Topware Interactive has won fines of £750 and costs awards of
£2,000 from four people it had sued. The Court issued default
judgments after the people sued did not respond to the Court or
turn up to the hearing.
The law firm behind the action, Davenport Lyons, claims to have
obtained the details of 1,000 alleged file-sharers from ISPs which
it will now use in further cases.
"Copyright owners spend millions of pounds developing copyright
works for sale to the public for their enjoyment and yet many think
it is acceptable to obtain the work illegally and for free by
procuring a copy on a peer-to-peer network," said David Gore, a
partner at Davenport Lyons, according to press reports.
The award of damages vastly exceeds the cost of the computer
game involved, Dream Pinball 3D, which can cost as little as £9 to
buy. The high award is likely to be designed to reflect the fact
that in some file-sharing networks, downloaders of the game also
act as distributors of it to an unknown number of other users.
The case involved the BitTorrent system of file sharing, which
automatically makes users who download material distributors of
that material in order to make the system efficient at distributing
content.
