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Nintendo Asks For Government Help To Fight Piracy
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Feb 26, 2009 06:53 AM
from the send-more-cannon-and-parrot-poison dept.
from the send-more-cannon-and-parrot-poison dept.
Nintendo, in its annual report to the USPTO, has requested help in dealing with piracy overseas, both from the US government and from several other countries in particular. China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and Paraguay are listed as the greatest contributing nations to piracy of the company's products. Nintendo suggests, for example, that "Chinese customs officials must stop shipments of game copiers and other infringing products out of China, and China should work in the coming year to eliminate barriers to its enforcement laws," and that "the Spanish government implement laws protecting the creative copyright industry and enact laws against Internet piracy."
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Whine whine whine (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the people who copy games for their consoles get the console and the necessary devices for copying games just because they know they can copy the games if they get it all.
There is no guarantee those people would get the console and any games if they couldn't copy them.
I've got a chipped gamecube and a DS with flashcart and could kinda get all of the games for both systems but then all I do is play WC3 on my computer anyway ...
I'm just not that into console gaming, I don't even play the games when they are free ffs, why would I play them if I had to pay for them?
Atleast Nintendo makes money on the consoles to so they have got my support anyway.
Parents getting said devices for their kids which would indeed get a couple of probably crappy games may be another story though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whine whine whine (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, but my actions don't result in lost sales since I don't even play the games when they are free, I would definitely not buy and play any games costing the amount of money they cost now.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
I know, but my actions don't result in lost sales since I don't even play the games when they are free, I would definitely not buy and play any games costing the amount of money they cost now.
They're not blaming you specifically you know.
Re:Whine whine whine (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is, pretty succinctly, the problem with calculating lost revenue by adding up all of the pirated copies...
It's one of the problems. Another one is people who download large batches of stuff and sort out the crap later - if they had to pay up front they'd be putting some amount more effort into filtering out the crap beforehand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, though, in the TPB case someone mentioned that pirates actually buy MORE movies than non-pirates.
Would they still buy more if they wasn't pirates? Would that result in more sales? Maybe. All we know is that non-pirates buy less movies.
That CD sales fail isn't that weird, I want different music and I want it cheap. People just have a fixed budget for entertainment, if there is something else you rather prefer than CDs (say DVDs or Internet access), people get that instead.
The music industry need
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I know, but my actions don't result in lost sales since I don't even play the games when they are free, I would definitely not buy and play any games costing the amount of money they cost now.
That's easy for you to say now because you're playing what you want to play and not paying for it. Since you're getting what you want for free, you're assigning a corresponding value to the experience of playing the games. If you were actually forced to either pay up or stop playing - after a while you might start to think that dropping $20-$40 here and there for a game or two is worth it, after all.
Or it's possible that you'd just stop playing games... But I think the former scenario is more common.
Re:Whine whine whine (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, I know people who bought DS' only because they could buy a cart with a micro SD card in and copy games to it.
These are people who I know definitely wouldn't have got one if they had to pay an additional £20 for each game on top of £100 for the device itself. Piracy has been one of the reasons the DS has been so succesful.
As you say providing Nintendo makes money on the device itself then they've really got nothing to complain about and aren't really acting any better than the RIAA/MPAA trying to force their ideal laws on foreign nations. Even if they didn't make money on the device I'm inclined to say more fool them for pursuing such a silly business model.
The other point is it's not like they even seemed to try hard to prevent piracy. Their systems are some of the most easily hackable out there so if they don't even invest in anti-piracy measures like Sony and Microsoft do then why should they expect anyone to help them if they wont help themselves? At least pirating XBox 360 games means goodbye to your warranty, can't be done on live arcade games means saying goodbye to XBox live with your system forever too so Microsoft at least tried to solve the problem through technology than just whining to foreign governments to enforce stricter laws on their citizens.
Parent
Re:Whine whine whine (Score:4, Interesting)
Same for Xbox, it was a total failure until people could chip it and use the HDD for games vs the un-cracked Gamecube for instance.
Piracy is the reason Microsoft got into the console business at all.
And yes, guess it helped DS vs PSP somewhat to since PSP games could be up to 1.8 GB in size and 2 GB memory cards cost a lot of money back then.
And I also agree that if you don't make money from all the products you're doing something wrong. Somewhat unrelated I can get a new Xerox 6110 N printer for less money than the amount of toner it ships with ... So when you have run out of toner it makes just as much economical (and/or service) sense to trash the whole printer and buy a new one ..
It took a long time to crack the Gamecube, the DS uses some RSA signature or something such, and the DSi got an updated copyright protection, so I don't agree that they don't try to protect the content. And even if they didn't they shouldn't have to, people should respect their rights. But to claim losses because people violate their rights?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
As you say providing Nintendo makes money on the device itself
Thats the problem, they may not be making money on the device itself. Now I don't know what the profit margin or loss is for the DS, but in many cases, the makers lose money on the hardware, and make up for it with the licensing of the technology to the game makers.
So when you pirate those games, they do end up losing money. Like someone previously said, these are companies, while yes they provide a service or a product, they are in it to make money. In this case, I cannot fault them for trying to protec
Re: (Score:3)
Wait, what? I'm kind of confused. I realize Slashdot isn't a collective entity with a hive mind, but I can't figure out whether the comments on this story make me believe that more or less than usual. On one hand, all the ones that have been modded up so far say the same thing as each other, which is generally something along the lines of, "Boo hoo, Nintendo. Go cry some more. You're getting what you deserve," with a lot more consistency than usual. On the other hand, the stereotypical responses that
Nintendo doesn't want to take my money (Score:5, Insightful)
if you don't want to buy the games (for whatever your reasons may be) then don't play the games.
I want to buy the games, but Nintendo doesn't want to sell the games for any of several reasons. One is the No Export For You [tvtropes.org] mentality even if there's a fully translated prototype (Earthbound for NES) or even if it's been released in another anglophone market (Kuru Kuru Kururin for GBA; Pinocchio for Wii). Another is that games from a smaller developer can't get published unless the developer has already released another commercial title on Windows, and some developers aren't fans of the genres that Windows gamers have historically preferred. What is the alternative to piracy in this case?
Parent
Piracy *is* OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Piracy is morally neutral, neither good nor bad. The intellectual monopoly faction has utterly failed to produce a single solid argument for the alleged immorality of piracy. Their appeals to property rights consistently ignore the factors that justify rights to actual property in the first place.
Lay off the moral posturing. Consequentialist arguments are all you've got, and even those are pretty weak.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be because somewhere inside my head, I put a value on my free time?
From what I can tell it's common for humans to attach more value to something one pays a lot for than something one gets cheaply or for free, regardless of their actual comparative value or usefulness.
If I were forced at gunpoint to express my amateur speculation I would probably say that it seems like some sort of mental self defense to prevent ourselves from facing up to having dished out big $$$ for something that was less valuable to us than something else we got cheap. That is, we don't want to admit t
Poor Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
My heart goes out to Nintendo in these difficult times of record profits.
Re:Poor Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
My heart goes out to Nintendo in these difficult times of record profits.
We probably need to institute a rule along the lines of "if you can effectively lobby the govt to help you out then they won't because if you can afford to pull /that/ off effectively you must be doing quite well already".
Parent
Uhuh... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes the cops come after them to arrest the material. Sometimes they come to buy it.
But..... (Score:4, Interesting)
.....if we piss off the Chinese by demanding they stop copying games or exporting copying hardware, they won't loan us 2000 billion in dollars. And then what will this poor, debtor nation do? No, no, we can't afford to make demands of the people giving us money to survive.
High Taxes increases Piracy (Score:2, Interesting)
At least in brazil its the truth. Super Mario Galaxy, for example costs 46 dolars on amazon.com. If you try to buy it in brazil, it will cost 260 reais, which is about 120 dolars. Its costs 2.6 times more than if you were buying it on the US. Whats the reason for this? Taxes and filthy lucre. I dont know why it doesnt happen with computer games. Left 4 Dead for PC, for instance, costs 45 dolars on Amazon.com. If you buy it in brazil, it costs 99 reais, which is about 45 dolars. Thats why computer games pira
Re:High Taxes increases Piracy (Score:4, Funny)
Charge a pornographic price and we will pirate it.
So anything $69 and up?
Parent
They have the power... (Score:2)
Why don't they wave their magic wand to make it all go away?
Required Background Reading (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect most people would be surprised by the sheer amount of piracy there is for games on Nintendo's platforms. So here's some background reading on the issue:
"In South Korea, many video game consumers exploit illegal copies of video games, including for the Nintendo DS. In 2007, 500,000 copies of DS games were sold, while the sales of the DS hardware units was 800,000." [wikipedia.org] Yes, you're reading that right; the attach rate for DS software in Korea was at one point less than 1.0, fewer pieces of software were sold than hardware devices, which is a tell-tale sign of use of piracy devices.
As for why that is, Gamesutra has a short but insightful article on the matter [gamasutra.com]. DS flash carts (what Nintendo is calling "game copiers") are cheap, and the South Korean people are turning to them in part as a solution to not being able to afford every game they want.
Nintendo's biggest fear here is that other countries end up like Korea, with rampant piracy and few legit customers. Nintendo does make a profit on hardware, but much of their profit is still on software. Furthermore their 3rd party game developers who don't make a profit on hardware would love to make a profit at all, and bad/no 3rd party support just makes Nintendo's hardware and software sales that much worse. I can't see why Korean piracy levels world-wide wouldn't kill the DS, or any other console for that matter. I understand Wii piracy through mod-chips is also pretty rampant in South Korea, although I do not know to what degree.
With that said I don't know why Nintendo is going to the US government about this. Certainly it's reasonable to ask the government to clamp down on this in the United States, and perhaps even apply some pressure on China where flash carts are made with relative impunity, but I don't see the point in listing the other countries. I don't see what stake the US government has on piracy in Spain, for example.
And I'll close this out by admitting I'm a pirate. I have an R4 flash cart with many games and exactly 2 legit games (1 of which came with the DS) when I could easily afford to be completely legit. I'm exactly the kind of person Nintendo is worried about. There are many more like me, I'm afraid.
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Or maybe its a case of people buying the hardware and building their own homebrew and/or using them for hacking purposes like a very cheap IM program/web browser. Korea has a health number or smart tech savvy users so this cant be out of the realm of possibility either.
Spain's piracy problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh come on! What's he complaining about? Software is illegal to share in Spain as in any other civilized country. Media is something else, as the right of personal distribution without it being a lucrative activity is legal.
Also, Mod-Chips and the sort are illegal too, not that security agencies give a f*** about some teenagers buying them.
So what is it that you want Nintendo? A France like model of 3 strikes you're out enforcement? I think the government has (or at least should) more important worries, lik
While I can see Nintendo's point, I wish they'd... (Score:5, Interesting)
....see mine. I have two kids (2 & 4), sometimes I play Wii Music / Wii Fit / Wii Play (Fishing!) with the older. It's too troublesome to lock all stuff away all the time (and sometimes I just forget to remove the disk from the console), so I've already thought a few times about modding the console to be able to backup the games before the kids manage to destroy the disks accidently.
As it is, they won't replace my scratched disks, so I don't have so much simpathy for them.
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Exactly. These products are only infringing upon the DMCA which is vehemently against Fair Use.
You have the moral high ground, along with millions of other people. You purchased the game, gave Nintendo and other companies the money. Why on Earth don't you have the right to make Fair Use backup copies?
I think you do have the absolute right to make backup copies. Thank god for the talented people that can create products to bypass copyrights restrictions so that you don't have to pay these #$&#*#*$ 10
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I've already thought a few times about modding the console to be able to backup the games before the kids manage to destroy the disks accidently.
What does your (in)ability to play personal legally backed up games have to do with industrial piracy?
(Not the GP). It has EVERYTHING to do with it. The same chip that would let andi75 play backed up games so that it could be a $.35 DVD-R that gets the PBJ treatment instead of a $40 game, is the chip that allows people to play the industrially-pirated mass-bootlegged games from Mexico.
Nintendo wants to screw over andi75 for the sake of slowing down the Mexican pirates.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Straying from the topic, but actually the solution is LEGALIZE LIGHT DRUGS (such as cannabis), so they can be produced and traded by honest, non-violent entrepreneurs, and certified for quality.
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Re:While I can see Nintendo's point, I wish they'd (Score:4, Informative)
I would be willing to pay $5-$10 (includes shipping) for a replacement disk. I send them the original scratched disk and they send me a replacement. They can even send it back in a generic box.
Parent
tackling the big issues (Score:2, Funny)
How to stop copying.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple: Stop putting games on a media which can be copied in any home PC.
Make game CDs a bit bigger or something so they don't fit in a standard drive for recording.
PS: "Spain"? Oh, sure, Spain is a major international cause of lost profit. Not. Spain has a sensible law regarding copyright, that's all.
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They did that. GC and DS both have media that can't be read in a normal PC.
It didn't stop piracy.
Good luck with that in Brazil! (Score:2)
stop physical devices and .. (Score:2)
so they stop physical devices and all that changes is that people choose to download PDFs(etc) and build there own.
In fact I see a good business opportunity "will build anything from PDF(etc), no questions asked, good rates".
reminds me of http://www.nealstephenson.com/diamond/ [nealstephenson.com]
Customs (Score:2, Interesting)
"Chinese customs officials must stop shipments of game copiers and other infringing products out of China"
Why doesn't Nintendo go after customs of the importing countries? It's because on both sides of the import/export equation are a very small number of people who actually inspect what is going on. Why don't they get the piracy sniffing dogs out? That's right, they can barely handle the drug trade.
I assume this is not bi-directional? (Score:4, Insightful)
"We want [country A] to change their laws, so that if a person in [country A] breaks our [country B] laws , we can prosecute them."
If [country A] != America and [country B] = American then GOOD
If [country A] = America and [country B] = !American then BAD
The USA is not your mom (Score:3, Interesting)
I can absolutely dig Nintendo's position on large-scale bootlegging, but isn't Nintendo a Japanese company? Let them ask their own country for help leaning on China. We already have enough people bitching about America acting like the world's policeman.
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Seriously? Piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that China is such a shithole, that it would be completely unethical to waste time dealing with piracy at this point. Let's stop slavery, let's stop human rights abuses, let's enforce workplace health and safety standards.
Moaning and whining about how a few people are getting games for free in a country like China is like complaining that Hitler stole your parking spot.
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Yeah. Japan is lobbying China for help. Not gonna happen, what with China's not-entirely-friendly attitude towards Japan.
And they are lobbying Spain, to stop pirates. It's like we are back in 1700 ...
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Nintendo, get a fucking life. Seriously, pirating is not costing video game companies much of anything, because not many people pirate new video games. Most of the "pirated" video games are games that can no longer be purchased and/or are out of print.
You poor misguided wretch. That makes it even worse doesn't it? When people are busy playing old games there is less profit to be made from selling them new ones.
Re:Piracy? What Piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The top four most downloaded Wii games at the pirate bay were all released in the last month, the fith is Mario Galaxy which certainly isn't out of print.
Re:Piracy? What Piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt Wii games are what the O.P. was talking about. I think he/she/it was talking about older systems.
For instance, how many people signed the online petition to have Nintendo translate Mother 3 and release it in the US? I believe well over 100,000 people signed it. Yet Nintendo refused to translate and release the game over here. So, fans of the series took matters into their own hands and translated the game themselves. If Nintendo would have released the game, they could have made a ton of money off of it, but instead, it is now being "pirated," instead.
Parent
Not correct (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you are not right. In Spain, where we both live it's illegal to copy software, even if it's non-for-profit.
But Spanish judges dismiss charges against people modifying their consoles or copying music or movies for personal use.
What Nintendo wants is to make illegal devices like R4/M3/WiiKey and blocking webpages that give access to pirated games (software).
Good luck with that, but I don't think it would be possible here.
Re: (Score:2)
But it seemed that he would be making more money if he had a nice selection of games, like the kind you can find in stores in the U.S., and if he actually tried selling them.
Game copying devices, and piracy in general, hurts the Chinese. Their retailers run on razor-thin margins while content producers generally don't tailor content for the Chinese.
Paragraph 2 also applies to paragraph 1. Games are the same way (moreso possibly than the grey-market copiers). You don't know he made more money on the games than the copiers. He might have been doing what gamestop does here: Pushing the used copies to "save you money" (heh heh).