British woman forced to pay £16,000 in file sharing suit

That's quite a tidy sum she has to pay over!

I've chatted with a couple different companies that focused mainly on PC games who are thinking about switching over to consoles for two main reasons: 1). piracy is a huge issue and they have been relatively unsuccessful at stopping it without overly pissing off their consumers; and 2). Console gaming is absolutely huuuuuuuuuuuge right now, so why not give it a try?

I wouldn't be surprised to see other game companies try to also take alleged file sharers to court over copyright issues. I personally think these companies should focus on taking out organized file sharing rings, not individual sharers, but what do I know? :P

id Software "thinking" about consoles. I think whoever wrote this needs to get their facts straight. id has already released a lot of console games already.

Also, for piracy concerns, if a game has online multiplayer, then it should be a no-brainer to just use the cd-key as the online identifier. That's what the original starcraft did, and it would just not let you on if someone else was using your key. There is no need for copy-protection at all with this method. Of course, if the game has no multi-player component, then it's understandable.

"Although many games now have Internet activation and other anti-piracy measures, ..."

If this is properly implemented, it can make it very hard for people to play pirated copies, and PC games do not have to disappear. That's not to say I like draconian copy protections -- I just think that this is a viable protection, assuming that your target audience has some form of Internet connection. Also, I cannot say that Steam is a perfect content delivery system (or is safe from corporate abuse), but so far, I think Valve has so far ran it pretty cleanly. I recently got BioShock for 15 bucks on a weekend deal. Sure, you get no physical media, and you are tied to your Steam account, but so what? You can at least back up the content to your own media, as much as you want!

At the right price, both deserving sides can be happy (client and author/developer/artist/etc). In this day and age, we can cut out the middlemen!

I feel the same way as AlexSGV. There should be no need to put protections on games nowadays. Online activation is the way to go since virtually anyone who buy's games, has an internet connection of some sort and fashion. Also, if these companies think it will be safer going over to a console, they are sadly mistaken. Console games are copied all the time and usually played on modded consoles that bypass any checks. It will be the same situation as on a PC; Except now, you have drawn more attention to the console than ever before from the pirates out there.

If you live long enough you seem to hear both sides of an argument and still look to the latter for guidance. Years ago we shared our music via records with any one that had any music to trade, we listened to each others records, participated at "sock-hops", had home parties and no one came knocking on our collective doors. Then came the "ASIAN Pirates" we do not have to name names but they have no respect for any sort of patent or copyright privileges, and laws were enacted to counter there impact upon the industry and the trickle down effect has been the lucrative collections of fines from private personages. These autocratic laws need repeal, and only as voters contacting our "so-called" representatives can effect a change. Costs be dammed, the past retail for single 45's was less than .50 cents, when LPs came along the average price in the late 50s and early 60s was still less than $3.00; when CD's came about in the 70's they were about the same or slightly lower than they are now, with promises of driving the prices down we purchased CD players and laser disk players, and as always once the manufacturer's received our monies, they kept the prices high to provide richer profits, and the story has continued ever since. Share and Share alike, we copied our records to recording tape, we copied our music to HI-FI VHS tapes and that was what the manufactures as well as the suppliers of the tape recorders and VHS machines expected us to do, Tape machines were targeted as HI-FI capable as well as advances in tape machines, any remember the "Nakamichi Dragon" series, it even flipped the tape over so you were not bothered with flipping to continue your listening enjoyment. Just say no to commercial black-mail, you purchased the music for your enjoyment, if that means that your enjoyment includes sharing then share away, I will continue to share music, knowledge, and any else that I can avail myself with. The commercial freaks need to go after the commercial pirates, but they can't, so they come after the least able to defend itself, the public consumer. On another point every time that we conserve electric power, the utilities go before the local, state, regulatory boards and ask for increases in rates, why?; because there revenues are less than expected, but no public utility board was sanctioning them for paying excessive dividends to stockholders, let alone those utility companies that regularly paid an extra fifth yearly dividend. So time we need to discuss just where we all fit in to the larger picture.

Well said, Cpetite01. The entertainment industry has become one of greed. There are bootleg software discs sold everyday-people making profits off of others work. This is NOT filesharing. What is the difference between my girlfriend sending me a movie that we can watch together when I am away and us sitting together on the couch watching it? I think we should take up a collection for the "mother of two" the entertainment industry isn't starving. Maybe they should spend those hefty legal fees finding a way to prevent Chinese bootlegging or are they making enough profit that what goes on in Asian countries is of no concern?

Their greed will result in their greatest downfall! Greed is what destroyed ancient Rome, Spain, & England way before the 18th century. RIAA will die!