FBI Cracks Down on Piracy of Obsolete Game

Alien54 wrote to mention a story detailing an FBI crackdown on pirated...NES games. From the article: "More than 60,000 pirated copies of Nintendo game consoles were seized Wednesday during raids in New York and New Jersey, prosecutors announced. Four people were arrested in the crackdown on the theft of popular games such as "Donkey Kong," "Mario Brothers," "Duck Hunt," "Baseball" and others, according to a release by federal authorities and papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Nintendo told the FBI that individuals and companies copy the video games and sell the pirated versions throughout the world, costing the company millions of dollars in lost revenue annually, according to the complaint."

Comments

Lost Revenue on 20-yr Old Games

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Gotta be selling it to be losing out on the profits... unless you include repackaged versions of the game, maybe?

How do they calculate?

[jsimon12]

How do they figure out how much selling games that aren't sold any more is costing companies? If Nintendo was still selling say "Solar Jetman" or "Duckhunt" for the NES then I would understand it could cut into their bottom line. But seeing as they don't how is this calculated?

Re:How do they calculate?

[NanoGator]

"But seeing as they don't how is this calculated?"

$50 x Inflated estimate of the number of copies 'pirated'.

The tragedy of copyright

[QuantumG]

If you had to pay a yearly fee to maintain your copyright this kind of crap wouldn't happen. As soon as a game/book/movie/whatever is no longer being sold it should pass into the public domain. Not that the public domain will exist in 5 years.

Re:The tragedy of copyright

[QuantumG]

Worse yet is the fact that there's no registration of copyright works, so if you find some old game that you think is great and would like to distribute it you have no idea who you have to contact to get permission. I recently ran into this problem with a game called Flashback. There's an interesting open source project which can read the original content of this game and present it on Windows/Linux/Mac etc instead of just DOS (and I think some old consoles too). This was a game I played when I was a kid and really enjoyed and I think the casual game players of today would like to play it too. Unfortunately the company that wrote the game is no longer around and I have no idea how to track down who actually owns the copyright. Of course, there is one way: I could just distribute the game and wait for them to sue me. But by then asking for permission would be a bit too late.

Re:The tragedy of copyright

[QuantumG]

No, what I'm saying is that if you want the protection of the US government and, as this story shows, the FBI, you should have to pay for it. It hardly makes sense that the majority of people, who don't make works for which they want copyright protection, should have to pay for the minority of people who do.

With all the mighty powers,

[RM6f9]

all the mi-i-i-llions of taxpayer dollars, thousands of person-hours of deep investigative efforts using the latest in 1990s technological know-how and tools, our beloved Homeland Security leaders bring us ... NES pirates.
Nice try, people, but there're things you're *not* telling us and cases you're *not* showing us that keep some of us fearful - not respectful, given the above, but fearful.
Controlling the media to portray you, our beloved federales, as incompetent clowns is only halfway effective - which half varies depending, and I'm afraid of clowns.

Re:Really?

[happymedium]

The so-called "millions of dollars in lost revenue" actually come from remakes and compilations of these old games for the GBA/SP/what-have-you.

A few points in Nintendos favor

[LordZardoz]

1) Nintendo has on occasion re-released old NES games for new platforms, so they are still able to make money off of those titles.

2) Many 8-bit games have new incarnations, and as far as I know, its a good idea to control the IP in all its incarnations if you dont wish to lose that control.

3) This is about as blatant a case of piracy as one can name. It was both wholesale and flagrant. And Nintendo went after the source, not the customer.

This is not anything like the RIAA / MPAA suing individual users.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:A few points in Nintendos favor

[NanoGator]

"This is not anything like the RIAA / MPAA suing individual users."

You're right. I would also add that Nintendo will definitely want to continue to own the copyright to these titles. If clones or rips are made and sold without permission, Nintendo's basically giving them the green light to keep going. They can't just wait until a big one comes along that uses one of their franchises that are still active.

Re:Really?

[King Fuckstain]

"As it stands there is a demand for goods that IP holders refuse to produce, that is not good for people."

The people should have created the original IP if they want to dictate when and how long a particular property should be produced. There needs to be IP reform in terms of how long the rights are held by a company but just because a company decides they are no longer going to produce a given product does not mean they should lose all rights to that product.

And how do you know that Nintendo would make a killing? You have any proof to back that up? Marketing studies? They seem to be making a killing off of their old properties by re-releasing them for the GBA.

Uhhh... The FBI?

[OmgTEHMATRICKS]

Don't these guys have anything better to do? Like tracking down murderers and rapists, for instance?

Re:Really?

[Gothic_Walrus]

For the record, there's an even better version of Super Mario Brothers for the Game Boy Color. Screen ratio is a bit off, but it came loaded with extras, including The Lost Levels.

Since everyone else has mentioned the GBA port, I just thought I'd point out that there's another way to get it too, even though it's not in production anymore.

Come to think of it, there's Super Mario Brothers All-Stars for the SNES, and that includes SMB as well.

And if I'm not mistaken, there's a version of it in Animal Crossing for the GameCube.

The point that I wasn't planning on making when I started this post: Nintendo is still making money off of the game, by rereleasing it on occasion. If someone has a pirated copy and doesn't buy a rerelease because of that, Nintendo has lost revenue.

These guys wouldn't know theft if...

[Travelsonic]

Four people were arrested in the crackdown on the theft of popular games such as "Donkey Kong," "Mario Brothers," "Duck Hunt," "Baseball" and others, according to a release by federal authorities and papers filed in U.S.

These guys seem like they wouldn't know theft if it bit them in the rear end. The crime is copyright infringement, not theft. Why are the police not involved if it is theft? Why is the IP "stolen" still in Nintendo's posession? Because what is going on is a violation of copyright laws/contracts. This may not make it right, but this statement proves that our English language is being twisted to support agendas and make things sound worse/different than they really are. [quazi-philosophical rant ahead:] I am one of possibly few left growing up being taught that stealing (or theft if talking legal terminology) requires loss. That in order for something to be stolen somebody has something, but somebody else took it away from you, depriving you of it, while gaining him/her possession of said item. Slowly this concept is being replaced rapidly every day with a different, easier to use concept. Now people are growing accustomed to the idea that theft/stealing doesn't require the "owner" to loose things they had "stolen," or that loosing something you don't even have but wish you had is theft. This surfacing ideology really scares me from a philosophical viewpoint. Before I try to reason why this is scary, I will first attempt to identify reasoning behind this. I think the answer as to why the definition was changed in the mindset of possibly millions is due in part from the pushing of certain agendas on people, which shall be a basis on my explanation. The agenda pushing is in part from the recording and movie industries attempt to show people a negative side to file-sharing, mainly that it can be used to violate copyright. Either through thinking copyright infringement was too light of a word to stir up support, or possibly because they though copyright infringement was too complex for somebody to explain, they instead went with calling unauthorized duplication of data theft or stealing. This brings in another factor right into the issue, that is that they might be too lazy to try and define in a balanced way fee from biased the basic ideas behind copyright laws without resorting to toying with the sometimes fragile world of emotions. The flaw with the decision here is, if you followed the definition of theft/stealing I was taught, duplicating pieces of data, simple 1's and 0's, without depriving them of the same bits of data doesn't fall under this definition. Sure copying something copyrighted without permission in some cases is wrong, but why not call it what it really is, and try to make it wrong in it's own sense instead of "stealing" stealing. The only thing that somebody would possibly be deprived of is the potential to earn some money. The potential meaning they have a chance, but fate can work in or out of their favor, but is not required under law to fall in their favor. I shall close this explanation of this piece with a fitting analogy. If we follow the mindset of the industries at work in media (music and movies), maybe it can be considered theft to tell people that a particular movie, or CD, or book is bad/not worth spending money on because you decrease the value of it to those people who want to buy it. The only flaw here might be that freedom of speech is protected under law here in the U.S, but there have been cases where the justice system has failed us on protecting the first amendment. You the reader have probably been reading through this and wondered where the reasoning for the redefining being scary will come into play. The English language is very rich in words and phrases. There is more than one way to describe one act, but only one way to describe it accurately. To me, what we were taught in elementary school, piled on to what "copying" is, and adding on to that what is being fed into our brains from debates on controversial i

Re:These guys wouldn't know theft if...

[zappepcs]

Despite the lack of paragraphs, this guy has an extremely good point. Theft and violating copyright law are two different things. In many cases, if not all of them, here in the US, copyright litigation seems to be based on the principles of theft, where the plaintiff pleads that the copyright violation has 'stolen' their profits... or will steal their profits.

This is nearly the same as say:
If a drunk kills someone with a car, the family of that person sues the drunk driver not only for the wrongful death of one person, but the expected wages, family (sons and daughters) and other things that the family is now deprived of because of the death of one person in their family, even though there is no way to quantify or verify that these things were lost to the family, or that the family has been deprived of them.

I think we can all agree that this is not quite the right way to think of things, but this is how copyright litigation works. Sharing out copyrighted information does not involve creating wealth for the violator in the case of sharing movies and music files. There is also no precedent that the people who download those copyrighted works would actually have paid money for them if they were not available for download. Nor is there any solid evidence that the sharing of music and video files has reduced the copyright owners profits in any significant way.
(If anyone knows of such proof of loss, please tell me where it is)

Additionally, because the value of the perceived theft is intangible, and can not be quantified, there is no basis for assigning punitive damages based on the number of files shared or any other such measure.

Copyright litigation coming out of LA la land is monstrous, and a blight on both the legal profession and those instigating the litigation.

People with morals would find a better way to ensure their profits than try to effect law to prevent anyone from sharing what they have paid for, or trying to prevent anyone from using technology that 'MIGHT' let them share those files with others.

Sure, copyright violators are wrong, but the current fight against them is bogus, and dangerous in respect of how it bends the intent of both copyright and the law in general. Preventing people from profiting from your work is a good thing, a positive for all of us. Allowing anyone to run rampant and twist the law to punish people just because they might violate copyright law at some time in the future is insane.

If you violate copyright law, and reap financial reward from the violation, then clearly, this is theft as well as copyright violation.

The parent is right, its time that we start looking at this issue for what it is.

Re:Really?

[BlueHands]

One could argue that the length of time could be based on what is given to the public. What public interest does is there in someone being a dick and withholding what he has prevously released? I realize that the creator might not like it the funny thing is that copyright is for the public not the creator.

Or perhaps after a certain time frame there could be a very low cost compulury license so that the creators dont get a say it what happens after a certain point but still get money. There is alot that could be done other then just changing the length.

none of it will happen any time soon but these are nice thoughts while we wait for the IP and Copyright to crumble away....

Re:Official theft vs copyright infringement thread

[Xtifr]

How many times does it have to be explained that copyright infringement is a different offence to theft?

I don't know - how many times will it take until the people who claim that "it's not theft" learn English?

Not all theft is illegal or even wrong. "Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal," as some great artist once wrote. Shakespeare stole the plot for Romeo and Juliet from some Italian writer. Block and Adler stole the plot of Forbidden Planet from Shakespeare. None of them did anything wrong; in fact both of them made the world a better place, IMO.

Copyright infringement is a form of theft that (like plot-stealing) doesn't involve any physical loss on the original owner's part. Nevertheless (unlike plot-stealing), it's a form of theft that is illegal.

I understand what you're trying to say, and even more or less agree with it. But I'm sick of people mangling the English language for political ends, even when I agree with the politics. "Theft" is not just limited to physical property. A girl stole my heart once, but I wasn't even slightly tempted to have her arrested for it! :)

Re:Really?

[Facekhan]

If you are truly buying a licensed copy of a copyrighted work and not just the media itself then by all right the consumers should be able to force Nintendo and Music CD companies and software companies to provide replacement copies of works that were sent on defective/degraded/stolen media forever.

When that happens I will no longer insist on my right to backup copies of media I buy and I will no longer download those albums that I have had stolen/lost/wrecked cd, old cartridge that won't work etc.

Analogy

[Dizzle]

The way I view it it's similar to records -> tapes -> cd's -> ???? -> profit!!!

Seriously though, Thriller first came out on vinyl. Everything was good. The tape offered portability. Everything was still good. The CD offered portability and sound quality. Still grand. You can buy these games for a song for the original NES, or you can pay 20$ for the portable version that has all the graphics of the original (sometimes improved) and maybe a few extras thrown in here and there. Sounds like a good deal to me.

The issue is this: some, if not most, of these games are not available for sale any more. I can't go to a store and pick up Double Dragon, for any system. I need to hunt hunt hunt for it. Now Nintendo may want to rerelease these games, they may not, but they can't say that they're currently losing millions of dollars in revenue. These guys have been stopped, I guess sales of old NES carts should start bringing in the big bucks for them again.

HOWEVER, that being said... these guys were profiting from counterfeit goods, and I'm sure no one can condone that.

Re:Really?

[m50d]

You've fallen for the "intelletcual property is property" argument. No it's not. There is no entitlement to copyright on your work. The US grants you copyright, a government monopoly, but only for a limited time, and can take it back any time it wants. The federal government is only permitted to impose copyrights "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts". No protection of the individual there. If copyrights aren't doing that, they're unconstitutional.

Re:Really?

[m50d]

They should lose the rights if it's not available to buy. Copyright encourages people to produce things because they're guaranteed royalties on them. That's the idea, that's the entire purpose of copyright. If the copyrighted thing is "out of print", copyright isn't encouraging things to be produced. Copyright should lapse if the product is not available at a reasonable price for 5 years or so.