18-Year-Old Modern Warfare 2 Pirate Was Arrested

By Shayla
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Grand Master

Shayla

Posted
Posted
There are a lot of games that end up on the market well before their official release dates and there's nothing the publishers and developers can do at this point but accept the fact and deal with the losses. Well, Activision will have none of that and has decided to take a hands-on approach on the smuggling business. When an ad for several Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundles surfaced on Craigslist, the company decided to contact a private investigation firm to deal with the matter.

IPCybercrime.com, the Dallas-based firm, responded to the ad and requested to purchase said bundles, but also spotted another ad. The seller claimed to be a stock boy for a major game retailer and the two ads were put together by the company when the two suppliers of pirated Modern Warfare 2 copies were found to be related via a social network. The private eyes relayed the information to Activison that confronted the two ?dealers,? whom, faced with reality, decided to give the games back to the retailer's loss-prevention staff.

What was a narrow escape for these two was a bit of a more dramatic scenario for Christian Del Amo. The investigators found one of his posts on an Xbox piracy forum, in which he asked people to donate him the funds to purchase one of those ?early? MW2 bundles. What would seem like simple naivety quickly turned into insidious intentions, as he claimed that he would need the copy in order to crack it and redistribute it online.

IPCybercrime tracked his e-mail address to a Facebook account, from where it obtained his cellphone number and found out what the 18-year-old's name was. The police department was contacted and it put together a sting to apprehend the young man. The game was delivered by an intermediate that eventually led it back to Del Amo. He was arrested and is currently held in the Miami Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. This wasn't his first incident regarding piracy, as he was known to have sold modded, 250GB Xbox 360 hard drives pre-loaded with some 125 hacked games. Even with its incisive actions, Activision wasn't able to keep Modern Warfare 2 from reaching the net, and, apparently, the Xbox 360 version is already available on several torrent sites.[/Sourceurce : Softpedia

Grand Master

PixilEyes

Posted
Posted
activision in their failed attempt....first they **** of their loyal pc fans then they try to go all "RIAA" on everyone...can't wait to see what they do when someone cracks iwnet in the new game

Why is it fail?

When people sell illegal copies of disc I think it's totally fare to take legal action.

Grand Master

kinetix63 Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Pirate is a bit of a misleading term in this article if you ask me. They were legitimate copies, they just happen to be stolen from a retailer. Pirating generally tends to suggest an illegitimate copy, rather than an official boxed one. Bit of FUD if you ask me.

Veteran

cabron

Posted
Posted
Pirate is a bit of a misleading term in this article if you ask me. They were legitimate copies, they just happen to be stolen from a retailer. Pirating generally tends to suggest an illegitimate copy, rather than an official boxed one. Bit of FUD if you ask me.

I agree and whatever he did was retarded. Specially posting this in Craigslist... :no:

Grand Master

XerXis

Posted
Posted
Thanks Activision for giving me another reason to not buy MW2.

what? why? because they busted some idiot teen who wanted to make a buck out of illegal copies? what harm has been done to you that you decided not to buy the game?

TBH, I don't believe you were ever going to buy it...

Grand Master

Ji@nBing

Posted
Posted
People complaining about Activision taking action are either retards or repeatedly pirate games.

Maybe both.

Give me a break. This kid is clearly a moron, but he doesn't deserve to go to jail for what he did.

what? why? because they busted some idiot teen who wanted to make a buck out of illegal copies? what harm has been done to you that you decided not to buy the game?

TBH, I don't believe you were ever going to buy it...

He didn't want to make a buck off illegal copies. That was a separate incident involving different people. He just wanted to get donations so he could buy it and share it online.

Veteran

Ash

Posted
Posted
Pirate is a bit of a misleading term in this article if you ask me. They were legitimate copies, they just happen to be stolen from a retailer. Pirating generally tends to suggest an illegitimate copy, rather than an official boxed one. Bit of FUD if you ask me.
What was a narrow escape for these two was a bit of a more dramatic scenario for Christian Del Amo. The investigators found one of his posts on an Xbox piracy forum, in which he asked people to donate him the funds to purchase one of those ?early? MW2 bundles. What would seem like simple naivety quickly turned into insidious intentions, as he claimed that he would need the copy in order to crack it and redistribute it online.

IPCybercrime tracked his e-mail address to a Facebook account, from where it obtained his cellphone number and found out what the 18-year-old's name was. The police department was contacted and it put together a sting to apprehend the young man. The game was delivered by an intermediate that eventually led it back to Del Amo. He was arrested and is currently held in the Miami Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. This wasn't his first incident regarding piracy, as he was known to have sold modded, 250GB Xbox 360 hard drives pre-loaded with some 125 hacked games. Even with its incisive actions, Activision wasn't able to keep Modern Warfare 2 from reaching the net, and, apparently, the Xbox 360 version is already available on several torrent sites.

Thats the piracy part.

Actually I am surpirsed that if he was known for selling modded 250G Hard drives with 125 hacked games on it, he wasn't already in deep trouble. He probably was on probation, and the MW2 thing was the final straw.

Collaborator

testroom_9

Posted
Posted

the title makes it sound like he downloaded it an then a swat team arrived...

what actually happend is he physically PAID for stollen goods and then took money for doing this on the understanding he was going to copy and re distribute the thing!

i'd hardly compare it to downloading a copy for personal use.... not that thats ok either...

Proficient

Treemonkeys

Posted
Posted
So you think that the guy who pirated the game did the right thing? I think he is just another idiot.

Well let me clarify. I do not agree with intellectual property rights, so piracy is a non-issue for me, though I do avoid it not for moral reasons but just to avoid the consequences.

That said, I am completely against real theft, such as a stock worker stealing copies as described, that is both stupid and wrong. So I would agree, he is just another idiot, but he is not the one trying to sell me a game, so I have little else to comment on him.

Now lets consider Activision, from what I gathered the copies were stolen form a retailer, not Activision itself. I'm assuming Activision was already paid for these copies, and lost nothing but the IP argument of the "potential sale" via the copying that would ensue after the theft (which can just as easily happen with any legally obtained copy). That to me seems like the only reason they got involved was to publicly make an example of piracy, not theft.

Now when the company is spending it's resources on private detectives for the sake of making an anti-piracy scare tactic instead of spending it on resources to make their product better, I will be critical of them and I won't buy their product.

**actually reads the article** he wasn't a "real" pirate

He's a real pirate or he's being accused of being one. The original copies were real but supposedly he wanted them for the sake of copying them.

I am against theft and for copying.

Experienced

scratch42069

Posted
Posted

I don't blame Activision at all for protecting their work in these situations. Violating the release date is serious business with games nowadays and the guy in the story should have known that. What irks me most about the release date breakers is not the piracy aspect of it but that the endings of a game could get given away before people have played the game. I could care less how a person gets a game or when just don't spoil it for me before I get to play it lol.

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