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I'm a little late on this news, but from Kotaku:
Here's One Way to Make a Pirate Pay — Dearly

Someone released a piece of malware masquerading as a hentai game. When installed it gathered personal information, including the person's name, and took a screenshot of their desktop and then uploaded the information to a website, publicly outing them as piraters of Cross Days, an erotic visual novel with optional USB sex toy interaction (for both men and women). Not only that but the EULA included with the torrented version said, during the installation, that it would do all that. :laugh:

I don't have to worry. I pay for all my hentai games with underraged girls...

Er...I mean....!

/Icararus mode: Off

The EULA is a perfect touch, honestly.

Brilliant. I've been suggesting that companies do this for years, basically leak copies of their software into the torrents but with spyware on it to reveal who downloaded it. Easy peasy court case.

Brilliant.

That software was REALLY mature for it's age though!

Espy said:

That software was REALLY mature for it's age though!

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What made it mature was it being sexually assaulted by its programmer.

And someone had to help it! Someone it could relate to!

Where might I find this website with everyone's desktop screengrabs?

uhhh.. you guys do know that "Calleja" is a very very very very very common last name, in, like, most countries in the world, right? SO if you, uh, like see that name in a screen grab, the chances of it being me are sliiiiiiiiiiiiiim to none. hehehe aranoid:

Necronic said:

Brilliant. I've been suggesting that companies do this for years, basically leak copies of their software into the torrents but with spyware on it to reveal who downloaded it. Easy peasy court case.

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Except the person they sued would win by arguing that the company clearly wanted people to have access to the game for free. After all, they released the game on the torrents themselves. Even if that didn't work, they could charge them with illegal monitoring and with illegally accessing their home computer through a private network, or worse... intentionally infecting a PC with a virus/malware. The class action suit from everyone who pirated the game would wipe them out.

Besides, you don't need spyware to find out who downloaded the torrent: They'd be able to trace the IPs of anyone trying to download it on their end unless they encrypt it.

Depending on how you worded the EULA I think a company with good lawyers could get around all that.

Raemon777 said:

Depending on how you worded the EULA I think a company with good lawyers could get around all that.

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Except EULAs are generally considered worthless by legal experts and would also be over turned if anyone had the money to challenge them in court. A contract you sign AFTER paying for an item is highly irregular and without a means to get your money back from a company if you refuse to sign the EULA, it's not likely to stand up to scrutiny. It's basically a scare tactic by the industry to bully you into doing what they want with their products.

Hm. Guess you are right. I wonder if companies could do it on the downlow though. Not have it transmit data about who downloaded it, but just load it up with viruses to trash someone's computer. That would be illegal of course, but it would only hurt the people that were stealing. Somehow I doubt any company would ever do this, as the lashback would be massive (if they got caught), but still.....something really appealing to me about that.

Having read that last week somewhere i recall that the info had to be put in manually... who the hell put in his/her real info on warez?! I swear, the main reason malware works is because people are retarded.

Except EULAs are generally considered worthless by legal experts and would also be over turned if anyone had the money to challenge them in court.

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One would hope so, but not everywhere is France, at times it's the UK: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/108/1083996p1.html