GTA ‘Cheat’ Developers Have Homes Searched and Assets Frozen
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
This feels severely heavy-handed for computer game cheating. The escalating aggression with which copyright infringement is being pursued is worrying in the context of other trends towards increasing corporate power with decreasing oversight.
I feel like saying 'aren't there other crimes the Australian Federal Police should be prioritising about a thousand cases higher than this?', but then that sounds like the whinging of someone pulled over for speeding. But a country's Federal Police force cracking down on computer game cheating? Is it not farcical?
But nearly all of the power is in the hands of the corporations and lawmakers and enforcement agents, and this is what they've decided to do. We don't have a lot of options to counter their decision.
I think it will take a small, dedicated group of people who will fight through legal channels and create technical/physical ways to avoid enforcement actions at the same time.
The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån were basically exactly what I've described. The international police and corporations cracked down pretty hard and illegally extradited Gottfrid Svartholm from Cambodia. Peter and Fredrik also went to jail too and still have unpaid fines.
Disgustingly, society thanked Pirate Bay for their sacrifices by switching to a closed, paid, corporatized service called Spotify.
Their sacrifice was in vain and we are all worse off 10 years later.
Or maybe what society actually values is different from what they believed it values or should value. Maybe it's willing to pay the entertainment industry for creating entertainment as long as it's available hassle free and so relevance of Pirate Bay declined once an alternative became available.
Spotify and YouTube are both certainly good candidates (though nothing is perfect, and they are far from it.)
What I'd like to shine a spotlight on, though, is how the operators of these major international businesses operated for decades before they finally "gave in" and started investing in streaming technologies.
Except, the 2nd part of the paragraph above isn't true - they haven't given in.
In my small country, they've funded a law firm with 50 employees to the count of dozens of millions of USD per year for 3 decades, to go after the little guy, who simply wanted convenience, and to listen to their favorite artists new shiny album, and was tired of paying outrageous prices for CD/DVDs that were released months later here compared to other countries.
Instead of, you know, actually spending that money to come up with a solution, funding developers, or whatever.
This is unacceptable.
In addition, they've spent untold millions in small countries (and large) doing political maneuvers to prop up their failing business models. We _know_ they did - and do - this.
This is also unacceptable. It's not the peoples responsibility to extend the life of failing businesses (possibly unless they perform some critical function).
And they are still continuing these practices. The lawyers they used are still 100% employed, now to "catch internet sharing criminals" and to literally _write laws and regulations_. This is not hyperbole, or slander, or rumors. It is fact, common knowledge, and widely reported. Taking advantage of the situation that most politicians throughout the 90s and early 2000s were illiterate about "the interwebs".
These companies deserve to go bankrupt.
They can - quite frankly - get fucked. I have nothing but contempt in my heart for them. It actually borders on hatred.
I could give sources, I could give links to the dozens of examples of these bastards suing people for whistling songs in supermarkets (although that particular example is unrelated to the topic, it speaks to my contempt). But frankly it's such common knowledge that I can't be bothered.
Spotify is decent, but it was not made by these companies - it was made in -spite- of these companies trying to actively stop and hinder development. And now they own it.
I will never use it, and certainly will never pay for it.
Most people who make money off music are doing live gigs. Society has collectively chosen to reward these artists for that effort, regardless of how they listen to it digitally.
But seriously? Sending police after people who enable players to teleport, have god mode and fly in a game???
That puts Rockstar and Take Two on my personal no buy list.