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Preys-World - Pensioners "wrongly accused of piracy" by Atari

Thursday 30th of October, 2008 - 01:49:42 GMT

A mature couple approaching retirement were accused of sharing the game Race07 by Atari within the last few days. The problem was, Ken and Gill Murdoch, 66 and 54, claim to have never played that game or indeed any other title, whether at the arcades, or on the original 8-bit era machines, through to their current home PC.

Unlike the other piracy stories we've featured recently, this couple were lucky enough to have the threat of prosecution dropped after refusing to pay the parking ticket-styled £500 fixed penalty. The reason for ending legal proceedings by law firm Lyons Davenport was undisclosed. However, (apart from looking as popular as Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for targeting pensioners) anyone can see that Atari's actions would have turned the Murdochs into martyrs and cast doubt over the effectiveness of legal action to combat piracy.

Whilst the general assumption would have been the hijacking of a wireless network for piracy purposes, the Murdochs have wisely stuck with a wired modem, though it's not clear whether it was an ADSL version which normally combines a router in the box. Their problems stemmed from the sole use of an IP address as evidence for Atari's piracy allegation. In the broadband world, addresses only change when someone moves ISPs at the same physical location. The mere IP address record proves nothing if the better hackers out there use their knowledge to spoof someone else's IP, leaving the victim with the accusations and legal headaches for piracy.

A trickle of other people have sought legal advice, claiming to have been wrongly accused of file sharing. We think that it won't be long before we read about individual and class action lawsuits launched against the software firms in retaliation for their claims, should the publishers turn out to have made an error.

- Ken

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