Friend's letter from a solicitor

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

My friend received a letter from a solicitor acting on behalf of Codemasters, I’m pretty sure. It says that he’s got to pay £500+ for making their Colin McRae game software available for others to download (presumably when he was downloading it using a torrent client).

The fee is for the game, the loss of business, the payment of the solicitor, and the payment of his ISP (probably for his information?).

However he never installed the game, never ticked a license agreement. Surely he can contest that part of the fee?

Is there anything else he can do?

#2

Sue the company who THINKS he installed the game. Then laugh in their faces as they don’t know what to do about it.

#3

I’d say they have a good case, and it would be worth just paying the money… Lawyers are not worth the money.

Make sure it is a real case and not a scammer trying to get free money. that would be a great scam.

#4

he’s not being asked to pay a fee for installing the game illegally, rather for piracy / distribution of pirated software.

#5

Makes me want to be careful - even though all the programs I own is legit.

#6

500? That’s not bad at ALL. the ususal numbers I’m aware of here end up jacking en extra ‘0’ or two a the end of a figure like that. Your friend should consider themselves lucky, pay the thing off, and never download copywritten crap through torrents again. I won’t say that I’ve never downloaded stuff, but there is no way on this earth you could EVER get me to do it via p2p like that. Downloading is one thing, uploading slaps a great big huge target on your back.

it’s too bad, really, that torrent is so prominent in the piracy community. The technology behind it is fantastic, but now comcast and I;m sure other ISP’s are choking the bit torrent transfers, so a lot of really cool apps that take advantage of it are probably getting screwed along with the illegal crap.

I hate when they claim it as a loss of business. Surely one could argue that anyone attempting to download the game was never in the market to have bought it anyway? I mean, how many people out there go “I think i will buy a new game today” and then hop on Pirate Bay?

#7

This is in the UK?

Google the Law firm - see if there are accounts of other people getting the same notice…

I don’t understand how they could have gotten information from his ISP without a court order. It should be within his rights to ask for a copy of that court order.