Usually when someone pirates a companies product, they take legal action, but Activision is doing something else in the case of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Instead of contact legal forces, they politely tell the pirates to stop, and in some cases they cooperate. But when one pirate doesn't, his mom gets an unexpected phone call from the company.

Contrary to its approach to Modern Warfare 2's piracy, which was to seek arrests for anyone found selling illegal copies of the game, Activision is simply asking Black Ops pirates to cut it out, and quite politely it seems. VentureBeat has posted the story of one bootleg buyer who has uploaded a series of videos detailing being tracked down by the publisher's private investigators, IP Cybercrime, on YouTube. According to the article, rather than report individuals such as him to the police, IP the firm is requesting that they "stop selling and to tell them where they got their wares," adding that "Most of the pirates were scared, surrendered their game copies and cooperated."

That's not to say the investigators aren't willing to employ more serious methods in dealing with people who don't give in to the "good cop" approach. "One young pirate was being a 'wise ass' and adamantly refused to cooperate," VentureBeat reported. "So the investigators called his mother."

Sayyed via joystiq.com »