Nintendo Asks For Government Help To Fight Piracy 296
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."
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.
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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.
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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.
They're not blaming you specifically you know.
Re:Whine whine whine (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Who says they'd be willing to pay, or would even consider buying a game if they were forced to pay to download batches of the crap and sort through it instead of feeling extorted?
This is the other crux of the argument.
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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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That's a really bad marketing slogan, you know. Most people wouldn't associate being on crack with good things.
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You know actual console hardware is often sold at a loss, subsidised by the licensing from the first few games you buy?
I seem to recall at the start of the PS3's life cycle the break even point was at about 5 games.
Admittedly, at this point in the DS life cycle, I would hope the parts have become cheap enough for them to make at least a small amount on the hardware.
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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.
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?
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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
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Nintendo makes a point of always profiting on hardware. They haven't lost money on a single Wii or DS console, and manufacturing cost reductions have not turned into price cuts at retail (they haven't needed to cut prices - they're still selling consoles faster than they can produce them.)
I don't think Nintendo has ever sold a console below break-even point.
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Well you know, the XBOX extra warranty isn't available in most countries, nor xbox live for that matter.
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What's the problem with piracy here? I think that the prices are freaking high, legal nintendo games/consoles/acc
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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?
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I guess you didn't really read my post.
I'm not so much defending piracy as stating it's idiotic to build a business model around assuming piracy wont exist, then when it does, trying to force law changes that effect people in more ways than just preventing piracy in countries where Nintendo doesn't even add to their economy.
If Nintendo does make a loss on the DS without putting any real anti-piracy measures in it and then people pirate games for it then that's their own fault for being so utterly naive in t
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I'm not so much defending piracy as stating it's idiotic to build a business model around assuming piracy wont exist,
First their model existed before piracy existed. Second they do put systems in place to prevent piracy but people crack it. They put these security measures on a hardware and software level. They also put in EULA agreements, etc. Now they are trying to get the laws ALREADY in place enforced. What more do you want from these guys? They did their due dilligence.
trying to force law changes that effect people in more ways than just preventing piracy in countries where Nintendo doesn't even add to their economy.
Actually they are not trying to force law changes. It is already illegal in China to pirate software. It is both a national law on their own and by
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Seeing as your entire post is based on the delusion that Nintendo makes an effort to protect their software then please explain why it is an issue that primarily effects Nintendo's consoles and not Microsoft or Sony's?
The fact is, Microsoft and Sony put much better protection in place with their latest batch of consoles whilst Nintendo did very little.
I'm sorry if you can't accept that but it's fact, it's far more trivial to crack Nintendo's systems than it is Microsoft and Sony's and this is purely down to
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Seeing as your entire post is based on the delusion that Nintendo makes an effort to protect their software then please explain why it is an issue that primarily effects Nintendo's consoles and not Microsoft or Sony's?
Wow you TOTALLY fail - again two links talking about people CRACKING nintendo's consoles:
http://www.iconocast.com/0000000013/S1/News1.htm [iconocast.com] [iconocast.com] (do a search for Nintendo)
http://www.ocmodshop.com/news/displaygamingnews.asp?articleid=33394&zoneid=15 [ocmodshop.com] [ocmodshop.com] (do a search for Despite)
The fact is, Microsoft and Sony put much better protection in place with their latest batch of consoles whilst Nintendo did very little.
Even if this were true, and I am not qualified to state who has better protection in place though Xbox and ps3 get pirated all the time, it still does not justify. A company does not have to put protections
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.
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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.
That is backwards ass stupid. It is poor justification and I dare you to go to a court of law, with pirated games and say "your honor, this is why i pirate games..." Most consoles are loss leaders.
http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=56707&page=3 [vgchartz.com]
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I don't know why you keep posting a thread that is mere speculation and is in fact factually incorrect as Microsoft aren't making a loss on the 360 anymore and haven't been for a while (thanks partly to the cost savings in the new v2 console).
No one's going to go to a court of law because they're not contesting their right to pirate, they know they have no right to pirate.
I wont respond to the rest of your ramblings because I already covered them in response to your other post. The crux of it is though that
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Piracy is a problem companies have to deal with themselves, not expect everyone else to deal with for them
FUD - Anti-piracy laws already exist in the US and China. Companies are not allowed to enforce these, the police must enforce these. Companies are begging police TO enforce these. You are rambling. BTW even if they are now making profits on their consoles - it does not justify someone pirating.
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"FUD - Anti-piracy laws already exist in the US and China."
Irrelevant, laws don't stop the problem existing so it still has to be factored into any business model. It's naive not to do so.
"Companies are not allowed to enforce these, the police must enforce these. Companies are begging police TO enforce these."
Depends on whose doing it. There's a different between civil and criminal infringement but I don't expect you to understand that. Police also have limited resources and when it comes to a choice betwee
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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
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Tiffany and Louis Vuitton aren't aggressive enough either.
Now you are comparing apples and oranges.
Those that can afford a $1000.- handbag will get the Real Thing and wouldn't want to be caught dead with a fake.
These guys don't loose a cent due to all the counterfeit crap being sold to an entirely different demographic.
The sale of illegally copied games is a different matter, an amount of market is being lost by the genuine manufacturers.
Because it's rather impossible to fix this through technical or legal means they'll have to come up with a different solution, l
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"Nintendo are not the only ones who make software for their systems. Third-party developers depend on sales of their software. It hardly matters to them whether Nintendo makes a profit on the hardware or not."
So then they need to complain to Nintendo for not producing a system that protects their games.
"Nintendo stuck with cartridges a generation longer than anyone else and used a non-standard format for their first disc-based system. Just because they don't take the same approach as other manufacturers doe
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But you'd never have a situation where they'd sell no games on any console- the people who buy games for their consoles still far outweight those who pirate games for their consoles at least on the latest gen systems.
The point is that if they sell consoles at a loss then they have to accept that those who do pirate are going to cause them a loss. They could just not sell at a loss and ensure that they don't ever make any loss to pirates (who wouldn't buy games anyway) but still maintain a profit off those w
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There is no guarantee those people would get the console and any games if they couldn't copy them.
Atleast Nintendo makes money on the consoles to so they have got my support anyway.
Not really. Considering game consoles tend to be a loss-leader for manufacturers (ala X-box, PS3, not sure about nintendo) the manufacturers don't want you to JUST buy their console (even if you NEVER put a game into it so there is no piracy issue). You are not supporting them by buying the console only - you are hurting them.
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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".
Uhuh... (Score:3, Funny)
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Sometimes the cops come after them to arrest the material. Sometimes they come to buy it.
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Yeah, just like Brazil will. Here there are people selling pirated games
That's in part because of Brazil's prohibitive import tariff on consumer electronics. In many cases, more of the price of an imported console or game disc goes to the government of Brazil than to Nintendo. FedEx.com's report on Brazil [fedex.com] lists includes a 60% duty, 1% brokerage fee, 1% warehouse tax, and 3% additional port tax, a 20% Industrial Products Tax (VAT) on the product's value plus duties (total tax so far: 98%), and an 18% Merchandise Circulation Tax on the product's values, duties, and VAT (total tax
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.
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Although to be frank, I doubt things would escalate to that level over this - there are bigger fish to fry right now than lost sales to a Japanese toy company that's practically printing it's own money.
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?
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For these games to be as affordable in Brazil as in the US, they would have to cost less in Brazil than in the US. However as the parent AC points out, it is either the same of more.
Is anyone surprised that piracy is a bigger problem there?
They have the power... (Score:2)
Why don't they wave their magic wand to make it all go away?
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Why don't they wave their magic wand to make it all go away?
But before they do, they need to make sure they put the strap around their wrist and pull it tight, else their magic wand might fling out of their hand and break their precious plasma TV.
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.
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Just because a hardware unit was bought and no software was bought doesn't automatically mean software was pirated. I have a DS, but no software for it. Not even pirated. It was given to me as a gift, and it's been sitting in my drawer ever since - I can't think of a single reason I'd want a friggin' DS. I woulda sold it but my girlfriend was the one that bought it for me. lol
Besides, isn't the DS designed so that you don't really need to purchase software? Like, if you play multiplayer, only one person nee
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Like, if you play multiplayer, only one person needs a copy of the game, right?
This is true of some games, like Tetris DS, where everything needed for multiplayer fits into about 3 MB. But games that swap a lot of geometry, textures, and sound from the Game Card into RAM need a separate Game Card per player because the wireless link is far slower than even the original PlayStation's 2X CD-ROM drive.
Homebrew (Score:2)
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.
I have an R4 copier. If I use my R4 to play OGGs and videos in MoonShell on a DS Lite, am I gypping Nintendo out of the sale of a DSi, which doesn't come out until April anyway? If I use my R4 to play DSOrganize, which has web and IRC functions in it, am I gypping Nintendo out of the sale of Nintendo DS Browser, which is out of print anyway? If I use my R4 to play Lockjaw Tetromino Game [pineight.com], am I gypping Nintendo out of the sale of a copy of Tetris DS, which is out of print anyway? And when I use my R4 to run t
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
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So what is it that you want Nintendo?
They want countries to enforce their laws and treaties. Pirating is illegal in China but the police turn a blind eye. So someone asking a country to enforce their laws is not out line. Maybe you don't agree with it because you want to own pirated games/movies/music w/o potential recourse, but then again a car thief doesn't want the police to enforce the laws either.
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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It was my impression that they don't want to go after the distributors of illegally made copies (which I don't have a problem with), they want go after the tools. Modchips & drives that can be used for ripping the original DVDs.
By limiting the availability of these tools (hence making them more expensive to obtain), they're in fact worsening the situation. If I buy the modchip & pay or find someone to install it for me (I'm no good with a soldering iron) and buy a special drive to backup my games, I
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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.
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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.
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.
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Re:It didn't stop piracy. (Score:2)
...they had custom media, sure, but they didn't make it expensive enough to clone/copy.
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That's a formatting issue though. That can easily be gotten around. If they really want to make it hard, make it PHYSICALLY a different size. Most CD trays are designed to holder either 12cm or 8cm disks. Nintendo: make your disc 10cm. Not only that, but make the spindle hole in the center 40% larger - that'll make it really difficult to work in laptop type drives which just grip it there.
And be completely ready to accept that some weird outfit in China WILL make a custom drive capable of reading your
Good luck with that in Brazil! (Score:2)
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1) How do you fight piracy
2) Justification of costs
To answer your posts
1) Hope the police will enforce the laws they are supposed to enforce
2) If you can't afford it - don't buy it. Trust me, nobody will die if they can't play the DS...well maybe the 13 year old kid who wants to have what "ALL" of his friends have.
Tax cuts (Score:2)
How can you fight piracy in a country where a Nintendo DS game costs more than US$100 a piece
By reducing the prohibitive (>100%) duties on imports of video games. I detailed them in another comment [slashdot.org].
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]
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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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Nintendo of America (NOA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd. (NCL), of Kyoto, Japan. Also, NES stands for Nintendo Entertainment System, not the name of a company.
PEDANTIC FAIL.
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The great thing about Japan is if you go and buy any gaming magazine from a newsstand, it's full of step-by-step instructions and screenshots on how to rip games or use bootlegs. :)
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.
Piracy IS LEGAL here in Spain(for video and audio) (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, that's right. Here in Spain, it's simply legal to download, upload and/or share music and films, if it's non-profit. Also, it's been ruled that pages that encourage sharing films and music and have revenues from ads are also legal, in part because otherwise google would be illegal, as google also has links to torrent files (try searching for "filetype:torrent" in google).
Unfortunately, Spanish Law makes an exception with copyrighted software. So it's legal to share music and films but not software. An
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So take a pill and help yourself to a cup of STFU.
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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)
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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.
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http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=super+mario+brothers+nintendo&safe=on&cid=16603037394614279608&sa=title#ps-sellers [google.com]
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=super+mario+brothers+nintendo&safe=on&cid=166030 [google.com]
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Also you say people are too cheap if these people are the majority the people are not cheap the prices are just set too high the product is overvalued. And before you go on about how people are still buying them. The price point isn't s
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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.
Could you name these "out of print" Wii games
For one thing, where do you go for "video games" in grandparent to "video games designed for Wii" in your post? But more importantly, can you try to give a North American release date for Earthbound (NES), Kuru Kuru Kururin (GBA), or Pinocchio (Wii), all of which were fully translated into English and then never released in the United States and Canada?
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.
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That's how much people love this game; that's how little Nintendo cares.
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Right on. I've had an R4 since day one, and freely admit to downloading NDS ROMS. The only one I've bought is Zelda.
1) Convenience. I have at least a dozen games on a 1 GB MicroSD. That's the ONLY way I'm going to be able to carry around a variety of games without losing half of them.
2) Quality. A lot of DS games really suck. I don't even keep most of the games I try. If I had paid for them, I'd regret it.
Mother 3 is awesome. I ordered a Slot-2 flashcart just so I could play it. I can see why Nintendo didn'
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not releasing a game into a specific market does not justify people pirating the game.
Why shouldn't people pirate it? Give me one good reason. There's no actual consequences for Nintendo, so you're going to have to either trot out your flawed understanding of property rights (which will then be summarily debunked), or fall back on appeals to "THE LAW" (in which case, who the fuck cares?).
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Playing a game for free that can't even be bought in your country will not cause the games industry to die, so get over it.
It doesn't matter how it affects their product - they, for whatever reason, are refusing to do business with you and guess what they are entitled refuse it. This does not give you a right to go in and steal their product. Let me give you an example. So how about you get over it.
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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.
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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).