no attorney, agreed to pay Activision $1,000. Read the Leach settlement.

Kenneth Madden of York, South Carolina agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Wii, Cod 2 The Big Red One PS2, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Xbox 360). He too was unrepresented. Read the Madden settlement.

James R. Strickland, aka Ryan Strickland of New York State; case is still active (CoD3 Xbox 360). Read the Strickland complaint.

It is unknown whether the copyright violations occurred in the course of file sharing, or whether there was some more complex mechanism afoot. Activision’s court filings do not specify the manner in which their copyrights were violated, or how they came to learn of the violations.

$100,000 for one game!! And it wasn’t even a good one!! If Activision wants, they can head over to GameStop and sue their asses for reselling millions of copies of CoD3 for 10 bucks at no profit to Activison.  These cases all seem to include games that are actually quite old so that tells me that it took Activision some time to get these cases together.  Activision was quickly approaching the list of douchebaggery, but now, they have officially reached elite level of Douchbaggery alongside EA and LucasArts.

-Apoc

~ by lolispotting on September 20, 2008.