[Bastich]

Originally Posted by mag

But, as shocked as all of you will no doubt be by this statement, I kind of agree with Bastich

Someone call me an ambulance. I think I am having a heart attack...

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Bastich, that was harsh. The U.S. is trying hard to give all types of criminals their comeuppance, no system is perfect. Piracy would be categorized under white collar crimes, so I think the guy's punishment is fitting. I believe the fellow who worked with Martha Stewart is serving a two year sentence or something. Breen should at least be grateful he wasn't caught under Saudi Arabia's judicial system or similar. They would have cut his hands off, and how's that for justic, eh?

I wasn't actually trying to be all that harsh. I was speaking very pragmatically. Just picture Steven Wright speaking my post and you are pretty close to the amount of emotion I put into it. Maybe I should buy a microphone and include an mp3 of my voice so you could hear that I am actually not ranting at all.

My belief is that only people who pose a physical threat to others should be locked in a cage. There are other, better ways to treat petty crime that don't put as big of a burden on taxpayers or the FBI, for that matter.

$700,000 of non-provable profit loss? Peanuts. By non-provable, I mean that the software would definitely have been purchased legally by people if the pirated copies weren't available. That is a very dubious claim.

actually i think he got what he deserved, pirating is one thing, but making money off of it is totally wrong.

There is no difference between the two. If you download a game off the internet, you are making money off of it. The money you save by not purchasing it, is profit that can be used to buy other things. You may have a point about the degree of profit, but there is little difference in the actual crime. I am speaking only of copyright infringement here. I don't really feel that such profit is really all that big of a deal though. See below.

Originally Posted by remixor

Bastich, if you were a game developer and you spend years of your life developing quality games, how would you feel if this guy was always there releasing your stuff before it was even out and profiting off of it? I don't think the sentence was extreme at all. Four years? I don't know how old the guy is, but he'll have plenty of life left to live after this is all over. As LauraMac said, good riddance.

Actually, I have worked in the entertainment industry doing live productions. If someone wanted to bring in a video camera and film my show, all the power to them. Maybe they will show it to someone else who will then come and see the show. It is like paying for advertising. The losses can often turn into gains through word of mouth. Piracy has always existed and forever will. Even the whole mp3 thing is a joke to me. And I say that as someone who used to be a musician. Hmm. I guess I still am one, technically...

I love statements like "Maybe if the [FBI/CIA/Police/etc] spent more time worrying about [foo], we wouldn't have problems with [bar]"... as if law enforcement agencies as a whole can only focus on one thing at a time.

They do have limited budgets and personnel. It was quite obvious that we needed to have agents double checking other agents work or they would have noticed that known terrorists were coming into this country using their REAL names. I don't really want to go down this path though, so let's just agree to disagree.