A mod was made for NR2003, for season 2005, called the NR 2005 mod. It's a no-cd mod version probably based on the no-cd mod that most NR2003 players use these days, because the game cost $80+(USA) at Ebay.
iFirst/iRacing bought some rights from Sierra, the then current owners of Grand Prix Legends and Nascar Racing Season 2003. It's not clear what rights they actually aquired. In the meantime, Sierra had given up its Nascar license, which was aquired by Electronic Arts. If I remember correctly, neither Sierra or iRacing could sell any more copies of NR2003, but online stores continue to sell NR2003 via Ebay and similar methods, so a small stockpile was created somehow.
Anyway, iFirst/iRacing started sending threatening letters to any site hosting the NR2005 mod. The GTP mod for NR2003 was changed from using real car names to ficticious ones (although there are mods to restore the names and logos), and if I remember correctly, it was due to a letter from iFirst / iRacing.
Because of the iFirst/iRacing action regarding the NR2005 mod, pirate bay became the main source for the NR2005 mod, which is the main reason that racing game players became aware of it's existance. In the minds of many racing game players, iFirst / iRacing was seen as more evil than pirate bay, in the case of the NR2005 mod, so it was referenced at many racing oriented forums as a source for the NR2005 mod. The link is still there, but I don't know if it's still possible to download the mod anymore, as this would require torrent servers still hosting the file.
USA is pretty strict, and most of Europe follows an international standard. Pirating is pretty common in a few countries, such as China, India, Russia, ..., where even the packaging for software, movies, or music is cloned. In the USA, most pirating involves downloading of music files via peer to peer services. Regarding Sweeden, the loophole is related to how torrent sites work; since there is no actual content stored at the torrent site, there's no violation of copyright laws (at least Sweedish copyright laws), and pirate bay has been operating for a few years.
I don't agree with TPB, or pirating generally, but neither do I like perverting the law.
Prosecuting TPB for "assistance to copyright crimes" is, in large part, akin to prosecuting the BBC for "assistance to murder", by reporting on one. Neither prosecution should stick.
The "Speed" word still seems to be very much like the oiginal font. Guess it's just in my mind but the logo still brings LFS to my mind the first thing I see it
But, they did change it, and people would not think of Live For Speed when they see that site. We do know, that it`s still pretty much, like 50% of LFS logo on it lol, but other people wouldn`t regonize is at Live For Speed I belive.
If you search the forum, it isn't very hard to find...In fact, there is a copy of it in the top LEFT corner of this VERY window!!!!!
(but their logo didn't have the word "FORUM" on it though )
Ford get very anal about their emblem. I remember some years back when they tried to sue some bloke who'd sanded the back of the badge down and changed it from blue to red (this was really common 10 years ago).
Their logo was also hacked to form a new word too... 'FUCT' done in their original font. I don't think that pleased them either, but was produced as keyrings, stickers, t-shirts and other stuff