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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."
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?
I think the biggest impact these consoles are having is not in revenue, but in brand damage, as is the case with most counterfeit products.
The games are all there, but often the titles or copyright notices are removed, or the graphics are askew, the little built-in light gun doesn't work, or the sound is off for some reason. The controllers are badly designed, such that you don't know which button is Start, which is Jump, and what the deal is with the turbo buttons.
I do think Nintendo is missing the opportunity to sell consoles like this themselves. But it seems they'd rather sell us old NES games for $20 each on the Game Boy Advance.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They obviously aren't obsolete if they are still selling.
And also, these are the crappy 1000-in-1 games-in-a-controller things for sale at malls. The problem isn't so much that they cause Nintendo to lose money, but instead diminish Nintendo's brand.
See, many of the games in these systems are literally hacked ROMs with various sprites replaced, and often the ROMs don't work and simply crash. Since the consumer thinks "this Nintendo sucks", they are less likely to buy a Nintendo product down the line, thinking it'll be similarly crappy.
Not to mention that the consumer got ripped off in the first place, as these systems tend to be sold for US$60 or so in mall kiosks and are of absolutely piss poor quality which would likely break under moderate use.
Arrrr! They be only 9 pixels wide, and be made of 3 colors, but arrr, these NES buccaneers have me shaking in me sea-boots!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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
Four people were arrested in the crackdown on the theft of popular games
How many times does it have to be explained that copyright infringement is a different offence to theft?
If somebody put a game up on the Internet where it was downloaded thousands of times, that can cause far more harm than if somebody went into a shop and stole something.
If somebody copied games that you can no longer buy, it can cause less harm than if somebody went into a shop and stole something.
Copyright infringement and theft are fundamentally different actions, with different consequences, governed by different laws. Even the Supreme Court has ruled that copyright infringement is not theft (Dowling vs US, 1985).
There is a perfectly good term to use when somebody copies something illegally. It's "copyright infringement". People who insist upon misusing the term "theft" are only seeking to cause yet more pointless arguments. There is a word for these people too. It's "troll".
Back in november, when Nintendo asked for your help in tracking down these "N64 controllers" full of hacked roms, everyone thought it was great, lined up at their e-door to help
Now when they've finally raided the warehouse and put a stop to it, there's nothing but "bitch bitch bitch copyright is teh suck".
Fuck you guys, I'm going home.
An anticircumvention ruling was issued by the Librarian of Congress on 10/28/2003. It protects - for the time being - sites such as ours at videogamemaps.net (my url). The pertinent clause:
(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
Sounds like the FBI straight out fucked up to me.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.