Nintendo Cracks Down on Copying Devices 361
Adrian Lopez writes "Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Hong Kong government. 'The Hong Kong High Court has intervened, at Nintendo's request, to help stop a global distribution operation involving game copying devices and modification chips that violate the copyrights and trademarks of Nintendo DS and Wii. On Oct. 8th, the court ordered the raid of Supreme Factory Limited facilities, through which Nintendo representatives seized more than 10,000 game copying devices and mod chips over the course of three days. The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo games.'"
Booo! (Score:1, Insightful)
And personal backups of your own media so that you don't have to buy a new copy when your friend/pet/child/"significant other" scratches it.
I don't know what the laws are like in HK, but I feel that the continued erosion of this right in the media (and thus the public perception) is wrong.
Re:Booo! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a lose-lose. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Nintendo is 100% successful, on the other hand, they will save some revenue, but at the cost of pissing off a lot of users, legitimate and otherwise, who might decide to take their business elsewhere.
Odds are pretty good that their actual success rate will fall somewhere between 0% and 100% (most probably close to the low end of the scale), making this endeavor slightly annoying to the users, while being in the main a big waste of time.
Any way you slice it, it's a dumb idea.
Re:Booo! (Score:2, Insightful)
So I still don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to use these mod chips and play their copied games here.
You can't do anything but admire... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, mod chips could be used for illegal activities, but also for good. The article really fails to highlight that. With a tone like this, you'd wonder how tape recorders ever got sold.
B.
Chasing users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it can be fixed. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem comes down to the fact that the "innocent" users are being lumped together with the abusers. Yet who do people bitch about? The company being negatively affected. Do you know people who have pirated games? Have you told them to take a hike? If not, why?
Re:Booo! (Score:2, Insightful)
"Blatant Stealing." (Score:5, Insightful)
It -can-, but it doesn't. Instead, it allows people that don't have the money to buy the game to play it anyhow, and get their friends excited, and get them interested in sequels and spinoffs. Instead of forcing the penniless gamer to go out and play in the yard for free, it keeps them addicted to video games.
On the other hand, people that -can- afford the games buy them, for the most part. I'm not talking the teenagers that have to skip lunch this month to buy a game, but the people with full-time jobs and disposable income.
And when it comes right down to it, the only difference between someone "stealing" a game using a modchip and that same person buying the game used is the timeframe. The developer doesn't get any money from either way. (Of course, GameStop gets some money on the used route, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)
My current tactic? Rental. Any game I don't absolutely have to have right away, I just rent it. For 1/3 of a game per month, I can rent 2-4 by mail. For 3/4 of a game per month, I can rent 4-8. Since I lose interest in most games after a few hours anyhow, this works great for me. I've had some games that I thought I'd love that I spent less than an hour playing them before they were back in the mail. GameFly (and probably other services) will even let you buy the game at a reduced price if you want to keep it. That makes it really hard to justify buying it brand new.
So in the end, Nintendo can rid the market of these devices and it won't change things for the better. That isn't their goal, though. Their goal is to remind people that they are illegal and 'wrong'. And they did that.
Speaking of scrathed disks (Score:4, Insightful)
An incident last weekend however has me reconsidering my current practices, at least where my kids CDs, DVDs and games are concerned.
Over the course of the last few years I've had to use the furniture polish trick on a few game CDs. Usually after one of the kids left them sliding around in a drawer and the PS2 or 'puter couldn't read them anymore. With I think one exception, so far I've been lucky and they've all be playable.
Last weekend however my son had a friend over for cooperative HALO3 fest. On the second evening they're setting up the friends system when my son decides to "stand up XBox so it can get some cooling". After this the system says the disk is unreadable, and it's discovered that their is a perfectly circular series of scratches about a quarter inch from the out edge and an eighth of an inch wide.
After multiple attempts with the furniture polish and toothpaste tricks I finally get the disk to read. I have NO doubt I'll be buying the young man a new HALO3 disk in the near future.
The moral of the story?
It should be EASY and LEGAL to make backups of your media. It doesn't matter whether it is music, a video or a game!
Oh, by the way, anyone have any favorite, tried and true, game disk restoration tips?
Typical lies (Score:5, Insightful)
They're also used to play games that aren't available for sale in the USA (and won't run on a North American Wii even if you import them legally), and they're used to play legal ("Fair Use") backups of game discs that have been damaged.
All of you MAFIAA shills can whine "oh but that's not what you guys are REALLY using them for!" all you want, but my both my sister and my girlfriend like Japanese date sims (weird, yes), and I've known several people who've had a game disc damaged beyond playability--usually by dogs or small children.
Re:It's a lose-lose. (Score:4, Insightful)
As near as I can tell, Nintendo are the ones actually stealing the physical property of others - chips, consoles, and a whole heap of stuff that isnt theirs. Fuck them and the corrupt legal system that helps them commit crimes against people.
Re:You can't do anything but admire... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Booo! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah that or... you could learn to start taking care of your stuff in the first place. I lost a few CD's to scratches when I was a kid. My parents never said, well you should have made a back up copy, they were more apt to say "GD it! When are you going to learn to take care of the stuff we buy you", so fast forward a decade later and how many DVD's or games have a lost to scratches. None.
Come one people take responsibility for your stuff. If your friend scratches them your friend owes you a new disk, if your child scratches them, well if that's the worst your child does to your stuff you got off easy, if your significant other scratches them, you have to take the good with the bad. If your pet scratches them... Wait what?!? Thats just stupid. I can't see any good reason why your pet should come near your media... Media has cases and those cases should be stored some where that Rover can't get to.
Re:Booo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, didn't it pass the Senate with 99-1 votes for vs. against? It wasn't particularly Bill Clinton's baby. Not that he would have vetoed it even if the vote was closer, but there are few politicians out there that show much opposition to increasing copyright restrictions. And Rich Boucher isn't running for president.
What kind of excuse is this? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you were actually serious about being worried that your game would break, you simply would have gone to GameStop or Toys'R'Us or the local equivalent and gotten one of their game warranties. I think its $3 for a $50 game and it gets cheaper for cheaper games. I used to work at a GameStop and have seen disks that were scratched, cracked in half, chewed on, mangled, we even replaced the one with a bullet hole in it. Now that TRU is getting into the same racket, I bet other stores follow too.
Having lived in a college dorm, I can tell you the real use of mod-chips is for downloading games that you don't own and playing them. I remember a big event back them was that the French version of Halo 2 was leaked right before the American release. In my dorm you could walk up and down the hall and hear a lot of zapping, followed by French profanity. If you listen to only slashdotters, you would swear that the only people that buy and use modchips are little old ladies that have piles of legally purchased pristine discs locked away, and bring out copies for their rowdy grandchildren to play with on weekends. In my experience, I've never seen them used for that.
Re:Booo! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd bet a lot of money that use of these devices for the purpose of personal backups pales in comparison to their use for playing copied games.
Sure, it's a bitch, especially as I was hoping to pick up an R4 for Homebrew purposes, but you've got to admit that Nintendo have a point with this.
Re:Speaking of scrathed disks (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll give you a tip, it depends on what kind of porn. I know that in stores like Ann Summers they sell "adult movies" which are "suitable" for girls, or at least, they like them. You could always also start with "Pirates" which has a pretty funny story.
Btw, the first porn movie I saw with my girlfriend (we had a really good time as the movie is hilarious these days) was Deep Throat (the original). My GF got interested after the documentary was released, so I got it and we watched it...
Re:But they wont achive much (Score:5, Insightful)
What a lot of these 3rd party cartridges do for the DS do is allow people to (aside from copying DS/GBA games) play music and movies, and have PDA functionality. They also allow users to play NES, SNES, etc games on them as well.
Many of these cards sell for $80+ (or do once you add the removable flash memory). If they were smart, they would take a page from the Wii's online service, sell a cartridge for $20 that allows you to buy and download old NES/SNES games with Nintento points like you can on the Wii. They could also sell a cartridge with a flash memory slot and allow it to do multimedia playback.
Re:Booo! (Score:2, Insightful)
The software industry is slowly realising that the concept of selling physical CDs and of those being of some worth is a joke. It is what is on the CDs that matters and that can be copied with ease. Eventually everything will be downloaded via Steam/Xbox Live and you will have to log on to run it. At that point you can make as many back ups as you like.
Re:Soooo much homebrew (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of scrathed disks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But they wont achive much (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What kind of excuse is this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What kind of excuse is this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nintendo[or]Sony[or]Microsoft sold the console to you. The hardware, after the sale, is not theirs, it's yours to do whatever the fuck you want to.
Re:But they wont achive much (Score:5, Insightful)
And driving it further underground makes it that much harder for Joe Sixpack to access, which is exactly what they want. Nintendo (or any other company hitting hard on pirates) aren't dumb. They know that piracy will always exist, but they want to drive it underground, really deep underground. So deep most people won't know about it.
R4 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But they wont achive much (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But they wont achive much (Score:5, Insightful)
Datel games-n-music DS. I got several japanese import copies playing on that device with a 1 gig micro SD card in it.
$25.00 at walmart. Warez for the masses.
I have a Cyclo DS Evolution (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a Cyclo DS Evolution. I thought it would save me money by not having to buy the games. The Evoution and the 2GB micro SD came out to about $90. I'd only have to pirate 3 games to save money. Ironically the only game I ever play on it is Tetris. Oh and get this. I've owned two versions of Tetris in the past. And I intend to buy Tetris again for my Xbox. I owned Tetris for the Apple II, (at least I think I owned a legitimate copy, it might have been pirated; My Dad bought it for me.) And I bought Tetris for the Game Boy Advanced. I lost the catridge. Does that mean that whoever has it now is now the legal owner? Or am I within my rights to aquire another copy of Tetris even though it's not the same exact version I used to have? Alexi Pajitnov lives like a pauper anyway. Is this the fairness of capitalism distributing wealth to those who have the most talent that you apologists are talking about?
So I bought a DS flash card to pirate games and ironically I don't use it to pirate very much at all. I would have been better off buying a legit Tetris catridge again if it weren't for the legal applications. Ironically those might not be all that legal either. I like to use the video player to play TV shows that I pirate off the internet. Hey, if I captured the shows myself and transcoded them to fit on my DS that would be legal, but if I download what someone else has already done for me then it's piracy right? I also like to use my DS as a wifi AP detector. So I can crack their WEP keys. Ha ha. Funny thing, one of the big reasons I bought the damn DS was because I was expecting to be able to play homebrew Doom on it. Nintendo and ID won't release a legit Doom for DS. Now that I actually have one I can't get Doom to run because of some technical issue. Damn it. BTW my Dad definitely bought me a legit copy of Doom 2. I remember he bought it at Costco. And that's ignoring the coolest application of all. I have friends who carry around huge purses filled with DS games. It looks very unwieldy. I can carry 30 games in one card. Which would be legal if I chose to purchase those games. Is it the device manufacturer's fault what the users do with their product? Is piracy really crushing the industry? Or maybe if there were still manufacturing jobs left in America workers would be able to afford video games.
PS I could really use a hand getting homebrew Doom to work. I have friends with DS's and I think they'd enjoy deathmatching via the wifi. Are you listening ID? I'll pay $100 for a legit copy.
Re:Booo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Having/maintaning good backups is part of "taking care of your stuff."
Homebrew development earned me a career (Score:5, Insightful)
I never thought a $500 video game would change the direction of my life, but I will never doubt that homebrew is great. Certainly it can be used to steal games, but it is also one of the cheapest and most effective ways for a novice programmer to get into a booming industry. And, yes, developing for emulators is also valid, but testing on real hardware was an invaluable experience that an emulator cannot replicate.
Re:Booo! (Score:5, Insightful)
So your reasoning to ban all backing up of your legally-acquired copies of music, games, movies, etc. is because you can get insurance which may or may not completely cover the loss (if you chose to pay the higher premiums to get the coverage), if it covers the loss at all?. I'm afraid I just don't agree with you.
Region Codes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What kind of excuse is this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which does little good for the saved games it's taken you hundreds of hours to create. With the R4 and M3 DS Simply, you can backup all your games and saved game files by dragging them to your hard drive. You also can play any of your games and not have to carry around and swap out all of your cartridges. The R4 also has a built-in cheat system to allow you to play the games by your own rules. I buy games if I like them. I have a legal right to make backup copies of software I own.
That is sad, but the answer is not to destroy a product that has many legitimate uses and fills a need that Nintendo was unwilling to fulfill itself. The movie industry tried to kill [wikipedia.org] the VCR when it came out because of fears of copyright monopoly violation. Later they started making more money from movie rentals and sales than they did from theatrical runs, due to a technology they tried to have axed, but that's not the point. You can't only think what's good for copyright holders, the important thing is the public good. The public good is the whole reason for copyright's existence, we shouldn't let this limited government-granted (non-natural) right trample on our natural rights.
Re:Region Codes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Region Codes (Score:4, Insightful)
The current bee in my bonnet is the way they cancelled a US version of Puzzle Collection for GC.
So the only reason I have a Free Loader is to play that damn game.
And I guess I still don't buy it. As long as the publishers don't publish in places where they don't have copyright, do they really care if someone can play the software there? So that means we're at least 3 steps removed from the people who might care.
If you don't provide for backup/homebrew/etc... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Nintendo et. al. provided a means for backing up games, free tools for developing and running homebrew (or for a very nominal fee), and eliminated region-coding, then modchips wouldn't be necessary for these legitimate purposes, and there wouldn't be the temptation to try pirating games at all. They choose not to provide these things. Wouldn't it be easier and less costly to them to provide this stuff? It would also make customers happy.
Re:Booo! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Offering free replacement media for disks which will no longer play due to scratches/warping (these could be offered via standard retail outlets so there is no issue of "Send us your disk and wait 3 months for a response", which could then be another legitimate reason to make your own backup). Media is cheap and if you can show proof of purchase, what's the issue for not issuing a replacement, other than greed?
2) NOT imposing region locks - in this day and age where markets are global via the internet and the world is shrinking in terms of travel, region locks are an archaic method of locking users in. If I buy a bunch of games on a shopping trip to NY I should be able to expect them to play back in the UK, or if I go online to buy games I shouldn't have to risk getting a non-PAL version.
If these are the two major legitimate reasons for mod chips, then the games companies could remove both reasons with ease and leave little excuse for mod chips and remove the debate. The problem is, even if they are a minority, some people ARE using mod chips for entirely reasonable purposes, and rather than taking the sledgehammer approach to the issue, companies could work with those customers to solve their issues and people may then be more understanding when those same companies ask for help to reduce piracy.
It would also go some way towards removing the perception of corporate greed in these areas - after all, why should we be sympathetic to companies crying about greedy pirates when those same companies are hurting their paying customers for the same reason?
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Blatant Stealing." (Score:3, Insightful)
Fact of the matter is...if companies don't at least make some attempt to make it difficult to pirate something, then everyone would do that instead of paying for it. Then games just would not be made.
If you are too poor to buy games, then you really should be doing something about that rather than sitting around playing video games. You even give a good alternative (GameFly) to pirating.
Re:"Blatant Stealing." (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I know that depriving someone else of their property is not quite the same as downloading a digital copy, but that's the point you're making- if you can't afford it, you should have it anyway. This is just bullshit sense-of-entitlement excuses, no better than Nintendo's own quips (Second-hand games are illegal!). Furthermore, if you can't afford the games (even the cheap-ass $20 older ones) then how the hell can you afford a console? It's like buying a nice 40" TV then saying you can't afford cable (at least with a TV you have over-the-air programming, though).
Do people use these things to make legal backups? Sure. Do the majority of people with these use it for such? Doubtful. Games really aren't that expensive. Okay, you want Gears of War? Save $5/month for a year. If you can afford the 360, you can probably afford to stuff $5 in a cookie jar. Maybe you'll have to rent it a bit, or wait, but if you want the game you can do it. And, by the time you have that $60, the price would probably come down a bit. (This isn't even to mention games not yet released, which tend to get hype many months in advance, allowing you to start saving now.)
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
misleading description, fixed it for ya: (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously... you pay $70-100 for a game and then it gets damaged and u r up shit creek, mod chips enable the backing up of your valuable purchase.
Tahnkfully mod chips are still legal here in Australia
Re:"Blatant Stealing." (Score:1, Insightful)