According to GamesIndustry, Nintendo has seized some 30,000 illegal piracy devices so far in 2008. It was recently reported that Nintendo is actually suing importers of devices like the popular R4 in Japan, with the help of over 50 game publishers.
"Nintendo takes a global approach to piracy and has pursued the illegal game copying devices in 11 countries this past year," Nintendo said in a statement.
"Nintendo has worked with enforcement officials in Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and the US, seizing close to 30,000 infringing game copying products, as well as taking actions against those distributors and manufacturers."
30,000? Is that a lot? Is that a number to brag about? Hell, there's probably more than 30,000 R4-like devices in some major American cities.
It sounds like they mean business, though When we look at monthly sales numbers, it seems like Nintendo is doing fine for software sales. But that doesn't mean that the software developers aren't hurting, and while we know Nintendo can afford a hit to the pocket book, some of the small software guys can't. Because of this, they're now taking serious action to put the clamp on DS piracy.
"Nintendo and software manufacturers are suffering tremendous loss caused by the import and distribution of such devices," said the firm.
"Nintendo and software manufacturers have determined that the spread of such devices in the market would hinder sound growth and development of the entire computer game industry and will therefore continue to take strict legal measures against any game copying devices that operate like the R4."
Contest:
10:11 AM on 07.30.2008
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However, if you use an R4 just because it's easy to carry mulitple games on it (unlikely), that doesn't really bother me. Not that anyone cares.
and as far as i know the only result their lawsuit in holland had was that some sites changed adresses...
Thats what I hate about this stupid propaganda that is just all misinformation: there is NOTHING illegal about this cards. I bought the hardware, I can do whatever I fucking want with my DS. None of these companies actually sell backup ROM images along with the product which WOULD be illegal and this cards also have lots of other uses Nintendo refuses to acknowledge.
It pisses me off to no end to see people saying the R4 its illegal only because Americans allowed themselves to be submitted into the dumbest, most backwards consumer hurting copyright laws in history. That however doesn't makes ANY of the uses of the cards, INCLUDING PLAYING ROMS illegal in many many countries including mine. It would be akin to making kitchen knives illegal cause they can be used to assault people, or banning rocks cause they can be thrown at property to damage.
Plus Mr North already debunked this right there in the article ( though I don't know why he backed out it ) as they are still printing money with the DS and software sales.
This isn't about piracy this is about establishing a precedent when companies dictate how to use the products YOU BOUGHT. I can use em however I damn well please, thank you. This is still a free country, and the US used to be one as well before the raise of DRM, the patriot act and enforced EULA bullshit.
I hate how people try to justify piracy. "They already make money, so why does my little bit count?" The extra units sold could go to companies that produce quality games, and encourage them to make more. In addition the money taken away by piracy only raises prices for people who do buy the games.
Now I'm all flustered...tl;dr version: piracy = bad.
As for the article: I think that the 30,000 number is substantial, mainly because it mentions that they were taking action. It kinda reminds me of the like 10 kids that get busted with music/movies whatever that get fined for a couple million or whatever. Number isn't that high, but the consequences are.
We already established that the copyright laws in the US are the exception and not the rule. And elsewhere, piracy in legal terms means that you make PROFIT from selling copyrighted material without explicit consent from the copyright holder.
Now we also establish that there actually has to be commercial speculation, meaning that there is actual money exchanged in the transaction. That is piracy.
Now almost NONE of the readily available internet distribution channels for ROMS ( or music or movies ) actually charge you ANYTHING to download the copyrighted material. So at best it would constitute a different kind of crime NOT called piracy cause there is no money involved. And that would be on only a handful of fucked up countries like the US. In the rest of the world, the law isn't legislated to serve corporations exclusively so we don't care about it cause we know they cannot prove downloads are lost profits. A person unable to download does NOT automatically translates in a sale.
I already discussed this at some length in the past: marketing companies are lucky if something like 5% of all the people remotely interest in the advertising add make a buying decision. So out of all those 30, 000 cards sold, lets assume that an incredible number of 5% of them would make a purchase decisions on all the games they just download. Lets say each plays on average 10 games on the card. That is roughly 15,000 games at 39.99 each comes to $599,850 USD.
Thats it, 600k now read this:
http://groups.google.com/group/Nintendo_DS/browse_thread/thread/65a511ab4aa39e4c
So thats, 100,000,000 games sold IN JAPAN ONLY, assuming the same price for american releases, $39.99, its a total of 399,000,000 USD on JAPAN ALONE, vs a realistic estimated sales lost of 600,000 USD sales lost worldwide to cards.
I dare to say more money its being lost to shoplifters and physically stolen or lost DS games.
That's like saying my computer is illegal because I might download music
Even then its outlawed because of EULA, which doesn't works elsewhere cause you cannot be hold accountable to a binding legal contract without a hard copy elsewhere. And Nintendo games do not even have an EULA since you cannot be hold accountable to a contract just by opening a product, that would be batshit insane in litigation.
So without any contract what I am getting on a DS game its an actual physical product, protected by copyright but those copyright laws allow me to make backup copies of the game and in many countries to distribute those copies to whoever I damn well please as long as I do not make actual profit from it and distribute em for free.
And stop ripping people off.
More people need to stand up to Nintendo and put them down for good.
I feel the same way with the R4 as I do with custom firmwares for the PSP, they oepn up a lot of new possibilities for homebrew and features that make them VERY worthwhile but MOST people that use them play copies of DS and PSP games that THEY DON'T AND NEVER HAVE OWNED.
This is wrong.
As for the "if game companies made their games cheaper then we wouldn't pirate them" argument; That's a flat out lie.
I have many friends who pirate and WHATEVER the situation, they find a way to justify it...
At $60: "It's too expensive."
At $20: "It's so cheap, they wouldn't have made much profit at this price anyway."
So yeah, that's great, we all know that having/buying an R4 isn't TECHNICALLY illegal at this stage but there is NO rational argument that pirating games you don't own is OK.
THAT IS WHAT WE'RE ARGUING AGAINST!
Try all you like, you're just justifying theft. Hell, I'd be LESS upset if you found a way to steal used games from GameStop! At least then you're REALLY sticking it to the man!
More people need to stand up to Nintendo and put them down for good."
Yeah, like Nintendo is the only one. Sony has been aggressively locking down PSP's for years. Heck, the very newest (like the ones that have arrived in stores the last few weeks) PSP's don't work with the Pandora Battery, which is a completely safe way to install custom firmware. Instead, people interested in homebrew and going around some of Sony's nazi ass policies (I can only play my PSP games through an HDTV? Really?) will have to take increasingly high risks to do so.
All Nintendo did was seize a few cards. As far as I know, the DS doesn't have much protection itself.
I agree with you for the most part, but you made a mistake at the end. You can make a back up copy because of fair use. What you cannot do is distribute. Giving the back up copy while you still have a copy is distributing. If you gave the original copy away, but destroyed the backup, then you are not distributing.
Unauthorized Distribution is considered illegal because that is what copyright gives you. The monopoly to distribute.
What the courts have to do is proved you distributed it, which is very very hard.
That's a knoble sentiment HP, but if you've been paying any attention at all to the dip-shits who inhabit this site, very few of them seem to have any real love for the hobby at all.
At least you wouldn't think they do, given how much they bitch about it, and how they act like complete knobs at every turn.
Your excuse is straight-up bullshit. If you're really interested in a given game, and it aint available in your neck of the woods yet, then you have the option of importing it. And if you're not willing to pony up the extra cash to get it before its release-date, then it's arguable that you don't need it as badly as you thought you did. In that case, you have no excuse for not waiting patiently for the thing to come out in your region.
So drop the excuses. You're a pirate, and that's that.
Why? I'll explain. By nintendo not mentioning the homebrew nature of an R4 etc, they are misinforming gamers and the wider and lesser game savvy public, and only mentioning the negative piracy aspects of the devices in question. Now imagine if MS did the same for PC, it would kill creativity on so many levels.
I dare you to ask Nintendo etc, what they think of the homebrew nature of games and their viable means of indie game creation via R4 etc. All you'd get is a cockblocking bs comment. Nintendo know very well, that homebrew is the one thing that will keep these cards alive and valid a purchase for gamers, and those of a creative mind (eg: Colors DS, Nitro Tracker). When you are well known and respected, lying and misinformation for your own ends becomes an ever easier sport. Many forget but Nintendo are masters at this sport.
Right now, with these cards, the creators of tomorrows games could well be cutting their teeth, and I feel it would be wrong for Nintendo to react stupidly, and alienate valuable customers and potential talent.
And lastly, I'll add the issue of money. Nintendo don't like to give smaller developers (even you or myself) a break on dev kits, and thus is it any wonder creative indie game developers are looking to Live and PSN (as well as PSP and DS). The bedroom coder teams of old are making a comeback, so the industry has gone full circle. Its a shame many can't see past what Nintendo are doing, and how if these indie devs were taken care of properly, the piracy could be eliminated and perhaps homebrew thrive much more. Then we'd all be winners.
For me, so long as Colors DS art ap exists, I'll always have a card in my posession, and surely have the right to keep it. I'd like to see Nintendo etc try to wrestle it from me.
Nice post. However, your logic is spotty at best.
* While I'm sure that there are people out there who own these cards and use them solely for the purpose of running homebrew, it's impossible to peg that down with any certainty. Being that a major, if not sole function of these is that they allow people to run pirated roms, I can't blame Nintendo for erring on the side of caution.
More importantly though, the Games N' Music device, while being relatively limited in its functionality, does show that piracy and homebrew do not have to go hand-in-hand. Which in turn would raise the question of why cards like the R4 need to support pirated games at all, if they're truly being used solely for the purpose of running homebrew applications.
* These devices aren't authorized Nintendo products. As such, Nintendo has no obligation to inform consumers about them. I'm a little confused as to why you'd argue that point at all.
Being that they do allow people to pirate games; a function that exists wholly independant of their capacity to run homebrew applications, it makes sense that Nintendo would focus on that particular aspect of the cards. They have no logical reason, nor any obligation whatsoever, to highlight homebrew functionality.
Call it lying if you must. I'll call it being focused on a very real problem, and not getting lost in inconsequential tangents.
* The DS does not represent the only means with which to run homebrew. There are tons of other products out there that are capable of it. Taking the DS out of the equation might give you one less device to run it on, but it doesn't remove homebrew from the world at large by any means whatsoever.
* They may block sales of these devices from here on out, but they're out there. Homebrew will not stop being developed.
More to the point, there are DS emulators that have developer functionality built in. And while they might not represent an aspiring developer's best choice for producing applications and/or games at this point, removing DS flash carts from the equation will not keep them from developing them.
Basically, the conclusion is that you've taken a very valid concern on Nintendo's part, and you've attached loads of irrelevant melodrama to it. Prohibiting the sale of flash carts will ultimately change nothing.
It won't even keep people from pirating games. Emulators exist for the thing, and while progress is apparently pretty slow on that front, they look to be making progress just the same. Homebrew wont be effected at all, as those who have flash carts will continue to code away, while those who don't can work their magic via those afformentioned DS emulators. Nothing will change, aside from that a few less people will be able to run pirated roms natively on the DS. That's it.
Though hey, while Nintendo might not be changing anything at all, I can't fault them for trying. It's their right after all.
I work at a video game publisher/developer, anyone who uses an R4 to pirate games is stealing money from me. So I have a personal stake in this issue, and I get a little riled up.
I have nothing against homebrew or indie games. A lot of my friends have jobs in the industry now thanks to their homebrew portfolios, but there is just no way to justify the R4 as a legitimate Homebrew tool that the corporations are trying to suppress.
Everyone who buys an R4 will have at least one pirated ROM on it. Plain and simple. You think that isn't true? Then you are one of three things: you are trying to justify your own piracy, you are lying, you are an idiot.
Should Nintendo do whatever it can to stop Piracy? Yes. Does that mean they do stupid shit that pisses us off, like not letting us load Wii Ware games from SD cards? Yes.
Does that suck? Yes. But that's life, and if nothing else it's only going to make even more game companies pump out "Wii Sports" shit. Because you know who doesn't pirate games? Soccer moms. Have fun when I lose my job and all you ever have to play is buggy homebrew and liscensed mini game collections.
Aside from Advance Wars, Elite Beat Agents, FF4, Space Invaders Extreme, Metal Gear Portable Ops, and Ops+, both Ac!d games, RE: Deadly Silence, etc etc etc.
I wouldn't have got a lot of those if I hadn't been able to try them ahead of time.
The R4, much like CFW, aren't evil, it's evil people who use them causing the problem. Killing CFW and the R4 isn't going to stop bad people from being cheap. Instead of downloading they'll buy used, which is exactly the same to a game company.
It's fun to imagine this impossible utopia, where people in their spare time after work and school step in to replace development teams funded by millions, and make free games that replace MGS. But that is delusional thinking.