Tag Archives: piracy

Virgin to attempt to kill music piracy with a brand new idea

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Virgin Media has decided to launch a brand new idea which, they think, might kill off some of the music piracy in the UK.

The new idea is supposedly going to launch sometime before Christmas, and it will mean that Virgin Media broadband users can download unlimited DRM-free music for a monthly charge to their broadband bill.

In addition, Virgin have used their brains. You would think “what a stupid idea – people will get the songs from Virgin and stick them on P2P networks”, but Virgin has agreed to aggressively police all the big P2P networks to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The deal is backed by one of the biggest music labels, Universal, and Virgin are hoping to have even more labels by launch date.

Personally, I think it could work, but only if people are willing to pay the price. If it does work, then the chances are that other ISPs will catch on and maybe we’ll be able to combat music piracy.

180,000 pirates sail the seas for The Sims 3… in just 3 days!

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Electronic Arts aren’t going to be in the best frame of mind at the moment.

The Register today posted that according to P2P download counting firm, BigChampagne (yes, I’m a little confused about the name too), The Sims 3 has been downloaded 180,000 times in just 3 days (May 18th-May 21st) by means of file sharing sites.

Now I’ve just been doing a few little calculations here. Say every single one of those 180,000 people bought a copy of The Sims 3 legally, and each copy cost £39.99. The total cost of those 180,000 copies comes to £7,198,200. That means that EA has lost just over £7 million in just 3 days.

It does make you wonder a little bit about how bad piracy is.

And then you have to think about who uploaded the file in the first place. Somebody has to – it doesn’t just magically appear. It would have had to have been someone related to EA in some way. The general public can’t get copies of The Sims 3 until June 5th, so something has gone wrong there.

As I have mentioned many times on GEEK!, I don’t like to get involved with piracy. I will certainly be getting my copy of The Sims 3 legally – besides I want a physical copy of the disc and box (I’m that kinda sad guy who likes to have the original box and discs – I still have my Sims Deluxe Edition and Sims 2 discs in their original box).

If you are going to wait for the legal copy, then its in stores on June 5th.