UK law firm Davenport Lyons has applied for the names and addresses of 7,000 IP locations in order to chase down gamers who have pirated games, and this week said that it had just got its first conviction in court. The conviction left one illegal file sharer with a bill for $32,000, most of that money going to Topware Interactive, owner of the computer game Dream Pinball 3D, and for legal costs.
David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons, said: ‘Illegal file-sharing is a very serious issue resulting in millions of pounds of losses to copyright owners. As downloading speeds and Internet penetration increase, this continues to be a worldwide problem across the media industry which increasingly relies on digital revenues.’
These early convictions are likely to see a global campaign of suing file sharers, for games now instead of music and video, and Davenport Lyons is offering a low pre-set fine to resolve the suits, if gamers will promise to stop making games available on P2P.
The award of damages follows a recent government brokered deal between the UK’s music and film industries and leading Internet service providers (ISPs) to tackle illegal file-sharing. Some six million people are thought to engage in illegal file-sharing each year, a trend which has cost the music and film industries many millions in lost revenue.
Several thousand names and addresses have already been ordered by the High Court of London to be released by the ISPs concerned. The evidence supporting the disclosure applications and subsequent proceedings is obtained by forensic computer experts Logistep AG, based in Switzerland, which has developed software to search for and accurately identify the IP addresses used to upload the copyright owners’ work.