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Lik-Sang To Take On The Big 3?
kableh writes "According to a press release on Lik-Sang's website, the gaming accessory company has new management, and is prepared to mount a strong defense in their upcoming lawsuit against Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. "Just a few days after having received High Court Orders not allowing us to sell Mod Chip products for the Playstation 2 and Flash Linker products for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, Lik Sang realized that the powers of those three multi-billion dollar corporations are simply infinite compared to the budgets and resources businesses like Lik Sang have available. Their legal actions have been hurting our customers and our business a lot in the last couple of weeks, so that we have finally decided to let somebody else take over Lik-Sang.com and solely concentrate on the lawsuit", says Alex Kampl, Director of Lik Sang International Limited."
"Their legal actions have been hurting our customers and our business a lot"
That's something you don't see often - they mentioned customers first. Lik-Sang really are great, and I'm personally glad to see them sticking it to the man.
Sueing only Microsoft is virtualy impossible, sueing Nintendo, Sony AND Microsoft is going to be quite a suicidal task... how much money do they have to burn?
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
Hopefully, it can become a huge PR boost to take on a big powerful company and let the common people know more about these sort of conflicts. That can act as extra incentive for small companies to stick up for their rights and further bring attention to these problems.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
We had developed a special proprietary media for the GameCube, which makes piracy all but impossible. There is also no internal hard drive to act as storage, either. Therefore, you don't see much GameCube warez or modchips floating about, compared to the PS2 and Xbox scene.
MS and Sony, with their resources, should have invested time and money to develop proprietary media as well.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
if they continue to make and distribute the mod chips without implying that they be used to modify a proprietary system, on what grounds can they be sued?
...then tell the big three were to stick it...
Put a big disclaimer on the side that says:
DO NOT USE THIS CHIP IN PLACE OF U19 IN THE SONY PLAYSTATION 2 MAIN BOARD VER. 1.3, DOING SO WILL VOID THE WARRANTY AND MAY BE A VIOLATION OF APPLICABLE LAW
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
Which law, the law that says once you bought something it's yours to do whatever you like to it? It's this transformation from purchase to "licensing" that's very obviously against the spirit, not only of the law, but also the spirit of capitalism as well.
American ingenuity did not create the Playstation 2 or the Gamecube...
And what happened to making an honest living? Is charging $200 for an American operating system honest?
evil adrian
Mod Chip != Piracy.
Piracy is wrong, but so is not letting you make backups.
Remember when it was "so you've lost your dongle - pay full price for a new copy..."
Now its "Your dog scratched the delicate DVD and level 3 no longer loads - tough, buy a new copy" - or "You broke the disc but you made a backup - now you're a criminal"
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Yes, Nintendo is a fine example of an American company. Red blooded Americans like Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yamauchi have created many quality, American games from their headquarters in Tokyo, USA.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Hmm, while I do not own a playstation, xbox, or anything newer than my "classic" nintendo. I don't see anything wrong with a company producing a chip that I can put into something I purchased. If I purchased the ps2 or something, I would expect to be able to open it up and plug whatever damn piece of electronics into it that I want.
It could be that I am missing some grand point here since I haven't been following all of this very well. It just seems to me that some company is creating a product that allows me to void my warranty on a piece of hardware that *I* own. If I buy a Toasmaster brand toaster and a company makes a Toastmaster hack that connects my toaster to the internet I expect to be able to mod my own toaster.
Am I missing something?
I wouldn't count out M$ just yet, they still have plenty of cash to throw at XBox. We all know that when Microsoft wants to dominate a market segment they are usually pretty relentless until they get what they want. They have bought exclusive rights to some titles just to boost Box sales.
Also I think Xbox live might make them more of a viable competitor, from what I've heard it's a better user experience compared to Nintendo and Sony's online offerings, albeit a pay service. I know several people who have bought Xboxes recently just for Xbox live. So who knows, it will be interesting to see where these console wars go.
MS, Sony and whomever else(never cared for nintendo) have great power.
This was never about protecting their revenues.
They have chosen to use their power to destroy a small business in hong kong that actually sells usefull products that they didn't think of.
Lik Sang is right about this hurting their customers. Their website was punted like a girl from #bearcave
MS has used their power to disrupt a company from selling legitimate products. I was going to buy a 7" LCD screen from liksang at one point and couldn't. I had to get it elsewhere. Oh Wait, no one else sells such usefull products.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If you made a copy of it beforehand, and had it stored in a safe place, then yes, you are entitled to a free backup.
However, your analogy isn't very good. A better one would be, if car companies behaved like the media and software industry, you wouldn't be allowed to make copies of your car keys. Lose your key and you have to buy a new car, at full price.
This probably isn't the case right now, but shouldn't it be considered a monopoly if one corporation (or an alliance of a few corporations) has so much power that they can simply sue competitors out of business?
I mean, shouldn't all corporations (and people) be equal in the court of law, even if they aren't in the real world. What the heck do they call it "justice" for?
---
Open Source Shirts
And have you thought how evil are Microsofts, Nintendos and other large corporations before stating: "What happened to making an honest living?"
Your patriotism is raw as you didn't think about this...
As if you would take some care about how certain corporations came into these megapredatory enterprises, you would just put your patriotism in first place and ask when someone would be able to make an honest living again.
It is not necessary to leave the US to see what certain large corporations did to Amrican ingenuity and innovation. Where are all those small companies that rised the M$ DOS world into the main trend in computing? Where is the shareware world? Where is the chance to rise a profit from a brilliant idea? What happened to Stack, old Borland, Novell and other major palyers in the market? What happened to the ancient Evil Empire of Big Blue which was a menace but still was full of innovation?
There is one thing. Ten years ago we had lots of major players: Microsoft, IBM, AMD, Intel, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, Borland, Lotus and several others. Today we have two sides: the *NIX world vs Micro$oft domination. Some may say this is natural, that there should be some congragation. However it is well known that this was achieved not by natural events and free market but rather by predatory politics. And US courts showed that this was a fact, no matter the half agreements that, for more than 10 years, US governments had with Redmond.
Before looking at Asian expertises, look at your own country and your own countrymen who cannot no longer make an honest living as before. Because you have no worser experts on stealing, distributing and profiting from hard American's work.
The thing that kills me about MS, Sony, and Nintendo flexing their corporate might here is that this isn't software we're talking about. This isn't a licensed product...when you buy a PS2, you OWN it, and whatever you choose to do to it once you own, wether that is playing with it, smashing it to bits, reselling it, or fucking around with the hardware, that's YOUR choice. They have no legal say into the matter, so they should have no sway over Lik-Sang for selling a chip that modifies said hardware.
It really chaps my ass that this should even need to GO to court.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
The real reason all 3 companies are sueing Lik-sang is becuase they want to keep their regional game monopolies regional. They sell more expensive in the US than in europe, or vice versa, or they may sell then in japan for 3x as much as in amercia. It's mostly statistics and how they can extract the optimum amount of money. As we all know the lower the price of an item, the more it well sell and vice versa, the more expensive an item is the less it will sell. Throwing all other factors aside, you'll notice that when you plot a graph of this you get a nice curve. Find the optimum point ont he curve, and estemate for those other factors, do some tricky math, and you find metroid prime should be selling at $49.99 in europe and $59.99 in the USA to make the maximum amount of money, even though they are the same game. So, they regionalize their systems, which is inexpensive, and they increase their profits by fixing the market price of their units. Illegally, mind you. Then, some guy comes along with a soddering iron, figures out how to bypass it. Some company starts selling chips becuase the guy figured he can save $20-40 a game by buying it in europe, or some european can get a game 5 months in advance of it's european release, and you start having problems with those statistics. In short, shops would literally spring up overnight to do this kind of thing if retailers didn't think they'd get the full wraith of hades forced upon them. Another thing. The system is designed to play the game while the disk is in. They don't make nay fancy carrieing cases or fancy protective gear for the game when it's on CD. So, over time, the CD will become damaged to the point where it has to be rebaught. By making sure the person can't play the game in the future, and by making sure that you can force people to buy a new game when the original breaks, you can further increase your profit margins. Then when someone questions them, they pay off the reporter or person, or tell them that they do it to ward off piracy then deny the fact that, statistically, they are completly incorrect. They then release the statistics at the end of the year, round off to some big number, and then publish it for joe-smoe's kid to use in his report. So no, it's not hard work anymore. It's the fact that one guy is good at something, and another guy who isn't as good decided to take legal action so he can compete. Game designers, on the other hand, I have a certain respect for. They do work hard and I bet they enjoy every moment of it.
Candy-Coated Knowledge