Nintendo Apologizes to SuicideGirls

As a follow up to the unfortunate incident on Wednesday, thanks to emfra (and others) who pointed out that BoingBoing has Nintendo's Apology Letter to the SuicideGirls site up. They even went so far as to offer up a free game system and game to the site owner. So alls well that end's well...but not before Penny Arcade had a chance to comment.

Comments

Can someone repost?

[Isca]

Some of us are behind firewalls at work :)

Re:Can someone repost?

[marktaw.com]

Hello,

We would like to apologize to you and to those who frequent the suicidegirls.com website for inadvertently contacting you about a fan posting on the website.

We know that many of our fans are old enough to make their own choice about what they want to view on the Internet. We value the support of our fans and we respect their decisions. The letter was sent as part of an ongoing Nintendo program to aggressively protect our younger consumers from the hundreds of sexually-explicit sites each year that use Nintendo properties to attract children. We are proud of our efforts in this area. Unfortunately, the site posting identified in our letter was targeted by mistake.

As a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you (and RuneLateralus) a free Nintendo video game system and game of your choice. (...)

In addition, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with contact information for RuneLateralus, or have him contact us directly, so that we may apologize to him. We would be glad to send him a game and system of his choice through you as well, since we do not have his contact information.

Sincerely,
Christie Hamilton
Nintendo of America Inc.
Consumer Service Department

Re:Can someone repost?

[Perdurabo26]

You can pick it up at MirrorDot.

Re:Can someone repost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone really needs to write a HOWTO on getting around employer's firewalls and Internet monitoring, if they haven't already. Spoiler: run sshd and an HTTP proxy (apache or squid) on a spare box at home. Have sshd listen on port 443. SSH from work to home; forward a port from your desktop PC at work to your HTTP proxy at home. Configure your browser to use the proxy over the forwarded port. Benefits: your employer can't easily snoop your Internet traffic or control where you go. Hazards: suspicious traffic on port 443 may alert employer's network snoops. Obstacles: your ISP blocking incoming port 443, your employer's firewall blocking HTTPS access to your ISP. Difficulty: four out of five. Success rate: ? Unknown, but it works for me, and my employer is very paranoid.

Re:Can someone repost?

[julesh]

And when the IT department works out that you're intentionally circumventing their monitoring and blocking of sites that frequently carry spyware and trojans, they're going to be _really_ pissed off with you.

Re:Can someone repost?

[nuxx]

What works really well for me is running a copy of CGIProxy on a https vhost on my personal server. That way the URLs are obfuscated and all content is wrapped up in SSL. Works rather nicely, and it works for most types of sites.

Re:Can someone repost?

[AvantLegion]

P.S. - You may pick up your free game systems at Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, WA.

Please bring the girls.

Re:Can someone repost?

[NeoSkandranon]

Also known as: HOWTO get fired for circumventing your organization's IT policy

Re:Can someone repost?

[Flying Purple Wombat]

There are no sexually-explicit sites that target children

Yes, there are. Two examples:

My wife opened a URL that once belonged to Toys-R-Us. She bookmarked it a few years ago, but now it's a porn site. I TRU didn't renew it's domain registration for that particular domain, and the porn guys grabbed it.

Also, see my /. post about how my son was tricked into firing up a porn-dialer http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=112780&cid =9562923

Re:Can someone repost?

[TiggertheMad]

And when the IT department works out that you're intentionally circumventing their monitoring and blocking of sites that frequently carry spyware and trojans, they're going to be _really_ pissed off with you.

If I were working in an IT department, and I found out someone set up a SSH proxie forwarding service, I would make a wild leap of logic and assume that the person was smart enough to keep their own machine spyware and trojan free. Most people don't even know what a port is, let alone how they work...

Re:Can someone repost?

[zoeblade]

I believe the parent post is right, although I'm not entirely sure. I heard Nintendo commissioned Sony to help them build a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES after the "success" of the Mega-CD (or Sega-CD as it's known in America), then changed their mind. Sony weren't too pleased about this so went ahead with the system anyway, improved it quite a bit, and released it as the PlayStation.

Re:Can someone repost?

[michrech]

While not targeted at children directly, try dlsreports.com.

I mis-typed this once in front of my boss and ended up with a picture of a vagina on my screen.

Luckily there were no customers in our shop at the time.

Going to the site now returns a 'search' page instead of the porn site it used to be. Maybee dslreports.com had it taken down?

Re:Can someone repost?

[Babbster]

I can see making that assumption. Of course, I can also see the next assumption being that they're using that connection to transfer proprietary information from the company's network to their own computer.

Re:Can someone repost?

[Aqua OS X]

Might be cool... if you have an overwhelming desire to become cross-eyed and enjoy being shot in the face with red lasers. :)

Re:Can someone repost?

[TClevenger]

In a previous company where I worked IT, a manager approached me and asked if there was a way to block web access to the outside world for one of their employees without alerting HR or Corporate IT that they were surfing porn.

I immediately wanted to answer, "Uhh, why don't you try being a manager and tell them to lay off the porn if they want to keep their job?"

Nintendo

[MyLongNickName]

Sounds like Nintendo did the right thing after messing up. Time to forgive and forget.

Oh wait.. this is Slashdot :)

Re:Nintendo

[MyLongNickName]

*SIGH* This really wasn't meant to be funny. Or at least it was only meant as a funny way to make a serious point. I am a skeptical personal. But sometimes, you just have to take something at face value. Accepting apologies allows reconciliation. Not accepting apologies means we will always be at war with each other... see 99% of the world. Nintendo did something stupid. They apologized and made an attempt at correction and reconciliation. I have a lot of respect for that. Yet, it seems like it is human nature to be vindictive. And it also seems to be in the nature of Slashdot to be vindictive even when folks here were not personally involved in the original wrong.

Re:Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

You should stick to the jokes you get depressing when you get serious....

Re:Nintendo

[gamgee5273]

I think what's important to note is that it was Nintendo's lawyers who contacted SG, not Nintendo. My guess is that someone from Nintendo of America has chewed out someone at the lawfirm royally by now...

Re:Nintendo

[Ubergrendle]

Paraphrashing Ganhdi, "if we rely upon eye-for-an-eye justice, the whole world will end up blind."

Corporations are big, confusing entities. They're byzantine. Sometimes one individual, or team, or department, or DIVSION, exercise a strategy inconsistent or in competition with the corporation's main objective. How many times have you gone to work, looked at a project, and wondered "what the HELL are they doing?!?!?".

In this case, cooler heads prevailed and the situation was rectified. I don't think that Nintendo should be penalised for correcting a mistake. They were even gracious about it.

Re:Nintendo

[Dyolf Knip]

Indeed. And it looks like this apology wasn't a boilerplated item, either. Normally, when a big company backs down from a major IP snafu, their statementes are more of the "Well, you're still an naughty criminal, but out of sheer altruism we'll let you live for now" variety; basically insulting you under the guise of "We're sorry". So to see a real mea culpa and a request for additional contact info so they can do some _more_ apologizing is rare in the extreme. Kudos to Nintendo on this.

Re:Nintendo

[Anonymous Coed]

Paraphrashing Ganhdi, "if we rely upon eye-for-an-eye justice, the whole world will end up blind."

The reason I hate that quote so much is that it makes no sense. An eye for an eye means that everyone who goes around poking eyes out will be blind. Not the whole world. Just the eye-pokers.

Re:Nintendo

[fossa]

Let's assume that you need at least one eye to successfully poke the eye of another. After poking a single eye, the eye-poker is now one-eyed, having given an eye for justice, but can still poke. The eye-poker's eye won't be removed until he is caught. This is the key point, and it allows the one-eyed (or two-eyed) eye-poker to poke as many eyes as she can until someone stops her. So it is possible for a clever eye poker to poke many more eyes than her two eye quota that she would at first appear to be limited to. (Let's ignore for a moment the question of punishing a multi-poker who has but two eyes to lose). Thus, it is certainly possible for everyone to go blind in an eye for an eye world if we allow for an eye-poking rampage.

Or maybe you just shouldn't take everything so literally.

Re:Nintendo

[buxton2k]

I think you're interpreting a bit too literally. The point of the quotation is that we all hurt each other at times, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes it's physical harm, and sometimes emotional, economic, etc. If those who are hurt demand the right to vengeance, then the cycle of hurting goes on; conversely, if we understand that both we and our neighbors are imperfect, we can take the first step towards apology and reconciliation.

I said it before...

[marktaw.com]

This was a stealth marketing ploy on the part of Nintendo.

"Hey, hot goth chicks like Nintendo games, how can we publicize this fact? I know, let's send them a nasty letter from our lawyers and 200,000 geeks will start to associate hot goth chicks with Nintendo."

And you all fell for it.

Re:I said it before...

[D-Cypell]

Nintendo Marketing Guy #1: "Why dont we create an elaborate ploy to associate hot goth chicks with Nintendo?"

Nintendo Marketing Guy #2: "GREAT IDEA!! Thats much better than Magic Mushroom munching italian plumbers.... get the lawyers on it"

Seems fairly sensible to me!

Re:I said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, somebody makes a mistake and (when informed of it) both apologizes *and* offers to make it up to the offended. Now, I'm not one to shill for corporations, but how does this equate to "sleazebag company"?

Re:I said it before...

[fatwreckfan]

Except that the user that posted the names of those games was a guy. That doesn't meet my definition of a "hot goth chick."

Re:I said it before...

[SilkBD]

Profit is not a good reason to run a company, enhancing the overall good of society is.

Damn, I never laughed so hard in my life. I don't know what bizarro universe you live in... but companies exist to make profit, there's no way around that unless you're a non-profit company.

You see, they explicitly make a type of company called "non-profit" to destinguish them from all the other companies who exist for profit.

You, my friend, need to rethink your idealistic subjective reality.

Re:I said it before...

[ArbitraryConstant]

I think it's a conspiracy. One assumes at least some of the 200k geeks will pay to see the hot goth chicks naked. They both benefit.

Re:I said it before...

[CommanderData]

Nintendo Marketing Guy #3: "???"

Nintendo Marketing Guy #4: "Profit!"


The joke's been done before but I couldn't resist :)

well after RTFA

[JeanBaptiste]

and checking out the suicide girls website...

I'd like to know why Nintendo's Lawyers are looking at goth-porn. That would seem far more damaging than a goth-porn site mentioning they like Nintendo games.

but what do I know.

Re:well after RTFA

[frankthechicken]

Maybe they were doing some research for a future Mario adventure, Princess Peach always seemed to me to like the darker side of life, what with her constant "kidnapping" by Bowser, and her penchant for chains, whilst being locked up in Bowser's "dungeon".

Re:well after RTFA

[dash2]

Cease and desist at once!!!! Yours, Nintendo.

Re:well after RTFA

[t35t0r]

Suicidegirls is not "goth porn", I saw no pictures of penetration, blowjobbing, cunninglingus, and cum gargling, but maybe i didn't look in the right places.

It seems to me the Suicidegirls is erotic/nude art with a gothic twist and should not be confused for porn, although it may have the same effect on your penis.

Dear Nintendo,

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to dress up as a woman in public and tip custard over my head. Then I come home and play Mario 64 for 3 hours, I really need some professional psychiatric help.

Yours faithfully,

A.Nutter

Dear Nutter,

Yes you do need help. Mario 64 is crap.

Yours faithfully,

Your shrink

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[Fade_to_Blah]

*GASP*

I can't believe you said Mario 64 is crap!

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[jacoplane]

You forgot to post your adress so they can send you a free gamecube!

I have mod points, and wanted to mod this...

[John Murdoch]

But "Obviously wearing tinfoil hat" isn't one of the mod options.

Makes perfect sense to me

[Phixxr]

I'm glad that Nintentdo is attempting to protect their trademarked property from mis-use by porn sites. Obviously they don't want you googling zelda and getting farmsex.com.

I think they've handled this in a most professional, and logical manner. Something that cannot be said for most large entertainment companies these days.

-phixxr

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[Rude Turnip]

Nintendo stepped way over the line and was utterly wrong. If someone mentions that X and Y are her favorite video games, that is not mis-use. I think in the end, it was a case of lawyers getting caught with their pants down in their zealotry.

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[jdreed1024]

I think they've handled this in a most professional, and logical manner. Something that cannot be said for most large entertainment companies these days.

Seriously. They didn't even blame it on an intern, or outsourcing, or anything. They didn't try to pull the "Well, we know we were right, but we're going to do you a favor and back down anyway" thing. And in offering one of their products, they're letting the person choose what they want. As opposed to the RIAA, which dumps poorly selling albums in inner-city schools and calls it good.

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[Lisandro]

Just what i thought. They did something perfectly understandable, fucked up in the process, realized it *and* apologized promptly. And make up for the hassle with a game system, which you might think (or not) that it's cheap, but again, no one forced them.

Kudos to Nintendo.

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[ArbitraryConstant]

While I agree that Nintendo took appropriate action, I think that they realized that they needed to dispose of the situation very quickly once it started hitting the major news sites. And Penny Arcade. :)

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[Lisandro]

And Penny Arcade.
Yeah, I am *really* sure they were *scared* of that one.

Why, of course they are. A site visited regularly by a lot of gamers - most between 15 and 30 years old? Sounds like potential Nintendo customers to me...

It was a PR move, of course, but they made it right. They deserve some credit.

Penny Arcade Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoochie Coochie Man

Fri, October 29 2004 - 4:30 AM
by: Tycho

I'd say it's better than even odds you've seen the story, either at VE or Slashdot. The long and short of it is that someone said they liked a couple Nintendo games in their SuicideGirls profile - and, in a parody of the reasonable universe, lawyers bared their teeth. I have a hunch we're talking about some kind of perverted spider application, an automated process with a bottomless appetite for filth, but it's funny to think tracking down meaningless infractions like this is some guy's fucking job.

I guess I should say a few things in advance of this discussion. SuicideGirls is a site where, among other things, girls take off their clothes. I'm not saying you should go there or not go there. They've asked to advertise here before, and while I don't have any great qualm with titillating media I didn't know if it was the best match for the site. It may be that my scheme for rating pornography has been damaged by the Internet, but the site is actually pretty tasteful compared to other sites I have subscribed to, many of which are filmed in barns.

Now, with the caveat out of the way, I am not without reason: I can understand why Nintendo as a corporate entity might not want their juggernaut brands associated with teen coochie. And indeed, if we were talking about photosets with explicit connections to their brands I would be less likely to ridicule them for it. I can even envision a scenario where a girl might have a Mario tattoo or something, and they might have something legitimate to say in that case, but honestly now I'm just indulging some kind of fantasy.

At this point, I don't care if it was a spider or some asshole at a terminal somewhere. When we did our Strawberry Shortcake comic, I was able to come to terms with the fact that there was an interpretation of my country's laws that prohibited what we had done. I didn't like it, but I could connect the dots and we relented. This, on the other hand, is merely stupid and evil. For better or worse, their company is built on these ancient, perennial brands that sprout up again on each new system. The reason it works is only partially because they tend to make excellent games - they deal gently with those classics, modernizing what they need, and somehow manage to retain a sense of wonder. But Nintendo's success hinges on the fact that their characters have become cultural icons - and being cultural icons means that we as gamers take an ownership in those franchises. They're a part of our language and, if you're the sort of person who reads Penny arcade, your culture.

It's not legal ownership, no - but we're heavily invested in those characters. Which I guess is a crime.

Update: Or, maybe it's not. Someone at Nintendo figured out this was stupid - BoingBoing has the letter they sent out.

(CW)TB out.

It's funny 'cause it's true.

[Spamlent Green]

That's great -- my sister-in-law actually is a trademark attorney, and once spent her days doing nothing but writing C&D letters... I immediately sent the link to the PA strip to her.

The letter?

[slimak]

Does anyone else need to moderate the reposted letter? I can post it here again in case any of the many above posts have the moderation maxed out at +5. Normally I don't repost articles, but there seems to be large demand (or at least supply) for this one. Please advise.

E-mail address?

[Dracolytch]

What, slashdotting wasn't enough, so now we're including their e-mail address so we can mailbomb them too? I mean, I know we're a secret socity trying to destroy the Internet one website at a time... But come ON! That's just EVIL.

~D

I hope not too late...

[koi88]

I hope Nintendo's apologies don't come too late.
You know, these emotionally labile personalities (suicide girls) take these things to heart...

Don't do it! Life is so beautiful!

Re:I hope not too late...

[HideEverFree]

Do you mean "emotionally labial"? :)

Smart move Nintendo

[HangingChad]

Whoa, a flash of corporate intelligence. That's so unusual anymore.

It was a loser but at least give them credit for recognizing it and trying to make amends. Short term it's ugly either way, but this will limit the long term damage. There's no story now.

Good job, Nintendo. Bite the bullet, apologize, move on.

Enough is enough....

[Alci12]

SCO or Microsoft is one thing but /.ing hot goth chick sites..man thats just low.

WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!

[minus_273]

The nintendo apology link goes to a site that carries pornographic ads. WTF is wrong with the editors and the MORON who submitted the story! Put a warning there at least.

Re:WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!

[Mac_D83]

The nintendo apology link goes to a site that carries pornographic ads. WTF is wrong with the editors and the MORON who submitted the story!

That is because this whole story from beginning to end is fake. The whole of slashdot goes "WTF is wrong with Nintendo" and surf to suicidegirls or another pornographic site. This results in suicidegirls getting loads of free advertising... The whole thing is a ploy and they have done it before, just look at these:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/26/17 58210&tid=95&tid=4
and http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/27/10 6259&tid=155&tid=4

Re:WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!

[julesh]

Huh? The ads I have on the page are for "Basecamp painless project management", "O'Reilly Revolution In The Valley", and a third one which isn't loading at the moment (i.e., we've slashdotted boingboing's ad server), but which I doubt is pornographic, given the tone of the rest of the site which is largely IT related.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Blame in the right place?

[SeanDuggan]

Bleh. It was probably some minor functionary overstepping their bounds who caused all this trouble. You'd might as well decide Walmart was evil because of a bad experience with a cashier. (Well, you'd be right about Walmart being evil, but for the wrong purposes)

Re:"All's well that ends well"

[Rude Turnip]

Luckily, all those years of playing Duck Hunt paid off and we were able to shoot that balloon down. Ha!...hoisted by your own petard Nintendo!

btw, anyone ever notice how much Nintendo stuff (clothing, stickers) is on the shelves at Hot Topic? They don't seem to mind alt.culture when there's a buck in it.

So... will Nintendo pay SuicideGirls for...

[dnaumov]

... all the traffic this little incident has caused? SuicideGirls has now been slashdotted TWICE within a week :)

Re:So... will Nintendo pay SuicideGirls for...

[Cyph]

So Nintendo shold pay for all the free advertising SuicideGirls received on Slashdot this week? Did Nintendo post the Slashdot blurbs, or did Slashdot do that?

This just in...

[Anita Coney]

Today the State Bar Association moved to disbar Attorney Christie Hamilton for conduct unbecoming of an attorney.

A spokesman for the Bar Association was quoted as saying, "Apologize?! If lawyers start giving apologies for simply doing their jobs, our entire legal system will collapse as everyone will simply get along rather than continue pointless and expensive litigation."

Re:website

[spellraiser]

In addition, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with contact information for RuneLateralus ...

Aha! It's all actually a part of the evil ploy! They want to know his address so they can dispatch black-clad agents to abduct him for nefarious purposes! Don't fall for it guys! Run away! Run
+++ATH
NO CARRIER

Response

[LittleGuy]

Dear Nintendo:

This law offices represent SuicideGirls. Ever since your letter of apology, they have experience a dangerous swing of confidence and self-respect. As a result, they can no longer see themselves as 'SuicideGirls' and prefer the term 'MildlyDespondentWomen'.

We are asking for a settlement of one billion dollars for emotional non-stress, lack of pain and suffering, and character assassination.

And a pony. a Shetland Pony. /s/
Dewey, Cheetham & Howe

Re:website

[bitslinger_42]

Granted, I am rather overtly paranoid, but did anyone else look at the last paragraph ("we would appreciate it if you could provide us with contact information for RuneLateralus") as a smooth attempt to get directly at the user without having to bother with a subpeona? I mean, come on. I'm Nintendo and I'm getting critized for attacking the website when it was an individual who posted (ignoring the context for a second here). So, I want to go after the user, but I don't know how to send the SaD letter. This looks to be a pretty cool way of getting the info without having to pay^H^H^Hcontact a judge.

/me adjusts tinfoil hat and shuffles off muttering to self

They've always seems sensible

[miyako]

Nintendo has always seemed sensible legally to me. I'm not saying they are alturistic or anything, but you just don't hear of them being evil, like one hears of Sony or Microsoft being evil.
From the letter, I can understand why they did what they did, after all, didn't zelda.com used to be (still is?) a porn site? For most kids, Nintendo is their first introduction to games, and it wouldn't be good for a kid to google for "pikachu" only to find out that some porn site had managed to come up high on the results list.
Somewhat off topic, but it seems to me that a lot of their newer games are targetting older gamers.
The recent entries to the zelda and metroid series seem to have been targetted at older players, mostly by virtue of their difficulty.

classy

[minus_273]

Reading the letter, i have to say that i like nintendo more as a company. Rarely do we see anyone thesedays admint a mistake apologize and then offer a jesture of goodwill to make amends. I think it was a really classy move on the part of Nintendo. I have alwasy liked their systems and games. It is nice to see that there are some reasonable people working there. I think nintnedo handeled this really well and in the end, people will either simply forget about it or bring it up when defneding nintendo instead of the other way around.
Kudos.

Good move by Nintendo...

[Goronmon]

Of course, the best thing would be to avoid situations like this in general, you would think people would pay more attention to what was going on when sending out C&D letters.

But, they did the right thing and fessed up to their mistake, something companies rarely do anymore. Way to go Nintendo.

Nintendo game system of their choice?

[Moloch666]

Just to really throw them off, I would ask for an original Nintendo system.

Re:Nintendo game system of their choice?

[SendBot]

I would ask for an original Nintendo system.

Complete with the little robot guy to handle the gyroscopes! That thing was awesome!

Re:Nintendo game system of their choice?

[NeoSkandranon]

"Top loading" model NES and a copy of Final Fantasy 1 sealed in box =D

Only way they could have a harder time coming up with something is if you just asked for a shitty game that never had many copies made

Re:Nintendo game system of their choice?

[TheLink]

How about this instead?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Infringement spidering

[NiceGuyUK]

To me, this just smacks of yet another "infringement spider" that trawls the web looking for mentions of a companiy's trademarks with little or no human intervention. There was a /. story akin to this relating to Linux Australia not long ago where an MPAA bot mis-identified a tarball that happened to have the same name as an obscure movie.

Automated Attorneys(tm) - Infringement Idiocy in a Digital Age

Let's give Nintendo a break, folks.

[Randolpho]

Now that we have the whole story, I think we can cut Nintendo a little bit of slack. Note the following from the original C&D letter:

It has come to our client's attention recently that you are using the Nintendo trademark(s)/works in the hidden text/visible text/meta tags and/or title and/or links of the above-referenced sexually explicit Web site.

Note the bolded portions. Then note this quote from the apology letter:

The letter was sent as part of an ongoing Nintendo program to aggressively protect our younger consumers from the hundreds of sexually-explicit sites each year that use Nintendo properties to attract children. We are proud of our efforts in this area. Unfortunately, the site posting identified in our letter was targeted by mistake.

What Nintendo did was try to protect children from porn-site google-spoofing. I know every one of you has done an innocent search for, say, "dog food brands", and come up with hundreds of porn links, usually on the first page, often the first link! I think what Nintendo was trying to do is a good thing, not a bad thing; unfortunately, they targeted a legitimate porn site rather than a google-spoofer.

It was a mistake, and they recognized it and fessed up. That in and of itself takes balls, and I salute Nintendo for it. I think the rest of us should calm down about it. I understand the desire to knee-jerk and think the man is out to get us, but I think the truth, in this case, is a little more mundane.

Re:Let's give Nintendo a break, folks.

[mlippert]

Good comment, those were my thoughts after I read the apology letter.

Too often the big companies sending out these types of letters refuse to admit there was a mistake. When they do it is usually something that barely admits any error on their part.

Which makes the action of Nintendo really stand out, and this action by Nintendo of both making it clear that they were in error AND actually making some restitution has definitely raised my opinion of the company.

Why stop there?

[Hoi Polloi]

Why stop there? I'm setting up a website with some pornstars and references to the following:

Subaru
REI
Nintendo
Sony
Dell
Bank of America Loan Dept. ..etc

Of course it could backfire and I'd end up instead getting an apology letter from a pornstar with an offer for free...you know.

The best part of that apology...

[Alzheimers]

is imaginging poor Christie Hamilton, a member of the Consumer Service Department, specificly offering a free console to the online identity "RuneLateralus". She didn't even try to pretend it was a real name by putting a space between the two words!

"Is that Rune or Ms. Lateralus? Ohh....ooook...."

You almost get the feeling that if Christie had asked what level her half-elven ranger was, she wouldn't have to stop and think before answering...

Slashdot/SG connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems stupid that Nintendo would send the site webmaster a video console in exchange for making a legal mistake, so this all seems fishy to me. Furthermore, slashdot has posted numerous stories with direct links to SG in the past. Naturally, they allow enough time in between stories to make the scheme less obvious.

This would make a good Slashdot poll.
"Does SG pay Slashdot for this advertisement?"
o Yes
o Probably
o CowboyNeal gets free nookie

Touching Is Good

[marktaw.com]

Nintendo Says 'Touching Is Good' in Sexed-Up DS Ads

Teaser spots start on Monday, playing up the dual-screen device's touch controls. A woman's sultry voice invites the viewer to come a little closer and get a feel.

When you're a kid you're always told you can't touch anything, said Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Nintendo of America. Touching is good. You're grown-up now, so read it how you want.

Print ads appear in young men's magazines Maxim and Blender, with a buxom woman holding a DS model and advising, How to Score! ... Start listening to her needs, playa!

Industry analysts said Nintendo's ads should draw young adults who are keen on gadgets and the image they project.

The Game Boy Advance has always been a kids platform, said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter. The DS is going to move up the age scale ... and they are going to put some more mature content on there,

Tell me again that the hot goth chicks connection isn't intentional.

In related news...

[MrNemesis]

...namechecks of the Suicide Girls appeared all over Nintendo's global website. Nintendo are hoping SG will sue, and then retract and offer free samples of their products by way of condolence.

Just to summarize

[phorm]

Nintendo sends C&D nastygram to SG for use of various names of their games, where an SG member mentioned being a fan of said games

Coverage on Slashdot, Penny-Arcade, etc on this debacle

Nintendo goes "oh sh*t" at the negetive PR, fully owns up, and offers free (Nintendo brand) gaming system of choice to some of those involved at SG.

SO basically, SG comes up with a whole crapload of attention, extra site traffic, and some free gaming systems. Now, since the site didn't get nuked I'm assuming that a full slashdotting didn't happen. If at least some of the visitors end up signing up - offsetting the bandwidth cost - they benefit not only from the free systems but also from the free publicity/extra signups.

Heck, I sent me GF a link to this, she was looking up some girls' on SG and found their profiles rather cool, wanted to sign up herself. I'd say that I score this one:

SG:+2 (traffic/signups/game systems)

Nintendo+1: or 0 (no harm no fowl, but perhaps bonus points for owning up where few would)
Idiot IP lawers:-1 (for doing the right job in the wrong place).

Re:Just to summarize

[Kris_J]

Heck, I sent me GF a link to this, she was looking up some girls' on SG and found their profiles rather cool, wanted to sign up herself.

Dear Penthouse, I don't normally write letters like this, but...

Whoa dude

[pclminion]

Granted, I don't think we'll ever see the way of life he envisions, but wishing for something that's more than what seems possible is a facet of human nature. It's something cynics like you appear to have lost (and I seem to be losing quickly).

It hardly implies that he lives in some "subjective reality."

Not perfect

[siskbc]

Yes, that people with money and power are frequently just indifferent to how their use of it affects people as long as they get what they want. Are you sure that's a step up from malice?

Take the tinfoil hat off. First, it was a fuckup. That's clear, they admitted it, end of story. Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids. I think I'm on board there. Third, there's no case for indifference because they did everything they could to fix the fuckup.

I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.

Re:Not perfect

[d34thm0nk3y]

I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.

Well, really, there is, it is just that Nintendo is playing a smaller part than originally thought. hehe

Re:Not perfect

[Maestro4k]

• Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids.

The AC replying to you said this as well but I wanted to point this out so it wouldn't get missed by others.

The jerks using Nintendo character names and stuff on porn sites to pull in links probably aren't pedophiles, and they probably don't give a shit that children get drawn in as well. They're just crooks hoping to cheat the system so they can pull in more money from their porn empire. Labeling this type of stuff as pedophilia hurts cracking down on the real problems by diluting what people think of as pedophilia and/or child porn. Frankly you're part of the problem, not the solution when you say things like this. We're all against child porn but most of us want to be helpful in stopping it, not mislabeling things to confuse the issue.

Re:Not perfect

[snkline]

Wish I had mod points. This is correct these people do these things to get more visitors to their pages and generate more ad revenue. I have never in 10 years come across a peice of pedophilia on the internet, which leads me to think its something you would really have to actually look for, not something that pops up by accident. Now normal porn on the other hand.....

Unbelievable

[Rogerborg]

Anywhere but Slashdot, I mean.

Well, if they didn't have a Cease and Desist from Nintendo before, I'm damn sure they'll get one now. How about we don't report on that?

Honestly, the adage about replacing people with very small shell scripts has never been more apt. Would it be possible to write an 'editor' script for Slashdot that performed worse than the 'editors' who currently draw a salary for 'doing' that 'job'?

Membership drive....

[un1xl0ser]

If the token of a Nintendo doesn't seem like much, just wait to see how many h0rny g33ky slashdotters sign up for memberships now. Horray for slashdotting pr0n.

Re:Fairly obvious what happened

[julesh]

So, where can I get a nakedness-sensitive spider of my own? :)

Here's the HOWTO

[Digital_Quartz]

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Firewall-Piercing/

There's even a tool for automating the process.

It's a trick!

[spiritraveller]

Don't trust them Suicide Girls!

It's just a ruse so that they can get RuneLateralus's home address and sue him directly...

DON'T DO IT!

(I'm joking, but if it were the RIAA or SCO instead of Nintendo, I wouldn't be.)

Parent has merit

[Adam9]

What kind of business letter starts with "Hello,"?

No contact information provided for the SG owner to contact customer service with the system of his choice

Most people scan in their letters as JPGs or PDFs, not retype them

Attorneys usually send e-mails to supplement a cease and decist letter sent via mail. SG says they only got an e-mail.

I could go on, but I think it's apparent now that SG did stage this.

Yeah, right...

[EvanED]

Just like cigarette ads aren't intended to target kids either...