I don't know how many of you are familiar with piratebay.org but I recently found all the legal threats against them @ http://thepiratebay.org/legal ... some of them are just comical...

for Instance SEGA send them this:

the response doesnt have > next to everything.

From anakata
To: law@iprights.com
Subject: Re: URGENT - FOOTBALL MANAGER TRADE MARK INFRINGEMENT

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 law@iprights.com wrote:

> Dear Sirs
> Our client: SEGA Europe Limited
>
> We act on behalf of SEGA Europe Limited (â^À^ÜSEGAâ^À^Ý) in the enforcement of its Intellectual Property Rights in the United Kingdom.
>
> As you will be aware, Sega is world famous and is recognised as being an industry leader in interactive entertainment. Sega, and its software developer Sports Interactive Limited (â^À^ØSports Interactiveâ^À^Ù) have recently announced that its new football management PC game â^À^ØFOOTBALL MANAGER 2005â^À^Ù is due to be launched later this month (see: http://www.sigames.com/n...view&article_id=1029 <http://www.sigames.com/news.php?type=view&article_id=1029> ). As a result of the recent publicity our client and Sports Interactive enjoy a substantial reputation and goodwill in the FOOTBALL MANAGER name.
>
> Further, SEGAâ^À^Ùs developer, Sports Interactive is the owner of a UK trade mark registration for FOOTBALL MANAGER under number 2,169,952.  We attach details of the UK registered trade mark for your information.
>
> â^À^Øthepiratebay.orgâ^À^Ù website / FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005
>
> It has come to our clientâ^À^Ùs attention that through the service provided by your â^À^Øthepiratebay.orgâ^À^Ù website, users are able, by clicking on a link on your website featuring the FOOTBALL MANAGER trade mark, to download an unauthorised and illegal version of our clientâ^À^Ùs new FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005 PC game. In this regard, your website is currently listing FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005 as number 1 in its â^À^ÜTop 5â^À^Ý and a substantial number of UK users used your services to download this game in the UK.
>
> By providing this service to UK users using the FOOTBALL MANAGER name, you are infringing the FOOTBALL MANAGER trade mark in the UK. Further, our client is concerned that due to the volume of illegal copies of our clientâ^À^Ùs FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005 PC game being provided via your service our client is losing substantial sums of money in lost sales.
>
> This email is ask that you immediately remove the link complained of, and to confirm that there will be no further misuse of the FOOTBALL MANAGER trade mark in relation to your services.
>
> In the meantime, our client reserves its rights in respect of any causes of action available to it in this matter and in respect of any claim for costs and/or damages against you. In this regard, your speed in complying with our requests will be taken into account.
>
>
> Yours faithfully
>
> Willoughby & Partners

Dear Sir(s), Madam(s), and/or Slimemold(s),

I have the distinct pleasure of informing you that no Swedish trademark
and/or coypyright law is being violated, regardless of how the situation
may or may not be under UK law. I would advise you to read up on Swedish
trademark law, more specifically Varumarkeslag (1960:644), as this might
save you a great deal of future humiliation.

I would also advise you to
a) not write the subject all in UPPERCASE, as it makes spam filters go
nuts
b) not attach meaningless data from trademark registrys in PDF format
and
c) stop lying.

> The Isis Building, 193 Marsh Wall, Thames Quay, London, E14 9SG,  United Kingdom
>
> Tel:  +44 (0)207 345 8888 Direct Fax: +44 (0)207 345 4555 law@iprights.com <mailto:law@iprights.com>
>
> www.iprights.com <http://www.iprights.com/>
>
>
>
> IMPORTANT: The contents of this email and attachments are confidential and may be subject to legal privilege and/or protected by copyright.  Copying or communicating any part of it to others is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, copy, distribute or rely on this email and should please return it immediately or notify us by telephone. While we take every reasonable precaution to screen out computer viruses from emails, attachments to this email may contain such viruses.  We cannot accept liability for loss or damage resulting from such viruses. We recommend you carry out your own virus checks.
>

Then I guess you'll have to send us another oh-so-scary-sounding e-mail
about http://static.thepiratebay.org/sega_mail.txt and
http://static.thepiratebay.org/sega_response.txt :-/.

 

ThePirateBay threats are the best

Until TPB's own country started caving to international (read: American) pressure and broke their own country's laws to persecute brokep and his team (that run TPB)

Now the servers are spread among a few countries... so sad.

If they complain that we take without giving, they should make themselves open to donations. I'm certain the community would show its gratitude for their efforts. I would.

Point....this shit happens
(courtesy of bluesnews.com, courtesy of Eurogamer)

Crytek to End PC Exclusives [April 30, 2008, 09:46 am ET] - 94 Comments

There's a Cevat Yerli Q&A on PC Play (thanks Eurogamer) with word that Crysis is likely the last PC-exclusive game from developer Crytek. Though he once again dismisses speculation that a console port of Crysis is in the cards, he places the blame for declining PC game sales squarely on the shoulders of software pirates, a theory that has become pretty commonplace. Word is:

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

qft.   has saved me assloads in cash on games that seemed appealing but after 30minutes of play weren't worth it.   ESPECIALLY on the hand held systems.

Though, I do have to say that with most of the US hooked up with broadband in one form another it's (piracy) become more widespread and that there's a good amount of people out there that aren't willing to pay for what they can get for free whether it's legal or not.  But blaming piracy for Crysis falling short is a stretch.  It was the first/only "DX10 omg!!" game.  what'd they think was gonna happen?  And from what i saw of it, sure it looked awesome but a video of a turd in HD is still a video of a turd.   Maybe it's just me but the line up it was up against seemed more appealing to me.

piracy will only lead to more subscription requirements

The thing is, Crysis was one of the most heavily advertised, and pre-buy-incentive-ridden games to grace our eyes in a very long time.
I've played the game and let's just say that if people don't like it, they should definitely stop playing games.
Personally, I have had friends tell me after watching Crysis, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna go download that right now and try it out."
It's pretty disgusting, but speaking out isn't going to do anything about it, it takes massive action on a massive scale to actually kill piracy.

Ever wonder why developer fees are going up?
Ever wonder why it takes 60 dollars to pay for a game that might have costed 40-45 dollars in the past?

It's because of this attitude that "I don't have to pay for it if I don't want to."
This is the logical equivalent of walking into a Best-Buy and taking out two plasma tv's without paying for them (I wonder how many people in here would do that?).

I've got some news for you guys, stealing causes inflation in the market being stolen from, inflation in one area causes prices to rise in that area, prices rising in one area causes inflation in other areas and so on...
This may seem comical or stupid to internet idiots, but you can work your way to any area of our current economy by just downloading a game that you don't feel like paying for.
Even if you don't believe it now, just think about why you are paying even two cents extra for a gallon of gas.

example? most people point to radiohead. Kid A (or was it ok computer?) received little to no backing from their record company in the states. no marketing, nada. however a demo of the album was relased on napster, all of a sudden on release it jumped up the charts completely unexpectedly when it was receiving no air time and no publicity. the only possible explanation for this is napster. there are other examples out there too that i can't remember because it;s been ages since i did the research.

secondly, i have actually done some research in this area for my degree. and if you can argue that all i'm saying is spin i can counter with exactly the same. i found basically NO independent studies done on the area, except for a handful which suggested the loss to industries is significantly lower than being reported, only 20% max of what they state. this isn't a slant, it's what i found out. unfortunately there have been little to no follow up studies done because of the vested interests at stake. I would like to see more done on the issue, and if i'm wrong i'm wrong, but the information out there at the moment doesn't give the complete picture.

and another distinction that has to be made (from my economics background). in a lot of scenarios pirated software does not have any real worth. it cannot absolutely be held as a loss to the industry. why? because person A pirating software from person B does not stop person B using them, whereas if person A stole person Bs TV there is a distrbution of existing wealth (or worth). 

finally in relation to the games, music, films industries you're taking about highly imperfect markets, all the time becoming increasingly more so, dominated by a few key players largely (although the gaming one less so). people will leave an imperfect market regardless, this is why they are called imperfect, another factor to take into consideration when judging the real effects of piracy.

so in light of this, can you present me with facts that aren't a simple regression of sales loss and piracy?

oh and in terms of marketing. all marketing is aimed largely at existing members of the market ( i mean look at the current GTAIV ads, is someone who's never played games before seriously going to see anything remotely alluring about it? it says little to nothing about the product for the uninformed consumer). yes they are receiving increasing prominence primarily due to the alrge amounts of money the main players are throwing behind their business models. but by and large Sony;s and Xbox's failures with the current generation is that they haven't enough to the market to replace those who are growing. Ninteno's marketing strategy is the only one out of all the major players across platforms to seriously atttempt to do this. but if you target a finite group basically without attempting to attract new agents, by and large the rate of dropouts will exceed the rate of growth. (and this was all documented previously, especially around the console releases, i couldn't be arsed finding any of those articles but it even made Time)

edit: to clarilfy, I am not denying that piracy is wrong. it clearly is. i am not denying it represents a loss to the industries, it clearly does. however, it is almost certainly being overplayed by the industries.

it is also worth noting that the internet and telecommuncations is rapidly changing how we consume these products. movie and music industries grew at a time when ignorance was rampant, they exploited the artist and the consumer. the consumer these days have far more power, but the industries are failing to adapt their models to suit the needs of the modern consumer. this is why we are seeing huge volumes of piracy (oh and there is evidence to suggest, at least in the developed countries that as the industries have made their products more accessible that piracy growth is actually falling). 

secondly in relation to the games market, again the original model grew to suit a small market, where large margins were needed to sustain the companies. however as the market is increased exponentially we're not really seeing the real worth of these products falling as they should have under perfectly competative economic models. so of course the industry isn't going to accrue the income it should. piracy is here, it's here to stay. if the PC market finishes expect to see more concerted efforts to crack the other formats. the industry needs to take efforts to give INCENTIVES for people to join the market, not disincentives for piracy.