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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."
Music fans reporting file sharers.
Despite how often we trash the RIAA etc. for their (misguided) attempts to defend copyrights, this just proves that if you treat your customers well and produce quality products, you'll be paid back. I'da turned 'em in too. Rock on Nintendo.
There was a "toys and games" shop that opened near my house, i thought nothing of it untill my friend said they were selling SNES games for $2 for any game, buy 2, get 2 free. so i headed down there. turns out they were selling counterfeit systems all the way up to the N64, and every game you could think of... I emailed nintendo, and got an amusing thank you note..
I probably helps that nintendo has been seen (as far as I know) as a company that has had a long long history of being a rather "good", innovative, and untainted (compared to it's counterparts). I personally like nintendo, regardless of what others say.
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!!!!
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
I think if a market stall appeared selling dodgy copies of movies and albums, then I would also do something about it.
I have always been totally two faced about things like this. If no money is exchanged and its not being used commercially, then I don't see a problem. However, once people actually begin using actual cash, it DOES start to divert money from the real content providers, whoever they may be.
liqbase
Almost unconsciously, I have categorized nearly all brand names I know into one of two categories: those I imagine to be supported by die hard, underdog loving fans and those embraced by the conformist, top of the game crowd. Although I realize that some of these associations are flat out absurd, they sit in my mind as such, nonetheless. I am curious if others have the same type of relationships in the back of their minds:
y (and more recently, Microsoft)a mp(rip):WiMP
*Apple:Microsoft
*Linux:Windows
*Nintendo:Son
*Armadillo Aerospace:Scaled Composites
*Blizzard:Valve
*Mozilla:Internet Explorer
*Texas Instruments:Hewlett Packard (despite TI's market hold)
*Star Trek:Star Wars
*Archos:Apple
*Find-a-drug:Seti@home
*Win
I wonder how much of this is my personal bias and how much is a result of clever advertising. Clearly, some of these comparisons are not legitimate or accurate, but the vast majority are. Regardless, those are the pairs I imagine. It's the fans of those things on the left that I feel would go out of their way for their cause.
I'm sure I will get modded down for this, but I honestly don't think "pirating" classic NES games, which are up to 20 years old now, is that wrong. Nintendo made a lot of money off the NES, but at this point the market for the classic Mario and Donkey Kong games is limitied to the nostalgic crowd, most of whom legitmately bought the games when they were kids. Why should we have to shell out 20 bucks for a game that we not only already bought, but that pales in comparison to newer games regarding programming time and complexity? In my opinion, these old games should be freely given to the community who made Nintendo what it is today instead of whored out by the marketing department of Nintendo to squeeze the last few cents out of them.
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.
You saw the Panasonic Q, which is perfectly legal. Take a looky at lik-sang, I think they still have them.
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.
Have you been living in a cave?! Polystation is
a very famous brand! Just like Panaphonics,
Magnetbox, and Sorny!
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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