same here
I still find it hard to swallow that all your hardware can be confiscated because a company filled a lawsuit - I can see that happening if you target government/military stuff, or have ties to terrorism or launder money for the mob , or child p - something along these lines but the lawsuit comes from the state/authorities not some DRM-making company, wtf

Bravo DENUVO, you are now officially worse than StarForce.

In all honesty, despite my general stance on DRM and copyright-bullying, I don't see something out of line here.

What Voksi was doing was potentially hurting Denuvo's business, so they have an obvious cause to sue him, at least in civil court. In certain countries what he was doing (circumventing DRM) is also illegal (don't know how it is in Bulgaria, where Voksi apparently lives and operates).

Seizing personal computers and other devices for evidence is also a pretty standard thing. All in all, this appears to be just another chapter in the standard fight between the DRM-makers and DRM-crackers.

This is a violation of rights of CIS citizens, oppression of the freedom of creativity, arbitrariness of power and destruction of the freedom of the Internet. 😀 Alexey Navalny, Petro Poroshenko & other democracy activists should help he and then take down the anti-people extortionate Duenvo.

People with incomes less than $100 per month are mourning.

P.S. Do not take my post seriously. 😀 It's a joke.

dr_st wrote:

In all honesty, despite my general stance on DRM and copyright-bullying, I don't see something out of line here.

What Voksi was doing was potentially hurting Denuvo's business, so they have an obvious cause to sue him, at least in civil court. In certain countries what he was doing (circumventing DRM) is also illegal (don't know how it is in Bulgaria, where Voksi apparently lives and operates).

Seizing personal computers and other devices for evidence is also a pretty standard thing. All in all, this appears to be just another chapter in the standard fight between the DRM-makers and DRM-crackers.

I see your point, and I'm not trying to defend the bloke, but it does seem strange for his equipment to be confiscated if (as far as I know) all he has done is to break the protection on commercial games. What he has done is legally wrong, and also wrong morally (although there is something to be said for the argument that Denuvo maybe shouldn't be inflicted on paying customers), but he's not committed a violent or morally repugnant crime, or targeted national security or anything, so to a lot of people, myself included, will see his arrest as treatment as being harsh and overkill. Plus it might well be inferred by us that the way he was and is treated over this matter is somehow much harsher because of the wealth and indirect influence of the software companies (or the USA government acting unofficially for the software companies), rather than because of any consideration of the letter of the law.

Well, considering the thing is about computer stuff, it makes sense to confiscate his gear to safeguard evidence.

Kerr Avon wrote:

but it does seem strange for his equipment to be confiscated if (as far as I know) all he has done is to break the protection on commercial games.

As was already pointed out, this is standard practice for collecting and protecting evidence. It will be returned to him once the police takes / learns whatever data they need from it.

Kerr Avon wrote:

What he has done is legally wrong, and also wrong morally

Not all countries have laws that say that the act of cracking itself is illegal, although if he was also distributing the cracked software, then that in itself is a clear copyright infringement, which is indeed illegal in most jurisdictions. Don't want to get into the moral discussion here.

Kerr Avon wrote:

to a lot of people, myself included, will see his arrest as treatment as being harsh and overkill

Where did it say he was actually arrested? His original post only claimed he had to "go to the police and explain himself", meaning to give a testimony, which is the obvious thing to do when someone presses charges / files a lawsuit against you. I don't believe he is in custody, is he?

Kerr Avon wrote:

...but it does seem strange for his equipment to be confiscated if (as far as I know) all he has done is to break the protection on commercial games...

AFAIK, is really hard to say that someone is guilty if the proofs of his crime are destroyed. In this case, the proofs are (mostly) in his computer... if the police let him their devices, his disks will be blank well before the judgement (note that police may have some other proofs linke ISPs logs and those things).

On the flip side, this tactic can (and has) been used to target and harass legitimate competitors both in and out of the business world. Creating forensic copies of the drives to safeguard any potential evidence is a viable and appropriate step in the investigation, but this should be done as expeditiously as possible and the property returned to the accused.

If the accused is found guilty or culpable by a recognized and accepted legal process, then he can be inconvenienced by a fine, prison time, injunction, etc.