The Entertainment Software Association recently released its 2012 annual report detailing its many affairs within the industry.
According to its report, the ESA's Anti-Piracy group collaborated with representatives of the Piracy Working Group to design and implement anti-piracy strategies against the U.S. and six foreign countries through training of international law enforcement officials.
Anti-piracy measures included the stopping of both online and retail outlets from offering illegal game downloads, pirated games and offering of modded consoles
3.4 million takedown notices during the first eleven months of 2012 to ISPs in the U.S. and three key countries to address P2P network's infringing activity were sent by the ESA. Google assisted the association by taking down more than 99 thousand search engine results containing links to pirated games. Sites like eBay, craigslist and Amazon were ordered to take down a collected amount of 94,719 advertisements for infringing items.
The ESA also detailed five major U.S. enforcement actions in order to curb piracy. In Huntington Park, Ca, the FBI seized 750 pirated Wii and Xbox 360 games, 15-30 hard drives containing more than 1,000 pirated games, several computers and more than 50 modded game consoles at retailer Fuzion Games. A craigslist owner in New York had items including 195 pirated Xbox 360 games, a number of computers and hard drives containing almost 800 copies of pirated Wii and Xbox360 games.
A breakdown of its measures against Canadian piracy also included sentencing. In Richmond, British Columbia a seller of pirated games was sentenced to six months of conditional release, two years probation and a $2,500 fine. According to the report, a majority of Canadian piracy came from kijiji sellers including one fined C8,000 and sentenced to two years probation.
Brazilian sites became the target of 16 of 31 websites taken down for infringing activities. 43 enforcement actions were done in the country including the seizing of 276,500 pirated games from street vendors in Rio De Janeiro.
Other countries mentioned were Mexico, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea.
The anti-piracy group conducted 32 training sessions for an estimated 1,250 officials in 2012.
