Game Sharers Prosecuted

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

It’s happened with music, and now it’s happening with games. Those who upload the Dream Pinball 3D game from Topware Interactive to file-sharing sites are going to be taken to court, the BBC reports. The game maker has hired UK law firm Davenport Lyons to pursue the British offenders, and already four people have been ordered by the Central London Court to pay $1500 each, and the amount could rise to $7,000 after costs.

How do they identify the illegal file sharers? Davenport Lyons is using File Sharing Monitor software from Swiss company Logistep. It collects the IP address of the file sharer. Of course, that still needs to translate into a physical address, and that’s held by the broadband company, but the lawyers believe a recent High Court decision will force ISPs to hand over the addresses.

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Davenport Lyons’s David Gore has said he expects thousands more prosecutions befoe the end of the year and warned:
"There is no difference between stealing a DVD from a high street retailer and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network. We hope that it will act as a deterrent. There is a hard core of file sharers who are just interested in getting something for nothing."

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