Digital piracy is something so many of us do without giving it a second thought. Whether it's using our friend's Microsoft Office disc to install the software on our personal computer, purchasing "bootlegged" DVDs, or downloading our favorite song through peer-to-peer networking. What we all think is an innocent act may not be so innocent after all...
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Don't forget about video games
Often we as the population only seem to think that digital piracy is just music and video files, mainly because it is the most common and easiest form of piracy. There also are tons of video games being copied from BitTorrents and pirated illegally. According to Science Daily 12.6 million people in over 250 countries are using these peer to peer torrents to share game files of the most popular game titles. Grant it most of these titles are computer games because it is way easier to modify the computer code to play a bootlegged game, rather than having a completely modded game console to play pirated games such as Xbox or Playstation. It is also suggested that the downloading of these such pirated games are way too high and are only continuing to climb, especially with the advancement to technology in the last five years. This has become a big deal for gaming companies and publishers because unlike artists and videos there are no other ways of income for games. A game is produced and you buy it, that is about it. Should there be a high fine or bigger criminal charges for video game piracy? Or should it be the same as everything else?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have heard about people buying bootleg games before, but never really know it was a big issue. Video games can cost up to $60 or more, so selling bootleg video games are taking away a considerable amount of money from companies. I feel like bootleggers should be punished the same way any other criminal. If a bank robber goes in and steals $10,000 from a bank, a bootlegger should be punished the same way as him if he stole $10,000 worth of games.
ReplyDelete