Actually, he said he downloaded the ISO because his computer didn't have a DVD drive. If I'm not mistaken, there was a retail version of The Witcher 2 and (in my books) this would be a legitimate reason to download a working copy of a legally purchased game. So it is relevant (enough.)

In both cases the company can argue they made available a legal alternative (digital download editions) as he knew he had no DVD drive he should (legally) have purchased one of those rather than the edition he couldn't use...

While they do not treat me as a thief by putting damn DRM on the games, CDP / GOG have all my support.

The pirates are all guilty of to have converted my hobby in a big DRM mess in first place.

Some people value box art and cloth maps and that Geralt bust or whatever. You don't get that crap with a digital copy. And (again) the legality of downloading depends what country you are in. For example; file sharing is still (assumed) legal in Canada as long as you own a copy of the work. Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of others downloading it from you to verify that they are entitled to the copy in question. (At the time of judgement, it was actually likened to photocopiers in public libraries.)

Fine I'll prove if your entitled or not heres your subpeona for all your computer hardware and games/ account passwords for steam etc so we can check you own it... It'll only take us 6 months... a year tops...

This is why you are generally told to settle unless you have proof one way or the other thats obvious to the court

Why would CDP need my Steam account information? Is that indicative of the shifty foundation of their case? Seems fishy to me, how about you, judge? And did I mention I keep all my receipts organized as anally as humanly possible? But I'm a gracious man so I'll give them a chance to settle.

Obviously I was referring to pirating rather than buying or watching something legally. Of course you have the option not to buy something. The question is the legality of the access you used to get the material.

Again, most pirates & downloaders in my view aren't really worth going after - seeders and initial uploaders are. But that doesn't mean that a downloader isn't violating copyright and a company is well within their rights to sue them if those downloaders don't have a legal copy even if it is my opinion that it isn't worth it. It's still not as bad as DRM.

In case you got it on steam and they would ofc request it to verify you hadn't falsified your receipts... No matter how anal you think you are the prosecuting lawyer is going to be even worse it's a shame but it's how it works in these rather annoying days.

Way to overreact there.

One, the source of this information is highly unreliable; taking it as truth without any independent confirmation is like trusting Republicans to paint an accurate picture of Democrats.

Two, this is an action undertaken by CDProjekt, not GOG.
While both are anti-DRM, neither have ever said they were "cool with piracy". All they said about it was that DRM was not an effective means of preventing piracy, which is why they don't use it.
I don't know why that makes them "cool with piracy". Nobody is "cool with piracy" except pirates (i.e. self-entitled assholes who think they have the right to enjoy someone else's work without having paid for it).


Personally, I don't like DRM, but I like pirates even less. If companies managed to invent a way to deter piracy without making life more difficult for legitimate customers, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, I don't think IP tracking is it, considering its unreliability.

That being said, we don't have any actual reports of innocent people receiving warnings to pay up.
Considering the source, it's highly likely that the German person who reported this WAS a pirate, so CDProjekt at least managed to target some of the right people.
And frankly if an innocent person receives such an e-mail, they're far more likely to delete it and flag the the sender as a spammer than to actually pay up.

They don't need to access your Steam account. Every game you purchase or receive as a gift on Steam gets an email receipt, you can just show that.

If you activate a game with a retail code, well, you don't get a receipt. But you still have all your purchases and activations listed at https://store.steampowered.com/account/

You really think it's to actually verify? BWAHAHAHAHAHA god no it's to make your life as inconvenient as humanly possible and waste as much of your time as they can so you'll settle rather than try and take it to judgement. They will claim that without access they can't prove anything as you could fake any other part of it...

Just to add, it also depends. For example, in Poland, policemen don't need a warrant to search your house and take the evidence if "there's possible danger of evidence destruction etc etc" and the prosecutor has to confirm and accept these actions.

Let's call this "after action warrant".

Usually recovering legal fees requires a separate legal action to be brought after the conclusion of the original case, and recovering legal fees typically isn't a simple matter of "you lost, now pay me my legal fees" (in many countries you have to show the the suit was frivolous or brought in bad faith to recover legal fees). All the while you have to spend thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to defend against the original suit and then even more to try to recover that money. I don't know what your financial situation is, but many people don't have $10,000+ just sitting around to spend on a legal battle (and good luck getting a lawyer to take a case like this on contingency).

As I mentioned before, these facts are at the very core of why law firms like to do things this way- because actually trying to fight one of these things (no matter how off-base or frivolous it is) costs more than simply paying up. It's an incredible abuse of the legal system, and the people who engage in this practice are absolute scum.

That's standard anywhere in the world. Most people would be outraged if somebody was being brutally murdered next door while the police officer went to court to get a warrant to enter the premises.