That's A Lot Of Piracy

wowzers, i mean that isnt a kid whos burning CDs or nothing, thats a heck of a lot. I wonder if they had their house raided or anything

"Charged before magistrate Saviour Demicoli, the teenagers pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them."

Yeah right, that's alot of backups

I doubt they'd be stupid enough to say they're their own personal backups - you have to present packaged originals as proof to dispute that. I think they'd be more inclined to be of the "ummm... I don't know where they came from but they're not ours either" mind.

The 14 yold could probably claim that as he is a minor he has no legal responsibilities regarding the pirated software (not old enough to sign contracts, not old enough to accept end-user-licenses etc.), or just claim he was corrupted by the other guy :P
CYer, Blitz

3,400 !!!

isnt it a $50,000 fine per title??

and i thought i was bad for getting lemonade tycoon of the net.

well.. you are.. but they are 3400x worse :)

I think they'll dispute the intention to sell them, which would be the major allegation towards them.

Stupid stupid stupid

thats funny, i wonder how they got busted.

i heard his pockets seams gave way and they all fell out onto the street....

we should pirate more, then original games will cost $5 like in russia :) mad!

or all game devs will go out of business and there wont be any games to buy at all. then you can keep ALL your money

Indeed.

[:)][:)]

you go right ahead :) you can be the kids cellmate. haha

oh but sir, they all accidently fell into the CD burner. It was an accident....I swear..

sir- there was a virus on my computer that kept prompting me to insert cd after cd. if i didnt it would wipe my hard drive. honestly sir.

Re. Makk's comment: Let that be a lesson to everybody, don't leave your CD burner tray open and unattended!

If they were 3400 different titles they could claim them as their personal collection (a lesser charge I would think.) It would be hard to explain 680 copies of 5 different titles without using the phrase 'personal profit'. I wonder if they were busted selling them at a school fate or something stupid like that?

I honestly can't see the appeal of being the leader in some massive software/movie pirating group. Sure, you probably get your stuff for free and early, but what else is there? Maybe it's just an ego thing.

Oh, just realised they probably made a lot of money selling them.. feel no pitty for them then.

I imagine that it would be a money thing. They could potentially make more doing that than they could with regular jobs at their age.

I doubt that they would have much idea of what intellectual property is at their age either, so they wouldn't really understand what is wrong with what they are doing.

I wonder if they purchaced the discs that they burnt everything to? ie 'we shouldn't steal the discs because that is wrong.'

the 18 year old should have known quite well what he was doing.

Souri - What else is there? How about a nice anal streching when you are caught and chucked in jail :D

JohnN: i am 16 and i know how bad it is to steal some one elses hard work and sell it for your own profit. So i am quite sure that the 18 year old knew but the 14 year old probably had no clue. That's the worst part, the 18 y.o took the 14 y.o for a ride as well.

I think it would be fairly naive to say that the 14 year old had no idea what he/she was doing was wrong, okay - maybe not a *full* understanding but they would be fairly aware of piracy and it's implications. I'm fairly sure at the age of 14 most people had a fair understanding of the world, and probably got p***ed off when people told/assumed that they didn't :P

never seen 'anal streching' and 'nice' used in the same sentence before! More likely to get a suspended sentence and a hefty fine wouldn't they?

not if i was the judge.

thats probably why your not the judge ;)

yeah. lucky for him. ;)

I wonder if everyone played by the rules and we lived in a world without piracy - how much cheaper would games/movies/music be? If companies didn't have to spend any money on anti-piracy, and they didn't loose any sales to piracy, the average price for their product would have to come down. -Then I could afford to buy more games!

Games would probably be more expensive since there would be no "alternative" method for getting the games, so they can jack up the price.
If you don't believe me, countries where piracy is rampant (such as china) sell games for 70-80% less because they are competing with the pirates for market share!
(In fact, piracy may be the reason that game prices have stayed reasonably static the last 5-10 years or so instead of rising with inflation).
CYer, Blitz