software raids

"A special team of police officers are working round the clock in Iasi
(N-E Romania), visiting people who violate software distribution laws.
These officers connect themselves to neighbourhood (that's the word
they used) networks and, out of the thousands of people making illegal
downloads,they pick a few at random and pay them visits. They have search
warrants, so if you don't open, they can legally break your door down. [...]

The minimum penalty is a 25.000.000 lei fine
(~650 euro, alot by our standards), the confiscation of your PC plus
the filing of a criminal record in the user's name."

• taken from a local newspaper.

To make a long story short,all peer-to-peer junkies are being hunted
down as of this week. This is as per request of the EU commission. A
reader's comment pretty much summarized how most of us feel about
this. He said that high level corruption and the fact that people get
murdered
in the street for 5$ and a cola bottle all pale when compared to some
random guy downloading 50cent for his own enjoyment.

IMHO if it werent for these programs 90% of the people currently owning
a computer wouldn't have bought it in the first place given that the cost
of authentic software (windows + office + other software) is RAPE
especially considering a the average romanian's income.

What I want to know is if such raids are common in the EU and the US.

Nope, I know a few people in the U.S. have been prosecuted but nothing like your talking about. People complain about the justice system here in the U.S., but from the stories I've heard from people who live overseas we have a pretty good system compared to a lot of other countries.

Back on topic about the music though.

There was an interesting thing on a BBC podcast the other day which claimed that more money could be made through illegal software (which is sold cheaply on the black market - not necessarily the downloaded stuff) than through the drugs trade, and so it was being used to fund other crime.

The cost of software is completely insane, and I'm surprised there has been very little lowering of costs when there are genuine free alternatives slowly cropping up (Google's software for example).

Microsoft seem to have the right idea by releasing a free version of C++ and the like, but I'd have thought that we need people like Adobe to follow this before anyone will stop breaking the law because of high costs. Whilst GIMP is a reasonably credible alternative to Photoshop, most tutorials out on the internet are aimed at Photoshop users, which at ?500 isn't going to fly off the shelves if there are free (albeit illegal) versions on the internet.

I've heard rumours about the odd raid - although I suspect they're trying to target the people creating the dodgy copies of the programs rather than those downloading. I also wouldn't be surprised if they do this once in a while to give it a bit of publicity/credibility and as an incentive to not download over peer-to-peer networks.

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My site

C++ has always been free, it's a language. It's about time Microsoft released their compilers (If that is indeed what you're implying)

This = Lame

I understand trying to protect your market, but some people are taking this thing too far. It seems since the turn of last century (1900) or so, if people tried to create a better alternative because there was some unjust or ludicrous aspect to the product ... that changed whatever industry that was a part of ... but since then if you do anything, you're wrong, indefinitely. It's very sad. When did companies stop learning from how their customers act exactly? Seriously. If people are downloading your product, you may want to consider better free trials and cheap prices before you do the absolute "GET THEM!!" routine.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Indeed the new free cheap things are getting much better. I've got open office and tons of google software on my computer. Great stuff.

But yeah, this is really lame.

A few hundered people have been sued in Germany recently, people with 1000+ uploads on eDonkey. But I don't think that's the way of stopping online piracy anyway. Sometimes I think the way the big companies calculate their loss is like 10,000,000 files downloaded = 100,000,000 ? lost. But that's bulls**t. People download whole albums of artists they hardly know about. CD's they would never have bought if they were more than a free click away. I mean a 14 year old kid using pirate Photoshop isn't a loss for Adobe. The guy wouldn't have paid a 1000 bucks in store for trying out the liquify filter. I won't even get startet at uber-expensive 3D programs.

It's different with people selling the products on the black market. That sucks. Also a big company should pay for their programs. But raiding random people who copied files worth a chewing gum? It always reminds me of a documentary I've seen about video recorders when they got popular. The film industry wanted to sue the producers because people could "illegaly" copy films they see in TV for free. Or something similar. Today we're laughing.

Crono said:
C++ has always been free, it's a language. It's about time Microsoft released their compilers (If that is indeed what you're implying)

Ah, yes, that would be it. Sorry! :smile: Compiling stuff with Borland was near-impossible for HL and HL2. Their Visual C++ Express Edition is supposed to be able to handle them both.

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CD sales have actually gone up since Napster was created, because now people can test a band before they go and spend their money, so they're discovering more music.

I f**king hate the music companies. I bought a CD, and because of the protection I can't put it on my iPod.

Oh my uncle got published in PC Gamer about this kind of issue...

you've peeked my interest
where may i find this article

That's funny, I was just thinking that the Ipod is a reaction to
illegal mp3 sharing since in theory you're not allowed to rip CDA files
from original CDs. If people never ripped music the Ipod would have
never been born :biggrin: .

It must be legal to rip music from CDs, because Windows Media Player has a function called ripping where it does just that.

I'm not doing anything illegal trying to put the music that I payed 20 friggin dollars for on an Ipod so that I can listen to it outside of my house.