A VentureBeat story details how Activision Blizzard was able to track down a pirate selling Xbox 360 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 bundles on Craigslist, and how the cracking of that crime led to the arrest of another individual selling illegal copies of the game.
The game in question, of course, doesn’t come out until November 10, prompting the publisher to call in IPCybercrime, a Dallas-based private investigation firm that specializes in online crimes. Turns out, employees at a retail outlet had stolen a crate of the bundles from a store.
However, the thieves had already sold a bundle to a software cracker that was able to figure out how to make illegal dupes of MW2. In what was probably not a coincidence, copies of the game started to make their way onto online torrent and peer-to-peer websites soon after.
Using an email address from a forum post, investigators were able to link a Facebook account to the poster and then, in turn, link an address to the Facebook account. Following a buy/bust sting involving a physical copy of MW2, police were able to pin the crime on 18-year old Christian Del Amo of Miami (pictured).
IPCybercrime’s owner, Rob Holmes, said Del AMo was in position to sell “thousands” of the illegal copies.
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How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
November 6, 2009
Posted in
Poll
Shout box
Andrew Eisen: Here's a telling bit: the page with the updates to the DRM? Yeah, it's down right now. And MS wonders why this "online check" stuff irks us so much.06/19/2013 - 3:40pm
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Imautobot: Damage is done, I am not going to give them another chance.06/19/2013 - 3:38pm
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Andrew Eisen: "Online authentication will still be required, but only during a console's initial setup" Hopefully, that means setting up Xbox Live and such.06/19/2013 - 3:38pm
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PHX Corp: @EZK one down, one to go06/19/2013 - 3:37pm
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IanC: Yeah, too little, too late. They lost my trust, and this sint enough to get it back. Theres just this lingering fear that one day it will come back, in some way.06/19/2013 - 3:35pm
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E. Zachary Knight: Gamasutra has confirmed it. They are reversing their DRM policies. Not sure what it all entails though. http://gamasutra.com/view/news/194649/Microsoft_reverses_Xbox_One_DRM_policy.php06/19/2013 - 3:33pm
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E. Zachary Knight: Rumor has it that Microsoft is just going to up and ditch its DRM policies before launch. http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/microsoft-to-pull-complete-reversal-on-xbox-one-dr/1100-4673/06/19/2013 - 3:13pm
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E. Zachary Knight: It is the same price as the existing slim, uses all new cables (power and composite) and does not have optical audio. So you have to use HDMI if you want HD video and surround sound.06/19/2013 - 2:12pm
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E. Zachary Knight: Interesting. IGN is recommending that you just skip the new 360 redesign. http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/06/18/unboxing-the-xbox-360-super-slim06/19/2013 - 2:12pm
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Papa Midnight: Rumor - Steam to Allow Game Borrowing06/19/2013 - 1:24pm
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Papa Midnight: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59560606/19/2013 - 1:24pm
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Andrew Eisen: Hey, that's exactly the point of our latest poll! Which I just noticed I somehow failed to post yesterday. I better fix that.06/19/2013 - 11:34am
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PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/microsofts-muddled-messaging-shown-off-on-national-te-514280891 Microsoft's Muddled Messaging, Displayed On National Television06/19/2013 - 9:57am
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Imautobot: Maybe there really is something to be said about selling a game at a fair price.06/19/2013 - 8:35am
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MechaTama31: Imautobot: I dunno. Ask my hundreds-strong Steam library, which I have played maybe 10-20% of. Those sales are just too good to pass up... >.>06/19/2013 - 7:38am
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Imautobot: Bought 5 GOG games last night, now I wonder if I'll play them. Why is it so comforting to know we have it, and yet such a challenge to bring ourselves to play it?06/19/2013 - 7:28am
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Andrew Eisen: Okay, fixed. For really reals this time!06/19/2013 - 12:42am
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Sleaker: @AE The actual link to the pay what you want is www.indiegamestand.com not desura. You seem to infer where it's at but never posted a link.06/19/2013 - 12:01am
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Andrew Eisen: LEGO: The Movie! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPnY2NjSjrg06/18/2013 - 9:39pm
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Zen: http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20130614/OFFDUTY02/306140030/New-Xbox-sin-against-all-service-members-06/18/2013 - 7:33pm
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Comments
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
I find it kinda of nice that they're going after the guy who made the initial upload for a change. I find it hard to sympathize with a publisher that comes down hard on end users that just know how to download a torrent. On the other hand, i'm happy to see a guy incarcerated for stealing a physical copy, making n copies of it and then worst of all trying to sell those copies.
Lets just hope the justice system comes through and with more than a slap on the wrist but less than life ruining jail time.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
That is why I get all my games from gamestop or from ebay or half.com, a sister site of ebay.com. But I look for 100% people on ebay or half to make sure other people have rated them and like their service. I don't buy games or that stuff off of craigslist. That would be a bad idea & anyone that buys games that HAVEN'T come out yet before the release date are idiots!
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
People would know those are illegal copies and not bother with them. They can easily wait for the real game.
When Jack Thompson runs his mouth, does anyone really care what he has to say anymore?
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
copy infringment is not illegal(you can be sued in cival court over it sometimes)...selling the softwre without a licsnes is criminal tho ^_~
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! Stop supporting big media and furthering the criminalization of consumers!! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
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http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
THAT is how you bust pirates and theives. You don't drum up overly expensive DRM that only punishes legit customers, you do al ittle footwork and track down the idiots hwo actually are selling stolen product for cash.
BUt hey, that'd take actualy work ,and, can't have a CEO doing that.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
+10
No more useless DRM, please.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
I was at Gamestop this week picking up Borderlands (THE ENDING SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!), and a friend who works there was telling me that some of his friends already had a copy of MW2, due to having a modded 360 and downloading it. Anyway, they apparently didn't have the modding quite down, because once Xbox Live noticed that they had been playing the game, it shut down their accounts. HAHA.
Interesting story, Gamestop has had MW2 for the better part of the week. They just can't give it out yet. But some employees are less than strict with their policies.
Also, while getting Borderland, I got a first look at the 'NVG' that come with MW2. If you spent money on it, I have bad news: they're actually WORSE that that 'spy gear' toy nightvision crap.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
AL
to get backups to run on a 360 you need a flashed drive, you can go the mile and get a modchip and what not to make it do more but a simple software mod loaded to a 360 DVD drive with 10-20$ worth of hardware laying around will do the trick.
Its mostly playing the games befor they hit the shelfs that get people baned.
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! Stop supporting big media and furthering the criminalization of consumers!! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
---
http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Chances are, the fact they were playing a game that hadn't even been released probably tipped them off ;) They were probably silly enough to try and go Multiplayer with it or the like.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Apparently, they were playing the full version, which means that it racked up those lovely 'achievements'. And once they noticed achievements for it showing up on XBL accounts, they got wise, and banhammered the lot of them. What's funniest is some of the people I know of being banned had just bought a year's subscription, and will not be getting any back from the look of things.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
If there were Digital Darwin Awards, they'd be up for nomination ;)
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
I dunno, does losing a game account fall along a digital version of removing oneself from the gene pool?
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Its not just a game account its your live account,everything you bought for it and that 360s connection to live as well. So it kinda is.... LOL
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! Stop supporting big media and furthering the criminalization of consumers!! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
---
http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
it's a console ban. you can switch your harddrive to a new xbox and everything will be back to normal. you will still have your full account along with your microsoft points.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Whilst I applaud Blizzard for catching the criminals, I must, once again ask what the point of DRM is, I think this little incident once again proves that it is not only a waste of time for users, but a waste of money for the companies.
When someone can, in a very short space of time, break the DRM system, then all it adds up to is an inconvenience that does nothing but push up the cost of creating and buying games.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
To try to prevent re-sale, and that's pretty much it.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Problem is, it won't prevent resale, what it will do is both encourage piracy, and allow people to rip-off other people who don't understand how DRM works.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Keep in mind that they were busting this guy for the xbox 360 version, not the PC version. I've never heard of a console games DRM even marginally inconveniencing the customer.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Fair enough, I'll admit my knowledge beyond the PC stage is pretty limited, but it still seems to me that something that can be cracked so easily doesn't really seem to serve a purpose, it seems that most of the people who get caught with pirated software are caught by human observation and common sense, not DRM, so companies are paying twice for protection, once in DRM and once in the wages of the XBox Live staff, and only one of them is actually appearing to be effective.
Re: How to Catch Thieves and Pirates
Explain that to the CEOs who OKed this crap.