Activision’s new CoD-war will be against pirates |
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| BY Adam Sandberg Sep. 22nd, 2008 | More on: |
The Call of Duty series has featured fighting against nazis, communists, terrorists - and dogs. Their current foe is none of the previously listed, but pirates. According to GamePolitics, Activision has filed lawsuits against six individual US pirates since 2007. The one who got hit hardest was pirate Shawn Guse, who agreed to pay out USD 100,000 after being accused of reproducing and distributing copies of Call of Duty 3 for the Wii and Xbox 360.
Other people that were charged were Chris Hyman who agreed to pay Activision USD 25,000 to settle a case over CoD 3 for the Wii and Tony Hawk’s Project 8 for the Xbox 360, George Laflin who agreed to pay USD 100,000, and Maryanne Leach who agreed to pay USD 1,000.
One argument pirates have been using since the dawn of illegal file sharing is that there’s no way in hell they’ll get caught doing it. There’s a lot of substance in that statement, but it seems that argument’s foothold is weakening. There’s more news of pirates getting prosecuted now compared to a couple of years ago, back when those who could possibly get caught were the ones making a profit out of it.
I have to say, it’s got to be hard to hand over 100,000 dollars and do it because you’ve pirated Call of Duty 3. It’s not like it’s the best game in the series. I swear I can hear the attorneys chanting “What should we do with the drunken sailor?” all the way from here.
September 25th, 2008
at 5:29 am
Shawn Guse is going round the internet trying to stifle reportage of him being a software thief. I received this from him: “My name is Shawn Guse and you have my name posted on your web site without my permission and I want it removed or changed to “A Washington man”, and I also want the link to the settlement removed if you have one. Please don’t contribute to the crucifixion of my name. If you are so kind as to remove the whole article that would be great. I have contacted many other web sites that are posting this and they are gladly removing it due to my request.”
My response was to write another article about him: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/09/25/shawn-guse-software-thief/
These thieves are pretty stupid. One told the press “I wasn’t doing anything more than an average college student does with torrents or MP3s, so it’s surprising companies like this are wasting time on people with little money.” So it is OK to steal if other people are doing it or if you only have a little money. Pathetic.