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Nintendo's Lawsuits Aided by Fans
Guppy06 writes "Last week there was a posting about Nintendo's efforts to crack down on people selling counterfeit Nintendo hardware and software, and there was at least one reply from a guy who reported someone to Nintendo. It turns out he's not alone; according to a posting at Nintendorks, NOA's Jodi Daugherty, their director of anti-piracy efforts, says it was helped by over 400 people reporting such kiosks to them."
I tried one at a mall about six months ago. The thing was junk. Super Mario Brothers was playing about 10% too fast.... Anyone else seen that?
I had a sucky sig.
This isn't about gamecube piracy, this is about these cheesy import deals that look like N64 controllers, and plug directly into your AV jacks (like all those Atari deals), and have a bunch of old nintendo games built in.
They sell 'em everywhere, go to any flea market and you can find them. They're as flimsily built as you can imagine. There's a light gun too, for Duck Hunt.
I believe they just have an image of the old 100-in-one NES bootleg from the olden days.
Anyways, they're no doubt illegal. But we're talking about Kid Icarus and Duck Hunt, not Metroid Prime and Resident Evil Zero.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Well, if you look at their history, while they essentially resurrected the video games market, they also severely limited the game developers. In fact, it is this behavior that eventually led to their own fall.
Indeed, Nintendo had a grip on home consoles in the 80s that would make Microsoft weep. Granted a grasp that was finally loosened by numerous law suits.
A more loyal fanbase? certainly, but only at the cost of so many million more PS2s and Xboxes.
I remember that when the HL2 source code was leaked, Gabe Newell (VALVe founder) sent out a request to the HL community. It worked. Pretty soon, they managed to get a few leads and tracked down the guy who initially distributed it. Best part was, all this happened over IRC rooms when some guy started boasting about his exploits.
This is setting a very positive trend, IMO. (Besides showing that IRC is not *just* the home of the pirates and the script kiddies :) It shows that the community will back a game publisher/developer who gives them quality stuff, and is willing to pull down shitty publishers like EA.
Anyway... long story short, this is Very Good(TM). I hope this continues
StrayByte.Net
Are they offering rewards? I can see a large industry for dobbers...
I think any company should have a right to enforce their own IP. I'd even support the RIAA/MPAA if they cracked down on marketstalls or websites profiteering from the distribution. Sadly they also abuse their consumers, and I think thats going too far.
Nintendo is doing nothing less than protecting its rights, and in a far more amicable way than some of the other corporations. Sure the emulation scene has been blasted by lawyers over the years. Although, considering they are still making a profit from the old games (classic handhelds etc) do you really blame them?
Systems to support this would be the Classic NES and snes converstions to the GBA
*** (I'm not suggesting constant remakes and re-releases is right either here btw ) ***
People are slating that guy in the link because he was miffed at recieving a counterfit product. I have to say I support him 100% for taking it back.
WE ALL know counterfit copies exist, some of us are even quite prepared to buy them *knowing* they are fake/stolen but not wanting to pay full price. It's a totally different story when a shop tries to sell such products and pretend they are legit.
how would you like to buy a $60,000 Rolex to find a quartz movement inside? OR a an athlon64 4000 to find its an overclocked 3800?
I think then, you might not be so jeering when it was you that had the wrong end of the stick.
Umm.. I call bullshit. I have been living (and gaming) in China for 3 years, and have yet to see the product you mention above. A knock-off GC??? The hardware is so proprietary it would cost them more to make a pirated version than to sell the official one, which sells here for just a bit more than the RRP overseas (1200 RMB). If they modded an original and put it in a pretty clear case I could understand. But as far as hardware goes, the only pirated consoles available are the 8-bit NES preloaded with hundreds of games. Maybe you could post some pics of the machine you claimed to have seen? It would send shockwaves through the hacking scene, because it seems not even the hardcore hackers have ever seen one of your fabled consoles.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
I was one of the "400 loyal fans"... ... except I'm not really a loyal fan. They lost me to the dark side (Sega) after their stubborness over CDs. Sure, I like their games, but I haven't really been a Nintendo fan since the SNES.
There are a few reasons I reported them. First, some of those games aren't abandonware. Nintendo is actively re-releasing them for the Gameboy Advance. Second, they're competing unfairly with Nintendo. The kiosk I reported was just outside an Electionics Boutique, and I suspect a fair number of parents that were asked for a Nintendo system for Christmas saw this as a deal, and got that instead of a real system. Third, they're unfairly profiting from Nintendo's IP. They were selling these devices for nearly $70! And finally, they were extremely pushy, and used high-pressure sales tactics on anyone who passed by their kiosk.
I think emulators are perfectly legal, and trading old ROMs doesn't really hurt their bottom line, but this was wholesale abuse of their IP.
Sorry, you're wrong about CDs. It's rare that someone can discern the difference between a well-encoded 192kbps MP3 and the original CD version. If you doubt me, I challenge you to take a blind hearing test. And many networks have lossless compressed audio files, such as FLAC.
The real reason people don't blow the whistle on music sharing is because CDs are overpriced due to the RIAA oligopoly.
One thing I have always wondered about is my local Software Etc.'s policy of selling games (usually GBA games) after they cross out the "NOT FOR RESALE" mark on the label with a sharpie. First of all, where do these games come from in the first place? Bundles? Demo units? Secondly, while I doubt that little mark is legally binding, you figure Nintendo would try and put a stop to it if they found out. Having gone through all the trouble of printing special labels and all.
"Watching Access Hollywood is like driving 10 SUVs!" -- Al Sharpton
I called today (with my own report), and the guy I talked to said they'd also been getting calls from people who had bought them and wanted some support.
It seems not all the ROMs are complete. Some give up after a certain level, so you can't finish the game. As a result, Nintendo is getting calls.
Considering it costs money to keep people on the phones, and they're getting calls for something that isn't actually theirs, yeah, I can see how they'd be losing money on these things even if they weren't rereleasing some of the games.
The PS1 *WAS* going to be a Nintendo console. It was a Sony-developed add-on for the SNES. When SEGA's CD system failed, Nintendo rethought it and told Sony they didn't want it anymore. Sony had to do something with this CD-based system, so they turned it into a standalone console and released it.
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I am Chinese. Every year I go back to China, I pick up GBA Games for 2 Dollars American. It's not the fact that the Chinese government doesn't do anything. It's more of the fact that intellectual property rights are not developed in China. Also, many Chinese people have a mindset that the American companies are exploiting Chinese resources and manpower so what the workers make rightly belong to them anyways. So many DVD's and GBA games are pirated under that circumstance. Fighting piracy isn't anything new, but it might take longer than previously thought to win this battle in developing third world countries such as China. The way to win this battle, is to make sure these developing countries have a means of passing and enforcing intellectual property rights.