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Modern Warfare 2 Pirate Thwarted by Investigators
by Jeff Mattas, Nov 06, 2009 6:47pm PSTA report in VentureBeat tells a tale of software piracy in our own backyard, and its serious consequences.
Eighteen-year-old Christian Del Amo was arrested by Miami-Dade police officers yesterday after allegedly attempting to sell pirated copies of Modern Warfare 2.
On October 30, Activision Blizzard hired online investigation firm IPCybercrime to look into suspicious posts on Craigslist advertising Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundles for sale, roughly a week and a half before their release date.
Posts in the piracy forums on xbox360iso.com seemed to indicate that Del Amo had obtained a copy of the game and cracked the copy protection this past weekend. The fact that pirated digital release copies of Modern Warfare 2 hit the torrent sites the next day doesn't seem like mere coincidence.
Investigators used social networking sites, user posts in online piracy forums, and several sting operations to identify those involved in the pirating operation, which ultimately lead to Del Amo's arrest yesterday.
Prior to this run-in, Del Amo had a site for selling modified Xbox 360 hard drives loaded with pirated software. For just $150, he'd sell you a 250GB Western Digital hard drive containing 125 pirated games.
"We plug leaks every day," said Rob Holmes, owner of IPCybercrime, "but this was one of the biggest ones of the year."
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Some of it is valid, but piracy in and of itself is not a problem. The actual issue always has and will be piracy relative to sales, and in that respect, the consoles (pretty much) always fare better. But, again, console piracy is a serious issue. Good to see a site acknowledge that. It seems to so rarely happen.
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Console vs PC piracy? Well, i'd say there probably a lot of both, i don't see much console personally, but i'm not in a console centric crowd.
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Erm, ok. But this hasn't been plugged at all, in fact it's probably made more people pirate the game who may not have known it was possible.
And what would the guys motive be to crack and then post the game online? It goes against his attempts at selling the game.
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With PC piracy you can't (in the west), yet it's the PC piracy that's vilified the most.
I guess that's just too difficult for many people.
"Many people find it hard to get hold of games they enjoy, it can be a frustrating and unpleasant experience. It's for that reason I chose to cut out the middle man and match up customers with games sans fuss. This dedicated retailer free approach works out great for everyone and offers much much much more choice. Try it before you criticise it!"
Sorry, just had to get that out.
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