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Successful Kickstarter Campaign Hit By Game Piracy Claims

Posted: 31 Jan 2014 02:39 AM PST

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was without doubt one of the most important devices to ever hit the home computing market. Developed by inventor Sir Clive Sinclair, the 8 bit device brought programming, gaming, color and sound to the UK market at very affordable pricing. Bedroom coding had seriously arrived.

After its launch in 1982 it went on to shift millions of units during a decade of production, but then disappeared taking its legendary gaming library with it. With its original adopters all grown up now and with cash to spare, the news that UK-based Elite Systems planned to resurrect the device was met with enthusiasm.

The company launched a Kickstarter campaign titled Bluetooth ZX Spectrum: Recreating the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with the aim of creating a Bluetooth keyboard that recreates the look and feel of the original computer, complete with its ‘dead flesh’ keyboard. It was covered by dozens of enthusiastic news outlets and retro-gaming forums.

With a plan to interface the device with iOS, Android and Windows and using existing ZX Spectrum emulated games already being distributed by Elite, the Kickstarter was a huge success, reaching and then surpassing its £60,000 goal. But now, on the final day of the campaign, the project has found itself neck-deep in controversy.

Elite Systems already publishes emulated classic ZX Spectrum games on the App Store, and it will be these games that will work with the forthcoming Bluetooth device. However, games developers who created these games are now coming forward to complain that while they signed deals with Elite several years ago, the company hasn’t paid them a penny.

Steve Wetherill was lead programmer on classic Spectrum games Nodes of Yesod and Robin of the Wood. He says that he and his business partner Paul McKenna entered into licensing agreements with Elite in December 2010 to include their Odin Computer Graphics titles in the company’s ZX Spectrum emulator pack on the App Store.

“We received (initially voluntarily, but later upon my prompting) royalty statements from Elite showing sales of the Odin titles. Eventually these statements dried up completely,” Wetherill explains.

“Over time, it became clear that royalties due under the agreement (which were to be paid within 30 days of the end of each calendar quarter) were not being paid. It is now over three years since this agreement was signed and to date no royalties have been paid.”

A classic: The Nodes of Yesod

yesod

Despite the lack of payment, Elite are still selling Odin titles on the App Store. Wetherill says he isn’t the only one suffering, with at least six other developers confirming that the have not received any payment for their games. In another case Elite are said to be using games without any permission at all.

“I am the author of Starquake, Firelord, and Wizards Lair for the ZX Spectrum. Like the other game developers here Elite Systems have been selling my games illegally, with no rights or contract to do so and making money from my original work which I hold all rights to,” developer Steve Crow explains.

Crow, who says that Elite have a history of selling games without permission, also notes an interview carried out by Pocket Gamer with former double Olympic gold medalist Daley Thompson, whose image was recreated in Spectrum button-bashing classic Daley Thompson’s Decathalon. The former athlete said that Elite approached him to be involved in an iOS release of the game but when he turned them down they included him anyway.

“Elite actually launched that game without my permission and without the official license,” Thompson explained. “It asked if I wanted to be involved in the project and I declined. Elite just went ahead and published it, anyway.”

Kickstarter backers have been calling for a public statement from Elite Systems on why they are developing a product designed to play games they haven’t paid for, but so far there has been no comment from the company.

TorrentFreak’s email to Elite with a request for comment has not been returned.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

Judge Understands BitTorrent, Kills Mass Piracy Lawsuits

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:55 AM PST

In recent years hundreds of thousands of Internet subscribers have been sued for downloading and sharing copyrighted material in the United States.

Most of these defendants have been grouped together in large cases, which makes it cheap for the copyright holder to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers. Instead of paying filing fees for each defendant, they pay a single fee by suing dozens, hundreds or thousands at once.

These so-called mass-BitTorrent lawsuits are possible because copyright holders argue that the file-sharers acted in concert. They all downloaded the same torrent file and joined the same swarm, they reason.

In a set of recent rulings involving the independent movies Killer Joe, Sibling and The Company You Keep, Federal Judge Stephanie Rose disagrees, as she actually took the time to understand how BitTorrent works.

In order to join multiple defendants in one lawsuit a copyright holder has to make it clear that they were involved in the same series of transactions. In other words, it has to be likely that the alleged pirates traded files with each other.

In the cases in question, there were weeks or even months between the time the first and last defendant was spotted sharing the film. This makes it very unlikely that all defendants did in fact share files with each other.

“In the Killer Joe cases, the January defendants would have to be connected to the Internet and still actively distributing data through the BitTorrent client approximately three months later to be involved in the same transaction as the April defendants, which is implausible at best,” the Judge writes.

Even more so, even if the defendants were found to share the file on the same day, that would still provide no evidence that they shared bits and pieces with each other.

“Even in all five cases where Doe defendants allegedly have ‘hit dates’ on the same day and close in time, there is no showing that the earlier defendants were still connected to the Internet and actively distributing data through the BitTorrent client at the same time as the later defendants,” she adds.

The copyright holders argued that alleged pirates can be joined in one lawsuit because they shared a torrent file with an identical SHA-1 hash. However, the Judge disagrees and notes that the hash provides no evidence that the defendants actually interacted with each other.

“Although each plaintiff has alleged that the defendants in each case were in the same swarm based on the same hash value, participation in a specific swarm is too imprecise a factor absent additional information relating to the alleged copyright infringement to support joinder,” Judge Rose writes.

“Any ‘pieces’ of the work copied or uploaded by any individual Doe may have gone to any other Doe, but may instead have gone to any of the potentially thousands of others who participated in a given swarm and are not in this case,” she adds.

Based on the above, Judge Rose concludes that all five mass-BitTorrent lawsuits should be limited to one defendant. The cases of all others are therefore dismissed.

Since copyright holders can’t easily prove that all defendants shared bits and pieces with each other, it is unlikely that the movie studios will succeed at filing cheap mass-lawsuits before this judge.

The ruling is definitely good news for the thousands of defendants who will be put in a similar position in the future. While there are no guarantees that other judges will reach the same conclusion, it provides defendants with additional ammunition to fight these cases.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.