Did you miss the part where I said wait a week before it activates and then have it activate at random dates afterwards?

I said this for three reasons:

1. People see the game, hear of no problems, and it spreads like wildfire (Spore already have over 3k downloads at the beginning of thread, how many does it have now?).  A week later people then find out it has the virus and by then it's already on a lot of systems just waiting.
2. This would cause confusion because people could download it without a problem and think they have the correct version.  They would keep spreading that version and then it would all start again.
3. People would become paranoid because you really never know if you have a safe or a waiting to explode version.

Losing all your data is kind of different from getting an itch. Pirating a game has an impact from $0 to $50 (depending on whether you were going to buy the game or not). Deleting someone's hard drive can make them lose an unbounded amount of money.

err to answer again:

Piracy is not stealing but it's still illegal because it's counterfeiting goods (here software) which is a crime. However it's not the same crime as it's an indirect process. I'm not saying it's good, i'm just saying it's not theft.

The type of crime matters a lot, you won't see pirates go to jail, they'll be fined. The ones that go do jail are the ones that do direct damage by either stealing, or selling counterfited goods (which there is direct because the sale did take place), but this is not piracy.

satisfied with the answer? because to me that is the same one as I put up there but with different words... I would have thought that the prada bag and nike shoe exemple suffice to make the link with counterfited goods ^^ but from Ali's post it's apparent that not.



And Benkenobi, I do agree that games and software are the ones most hurt by Piracy and sometimes hurt in a way that harms, however unlike movies and music, they have a means of protecting themselves... search and arrest the rippers.... as it requiers a skill beyond pressing the record button to crack a software.

Similarly Ali, your 8 man months would be better served to try and find the groups like Reloaded and pay a front page in newspapers once they are arrested so that you get an actual effective solution.

Purchasing a brand new game in the middle east at most stores would set you back by around($70-90apporx). Clearly these prices are not in any way sustainable by a consumer. Heck I'd say most companies are so greedy n desperate to make money that they would go as far as sue people for it.(case in point RIAA) Charge fairly for the games ($40-50) and sales would definitely double. Stealing isnt cool. but neither is charging $90 for a game when consoles cost just $200-300. Everyone needs to profit, but there is no need to be a bitch about it!

and I'm happy that the core discution turned from "puting a virus to delete the hard drive" to "make save files corrupt" because that is the point I initially came to argue about it being flawed.

3. people's norton would be updated with the known virus (that or norton gets sued for not providing the service they are paid for), and you're prank is useless as pirates would just download a demo of norton to check it...

If it gets to that point I've already won. 

Remember, the point is to get people to think twice before pirating my shit.

There's no convincing you, you're just dead set in your opinion.....

Stop arguing piracy is cool, it isn't.....

People loose their job over it.....

well there is the whole thing about using Yasu to prevent blacklisting of virtual drives. You also have programs like Peerguardian and such to block "bad" IPs....

I don't think that the companies that prompted these programs to apear think they have won... on the contrary, they have probably made pirates and the distributors harder to catch.

actually ali since you're there, I read in one of your thing that people were now paying royaltees to use your softwares legaly, does that mean they were companies and not people?