The 'Little Bear' Warning

[ComSoft6128]

Dodgy dealings in Deutschland in 1989?
So what, involving a CPC, could bring the police to your door:
                                                                                                      Cracking?
                                                                                                      Hacking?
                                                                                                      Pirating?

If anyone knows please add a comment.

Links:
https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?p...
https://cpcrulez.fr/info-tlb.htm

Not emulated - original hardware and software.
Please note that  the aspect ratio for this YouTube video is 16:9 but the CPC monitor
has an aspect ratio of 4:3 so you may wish to adjust your viewing device accordingly.

[eto]

Cracking was no crime in the 80s. But pirating was.

There was one lawyer who was very infamous for identifying people who swapped games. He was contracted by some publishers and published classifieds in magazines where he offered to swap games - and he answered on classifieds, where other people offered to swap games.

Once he had your address and some evidence (like lists of games or disks), he reported this to the police and at the same time, wrote a written warning, for which he could charge a fee to you (around 2000DM). Depending on the size of the case, the police could come to your home for a dawn raid - or just send you a letter so you had to come to them for a hearing.

[pelrun]

Germany is a weird case - lawyers there can proactively investigate copyright violations and then issue summary infraction notices and demand damages and legal fees, even when they *aren't* employed by the copyright owner and have no explicit permission from the copyright owner to do it. And they have no onus of proof; the victim has to prove they didn't do it.

No other country does this, because it's incredibly fucked up, and a total scam designed to make those lawyers rich.

[ComSoft6128]

@eto & @pelrun -   & 

[Poliander]

For the sake of completeness, it should be said that this practice has been made much more difficult by a change in the law since 2020.