Nintendo Sues Korean Sites Over Copyright Violations

The Korean Times is reporting that the Korean branch of Nintendo has filed suit against several websites over copyright issues. The suits come just nine months after Nintendo first opened up the Korean market (officially) with the introduction of the Nintendo DS. From the article: "'They infringed on our copyright by posting Nintendo's game titles through the Internet without our permission,' a Nintendo spokesperson said. 'The legal action was taken against only some sites and users this time but we will take further measures if such a violation continues to take place.' She declined to comment on how many sites and people are involved in the piracy suit. The legal action came after Mineo Koda, the Japanese chief executive of Nintendo Korea, had expressed concern about the lingering problem of piracy in South Korea that he said would pose a challenge to his company's business here."

Comments

Re:What exactly is being distributed?

[Applekid]

Thus the ethical reason to allow 'piracy' for older games is lost, and therefore piracy of this kind should not be tolerated. I'd buy that reasoning if Nintendo was committed to releasing ALL games and exactly as they were. Tecmo Bowl, Waverace 64, and others have gotten the revisionism bug in them to avoid legal responsibilities of certain trademarks.

They've made it clear that it's still the original publishing company's responsibility to port them for VC, so don't expect to see, say, Joe and Mac or Arcana or Super Dodgeball. Other companies that are still around already make huge profits doing remakes on other platforms so don't expect to see Final Fantasy VI or Dragon Quest III or Mega Man. Even games that NoA never recouped localization costs for like Mother/Earthbound for NES and Star Tropics 2 aren't really on the fast-track to be made available and the only explanation for it is that, frankly, Nintendo really isn't that committed to it.

When you consider how large (absurdly large) the Nintendo back-catalog goes PLUS TurboGrafix/PCE PLUS Genesis PLUS (soon) Neo-Geo, VC selections are merely a pittance. An mere excuse to pull the rug out from the last moral leg emu players stand on.

For how much money they've made with the DS and Wii, there really isn't anything stopping them from releasing 50 games a week, buying off abandoned properties from the last remaining IP holders and paying off other companies to rerelease the old stuff.

I mean, it's not like other publishers produced their own cartridges. Nintendo already has at least one ROM dump for every game ever produced by their factories: prototypes and everything.

Besides, I have a copy of the original Zelda in cartridge form whose battery has long been dead. Why should I pay another $5 to play the game when I already have a license to run it?