Nintendo Sues Korean Sites Over Copyright Violations 46
The Korean Times is reporting that the Korean branch of Nintendo has filed suit against several websites over copyright issues. The suits come just nine months after Nintendo first opened up the Korean market (officially) with the introduction of the Nintendo DS. From the article: "'They infringed on our copyright by posting Nintendo's game titles through the Internet without our permission,' a Nintendo spokesperson said. 'The legal action was taken against only some sites and users this time but we will take further measures if such a violation continues to take place.' She declined to comment on how many sites and people are involved in the piracy suit. The legal action came after Mineo Koda, the Japanese chief executive of Nintendo Korea, had expressed concern about the lingering problem of piracy in South Korea that he said would pose a challenge to his company's business here."
Re:What exactly is being distributed? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the most common rationales for downloading ROMs or Songs was that the copyright owner did not provide a legal method, or provided the content but at an absurd price (Like $7/song for no DRM). With the introduction of these titles onto the Wii, that is no longer justification.
Certainly people may feel that $5 for an old NES game is more than it is worth, but it is definately not an absurd price when you consider that unlike music, which often is little more effort than running a file conversion program, converting an old piece of software to run w/o serious bugs on new hardware does require some work. They aren't making ringtones here (which ARE often at absurd prices).
What I'm saying is that Nintendo has provided a method to purchase these games, and if they can ensure that they work bug-free on the Wii, probably plans to release as many titles as they can.
Re:What exactly is being distributed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What exactly is being distributed? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said...why hasn't Nintendo released a system (perhaps they could even do this with a firmware update to the Wii?) in which you could buy "packs" of old NES, SNES, and N64 games on CD? I mean think about it...charge 30 dollars, put 6-10 games on each CD, and presto: they suddenly have hundreds upon hundreds of titles they can resell (or sell for the first time). I know they would get plenty of business from me if they had officially created and supported re-releases of old games...just on a more "complete library" level. Or hell, release the entire library of each system on a DVD or two and charge a 100-150 for it...I would be willing to bet quite a lot that they would sell them by the truckload.
They are just now getting to see what they can earn off their older stuff...if you were to tell me I could buy a system created and built by Nintendo that had the ability to play NES, SNES, and N64 games, and then proceed to release the ENTIRE LIBRARY of those three systems on a retail level again...hell yes people would buy it.
It sure would beat the hell out of spending exorbitant amounts of money on Ebay for those hard to find titles....AND they would be making more money on complete, ready to play titles.
Virtual Console is nice, don't get me wrong...but I sure hope it's only their first step. They are sitting on a veritable gold mine and would be missing out on a lot of cash if they didn't do something more...substantial.
Re:What exactly is being distributed? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the demand side, they're faced with a rather difficult scenario of bundling games into a collection. Maximizing profit in this case is the same as maximizing bundles sold, so expect bundles with one good hit and several also rans. VC doesn't force this bundling -- people bitched about bundling a few years ago with CDs being a factor in pirating an album instead of paying 2 dollars for the one song they cared about. I'm sure they also love that their anti-piracy measures also make it so you can't transport VC games from one console to another.
From a technological standpoint, VC offers a kind of traceable identification and encryption that mass produced DVDs do not. As far as I know, each VC downloaded is encrypted for a different Wii. Don't ask me how the other side knows the key. I hear they've actually done the technology to put games on reusable carts in Japan, but the US is a much larger region, so again negotiations break down. You can't just walk up to 7-11, ink a deal and call it good, since for example, the nearest 7-11 to me is 60 miles away. It's possible they could do something with McDonalds, but the franchise nature makes it slightly problematic.