Tag: Intellectual property
Nine Inch Nails release 400GB of raw, unedited concert footage for fans to make their own DVD
If you’re a NIN fan, then you’ve just been handed a massive, if a little belated, Christmas present. Trent Reznor, known for his liberal approach to his intellectual property, has released 400GB of raw, unedited HD video footage shot at three recent shows in Victoria, Portland and Sacremento.
Spore becomes most pirated game ever
Largely thanks to the draconian DRM bundled with Will Wright’s ‘Spore’, the life-simulation game has been downloaded an epic 1.7 million times since its release at the start of September. If my maths is right, that means that one copy is downloaded every five seconds or so. If that rate had been maintained over the whole year, then people would have snagged 6.5 million copies.
Interestingly, second place in this year’s top ten most pirated games, published by Torrentfreak, was the Sims 2, showing that piracy isn’t limited to hardcore gamers (who generally hate the Sims), it’s become a perfectly mainstream pastime among ordinary people. It’s impressive that despite being released in 2004, it’s still right up at the top of the list, though it’s unclear how The Sims 2’s multiple add-on packs are counted.
(via MCVUK)
Related posts: SPORESUIT: EA sued over Spore DRM | Spore fans threatened with game ban over DRM discussion
Atari abandons filesharing lawsuits
Following the news the other week that some pensioners had been accused of downloading pirated games, Atari has abandoned its ‘sue-your-own-customers’ strategy, developed in conjunction with trigger-happy lawyers Davenport-Lyons.
Although the company maintains that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy”, this is a positive step from a company realising that the only thing it’s actually getting out of the campaign of intimidation is bad press.
Will other companies follow? Codemasters is the biggest games publisher still associated with the troubled law firm. With any luck, it will wake up too, and realise that bringing legal action against its customers is far more trouble that it’s worth. There are many other options for making money with games.
I’m off to go buy some Atari games.
Atari (via TorrentFreak)
Related posts: Pensioners ‘caught’ pirating games | Atari and Codemasters join video game piracy legal fight – £300 fines on the way to 25,000 game-sharers
The Pirate Bay hits 15 million downloaders and 3 million registered users
How appropriate. Just a few days after Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008, the Pirate Bay – the world’s most notorious bittorrent tracker – has announced that it has hit 15 million peers, and 3 million registered users. For those of you unfamiliar with bittorrent terminology, that means that they’ve got 3 million uploaders, and 15 million downloaders. That’s more than the populations of Norway and Sweden put together…
