Nintendo Wins Lik Sang Piracy Case 55
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Adrenaline Vault article indicating Nintendo has won substantial damages against GameBoy 'backup' device vendor Lik Sang. According to the original Reuters story, "Nintendo Co Ltd said on Thursday it has won one of its 'most significant anti-piracy judgments ever' against a Hong Kong firm that sold devices capable of copying its games and putting them on the Internet for limitless downloading." Nintendo has been awarded an interim amount of HK$5 million (US$641,000) in damages, and they say Nintendo software publishers as a whole lost US$650 million in sales last year due to piracy.
Disgusting (Score:1)
Re:Disgusting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Disgusting (Score:1)
I guess you are right, that's why they invest some much time and money to make their products piracy free
It does show a point though. We all have seen the sales of Nintendo's GC fall further behind compared to the PS2 and XBOX.
This proves to the point that piracy aren't a deciding factor, in stead it might prove that piracy helps (to a degree) to sell products. I for one, have been copying ga
How does this affect the US? (Score:1)
How does this affect the US? Does it allow Nintendo to go after people who purchased products from Lik Sang? Does it prohibit another Chinese manufacturer from making similar products and selling them here (other than that they too would likely lose a suit in HK)?
BTW -- Thanks to the DMCA production of this device would be patently illegal in the US. It wouldn't take a court to decide that either... Nice to know the Chinese have more "freedom to innovate" (hey that's catchy;) than US citizens do. Make
Re:How does this affect the US? (Score:2)
Not really; you're not cracking encryption or otherwise circumventing tech measures limiting access to copyrighted material; you're just copying it. There's no access-limiting technology there to begin with.
The custom cart is an access control (Score:1)
lost $650 million in sales last year due to piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
They assume just cause someone download it for free they lost a sale. Most people who download stuff would of never bought it anyways, even if they could not of gotten it free. They should just enjoy the popularity of the product and acept the sales they get. [even a downloader must buy GB to play it on] Anyone with brains does not spend $5-600 a year on GB crap. Well not anyone with a real life or a good drug dealer near by.
Re:lost $650 million in sales last year due to pir (Score:2)
Re:lost $650 million in sales last year due to pir (Score:2)
I don't know... because some people get some sense of enjoyment out of playing games?
Why would anyone ever want to play GB games on a console? Nintendo's releasing a gamecube peripheral to let you do just that in a few days.
Re:lost $650 million in sales last year due to pir (Score:1)
Prove it. It's one thing to make a statement like that, it's another to link a study. And as you know, the interpretation of statistics is often subjective, and fraught with bias.
While it is probably true that if there was no way to pirate something today, more products would be sold, but in a world with a warez mentality, that's not true. If I can download The Hulk, I'm certainly not going
Re:lost $650 million in sales last year due to pir (Score:2)
Thanks for clearing that up. I assumed that all the money I was spending on those GB games was because the games were fun and interesting to play. Now, thanks to your marvalous insight, I have realised that I am, in fact, brainless or without a "real" life or drug dealer.
Just so you know, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft don't make money on hardware sales, they make it on software sales
US$650 million (Score:2)
thats not THAT much, is it?
Re:"capable of" (Score:2)
Re:"capable of" (Score:1)
Re:Won Some Got Some (Score:1)
I'm glad I got mine.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like with all technology, there are good u
Re:I'm glad I got mine.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But make more money how? How many developers want to develop for a company that has no concern about copyright infingement? This was not about only first party titles. This is just one more venue that Nintendo has to stick with Sony and Microsoft...not for the consumer,
what other uses (Score:1)
Re:what other uses (Score:2)
Re:what other uses (Score:1)
Re:what other uses (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus the flash carts also make a good development system if you want to try your own game on something other than an emulator.
Re:what other uses (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, being able to do that is great, if you get a large enough cartrage (about 300$ for 1GB), you can fit 32 of your GBA games into one cart so you don't have to constantly switch them and fumble around with games and worry about losing them.
And, for th
Jeeze (Score:1, Troll)
This is annoying. (Score:2)
I have lots of NES and SNES games that I'd love to be able to play on my GBA portably, but can't because the flash carts are impossible to find now. Why? Because people were just warezing like mad with these things. The only time I ran into a person with a flash cart (at a theatre), he bragged about how he had so man games, he couldn't even remember them. The flash cart he carried had 5 of them at the time on it.
As someone who owns over 250 games, I
What are you talking about? (Score:1)
Unless you build your own portable SNES and NES I find it unlikely that you'd play SNES and NES games portably.
I'm talking about ... (Score:2)
It is also very possible that SNES on GBA [gameboy-advance.net] stuff will exist soon.
Not New for Nintendo (Score:2, Interesting)
You have an
Officiall comments by Alex Kampl / Lik Sang Intl. (Score:5, Insightful)
happenings and about the misleading press release of Nintendo.
Before the Nintendo Press release has been distributed, I have delivered a Notice of
Appeal to Nintendo, as well as to the High Court of Hong Kong. I am not exactly sure
why Nintendoâ(TM)s press department didnâ(TM)t mention a word about it.
The Judgment was not a real trial yet, it was a Summary Judgment with a single Judge.
Usually such Summary Judgments are in case of bounced bank checks where no trial is
needed and everything is straight forward.
With all due respect to the High Court of Hong Kong, but no Intellectual Property (IP)
specialist was assigned to this case. Already at the first hearing the Judge mentioned that
itâ(TM)s a pity Hong Kong has no IP specialist anymore and that he finds the Copyright Law
of Hong Kong very confusing. After some research, it looks like the Judge is a specialist
for maritime laws. He made several comments during the hearings which seemed to
observers like this was his first IP case ever.
The Summary Judgment itself was based on the Section 273 of the Hong Kong Copyright
Ordinance about âoecircumventing a copy-protectionâ. No copy-protection exists in the
Gameboy or Gameboy Advance game cartridges. The Judge didnâ(TM)t hear a specialist or at
least an independent 3rd party expert opinion - he took it for granted from the
explanations by Nintendo that there is a copy-protection.
Furthermore, the Judge found that âoeby analogy with drugs, it[the setcion 273] is not
aimed at the drug addict but at the drug traffickerâ. I fail to understand his logic, as this
would mean that the drug store selling the injection needles to drug addicts or maybe
even the manufacturer of the container where the drug addict keeps the drug could be
held liable?
After legal actions in the USA against Bung Enterprises in the late nineties (for selling
and manufacturing videogame development and backup equipment) this was the second
Court Judgment ever regarding products of this nature. Regarding information made
available to me in the Court Room, the case against Bung and its US distributor Carl
Industries Inc was brought to an end in their disfavor by Bung not complying with Court
Orders and not paying ordered penalties. The actual judgment was written by Nintendo
representatives, without the Judge properly going through the arguments. The legality or
illegality of the products in question has therefore never been argued in a real trial
anywhere in the world. A serious trial, with competent Judges, is now definitely needed
to settle the question once and for all. This is why I have decided to appeal.
I am not happy about the direction where this is heading, neither are supporters and
legitimate users of the tools. Again, I have to stress once more, that the very same
hardware under attack is used by thousands of hobbyist users and even professional
developers for legitimate purpose. Very embarrassing for Nintendo: even the large
publisher, who made the original game used in Court for demonstrating purpose, bought
hundreds and hundreds of Flash Cartridges from my company for beta testing. And so did
numerous other top 10 publishers listed in the stock market.
The products I have sold are not circumventing any copy protections, same as a Floppy
Disk Drive and a 3.5" Disk doesn't â" in fact there is no copy-protection existing, as
commonly known by the gaming industry.
I completely understand Nintendoâ(TM)s fight against piracy, but I believe they are aiming at
the wrong targets. With Digital Media and the Internet nowadays, publishers will have to
change their strategy. They just canâ(TM)t win the fight against the Progress without removing
our primary rights: presumption of innocence and the right for backup. Nintendo doesnâ(TM)t
need to prove you are a pirate anymore, it is assumed you all are if you have the technical
means to copy.