More than two years ago, Amazon sued a network of websites that sold pirated DVDs of Prime Video exclusives such as The Rings of Power and The Boys. The defendants, believed to be based in China, never showed up in court. This week, a California federal judge awarded Amazon $6 million in damages and granted a broad domain transfer request, targeting registrars and registries.
This is nonsense.
I can’t just go and sell physical copies of Stardew Valley because the person who makes the game does not sell physical copies for XYZ platform.
Just like I can’t go and sell digital copies of something I don’t own the rights to just because it’s only available in physical form.
Y’all are doing that thing where you feel you have the right to other people’s labor. And going further and saying you have the right to profit from other people’s labor because they didn’t package their labor the way you want.
For gaming, lets say you have a title region locked to Japan but someone sells an unlocked pirated version.
Should they be able to sue for a product variant they very well could make but are choosing not to?
There’s the whole “no harm” rule, if they aren’t being harmed by selling to people who are not and never will be their customers…
I don’t think someone has the right to sell someone else’s product without permission. It’s as simple as that.
Note that this is differentiated from piracy. Y’all are muddying waters and sabotaging the cause when you entertain the idea that selling bootleg dvds should be equivalent to someone downloading something from the internet with no money changing hands. Regardless of constructed reasons related to availability.
Can it really be an infringement if there’s no physical source though? That’s the question.
Say someone does an online comic strip, I download the images, re-format them for print, and sell a print version.
There is no physical version to bootleg, the only reason a physical copy exists at all is because I put the time and effort into making one.
Same with the “Calvin peeing on things” car stickers. King Features and Bill Watterson could absolutely produce those themselves, but don’t. Watterson refuses to license the character for anything.
At the same time, they also haven’t gone after the people who are producing them.