Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nintendo Apologizes to SuicideGirls

Posted by Zonk on from the doing-the-right-thing dept.

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.

30 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Can someone repost? by Isca · · Score: 5, Funny

    Some of us are behind firewalls at work :)

    1. Re:Can someone repost? by marktaw.com · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

    2. Re:Can someone repost? by Perdurabo26 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can pick it up at MirrorDot.

      --
      I will endure to the end.
    3. Re:Can someone repost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Can someone repost? by Flying+Purple+Wombat · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

      --
      If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
  2. Nintendo by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Oh wait.. this is Slashdot :)

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:Nintendo by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Insightful

      *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.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  3. I said it before... by marktaw.com · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:I said it before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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"?

    2. Re:I said it before... by SilkBD · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      00101010
  4. well after RTFA by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:well after RTFA by frankthechicken · · Score: 5, Funny

      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".

    2. Re:well after RTFA by dash2 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  5. Dear Nintendo, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  6. Makes perfect sense to me by Phixxr · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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

    --
    ungggghhhh
    1. Re:Makes perfect sense to me by jdreed1024 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    2. Re:Makes perfect sense to me by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  7. Penny Arcade Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. E-mail address? by Dracolytch · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    --
    This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
  9. I hope not too late... by koi88 · · Score: 5, Funny


    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!

    --

    I don't need a signature.
  10. This just in... by Anita+Coney · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  11. Response by LittleGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    --
    Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
  12. classy by minus_273 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
  13. Re:WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!! by Mac_D83 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  14. Nintendo game system of their choice? by Moloch666 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
  15. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  16. Let's give Nintendo a break, folks. by Randolpho · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
    --
    "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
    -Marilyn Manson
  17. Not perfect by siskbc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --

    -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

    1. Re:Not perfect by Maestro4k · · Score: 5, Insightful
      • 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.

  18. Parent has merit by Adam9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.