Fair point. The main point I was initially going for was that they aren't looking to pursue legal action in good faith, but that their main goal is using the massive trouble of defending against legal action as a threat to extort money. However, as we're pretty much on the same page about how scummy this whole thing is there's no further reason to beleaguer that point.

But then why do they only start now with it after allegedly millions or pirate activity? Why not in May right after the release of Witcher 2? The signal must be sent before the piracy occurs in order to be strong. Now that Witcher 2 is getting older and older and cheaper and cheaper anyway the desire to pirate it will be far below than in may.

Without more proof I doubt the info in the article is correct.

So, 4 pages of opinions and not a single shred of evidence to support the article's outlandish claims? GG, cheese.

As for the supposed tactics, better this then crippling DRM.

They do indeed, and such lawsuits end not infrequently in dismissal due to accusations of entrapment or incitement.

In any case, my interpretation of "we don't care about piracy" was in the sense that "we don't let piracy affect the way we treat our legit customers". I have no problems with GOG chasing up pirates, provided that the means are reliable and fool-proof.

If they HAVE been using IP and MAC data as a basis for these threats, then I can only condemn this in the highest terms. Both IPs and MAC addresses can be easily spoofed, and have been proven to be highly unreliable.

Some people get taken to court and LOSE after suffering from entrapment in the US, sadly.

Also remember that it takes time to hire the legal team; find the possible thieves and conduct research (checking the IP as well as correlating it to times of access and suchlike) even before they can start serving orders. They've probably also got to check their own sales records as well as registered games to ensure that they don't send a notice to someone who has legitimately bought a licence from them.

You're right. It certainly takes time. I just wish there were more information to go by than the tidbits by some law firms and the suspect claims of a pro-piracy blog.

This.

Yeah, I'll partially go with that too, with the note that if you mention "pirate and share" I'm going to assume that (unlike everyone else on that side of the barricade) you know the difference. As such, "pirating" should refer strictly to those who earn something from it (be it from selling "pirated" disks, subscription-based 'sharing' sites or even ads on free 'sharing' sites) and should pretty clearly be prohibited (as it involves making money off another's work), but "sharing", done strictly on the sharer's resources and for no gain whatsoever, should be free and not penalized in any way, shape or form.

Not leaning either way right now with this post, but it's funny how sharing game disks with friends is ok in some gogger's/player's eyes but not sharing a torrent copy. Just like listening to a song on radio or youtube is ok in most company's eyes(and people's eyes) but not ripping an mp3(even a crap quality one, so that negates the whole mp3 is better quality than radio argument a bit) off of a website to listen to alone.

The difference (at least to me) is that when you share a game disk you have one person with one disk passing that one disk onto one person. Only one person has access to the content at any given time. It's much like checking a book out from the library. Even when libraries lend out digital books there are only so many e-copies of the book in play at any given time, and those e-books are being read by an equal amount of people before being "returned". When you torrent, however, you have one person with one copy, sharing that copy with multiple people. If, for instance, ten people download a particular torrent, then you have eleven people with access to the game. Yet, there is only one purchased copy of the game in play. There is a major difference between the two - especially when you consider that the eleven people I cited above are generally far, far greater in number.

It's still depriving the company of selling a new copy to that other person though. In both methods they lose money potentially.

Ah, well I agree 100% with your main point, then.
Given the deep love people seem to have for Steam and several developers (like Blizzard) I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes. Now what I am not saying is that stuff wouldn't change, it most certainly would. What I am saying is that plenty of great stuff will still get made and that the current system pretty much sucks ass.
Except there's literally no evidence that this is what actually happens. Even if your young friends didn't buy many C64 games, that doesn't mean tons of other people with money don't. A lot of devs who made C64 games are still in the industry and a few of the companies (or their names at least) are still around as well.

On the contrary, there's ample evidence that even when TW2 was easy as hell to pirate that people bought it anyway... in droves. In fact the whole video game industry is full of said evidence regardless of the whining about piracy, second hand sales or whatever.

Some people will not pay, I'm not arguing that this isn't the case, what I am arguing is that there's ample numbers of people who will pay for various reasons, enough even to churn out AAA blockbusters.
There would be pirate servers just like there is for WOW, etc. Some would be for pay and some would be set up by your work buddy.

It's called entrapment in the US and it's fucking hard to prove as a defense. The jury is automatically against you, no matter what the law says.
I'm not sure why everyone calls them pro-piracy. I don't read TorrentFreak very often but most of their articles are more balanced than the evening news here.

It's like saying "the claims of a pro freedom group" when referring to the EFF, just because they have an agenda doesn't mean they lie.
But you know what the real difference boils down to? Progress. Yes, we've progressed to the point where we can share replicate this stuff. Will you cry foul when 3D printers are able to print you a new fender for your car? That too is progress.

Bertrand Russel rightly pointed out in 1932 that we'd long since had the means to support everyone comfortably on about 4 hours of effort per week (see his essay, In Praise of Idleness), it's gotten even better since then and yet people are relatively more poor since the post WW2 boom wore off.

We're so glued to our bullshit model of having winners and losers we can't just let progress happen. Let people work extremely minimally for their support and they can do whatever in their free time (I guarantee you'd have more video games, books, and movies to consume than ever before).

So again, the difference is progress, and I'd assert that you should see it as a good thing.