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Nintendo Cracks Down on Copying Devices
Adrian Lopez writes "Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Hong Kong government. 'The Hong Kong High Court has intervened, at Nintendo's request, to help stop a global distribution operation involving game copying devices and modification chips that violate the copyrights and trademarks of Nintendo DS and Wii. On Oct. 8th, the court ordered the raid of Supreme Factory Limited facilities, through which Nintendo representatives seized more than 10,000 game copying devices and mod chips over the course of three days. The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo games.'"
The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo games.
And personal backups of your own media so that you don't have to buy a new copy when your friend/pet/child/"significant other" scratches it.
I don't know what the laws are like in HK, but I feel that the continued erosion of this right in the media (and thus the public perception) is wrong.
If Nintendo is 0% successful at this, they will have wasted a lot of money and time for nothing.
If Nintendo is 100% successful, on the other hand, they will save some revenue, but at the cost of pissing off a lot of users, legitimate and otherwise, who might decide to take their business elsewhere.
Odds are pretty good that their actual success rate will fall somewhere between 0% and 100% (most probably close to the low end of the scale), making this endeavor slightly annoying to the users, while being in the main a big waste of time.
Any way you slice it, it's a dumb idea.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...the way this article is spun.
Yes, mod chips could be used for illegal activities, but also for good. The article really fails to highlight that. With a tone like this, you'd wonder how tape recorders ever got sold.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I've always wondered if those that use R4 cards (I don't have one) for the DS and play online are at risk of being caught and having their doors knocked down by the SS..err I mean Police. Surely they're logging users and have means of identifying legitimate/illegitimate users?
ilovegeorgebush
The requirement should be, create a back up copy for the end user which cannot be used; easily; by anyone else. Granted many companies won't like that either but it may be easier to keep it off their radar if the system truly doesn't make it easy to just copy and distribute paid content.
The problem comes down to the fact that the "innocent" users are being lumped together with the abusers. Yet who do people bitch about? The company being negatively affected. Do you know people who have pirated games? Have you told them to take a hike? If not, why?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"It can destroy years of hard work by a team of very talented software developers, who strive to create games consumers enjoy playing."
It -can-, but it doesn't. Instead, it allows people that don't have the money to buy the game to play it anyhow, and get their friends excited, and get them interested in sequels and spinoffs. Instead of forcing the penniless gamer to go out and play in the yard for free, it keeps them addicted to video games.
On the other hand, people that -can- afford the games buy them, for the most part. I'm not talking the teenagers that have to skip lunch this month to buy a game, but the people with full-time jobs and disposable income.
And when it comes right down to it, the only difference between someone "stealing" a game using a modchip and that same person buying the game used is the timeframe. The developer doesn't get any money from either way. (Of course, GameStop gets some money on the used route, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)
My current tactic? Rental. Any game I don't absolutely have to have right away, I just rent it. For 1/3 of a game per month, I can rent 2-4 by mail. For 3/4 of a game per month, I can rent 4-8. Since I lose interest in most games after a few hours anyhow, this works great for me. I've had some games that I thought I'd love that I spent less than an hour playing them before they were back in the mail. GameFly (and probably other services) will even let you buy the game at a reduced price if you want to keep it. That makes it really hard to justify buying it brand new.
So in the end, Nintendo can rid the market of these devices and it won't change things for the better. That isn't their goal, though. Their goal is to remind people that they are illegal and 'wrong'. And they did that.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I've not made a habit of backing up CD / DVD media based games or content, primarily due to the hassle. For the adult stuff my wife and I are careful enough with the disks that the risk of the disk becoming damaged through normal use is reasonably low. (read as not worth the hassle and cost of obtaining technically illegal software and quality media)
:-)
An incident last weekend however has me reconsidering my current practices, at least where my kids CDs, DVDs and games are concerned.
Over the course of the last few years I've had to use the furniture polish trick on a few game CDs. Usually after one of the kids left them sliding around in a drawer and the PS2 or 'puter couldn't read them anymore. With I think one exception, so far I've been lucky and they've all be playable.
Last weekend however my son had a friend over for cooperative HALO3 fest. On the second evening they're setting up the friends system when my son decides to "stand up XBox so it can get some cooling". After this the system says the disk is unreadable, and it's discovered that their is a perfectly circular series of scratches about a quarter inch from the out edge and an eighth of an inch wide.
After multiple attempts with the furniture polish and toothpaste tricks I finally get the disk to read. I have NO doubt I'll be buying the young man a new HALO3 disk in the near future.
The moral of the story?
It should be EASY and LEGAL to make backups of your media. It doesn't matter whether it is music, a video or a game!
Oh, by the way, anyone have any favorite, tried and true, game disk restoration tips?
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo game
They're also used to play games that aren't available for sale in the USA (and won't run on a North American Wii even if you import them legally), and they're used to play legal ("Fair Use") backups of game discs that have been damaged.
All of you MAFIAA shills can whine "oh but that's not what you guys are REALLY using them for!" all you want, but my both my sister and my girlfriend like Japanese date sims (weird, yes), and I've known several people who've had a game disc damaged beyond playability--usually by dogs or small children.
I'm sorry, but to all those who say that they're using their mod-chips for legitimate purposes: who are you trying to fool? I can see the point that you might not want your kids or your dogs chewing on your games. Here's your legal solution: DON'T FEED THEM TO YOUR DOGS. If you're too stupid or lazy to keep them out of harm's reach, then you don't deserve to have them. God help your kids if you ever decide to own firearms.
If you were actually serious about being worried that your game would break, you simply would have gone to GameStop or Toys'R'Us or the local equivalent and gotten one of their game warranties. I think its $3 for a $50 game and it gets cheaper for cheaper games. I used to work at a GameStop and have seen disks that were scratched, cracked in half, chewed on, mangled, we even replaced the one with a bullet hole in it. Now that TRU is getting into the same racket, I bet other stores follow too.
Having lived in a college dorm, I can tell you the real use of mod-chips is for downloading games that you don't own and playing them. I remember a big event back them was that the French version of Halo 2 was leaked right before the American release. In my dorm you could walk up and down the hall and hear a lot of zapping, followed by French profanity. If you listen to only slashdotters, you would swear that the only people that buy and use modchips are little old ladies that have piles of legally purchased pristine discs locked away, and bring out copies for their rowdy grandchildren to play with on weekends. In my experience, I've never seen them used for that.
That's all fine and dandy for the Wii, but for the DS it's not so simple. The sad thing here is I think Nintento is missing the opportunity for a new product.
What a lot of these 3rd party cartridges do for the DS do is allow people to (aside from copying DS/GBA games) play music and movies, and have PDA functionality. They also allow users to play NES, SNES, etc games on them as well.
Many of these cards sell for $80+ (or do once you add the removable flash memory). If they were smart, they would take a page from the Wii's online service, sell a cartridge for $20 that allows you to buy and download old NES/SNES games with Nintento points like you can on the Wii. They could also sell a cartridge with a flash memory slot and allow it to do multimedia playback.
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Yep- I use DSOrganize and MoonShell on mine. Makes a decently priced MP3 player. I am guilty of pirating games too, though- mainly because I live in China and the DSes are region-locked to only play Chinese games (of which there are less than 10) due to some idiotic decision. But, they left the GBA slot completely unprotected, because the GBA game library consists mainly of fan-translated games flashed onto blank cartridges and sold commercially; from big department stores to small street vendors, none of them are official.
OSx86 FTW
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And driving it further underground makes it that much harder for Joe Sixpack to access, which is exactly what they want. Nintendo (or any other company hitting hard on pirates) aren't dumb. They know that piracy will always exist, but they want to drive it underground, really deep underground. So deep most people won't know about it.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
The PSP isn't much of an onslaught.
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
on the DS it is that simple. you can walk into any walmart and walk out with a DS cart that will play copied games.
Datel games-n-music DS. I got several japanese import copies playing on that device with a 1 gig micro SD card in it.
$25.00 at walmart. Warez for the masses.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have a Cyclo DS Evolution. I thought it would save me money by not having to buy the games. The Evoution and the 2GB micro SD came out to about $90. I'd only have to pirate 3 games to save money. Ironically the only game I ever play on it is Tetris. Oh and get this. I've owned two versions of Tetris in the past. And I intend to buy Tetris again for my Xbox. I owned Tetris for the Apple II, (at least I think I owned a legitimate copy, it might have been pirated; My Dad bought it for me.) And I bought Tetris for the Game Boy Advanced. I lost the catridge. Does that mean that whoever has it now is now the legal owner? Or am I within my rights to aquire another copy of Tetris even though it's not the same exact version I used to have? Alexi Pajitnov lives like a pauper anyway. Is this the fairness of capitalism distributing wealth to those who have the most talent that you apologists are talking about?
So I bought a DS flash card to pirate games and ironically I don't use it to pirate very much at all. I would have been better off buying a legit Tetris catridge again if it weren't for the legal applications. Ironically those might not be all that legal either. I like to use the video player to play TV shows that I pirate off the internet. Hey, if I captured the shows myself and transcoded them to fit on my DS that would be legal, but if I download what someone else has already done for me then it's piracy right? I also like to use my DS as a wifi AP detector. So I can crack their WEP keys. Ha ha. Funny thing, one of the big reasons I bought the damn DS was because I was expecting to be able to play homebrew Doom on it. Nintendo and ID won't release a legit Doom for DS. Now that I actually have one I can't get Doom to run because of some technical issue. Damn it. BTW my Dad definitely bought me a legit copy of Doom 2. I remember he bought it at Costco. And that's ignoring the coolest application of all. I have friends who carry around huge purses filled with DS games. It looks very unwieldy. I can carry 30 games in one card. Which would be legal if I chose to purchase those games. Is it the device manufacturer's fault what the users do with their product? Is piracy really crushing the industry? Or maybe if there were still manufacturing jobs left in America workers would be able to afford video games.
PS I could really use a hand getting homebrew Doom to work. I have friends with DS's and I think they'd enjoy deathmatching via the wifi. Are you listening ID? I'll pay $100 for a legit copy.
When I was in high school, I bought a Flash2Advance for gobs and gobs of money because I wanted to play NES games on my Gameboy Advance. I did that for a few days, and then got sick of it. A few months later I decided to try my hand at GBA game development, and made a few demos and a complete game over the course of a few months. I entered the game in a Homebrew GBA competition and got an honorable mention... My parents thought it was the biggest waste of money and for a while I did too, until three years later when I mentioned it on my resume. I got a job at an embedded engineering company, and my boss later told me that the whole reason they called me in for an interview was because of they downloaded my GBA game and tried it out. Before that I had never even heard of "embedded engineering," and now it is my passion and specialty.
I never thought a $500 video game would change the direction of my life, but I will never doubt that homebrew is great. Certainly it can be used to steal games, but it is also one of the cheapest and most effective ways for a novice programmer to get into a booming industry. And, yes, developing for emulators is also valid, but testing on real hardware was an invaluable experience that an emulator cannot replicate.
I might be on Nintendo's side for stuff like this if it wasn't for the #$&(U@#$ region lock codes.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
... you get piracy. We have a modchip in our Gamecube and primarily (by far) it is used for homebrew, backups of our purchased games (sorry, but I do think I should be allowed to backup our purchased games), and to play games from other regions (region-coding is extremely irritating and stupid - why make it hard for us to buy and play games we want to play?) Have I ever downloaded a game ("pirated")? Yes, I have. I've only done it a handful of times, and have always ended up tossing it out (or buying the game), but none-the-less, when the possibility is there, you're bound to try it at some point. And some will continue to do it and won't toss out their pirated games.
If Nintendo et. al. provided a means for backing up games, free tools for developing and running homebrew (or for a very nominal fee), and eliminated region-coding, then modchips wouldn't be necessary for these legitimate purposes, and there wouldn't be the temptation to try pirating games at all. They choose not to provide these things. Wouldn't it be easier and less costly to them to provide this stuff? It would also make customers happy.
--- What?
Yeah, that'd be great, if there were actually any open-source games that were, you know, fun. I don't know about the rest of you, but I play games to have fun, and as much as I despise EA, they have entertained me far more than all the open-source games I've tried, together. Not to mention they're a pain in the butt to get working in the first place.
Well I'd like to be able to play multiple games on the DS without swapping. What does that have to do with pirating? I think this is just flamebait.
"Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Hong Kong government. 'The Hong Kong High Court has intervened, at Nintendo's request, to help stop a global distribution operation involving game copying devices and modification chips that can potentially be used to violate the copyrights and trademarks of Nintendo DS and Wii. On Oct. 8th, the court ordered the raid of Supreme Factory Limited facilities, through which Nintendo representatives seized more than 10,000 game copying devices and mod chips over the course of three days. The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games backed up by their owner, not wishing to damage their expensive purchases, and to enable homebrew, and the mod chips allow the play of legally backed up Wii discs or homebrew games.'"
Seriously... you pay $70-100 for a game and then it gets damaged and u r up shit creek, mod chips enable the backing up of your valuable purchase.
Tahnkfully mod chips are still legal here in Australia
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