A very real threat to everybody in Poland, even Ross

[BTGBullseye]

Please read this... https://torrentfreak.com/police-seize-hundreds-of-computers-over-pirate-movie-download-in-2013-171125/

 

The gist of it is, copyright trolls are actively and 'legally' seizing computers of random people based on unconfirmed IP addresses obtained 4 years ago. This is apparently a rather common practice nowadays within the Polish legal system. They rarely find any illegal content on the seized systems, and the people who are losing their systems will likely never see them, or the contents of the system, again.

 

“Polish prosecutors often decide to seize computers just because they got an IP address list from a lawyer. Sometimes even prosecutors don’t want to do that, but copyright owners complain to the courts, and the courts issue an order to seize machines."

[Alyxx Thorne]

Jesus christ... that sounds terrible. I really hope Ross hasn't illegally downloaded anything in the last 4 years...

[Zaraki]

I hope Ross is gonna be fine.

[BTGBullseye]

The IP address provided by ISPs generally are what's called "dynamic", meaning they change on a semi-regular basis. Ross might get transferred to an IP address that a pirate used last year, and have his computers confiscated because of it. He doesn't have to do anything at all for this to negatively impact him.

[Alyxx Thorne]

That's a bit unfair...

[Kaiosama TLJ]

Alyxx Thorne said:

Jesus christ... that sounds terrible. I really hope Ross hasn't illegally downloaded anything in the last 4 years...

 

My biggest concern is what is considered as a illegal download in Poland? I'm not familiar with their laws, but considering this crap is happening I can only imagine it has several loopholes.

 

The point were I'm getting at is that most games that Ross covered in Game Dungeon are abandonware, and while it's not illegal to download them they're still considered downloads from "non-official" sites, which may fall into "piracy" territory even if it technically isn't. But even if it's not the case, Ross reviewed Strife when it was abandonware, but now it's a commercial game again thanks to Strife: Veteran Edition, which, like Ross said in the follow-up episode, puts this game in a weird territory since it's technically not abandoware anymore, so...

 

And there's also the CarnEvil review. As far as I'm aware of, emulators are considered piracy in a lot of places, but only if don't own the original game, and Ross doesn't seem to own a original cabinet for this game. Although, I do hear that it's a bit more lax for arcade games of past generations, so Ross may be safe here.

 

I do hope that I'm exaggerating, but considering the situation it's only natural for me to expect the worst.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Kaiosama TLJ
The post became a mess with embedded link errors because it was made before the forum overhaul. (see edit history)