Internet Cafes: The untouchable Piracy?

**hellenes** · 12-05-2005, 05:57

Originally Posted by Papewaio

Since a democratic state reflects the will of the people... doesn't it reflect poorly on the people then?

BTW can you name the city with the largest Greek population outside of Greece?

Chicago, Melburne, Sydney...
These three Im not shure what you mean though...
On the democracy, well we all know what UK people wanted about the Iraq war and what Tony Blair decided...

Hellenes

**Papewaio** · 12-05-2005, 06:21

Actually we will have to wait for the next elections to see if Iraq is a significant enough election point to decide things... after crime, economy, employment etc...

Melbourne has a Greek population of about 800,000...

**hellenes** · 12-05-2005, 06:38

Originally Posted by Papewaio

Actually we will have to wait for the next elections to see if Iraq is a significant enough election point to decide things... after crime, economy, employment etc...

Melbourne has a Greek population of about 800,000...

Thats correct...
If something isnt important people bend over it, they disagree but they tolerate...
But why you aksed me about Greeks abroad?

Hellenes

**hellenes** · 12-05-2005, 07:24

Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Or you could simply stop patronizing them.

Did I patronise them?
We are having a discussion here and net cafes are a fact in most western countries (like Denmark, France)...
Where did I patronise one?
But even if I did does it change anything?

hellenes

**doc_bean** · 12-05-2005, 11:49

A couple of small remarks

-it's entirely possible that most cafes do run on a special license agreement, that probalby isn't as expensive to them as buying 50 copies og a game is. After all, publishers might see this as a form of advertising.

-no-cd cracks aren't always illegal, afaik, they will be in the EU soon due to a new directive.

-IP protection and anti-piracy are two different things. I don't think the average business owner cares about how we deal with pirated games, they'll worry more about our patent policy. And if they can run Windows on a few extra PCs without paying for it, I don't think they'll complain.

-Mugging people is hard work, and it's hard to predict your profit. the real money is in white collar crime

**hellenes** · 12-05-2005, 12:37

Originally Posted by doc_bean

A couple of small remarks

-it's entirely possible that most cafes do run on a special license agreement, that probalby isn't as expensive to them as buying 50 copies og a game is. After all, publishers might see this as a form of advertising.

-no-cd cracks aren't always illegal, afaik, they will be in the EU soon due to a new directive.

-IP protection and anti-piracy are two different things. I don't think the average business owner cares about how we deal with pirated games, they'll worry more about our patent policy. And if they can run Windows on a few extra PCs without paying for it, I don't think they'll complain.

-Mugging people is hard work, and it's hard to predict your profit. the real money is in white collar crime

Well this might be the case but there are still quite many game publishers for 40 latest games to be licensed...
But do the publishers care?
I havent seen any case of any publisher representative coming to Greece to react to the situation.
Rome Total War is being exploited for 1.5 euros an hour, people make huge profits out of Linage II fakeservers (set up by the net cafes networks themselves!!!)....
Windos OS on the other hand is being protected by the law, there is even a commission and an organisation set up to check all net cafes if they have legitimate Windows OS, while checking that they apparently dont notice the huge load of pirated games that are running on that OS...

Hellenes

**lugh** · 12-05-2005, 14:45

Irelands had a boom of internet cafes in recent years. In Dublin city centre at least, you don't have to walk much more than a few hundred meters to find one really.
I think we have the large Asian immigrant community for it though, they're largely foreign owned and used. Hellenes, you're getting ripped off though mate, the cafe I use has 100Mbps at .50 cent an hour, and this is in Ireland, land of the €4 cup of coffee!

I thought cd cracks were legal on the basis of personsal use in the EU? ie you can use em to backup your games etc or run the game of a harddrived ghost? Sides that doesn't get arounf mp-cd key issues so I don't see it being an issue for the internet cafes.