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.'"

Comments

But they wont achive much

[Tainek]

Its like taking piss out of a swimming pool, you can make wii chips out of commonly availible materials for $5 (WiiFree, OpenWii etc)

Re:But they wont achive much

[deftcoder]

Or pissing into an ocean of piss.

Making stuff illegal just drives it further underground.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Kamokazi]

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.

Re:But they wont achive much

[jamar0303]

In Japan, they do- it's called the Play-Yan. Strange that they don't try to sell it outside Japan.

Re:But they wont achive much

[morgan_greywolf]

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. Maybe that's exactly what they plan on doing and that's why they are cracking down. The Nintendo folks are pretty smart. They lost the king of hill spot in the video console market to Sony and Microsoft mostly by being fat and lazy, not by being stupid. They've managed to maintain their lead in portable gaming, even despite the onslaught of PSP.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Phisbut]

Making stuff illegal just drives it further underground.

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.

Re:But they wont achive much

[prezkennedy.org]

The PSP isn't much of an onslaught.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Applekid]

The sad thing here is I think Nintento is missing the opportunity for a new product. They're not missing the opportunity for a new product, they're reserving that new product for themselves.

During end-of-life of the SNES, they did exactly that in Japan. You bought a flash cartridge preloaded with a game and could then take it to a vending machine where you would insert it in a slot and buy a new game that was loaded into it. The biggest of those games was Rockman & Forte (which was also available in classic blown ROM cartridge format)

What I find particularly interesting is that while Nintendo was at the bottom of the pecking order for gaming*, there weren't a whole lot of "illegal" mod busts. There were NES, SNES, and GB copiers but they got the hammer right quick, while the GBA and DS ones were sort of left alone until recently. Obviously they learned that those devices garner interest in the platform itself and when they shut one down, ten more pop up in place. Now that Wii and DS have the spotlight, they can, once again, become ham-handed since now the underground is no longer a help but a potential loss of their newly found massive profits.

* Yes, the Game Boy dominated the portable market, but overall Nintendo was nowhere near Sony with its sparkling golden boy Playstation/Playstation 2.

And to think Satoru Iwata was recently quoted:

. . . it [is] important that Nintendo [doesn't] lose its internal momentum or [becomes] an arrogant company that [rests] on its laurels.

Re:But they wont achive much

[morgan_greywolf]

I was being generous. ;)

Re:But they wont achive much

[Spokehedz]

Yea, because I can always find a Wii at any store that sells electronics... And I can never, ever find a 360 or PS3.

This comment brought to you by the word SARCASM... and the letters S, T, F and U!

Re:But they wont achive much

[BosstonesOwn]

So you say I can get a "modchip" for a wii ? Whats this modchip you speak of used for ?

Re:But they wont achive much

[zerocool^]

I've just spent an hour looking on the web for information on this thing.

It would seem that it will NOT play any commercial DS roms, with very few exceptions. This is due to some weird limitation with the GnM where in order to play a rom, it needs to be able to be copied into the DS's RAM, which after loading the GnM stuff is around a measly 3.6 ~ 3.7 MB. Most DS roms are far bigger than this, even after being trimmed and compressed. The sole exception is supposedly Elf Bowling.

However, the GnM will appearantly work with a lot of SNES / NES roms, if you have the right software.

~Wx

Re:But they wont achive much

[im just cannonfodder]

I need someone to mod my wii in the uk so i can let my kids play the wii before i come home from work without the fear of the discs getting totalled!

Re:But they wont achive much

[rgo]

They discontinued it in 2005. And it was made for the GBA.

Nintendo did not offer an online game store in Japan for the Play-Yan like they are doing right now with the Wii (with a heavy layer of DRM), in fact, the only content they made available were some free games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-Yan

Re:But they wont achive much

[jamar0303]

Actually, I found out that they've made it available in mainland China (marketed as for the DS, but really the same thing over again). Probably this was more due to desperation, as their official Chinese game line-up consists of less than 10 games- and a significant portion of that is Nintendogs with SM64DS, WarioWare, Yoshi Touch and Go, and... no, I think that's it. Naturally most DS sales in China rely on flashcarts coupled with fan-translations of popular foreign games. Right now, all 4 Ace Attorney games (PW 1,2,3 + Apollo Justice) have been translated, as have a bunch of others that i can't name (I know Harvest Moon has been translated too).

Re:But they wont achive much

[DrEldarion]

Can you remember many other portable devices which were able to even compete with Nintendo's offering, much less sell 25 million? The PSP is probably the only worthy competitor Nintendo's had in the portable arena.

Re:But they wont achive much

[hedwards]

Can you remember many other portable devices which were able to even compete with Nintendo's offering, much less sell 25 million? The PSP is probably the only worthy competitor Nintendo's had in the portable arena. I remember playing with a sega game gear probably 10 or 12 years ago, and it was fun, the graphics good and the games enjoyable, but the price tag and the voracious appetite for batteries were enough to keep me from buying one. The gameboys at the time were monochrome, but they had better battery life, and were significantly less expensive.

I still have my GBA, having finally gotten rid of my GBC, and I use it regularly. I use a third party cartridge and copier, I don't use games that I haven't purchased, with the exception of a few games that were released for free use. There are still a goodly number of roms which are legitimately free for download.

It is really unfortunate that they are going this route, one of the reasons I have a GBA still is that I can put all of my games onto one cart and not have to schlep a dozen carts around with me wherever I go. I can spend some time and write a few for myself. Killing that would really dampen any interest in owning a Nintendo product over the competitions' offerings.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Joe Snipe]

must have missed this:
http://gtamp.com/DS/Datel-Games-N-Music-product-for-Nintendo-DS-recall.php

Re:But they wont achive much

[flitty]

Does duct-taping 2 gamecubes together count as modding?

Re:But they wont achive much

[ZeroFactorial]

I sense a great disturbance in the force....

As though millions of Wiis were suddenly cut off.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Smauler]

Quit trolling and add something to the discussion. Not everyone here loves pirating movies, music and games. I personally buy lots of games, some movies, and listen to the radio and old music I bought. I also am not a huge fan of the Wii, either.

Slashdot does not, despite what you may believe, consist purely of moronic fucktards trying to get everything they can for free as quickly as possible. Though admittedly snide bastards are on the increase.

Re:But they wont achive much

[porcupine8]

That was my thought, too. I'm really hoping for something that will let you play NES/SNES/etc games bought via virtual console on your DS.

Re:But they wont achive much

[aliquis]

The DS has a GBA port and the way the first gen hacks where made was to use whatever flashcard/movie player in the GBA slot, which of course would boot in GBA mode and only use one of the CPUs, but then add a flashme device in the NDS slot which booted the DS in NDS mode and then let it read from the GBA-slot and do whatever that card did.

Re:But they wont achive much

[vuffi_raa]

they do have a legal one called "games and music" (you can get it in best buy- can't get much more mainstream than that) but it in no way outsells the r4 or m3 or ezflash because it has limitations on what you can do with it and doesn't run homebrew.

Re:But they wont achive much

[vuffi_raa]

that is horrible- I am sooo offended by cats

Re:But they wont achive much

[Meski]

I sense a great disturbance in the force.... As though millions of Wiis were suddenly cut off. Flinches violently

Booo!

[garcia]

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.

Re:Booo!

[CRCulver]

Media-shifting is only a fair-use right when encryption is not involved. Under the DMCA, you cannot break encryption to media-shift. It's not just media hype, it's been US law since 1998.

Re:Booo!

[Junior J. Junior III]

That's OK; in another generation or so, physical media will be a thing of the past, and instead of shipping a "thing" that you use to install/load the game, everything will be digitally distributed over broadband, "software as a service" will be the business model, and you'll either rent playing time or have a monthly subscription fee. Backups will be limited to your account data, and will be automatic as the information will be housed on their datacenter, but you won't truly own the data beyond the right to access it and modify it through in-game actions; the service vendor will reserve the rights to alter the binaries at their discretion for any reason, and once they push updates the game-that-was will no longer be available for anyone to play. There will be no replay option once they determine that a game is no longer profitable enough to continue serving, and there will be no right of resale, because there will be nothing to sell -- there'll be a black market for selling achievements such as special items a la the Everquest economy, but that's about it.

Re:Booo!

[toQDuj]

Yup, but not in the rest of the world.

So I still don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to use these mod chips and play their copied games here.

Re:Booo!

[Sockatume]

The legendary Stuart Campbell interviewed ELSPA's (Europe's ESRB, basically) then-boss on the grey legality of backup devices ages ago. His stance was that you buy a single copy of the physical medium, and that's it - regardless of the law, and what many game manuals say ("this product is licenced, not sold...") they were going to prohibit all of the consumers's copyrights. Asked what customers should do when, by no fault of their own, the physical medium becomes unusable, he unrepentantly said they were stuffed and they'd have to buy it again.

Re:Booo!

[PhoenixFlare]

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.

If that's what you would do, then great, but i'll bet you anything it wasn't what the people they seized this stuff from had in mind - I'm sure it makes a comforting thought to the vast majority that use mod chips and such to play "backups" of games they never bought, though.

Sucks for our rights, I agree, but the reality is that most people just want obscenely cheap/free stuff.

Re:Booo!

[Junior J. Junior III]

So don't crack the encryption; just copy the encrypted text, and let the authorized decryption device do its job with your perfectly legitimate encrypted backup copy.

Re:Booo!

[ozmanjusri]

I think we have bigger problems as well as the DMCA.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Booo!

[shawn(at)fsu]

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.

Yeah that or... you could learn to start taking care of your stuff in the first place. I lost a few CD's to scratches when I was a kid. My parents never said, well you should have made a back up copy, they were more apt to say "GD it! When are you going to learn to take care of the stuff we buy you", so fast forward a decade later and how many DVD's or games have a lost to scratches. None.

Come one people take responsibility for your stuff. If your friend scratches them your friend owes you a new disk, if your child scratches them, well if that's the worst your child does to your stuff you got off easy, if your significant other scratches them, you have to take the good with the bad. If your pet scratches them... Wait what?!? Thats just stupid. I can't see any good reason why your pet should come near your media... Media has cases and those cases should be stored some where that Rover can't get to.

Re:Booo!

[Eccles]

We have Bill fucking Clinton to thank for that.

Uh, didn't it pass the Senate with 99-1 votes for vs. against? It wasn't particularly Bill Clinton's baby. Not that he would have vetoed it even if the vote was closer, but there are few politicians out there that show much opposition to increasing copyright restrictions. And Rich Boucher isn't running for president.

Re:Booo!

[jamar0303]

Or, you know, people who use modchips to play legit games that won't run due to idiotic region-lock (Euro players buying US games, for instance- because you honestly aren't going to get one Wii for every region, are you?).

Re:Booo!

[CastrTroy]

No, you won't be able to sell achievements, because the achievements will be tied to a key unique to your device. So, you could sell the device itself, but then you'd be selling all your achievements.

Re:Booo!

[AKAImBatman]

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.

While I agree on the Wii discs, the truth of the matter is that it is probably illegal to backup DS chips. According to the decision of Atari v. JS&A, backups are only authorized when they're necessary to protect against "mechanical or electrical failure" of the cartridge. Given that DS media is similarly sturdy, a US court would be likely to rule in the same manner.

However, the question that remains is: Do these chips have other legal uses? In the case of DS games, that somewhat depends on whether or not these chips are the ones used by homebrewers. If they are, then you have a significant legal use right there. (This was a defense that JS&A attempted, but was unsuccessful as console homebrew communities did not really exist back in the '80s.) If homebrewers use a different set of chips, then I'm afraid that our HK friends have no real legal leg to stand on here in the US, either.

Re:Booo!

[jamar0303]

There are some accidents you just can't prevent, such as those caused by drunkenness, but I think reinstating Prohibition is a bit much. That, and no amount of grounding your kid for destroying a disk will bring it back.

Re:Booo!

[Von Helmet]

I'd bet a lot of money that use of these devices for the purpose of personal backups pales in comparison to their use for playing copied games.

Sure, it's a bitch, especially as I was hoping to pick up an R4 for Homebrew purposes, but you've got to admit that Nintendo have a point with this.

Re:Booo!

[Mathinker]

In such a consumer dystopia, I'd think that open-source games would start to gain a foothold in the old off-line, infinitely replayable niche, and eventually the proprietary game producers might partially return to produce games for that niche. Look, we're not talking MS vs. Linux here, you don't use games to run all the other programs on your computer.

Of course, by that time widespread use of computers as general purpose computational platforms might be dead, so the open-source games couldn't compete (e.g., Linux on Playstation 3 cannot use the GPU). I would hope not.

Re:Booo!

[ThirdPrize]

Trouble is that there is no physical difference between your "back up" and a copied version of the game. One may come on a dodgily photoshopped CD but they are essentially the same (as the original). You probably even have the serial written on the front as well.

The software industry is slowly realising that the concept of selling physical CDs and of those being of some worth is a joke. It is what is on the CDs that matters and that can be copied with ease. Eventually everything will be downloaded via Steam/Xbox Live and you will have to log on to run it. At that point you can make as many back ups as you like.

Re:Booo!

[n2art2]

ah but you see that is where you are wrong. You are buying the disk, not the media on the disk. The media on the disk you are only being licensed to use. . . in conjunction with that disk. Loose or damage your disk and well, you violate your licensing agreement with them, because you no longer can use the media in conjunction with the disk.

Hey I didn't say it was right, but would you rather pay 3-5 times the price you pay now to have that disk so that you can have the rights to use the media on any medium that you wish?

Re:Booo!

[maxume]

I suppose you think libraries are a real burden on authors?

Re:Booo!

[gEvil (beta)]

And what exactly does your nice strawman argument have to do with taking care of your crap?

Re:Booo!

[jamar0303]

I think that my cartridge falling apart due to faulty construction counts, but apparently it doesn't happen enough to be significant.

Re:Booo!

[Tim C]

It's not just media hype, it's been US law since 1998.

Last time I checked Hong Kong was Chinese-governed, not American.

You're right, but it's kind of beside the point; the rest of us don't (yet) have to deal with that particular unjust law.

Re:Booo!

[maxume]

Nothing, but in a world where it is (from a technical standpoint) trivial to duplicate digital media, banning said duplication because forcing people to take care of their things because it is a good moral character builder is insane. I like to examine insanity, so I asked the OP a question designed to elicit further insanity.

Re:Booo!

[Phisbut]

I think that my cartridge falling apart due to faulty construction counts, but apparently it doesn't happen enough to be significant.

Your cartridge falling apart due to faulty construction is covered by the warranty, so you have zero need for a backup there.

Re:Booo!

[Trelane]

I lost a few CD's to scratches when I was a kid. My parents never said, well you should have made a back up copy, they were more apt to say "GD it! When are you going to learn to take care of the stuff we buy you", so fast forward a decade later and how many DVD's or games have a lost to scratches. None.

You had mediocre parents and have had the good fortune (thus far) to be in complete control of your stuff. Not everyone (e.g. Greensboro KS, Louisiana, and various random people who've been burgled or robbed) is so lucky.

Having/maintaning good backups is part of "taking care of your stuff."

If your friend scratches them your friend owes you a new disk, if your child scratches them, well if that's the worst your child does to your stuff you got off easy, if your significant other scratches them, you have to take the good with the bad. If your pet scratches them... Wait what?!? Thats just stupid. I can't see any good reason why your pet should come near your media... Media has cases and those cases should be stored some where that Rover can't get to.

Aside from "If you had backups, there'd be no problem" you focus in on one case of loss: damage through people or pets who were granted access. There are many other scenarios, including the ones I've previously outlined. The solution to the problem is backups .

Re:Booo!

[Graftweed]

Making backup copies for your own use falls well within fair use of the media you just bought. The only people who don't seem to think so are those who have been brainwashed by the media at large to think it's somehow a crime to safeguard your investment in a product that isn't exactly cheap.

But in any case not everyone keeps their media in a hallowed shrine, never to be touched by others, like you apparently do. People have friends, who sometimes also handle the media. I'm not going to be all prissy if someone leaves a fingerprint or a minor scratch on my games. But over time these start to add up.

There's also another instance where I always wish I could make backup copies. When I buy used games the disc media is sometimes in pretty bad shape, since everyone's definition of "cosmetic scratches" varies wildly. I've never had one that has outright failed, but I'd feel a lot better if I could transfer the data on the disc to a new one and use that instead.

Re:Booo!

[tiananmen tank man]

>>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.

>Yeah that or... you could learn to start taking care of your stuff in the first place.

Why not make backups when it is so easy to with digital data? Maybe we also shouldnt buy car insurance and just drive extra careful.

Re:Booo!

[jamar0303]

Ture, it should be. But, I've been accused of deliberately trying to pull the cartridge apart (why would I do such a thing?) when trying to do that warranty replacement. Then again, I live in China- I get punished for buying a genuine game, whereas the small independent vendors were all too happy to help get me up and running with my SuperCard on my DS Lite (they pre-loaded a Japanese-Korean-English dictionary, a program for learning Chinese, and a copy of Apollo Justice- best game in the Ace Attorney series so far).

Re:Booo!

[PhoenixFlare]

Again, not saying you can't find legitimate purposes, but I think trying to pass that off as the majority use is extremely debatable.

Re:Booo!

[tbannist]

On the one hand, you should actually be "thanking" Bruce Lehman for the DMCA, and even he knows (now) that it is a terrible failure.

On the other, I'm glad that your right to copy songs is so much more important to you than your right to Habeas Corpus. We can clearly see where your priorities lie!

Re:Booo!

[dr_d_19]

Why?

I can hold my Wii (no pun intended) in one hand and a disc containing a game in the other. But unless the creator of the game has payed Nintendo, I'm unable to play the game in a console for which I've paid. Why is that?

Copyright infringement is one thing, but limiting the use of something I've bought in order increase income in something else.

Do whatever you want with the pirates, but allow me to use what I've paid for damnit.

Re:Booo!

[speaker of the truth]

Aah yes. Because if you don't support "Won't somebody please think of the children" Clinton you must automatically support the Bush administration. I guess I can't blame you for that though. We have our binary government to thank for your mentality.

Re:Booo!

[theaceoffire]

CD's, DVD's, and even flash have a finite lifespan, and can contain unexpected defects.
And NOTHING is worse than getting to disk 4 in a video game and seeing the "Disk Read Error".

This goes double for installation cd's/dvd's. I always back them up so I don't have to worry about a defect.

And as for the case thing, I have seen some cases scratch up a disc MORE than leaving it on a desk... although that is rare.

I do not want to loose a viable option just because some users never have a problem.

Re:Booo!

[toleraen]

You had mediocre parents and have had the good fortune (thus far) to be in complete control of your stuff. Not everyone (e.g. Greensboro KS, Louisiana, and various random people who've been burgled or robbed) is so lucky.

Having/maintaning good backups is part of "taking care of your stuff." Please provide a method on how to backup my TV, my couch, my oven, etc, so when I'm robbed I'm good to go. Oh wait, that's right, it's called home owner's insurance, which applies to everything you own (as long as you chose to cover it). When my wife's apartment burned down I had my PS2 games back within a week. Backups are for irreplaceable information, not material goods.

Re:Booo!

[Trelane]

are you seriously suggesting that if you lived in New Orleans, not only would you have backups of everything, you would have off-site backups?

No, my point was first and foremost to point out that not all losses are preventable. It was for that purpose that I presented Louisiana as a counterpoint to the extremely naiive position of "just take care of your stuff".

Second, having more than one copy greatly increases the liklihood of a copy surviving a disaster.

not only would you have backups of everything, you would have off-site backups? Not just "off-site" either mind you, but off-city backups?!

Now you're just flying off the handle here, AC:

• Not everything need be backed up for backups to be good
• Not every backup need be off-site to increase the likelihood of a copy of the content to survive. Off-site only makes it (almost) guaranteed. For instance, if you make a copy of your game or whatever, you'll probably keep one of the two (probably original) in a safe place, which is much more likely to survive disaster (e.g. in a fire/water-proof safe or safe-deposit box or even just in a box in the attic). Without backups, you'll have to trade off safety and convenience (and probably just lose everything in a disaster).

Finally, you've latched on to one of my three examples! What about the others, eh?

Re:Booo!

[spyrochaete]

The DS is probably the console most in need of backups in all history. The cartridges are quite small and easy to lose, but are bulky enough that it's annoying having to bring more than one or two along with you. My R4 slot 1 SD backup device lets me store all my games on the one cartridge that I never have to take out. It's very convenient.

Re:Booo!

[Dishevel]

A real president will veto a bill he dose not believe in. No matter what others think. The US is not a government of the people getting to vote their way on which thing. We vote for people who are supposed to do the right thing and they are supposed to do whatever they can to fight for their beliefs. The problem we are having in the US is that all of our politicians are spending their time telling us what they think we want to hear. Polls should be made against the law. At least then the politician would have no idea what might get them re-elected for their next term. Then when you make elections fully publicly funded we can be a real country again.

Re:Booo!

[tbannist]

It's what you get for not throwing in the traditional "but Bush is even worse" when you complain about the Clintons.

Re:Booo!

[Diss Champ]

Absent a way to get around DRM, art in digital form (games, music, video) is irreplaceable information as soon as the publisher decides to stop selling it. One of the purposes of copyright expiration was to keep such information from being lost forever when the purely commercial interest was gone and existing copies degraded. If an irreplacable piece of art you have is destroyed, your homeowner's insurance won't magically make it reappear.

Re:Booo!

[russotto]

No, the DMCA passed the Senate 99-0, and the House by voice vote. And Boucher was one of the 99, so forget about him.

Re:Booo!

[Trelane]

Please provide a method on how to backup my TV, my couch, my oven, etc, so when I'm robbed I'm good to go.

Sorry, physical goods and electronic goods are not the same. Now, when you have a matter compiler, we can talk more about it.

Oh wait, that's right, it's called home owner's insurance, which applies to everything you own (as long as you chose to cover it).

Yes, homeowner's (and renter's) insurance is a fallback for some major disasters like I outlined. However, there are caveats:

• It covers stuff when it's in your home (What about your DS games or CDs or whatever? Remember, O Strong Copyrighter, that making MP3s of your CDs are illegal--you must use the original media!)
• It usually has a considerable deductible.
• Your insurance agent will ding you (i.e. raise premiums) when you take it, so you have to choose carefully when you cover a loss, so a minor theft is most likely in your pockets, not theirs. (In fact, they will drop you if you file too many claims!)
• Flooding can and will happen, but flood insurance is a separate (and costly!) option to add. Say you're in a 500-year flood plain (most places are in some sort of flooding area; the question is how often it occurs). The chances of you getting flooded any time in the near future are small. Would you elect to pay the (rather costly) insurance for everything, or just a set of things (which likely excludes games and music)? Why pay extra if you could back it up?
• Choosing to cover stuff is a trade-off. You can cover more (and increase premiums) or cover less (and decrease premiums). So you're saying we should have to increase premiums, because backing up a CD should be prohibited?!

So your reasoning to ban all backing up of your legally-acquired copies of music, games, movies, etc. is because you can get insurance which may or may not completely cover the loss (if you chose to pay the higher premiums to get the coverage), if it covers the loss at all?. I'm afraid I just don't agree with you.

Re:Booo!

[Kamineko]

You're going to not buy an R4 because Nintendo have a point ?!

Re:Booo!

[Trelane]

One of the purposes of copyright expiration was to keep such information from being lost forever when the purely commercial interest was gone and existing copies degraded

I disagree.

Copyright is a tradeoff between inhibiting people's natural ability/right to copy (and improve on) an idea or work of art and the desire to have more ideas and artwork than would happen if people's natural ability/right to copy were infringed upon. So you give the creator a temporary monopoly in their work (i.e. prevent others from copying the work) in order to allow the author to gather money/prestige/whatever in the hopes that the author will reinvest the gains from the previous work in new works. After a time, it is counterproductive to continue infringing upon the citizens' natural abilities/rights, so copyright expires.

Re:Booo!

[Gravatron]

Indie and open source gameing is neat, but support on the console front has always been iffy. Sony Allowed it on the ps1 via the Net yazoo (Devil Dice is a great example), on the ps2 via the linux kit, but the ps3's linux is still too locked down. They seem to be picking up indie developers though, with the recent release of Everyday Shooter and LittleBigPlanet on the horizon. I'd like to see that expanded to get us a greater variety of indie developers on the ps3.

I've heard nintendos new program is simular to this, but i've yet to see the results stateside. I'm not even sure it's really indie, I need to read up a bit on it. Ditto for Live arcade. There are some indie games, but alot i'm sure come from microsoft proper.

Re:Booo!

[Xeth]

Yeah, but there aren't any laws preventing my friends from duplicating their couches and giving me a copy if mine gets damaged (or if I just want a new one).

"Intellectual property" (the term itself is a tragic example of language being subverted by moneyed interests) has only tenuous similarities to real property, and almost none in a just society.

Re:Booo!

[Eccles]

A real president will veto a bill he dose not believe in.

I didn't say Clinton didn't support the DMCA, just that he wasn't particularly instrumental in getting it passed. Might as well blame McCain -- he was in the Senate at the time.

The problem we are having in the US is that all of our politicians are spending their time telling us what they think we want to hear.

You think we wanted to hear the DMCA, that there was a clamour of support for extending copyright? No, the problem is the politicians are bought and paid for, and an "honest" one is just one who stays bought. The DMCA was a payoff to the already rich and politically connected.

Re:Booo!

[misterooga]

Actually, that really should be the way to go in any community: that law to keep trouble out should not be necessary. But that's just wishful thinking of course. I do have to ask how many of us would simply pay off any damage if it's less than $1000 in fear of your automobile insurance going up if you start filing everything? Sure, large accidents and manufacture errors--like engine suddenly going kaboom...happened to a friend of mine after getting his car one week prior--should be covered and mostly likely you will let insurance company foot the bill. But if you scratch your car while parking, unless it's a major dent you will either just keep it there until it gets more damaged or it's out of your own pocket. You gotta admit insurance in many situations are...simply a money lost and investment on 'what-ifs' that you hope you will never have to cash out but still pay since government mandates.

Re:Booo!

[Just Some Guy]

Please provide a method on how to backup my TV, my couch, my oven, etc, so when I'm robbed I'm good to go.

Good point. I am now ripping the tape drive out of my server because if I can't make backups of my kitchen table then I shouldn't be allowed to make backups of my home directory.

Does your logic truly make sense to you, or are you just being an ass for the sake of it?

Re:Booo!

[ohtani]

Does said home owner's insurance cover for act of dog? Or other small mishaps? Like if a friend accidentally steps on your disc or the normal wear and tear of a disc that may be a potentially rare game? Is the purpose of paying $40 (give or take $20 depending on console) for a new game go towards the fact that it's a physical disc or that you're licensing a game from the company to play?

Re:Booo!

[Von Helmet]

Sorry, that's not what I meant. I mean - I'm hoping to pick up an R4 for the Homebrew, but it's likely to become harder to get hold of an R4 as a result of this.

Re:Booo!

[delinear]

Well then companies could resolve both these issues by:

1) Offering free replacement media for disks which will no longer play due to scratches/warping (these could be offered via standard retail outlets so there is no issue of "Send us your disk and wait 3 months for a response", which could then be another legitimate reason to make your own backup). Media is cheap and if you can show proof of purchase, what's the issue for not issuing a replacement, other than greed?

2) NOT imposing region locks - in this day and age where markets are global via the internet and the world is shrinking in terms of travel, region locks are an archaic method of locking users in. If I buy a bunch of games on a shopping trip to NY I should be able to expect them to play back in the UK, or if I go online to buy games I shouldn't have to risk getting a non-PAL version.

If these are the two major legitimate reasons for mod chips, then the games companies could remove both reasons with ease and leave little excuse for mod chips and remove the debate. The problem is, even if they are a minority, some people ARE using mod chips for entirely reasonable purposes, and rather than taking the sledgehammer approach to the issue, companies could work with those customers to solve their issues and people may then be more understanding when those same companies ask for help to reduce piracy.

It would also go some way towards removing the perception of corporate greed in these areas - after all, why should we be sympathetic to companies crying about greedy pirates when those same companies are hurting their paying customers for the same reason?

Re:Booo!

[Sancho]

`(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

My understanding is that fair use is still a legitimate affirmative defense against the DMCA.

Re:Booo!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Making personal backups in itself is permitted, but there is no legal requirement to make it easy.

Re:Booo!

[Kamineko]

See that you do! :P And play my Lemmings!

Re:Booo!

[CRCulver]

Essentially, that paragraph only gives you personally the right to attempt fair-use. It does not allow you to distribute tools to let others do it.

Re:Booo!

[king-manic]

Yup, but not in the rest of the world.

So I still don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to use these mod chips and play their copied games here.

The US is trying their damnedest to make it universal via the WIPO treaty that it's pressuring it's trade partners to sign. Although I think Nintendo's actions are neutral. The primary usage of those devices are piracy not backing up.

Re:Booo!

[vegiVamp]

Probably. And soon after, they'll be launching a 'very special service for our most valued customers', offering 'faster loading times, full functionality even when the network breaks down, and unlimited use time (without support) even after the shelf-life of the product ends so you will never lose access to valueable data again'.

For how many years have 'visionaries' been flip-flopping between thin client and fat client architecture now ?

Re:Booo!

[DrXym]

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.

You know, I know and Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft know that virtually every modchip is used to play pirate games. I'm sure there are legitimate users who only play games they own or to play region unlocked titles. I'm also fairly sure that such people represent a miniscule percentage of modders.

It really is no wonder the console manufacturers go after the modders given that they're basically an aide to piracy.

Re:Booo!

[toleraen]

Well, I am big fan of it, I'll admit that much!

Re:Booo!

[Creepy Crawler]

---ah but you see that is where you are wrong. You are buying the disk, not the media on the disk. The media on the disk you are only being licensed to use. . . in conjunction with that disk. Loose or damage your disk and well, you violate your licensing agreement with them, because you no longer can use the media in conjunction with the disk.

Ok. So you accept the EULAs, even when they do not exist? Interesting.

I follow copyright law. I buy one "copy" along with the medium the information resides. If my medium becomes corrupt, I have a right to maintain my "copy".

Guess how I'll do that? Any damn way I please.

Re:Booo!

[LordVader717]

Unless you use off-site backup, you're copies are going to be just as screwed as the originals in a worst case scenario such as a flood.

Re:Booo!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Perhaps, but I think this "dystopian" model has a strong business case, as well -- people love riding roller coasters, but no one goes out and buys a roller coaster. They just use roller coasting services provided by a company when they want to enjoy a roller coaster ride. So we'll have some games that are like roller coasters, and some games that are like, say, bicycles, which people can own. Games that have an important network element to them and rely on a stable, managed network community, or that have tall hardware requirements (like a VR machine or something wearable, too expensive for the average consumer to consider owning) will gravitate toward the roller coaster model, and simpler games that don't have these requirements will gravitate toward the bicycle model.

Re:Booo!

[Trelane]

Unless you use off-site backup, you're copies are going to be just as screwed as the originals in a worst case scenario such as a flood.

I don't think this necessarily follows.

Regardless, a remote backup is always a good idea as it's certainly more likely to be safer.

Something that apparently isn't realized by many is that backups need not be physical in the case of digital media. Provided you know where to store it, shouldn't you be allowed to store a digital copy of your movies, music, and software at a remote site?

Re:Booo!

[SetupWeasel]

Nope. It was perfectly correct as it stood. You made it a mess! I made a comparison between unnamed problems and the DMCA. That is why it needed the "than." Without that, no comparison is made and the words "bigger problems" look foolish. Bigger problems than what? Who knows?

A grammatically correct sentence for your opinion would look like this:

We have big problems that include the DMCA.

First I removed the "I think," because you cannot speak for my thoughts. Then I removed the "than" and replaced "bigger" with "big" to put the DMCA on the same logical level as the unnamed problems.

I hope this helps you to become a better troll in the future.

All the best,
Joe

Re:Booo!

[LordVader717]

Government only mandates liability insurance. You can still decide to take the risk of not insuring your own car.
And Manufacturing errors are covered by warranty.

Re:Booo!

[LordVader717]

Your backups will likely have a much more limited lifespan than your original media itself.

Re:Booo!

[SethraLavode]

Actually, that really should be the way to go in any community: that law to keep trouble out should not be necessary. But that's just wishful thinking of course. I do have to ask how many of us would simply pay off any damage if it's less than $1000 in fear of your automobile insurance going up if you start filing everything?

Off the top of my head, there's only one state mandates that you carry Collision coverage, which is used to repair damage to your own car (and that's because Michigan has some really funky no-fault laws).

The compulsory liability insurance required by the state is in place to pay for damage you cause to other people's cars or, more importantly, damage you cause to other people. Yes, it's money you will hopefully never see again, but it really is an investment against potential future financial ruin. It's a way for the state to protect its citizens by making sure that they will be cared for if they are hurt in an accident.

Personally, I have no problem spending $40 a month to make sure that if for whatever reason I cause an accident, I'm not on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, I feel better knowing that if someone plows into me, there will be coverage for my medical bills.

Re:Booo!

[KDR_11k]

I agree with that stance. In the absense of an EULA (or in a jurisdiction where an EULA is not binding) all you buy is a physical medium which you can then proceed to use however you wish as long as you don't violate any laws.

Re:Booo!

[KDR_11k]

Well, there were some import-only chips and tools so there was apparently demand. I would like to have one of those for the Wii.

Re:Booo!

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but when he breaks a window the same thing applies.

Re:Booo!

[KDR_11k]

Not just "off-site" either mind you, but off-city backups?!

ThePirateBay is an off-country backup! What other backup works even when you never had the original in first place?

Re:Booo!

[Mathinker]

From your original post:

physical media will be a thing of the past, ... There will be no replay option once they determine that a game is no longer profitable enough to continue serving, and there will be no right of resale, ...

After I replied:

and some games that are like, say, bicycles, which people can own.

I'm glad that my post had such a great influence on your opinion. I agree with you that my use of the word "dystopian" was an exaggeration, I know that many people enjoy games using the business model you are talking about. I replied because the way I read your original post it seemed to me that you also were exaggerating, claiming that a whole niche of the games market would disappear.

Re:Booo!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Weird, politeness and reasoned discourse on slashdot. A first post, of a sort;)

Well, I do think I would agree with you that it would be dystopia if the only way to have fun were to go out and pay for the privilege to ride a roller coaster, and bicycling wasn't available to anyone because it was being suppressed by the roller coaster tycoons. That would suck.

But I do fear that there won't be a sustainable economy for bicycles if they're so easy to steal that no one buys them, and after a while no one bothers to make them anymore. Valve's solution to that problem, Steam, seems to be working pretty well for them... but I don't like the phoning home and the product activation, and I think it borders on dystopia.

And as of relatively recently we have "console exclusive" games which by all rights ought to be "bicycle" business model games, but are distributed digitally using the subscriber service model -- take Pac Man Championship Edition for example, a FANTASTIC game that I would LOVE to have, but I refuse to buy an XBox 360 due to its quality control issues and the fact that it's manufactured and sold by Microsoft. Pac Man is a part of video game culture's heritage, and by all rights PMCE ought to be ported to every platform that it can run on, just as the original Pac Man was, and I'd gladly pay money for a copy that I can *own* and play on the platform of my choice, but no, it's an XBox Live exclusive, meaning not only do I have to buy an XBox to play it, I'd have to subscribe to the download service as well! All to play a game that ought to be playable on a decent smartphone. It's sad.

Re:Booo!

[Trogre]

Doesn't matter. He vetoed a whole lot of bills while he was in power. That's why a lot of people liked him - he preserved the status quo very well.

All excuses aside: he could have vetoed this one, and he didn't.

Re:Booo!

[rgo]

A real president that respects and believes in democracy won't veto a congress bill, because it's the people who voted for them.

Re:Booo!

[Trogre]

Except McCain couldn't have stopped it by his actions alone. Clinton could have, and didn't.

Re:Booo!

[Trogre]

And still people on this forum advocate buying a Wii.

(shakes head)

Re:Booo!

[scot4875]

'Media' and 'disc' are the same thing in the context in which you're using. You mean software everywhere you're using the word media.

--Jeremy

Re:Booo!

[catprog]

What if you do not break the encryption but amke a 1-1 copy of the disc?

Re:Booo!

[Creepy Crawler]

How do you store data? If you're not using some sort of light loop or some trick of storing data over latency-based pipes. you use physical matter.

When I buy a copyrighted piece, I OWN the matter on it, but not the data pattern provided. The data pattern is provided control via Copyright statutes and I am granted and restricted by the US government ALONE.

If my medium is destroyed or made unusable, I have a right, under copyright statutes to re-obtain what I have legal control over (1 data copy).

A better question should be thus: How can one prove that somebody legitimately owns a copy of data (but is not extended full copyright privs)? Is a receipt acceptable? Is the physical medium acceptable? Some sort of 'ownership' checking service?

Re:Booo!

[Sockatume]

He was also applying it to products which come with an EULA which specifically allows the creation of a backup copy, though. And (IIRC) people in the UK have a statutory right to create a single backup copy of any software they own regardless.

Slashdot 10 year Party?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but notice that every article on the Main Page has been posted by ScuttleMonkey...where did everyone else go? Was there a party last night that Scuttlemonkey wasn't invited to?

It's a lose-lose.

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[kkiller]

Is this the only factory in the world making modification devices? Somehow I doubt it.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[ilovegeorgebush]

No it's not. They're chasing down copyright thieves who are violating the use of their software/hardware. If they shutdown one factory and seize (from the article):

more than 10,000 game copying devices and mod chips

then they've already made a win. Sure, if people are using these for legitimate means (i.e. making backup copies of their purchases) then they're hurting the good guys; but let's face it, the majority of mod users are breaking the law so they don't have to pay.

Don't get me wrong, I hate all this Facist Copyright theft chasing, but I just don't think the recent raid was 'a big waste of time'.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[SpeedyDX]

However it turns out, I'm just glad that I got my R4 from HK before the crackdown happened.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[SkeezerDoodle]

Odds are pretty good that their actual success rate will fall somewhere between 0% and 100%

How profound! Did you stay up all night crunching those numbers? :p

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright thieves? Who is falsely claiming copyright over the property of Nintendo? And what in the name of FSM does "violating the use of their software/hardware" mean? Surely if Nintendo have sold the hardware to others its not theirs anymore, and its up the new owner to decide what they do with it. Is owning property illegal? How did this scam come about whereby corporations sell stuff to you, then claim they still really own it - and the right to control what you can and cant do with it?

As near as I can tell, Nintendo are the ones actually stealing the physical property of others - chips, consoles, and a whole heap of stuff that isnt theirs. Fuck them and the corrupt legal system that helps them commit crimes against people.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[jamar0303]

This is just HK. They haven't touched the mainland yet, which is, as we know, the manufacturing center for damn near everything.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[muffen]

I doubt it makes any difference. There are plenty of countries in the world where producing the modchips is not a crime, so the only thing this does is delays shipment of the stuff by a few weeks until someone else starts producing it in a country with (imho) sane laws.

As long as people are willing to pay for the modchips, there will be someone that produces them. Even if Nintendo managed to close down 90% of the modchip makers, the only result would be that the remaining 10% would produce more and earn more money.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[Phisbut]

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.

Tell me, of the current 10M+ current Wii owners, how many actually know about thing Hong Kong stuff, and how many really care? The only users who'll be pissed off are the users which Nintendo (or just about any other company) doesn't want anyway.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

I disaggre - Nintendo has sold 50 million DS units worldwide, and only confiscated 10,000 mod chips (of wich some fraction were for the Wii) Even if you assume that is only say 10% of world wide mod chip production only about 2% of the DS market. What this does is stop the expansion of modchips into the mainstream - where the real money is at risk.

People will still by DS's - because they want the games. they don't really care if they can or cannot get a modchip.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[DrEldarion]

the majority of mod users are breaking the law so they don't have to pay. The majority of P2P users are breaking the law, too. Should we shut down that?

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[BeerCur]

Modded insightful? I thought he was making a joke.

If he wants to take a sledgehammer to his WII than I'm sure he's allowed. However breaking into the OS and cracking software with, lets be honest, the general purpose of playing commercial games for free, then I believe Nintendo has the right to try to stop that activity. Believe it or not, that's hard thing for me to say. I like the ability to tinker and play around with stuff and I hate the general idea of not being allowed to do with paid content as I see fit. The truth is though, if "pirating" was easier to do, with no repercussion, then more people would do it. There is a ton of stuff out there that's free use, but people seem only want to consume the commercial / advertised crap, I included.

I guess it comes down to, what else can a manufacture, software maker, record company, or movie producer do to make money from copyrighted work, while satisfying "I want use as I please" crowd? Is it possible? Probably not...

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[SetupWeasel]

Do you have a Wii? Have you updated it?

Nintendo has you click through a warning that tells you that the update may disable a modded Wii, and it also informs you that you can turn off the machine now to avoid the update.

You tell me what other hardware maker will do that for its customers.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[PolarBearFire]

Odds are pretty good that my success rate of eating cake at any given day will fall somewhere between 0% and 100%

Actually although most of us find these things cool and want them around regardless of legality, the vast majority of users couldn't care less. That's how companies make billions.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[shutdown -p now]

However breaking into the OS and cracking software with, lets be honest, the general purpose of playing commercial games for free, then I believe Nintendo has the right to try to stop that activity.

Don't "believe". Check the local law. If you are in the US, chances are that you are indeed screwed that way (thanks do DMCA). But in many other places of the world, it is expressedly legal to modify the software and hardware you own.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[DeeDob]

Unless your software is a license. In which case what you purchased is a right to use something, not actually modify it.

Almost all software is licensed nowadays because of it.

Modding a console is not illegal in most countries because of the hardware change. It is because it affects the software in the console.

However you want to cut-it, modding a console for making backups is a very poor defense. People mod their console to play pirated and illegal games. Period.

Point in fact, most companies allow you to order a "replacement" disc for the cost of shipping + minor fee for the disc itself, if your copy is damaged.

These "rights to copy" software go back to a time where you actually bought the software for your own use and where the physical magnetic disc would degrade pretty quickly in a few years. This is not the case anymore. Most old CDs from 1995 still work today.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[shutdown -p now]

Unless your software is a license. In which case what you purchased is a right to use something, not actually modify it.

This is not correct. You still purchase the physical media. If it contains some software, there's no law - not copyright law, certainly - that precludes you from running it the way you want.

Now, there's this nasty thing called the EULA. It is claimed that, by forcing you to read it and click "Accept", you enter a contract which imposes further obligations on you above those of the copyright law. However, EULAs are not considered valid in many countries. In the US, IIRC, they are valid. But in no country an EULA can override certain rights that you have as a customer. If that includes a right to modify your software for your needs, then no EULA can restrict you from doing so. For example, in my country, Russia, this is explicitly so under our copyright law: I am legally allowed to reverse engineer, disassemble, and modify any software for the purposes of interoperability or "making it suitable for my needs".

People mod their console to play pirated and illegal games. Period.

People mod the console to install Linux for the fun of it, too, or to write their own games. There is no reason to allow the companies to restrict them from doing those, undoubtfully perfectly legal, activities. No period there, sorry.

Re:It's a lose-lose.

[DeeDob]

People mod the console to install Linux for the fun of it, too, or to write their own games. There is no reason to allow the companies to restrict them from doing those, undoubtfully perfectly legal, activities. No period there, sorry.

Yeah, but WHO actually mod their consoles for that specific purpose? About what, 0.5% of the people who actually uses mod chips?

On some consoles anyway, like the PS3 where Linux comes out-of-the-box and on the Xbox 360, where anyone can develop games under the XNA, the concept of modding the console to allow what you have described becomes simply invalid. On those consoles, people mod their consoles strictly for playing pirated games.

Misread that..

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Heh. I misread the first sentence as:

Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Donkey Kong government. Need more coffee.

Re:Misread that..

[rohan.p]

don't worry i saw the same and im not sleep deprived, its Nintendo hitting propaganda into our heads I LOVE NINTENDO.. oops

Re:Misread that..

[LordVader717]

Good thing this plant wasn't in some banana republic.

You can't do anything but admire...

[toQDuj]

...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.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[CGDR2]

Yeah, but how many more people use it for illegal purposes than legal purposes? Being absolutely, 100% honest, it's not fair to expect Nintendo, or any other company to simply do nothing because a few people genuinely want to back up their games.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[toQDuj]

This whole zoning system is fucked up anyway. Wasn't it Sony that abandoned the zoning for the PS3? As for your case, it sounds like they want you to buy a US Wii besides your Japanese Wii, for playing US games. Hell, I think you're lucky that the TV signals are even compatible, otherwise you had to buy a Japanese TV for the Japanese Wii and a US Wii for your US TV :).

B.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[beatmania]

Well, being absolutely, 100% honest, it's also not fair to expect ME, as the CUSTOMER to simply do nothing (or buy another Wii here in the USA) because Nintendo made a poor marketing decision when they decided to region lock their console.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[toQDuj]

I don't know where you got the flamebait tag from, I think it's undeserved.

Yes, Nintendo should pursue their rights. But they should not quash the rights of the owner in doing so. I think if they had a "backup" option, or a method of putting their games on harddisk and plying it from the harddisk, that the back-up rights would be preserved. Doing away with this zoning system also gives the owner one less reason to meddle with the innards.

You might fear people copying their friend's disk onto harddisk, and sure, that will happen. But the damage incurred from copying a friend's game is negligible compared to the damage of a person playing a game downloaded from the internet. So the back-up option would be the lesser "evil", required to maintain the rights of the owner.

All in all, if the manufacturer maintains the rights of the people, then I think it's free to take whatever steps against illegal activity that it can.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[dattaway]

I used a mod chip to flash DSLinux on my Nintendo DS. I just wanted a small computer that I can play with, not to play commercial games. If Nintendo cracks down too much, the community is going to be a much stronger.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I was about to buy a mod chip for my Wii precisely so that I can play Densha-de Go which only works on Japanese consoles. Note it only works on Japanese consoles not because of some technical limitation or shortcoming of non-Japanese Wii's, but entirely because of a pointless software lock.

Rich.

Re:You can't do anything but admire...

[10101001 10101001]

With a tone like this, you'd wonder how tape recorders ever got sold.

That's because they weren't sold; they were pirated.

(Hey, if copyright infringement can be called theft, then legitimate sales can be called piracy (I mean, after all, them selling me that tape recorder and those cassette tapes means lost [potential] sales for all those bands at the clubs.).)

But it's CHINA!

[NealokNYU]

This is China we're talking about. It's not hard to find information about their almost total disacknowledgment of international copyright laws. Let's start with a Google search.

Software piracy is the norm. You can acquire scandalously cheap, perfect-looking copies of everything from Office to Everquest for dirt cheap, i.e. cents, not dollars. The Chinese government has been remarkably slow in taking action to support the authority of nations seeking the enforcement of copyright laws, and while I doubt this action will have any real effect, if it's the sign of a larger commitment to action-- and it well could be, what with China's footprint in the global economy increasing every day-- this could well be a major sign of things to come.

Re:But it's CHINA!

[CastrTroy]

Does anybody else remember the story of somebody (in China I'm pretty sure) selling old Gamecube games in Wii packaging to make them look like new Wii games. That's the extent they go to for this piracy.

Re:But it's CHINA!

[Halcyonandon]

But wait, wasn't Nintendo already doing that themselves?
(That's to say: when flicking your wrist is just emulating a button press, the game was probably not designed for the Wii.)

Chasing users?

[ilovegeorgebush]

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?

Re:Chasing users?

[FlopEJoe]

have means of identifying legitimate/illegitimate users

I'm assuming sarcasm but I've always wondered what is legitimate with the DS. You can use R4 (and others like it) to play movies, read ebooks, listen to music, and play homebrew your DS. That's hours of entertainment without touching an illegal, downloaded ROM or altering your rig in anyway. The R4 isn't like plopping an EPROM in a console or rerouting wires since it doesn't alter anything the DS was sold as... not even the firmware.

Then the step further, you can buy ROMs, dump them and, and put multiple games on your DS. Most would find the convenience in traveling without all the ROMs or the chance that your kid drops it down the air duct shaft. But is that legitimate to Nintendo? Seems the same as ripping my own CDs and putting them on my MP3 player.

Re:Chasing users?

[jamar0303]

How? Once the game is loaded into the card's RAM, for all the DS knows it's just a regular DS game card. There's no other way for those to work (not sure about the ones that used to run from the GBA slot, though, but we're talking about the R4).

Re:Chasing users?

[tepples]

I'm assuming sarcasm but I've always wondered what is legitimate with the DS. I'm guessing that Nintendo's plan is for homebrewers to stop playing with the DS and buy a Windows Mobile device to hack on.

Re:Chasing users?

[Ambvai]

As somebody who owns and thoroughly uses an R4 [in an imported DS too], it's a remarkably handy unit:

DSOrganize essentially turns it into a simplified PDA with notetaking, calendar, address book, calculator, etc. The reading of ebooks and listening of music is also present. For the avid gamers, you can fit a lot more games into the space of a single cartridge.

As for what data leaves the unit- I've compared the data streams from a legit cartridge and an R4 rom and there's nothing that appeared to be identifying about the R4 unit's data. (DSO, on the other hand, keeps a record of what kind of flash cartridge you're using; That's visible on their webpage and also gives an estimate of unit popularity...)

Re:Chasing users?

[i.of.the.storm]

But that's based on the DLDI driver patch if I understand how it works correctly. Commercial ROMs have no way of detecting a homebrew cart, or else we wouldn't have all these hackers on MP:H and stuff.

Well it can be fixed.

[Shivetya]

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?

Re:Well it can be fixed.

[toleraen]

So have the companies include two copies of the game. When the 'original' is inserted, it registers somewhere in the system that the disk was inserted, and indeed is authentic. When you lose/break/scratch the 'original', insert the backup. The system sees it's the backup disk, and verifies that the original was at one time played on the system. There's probably some online component to that verification as well.

But which is cheaper: including a second disk with every unit shipped, or just mailing out replacement disks for people who send in their broken disks? I would guess the latter, and from what I remember reading here some/most companies already do this.

Re:Well it can be fixed.

[KDR_11k]

1. Buy game
2. Insert game into console
3. Make backup
4. Sell game
5. Keep playing backup
6. ???
7. PROFIT!

Re:Well it can be fixed.

[toleraen]

I finally know what the ???s are!

6. When the aforementioned online activation sees that the original copy is now used in some other system, access to the the backup is revoked.

Brilliant!

Re:How do they want to crack down on this?

[chr.vinter]

You don't need any mods at all. Just copy. I will admit it is not extremely clear on the issue, but if I can read, the WiiKey mentioned several times in that article is necessary and it definitely is a modchip.

"Blatant Stealing."

[Aladrin]

"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.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Technician]

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.

Incorrect assumption on those with a full-time job. Many with full time jobs are the working poor. Their disposable income was spent years ago while they lived in their parrents basement. Now they have full time mortguages, phone bills, credit card bills, tuition loans... Those with a debt load of $50,000 or more shouldn't be buying $50 videogames. I don't have any console games. My kid bought a playstation.. Used for $19.95. Guess how many brand new retail games we buy for it? I may have sold a bunch of stock lately, but that just rolled over into getting out of an ARM at over 8%. Investments are not disposable income. They have a purpose. Debt is just that, debt. Now that my car is paid for, doesn't mean I now have disposable income. It simply means I can now attack debt at a faster rate. $50 videogames are still not in the budget.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Aladrin]

What assumption? Read it again. I said 'people with full-time jobs and disposable income.' I didn't say people that have full-time jobs HAVE disposable income, I said those with both.

It should come of no surprise to anyone that people with no disposable income don't buy luxury items. It's pretty obvious.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Technician]

Sounds like you need a better job, or you need to budget a little bit better.

The job is fine. My wife is working on her Masters. The budget was fine until we adopted kids with problems. 1 year later at boarding school for emotionaly challanged kids with eating disorders, we now have the $65,000 bill. Life does have expensive options. The kid is doing fine now.

The options were;
1 was to wait for domestic violence to burn down the house.
2 was get into a program to fix the problem.
3 kill the kid and let the state take care of my retirement in prison.

We opted for number 2 and are now part of the working poor selling investments early and throwing it at debt. College savings have been diverted.

Never adopt kids with emotional problems unless you have a big budget and bigger heart. They will abuse you. Get used to it.

Health care and state medical coupon do not cover that one. Needless to say the college money is mostly gone. The kids will need to do student loans like most everyone else.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[CastrTroy]

Actually, I see lots of people with no disposable income buy lots of luxury items. That's what credit cards are for. It seems to me that the less money a person has, the more percentage of their money they spend on luxury items. I know people who can barely put food on the table, but they insist on shopping at expensive clothing stores, getting cable TV, highspeed internet, having a cell phone, and lots of other luxury items.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Deliveranc3]

Agreed, the biggest people hurt are the ones with games that most people just wouldn't buy.

Katamari Damancy is an excellent game... I love showing it to non-gamers and getting them excited about gaming through it... but no one I know who owns a ps2 owns the game, it's just too short!

Enter mod-chips where you can access games like Katamari or Dragon Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (a glorified Bejewelled clone) that there is NO WAY you'd buy.

I bought my DS some accessories and 6 games before I bought my mod chip (and, as someone mentioned earlier, I mostly got it so I could play my games without lugging a lot of tiny expensive carts everywhere).

I'm bought more games than 90% of DS owners and more than paid for continued development on the DS

I think what so many people are complaining about is that they know that mod chip owners will be able to play the games in 15-30 years... my mod chip will still be around and I can find all the old games. If I had to keep the carts they'd be lost, broken, or sold by the time I wanted to show them to my kids (gone the way of my GB and games, Sega Genesis, Old PC library)... I don't want to lug around a media library in a bunch of diffrent formats forever.

I COULD have bought a 360 and modded it with the money I spent on DS games but I think you need to support the developers and I don't feel the right to every single game just because I can... on the other hand the homebrew community shows we don't REALLY need the big name developers and publishers. Games will get made on donations and be really good! Don't sell your console at a loss and you won't need to fear the modders.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[brkello]

Wow...what a rosy little world you live in. Pirating games means that everyone is going to make great profit! Pirates are such nice people that when they don't pay for a game and like it they become an advertising agency that just pours money in to the company. It also keeps these pirates off the streets where they would be causing trouble. I never knew how fantastic pirating could be!

Fact of the matter is...if companies don't at least make some attempt to make it difficult to pirate something, then everyone would do that instead of paying for it. Then games just would not be made.

If you are too poor to buy games, then you really should be doing something about that rather than sitting around playing video games. You even give a good alternative (GameFly) to pirating.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Aladrin]

While I don't own Katamari Damacy, I -did- try to buy it used the other day.

On the other hand, I bought Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords for the PSP when it came out, and for XBLA the other day as well. (I forgive you for getting the name wrong.) I will admit that most would not find enough entertainment in them to buy even 1 copy, but I found it to be a really great game.

I absolutely disagree with the homebrew statement, though. There's never going to be a homebrew game that competes with the heavy hitters: Oblivion, GTA, Halo, etc. There may be a few people who think there are better homebrew games, but the overwhelming majority don't think so.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[RyoShin]

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.

So, if I can't afford a Ferrari, I should be able to have one, anyway? Sweet, I'm going to go find and take the first Ferrari I see, because even though I'm penniless, I should be able to have it, anyway. And the Ferrari will give me my kicks, so it helps my "addiction", which would probably make me more likely to go out and steal another Ferrari rather than save up to buy one.

Yes, I know that depriving someone else of their property is not quite the same as downloading a digital copy, but that's the point you're making- if you can't afford it, you should have it anyway. This is just bullshit sense-of-entitlement excuses, no better than Nintendo's own quips (Second-hand games are illegal!). Furthermore, if you can't afford the games (even the cheap-ass $20 older ones) then how the hell can you afford a console? It's like buying a nice 40" TV then saying you can't afford cable (at least with a TV you have over-the-air programming, though).

Do people use these things to make legal backups? Sure. Do the majority of people with these use it for such? Doubtful. Games really aren't that expensive. Okay, you want Gears of War? Save $5/month for a year. If you can afford the 360, you can probably afford to stuff $5 in a cookie jar. Maybe you'll have to rent it a bit, or wait, but if you want the game you can do it. And, by the time you have that $60, the price would probably come down a bit. (This isn't even to mention games not yet released, which tend to get hype many months in advance, allowing you to start saving now.)

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Aladrin]

When did I ever say it was moral, ethical, or 'right'? I didn't. I said it benefits Nintendo for it to happen. Save your tirades for someone who thinks it should be legal to steal.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Technician]

My wife was suffering empty nest syndrome. Our kids are grown so we now have grandkids. Denying the wife the kids is something not done.

You wouldn't buy a dog with rabies, would you?

Let me guess, you never bought anything based on the test drive or demo and then felt let down? We had the kids as foster kids for a while. As they reached adolescence and the honeymoon was over, the difficulties started. Kind of like one of my hard drives after the warranty expires.

Having or adopting kids is a bad budgeting move in any case, adopting damaged goods is an obvious and avoidable disaster.

Good kids are worth having. Money can't buy everything and a kids true love can't be bought. Like buying many products, the hidden damage is larger than it first appears. Windows 98SE was the OS to end all. Everything past it has been new improved, expanded, better, etc.. Seen the latest on the VIsta WGA activation issues? XP is the largest botnet in existence. The problems showed up later. 20/20 hindsight is a well DUH event. The foresight is a little murky. To protect the children's privacy, the state doesn't always bother to share all the history of abuse, violence, drug use, etc with prospective parents. After the adoption we got the records, almost a full filing cabinet drawer full. They had a rough life. We took them out of the ghetto quite literally, but we haven't gotten the ghetto mentality of verbal abuse, anger outbursts, authority defiance, and filthy language out of them yet. Things can and do quickly escalate out of control unlike our other kids.

The daughter is doing much better after the boarding school and will likely go on to have a reasonably normal adult life. The son on the other hand is probably headed into regular law enforcement encounters. Unless he changes soon, his prospects don't look too good. We get almost weekly calls from the school regarding behavior problems and have to make adjustments for supervision when he is suspended. I wish these kids came with a money back guarantee, but they don't.

Some kids stay out of trouble. Other kids can't stay out of trouble.
RIAA lawsuits and my kids direct violations of internet use is why they are filtered and heavily monitored. The CD drive is not a writer. All their MP3 trading is done behind my back using the tradional sneaker net with burned CD's and USB drives. I know it happens. They buy few CD's but manage to fill up a Zen and and iPod. Much of the music is stuff I don't permit but catch them with all the time. It's gotten to the point they don't even try to hide it anymore openly asking friends to rip stuff for them. They know it's illegal, but they don't care.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[RyoShin]

The portion of your post that I quoted basically, at least to me, tries to rationalize the ability to mod consoles so as to steal games, in essence claiming it's okay to do that.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, get over it, I pirate Wii games cause I can and it's free. I'm a bastard, and so are most other people.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Scudsucker]

So, if I can't afford a Ferrari, I should be able to have one, anyway? Sweet, I'm going to go find and take the first Ferrari I see, because even though I'm penniless, I should be able to have it, anyway.

If you made an exact copy of a Ferrari with your own parts, no that would not be a problem, and would have zero impact on the company since you wouldn't buy one anyway.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Scudsucker]

There is zero functional difference between someone who will not buy something and someone who will not buy something and download it for "free". Either way the company sees no money. Piracy hasn't prevented PC games from making tons of cash, despite the fact that their DRM is far more easily bypassed.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[RyoShin]

You can argue that those who steal games wouldn't buy them in the first place, but then why steal them? Why get something that doesn't have value? Okay, you can extend that to say this is true for those below the poverty line, and I'd agree, but we both know that is not only poor people that pirate. I'd think that some (more than a tiny fraction) of those who pirate can afford (or at least save without much effort) and would buy the game if it was the only way, but would rather be cheap/fight "the man" and pirate it instead.

For shits and giggles, let's run with your idea of a copying device. If everyone could easily make their own duplicate Ferrari*, then very few people would pay. Why therefore, would Ferrari want to continue making cars? Some argue that is their problem, not yours. Alright, so now you have your own Ferrari, sweet. And every day your drive your Ferrari. And now it's getting kind of dull, even when you invite friends over to ride your Ferrari... (remember, this is about entertainment, so practical uses are irrelevant for the analogy).

So now what? You keep using the same Ferrari, over and over? I sure bet you'd like a new Ferrari to copy and use. Maybe something with a new built-in holographic projector and hooker bot (this is the future, after all). But, because no one was buying their cars, Ferrari had no interest in creating new cars with more auto advancements and interesting/innovative features. If they still exist at this point, they're probably surviving on a service model. Upgrade? What upgrade? Aside from fixing some mechanical issues in the car, giving extra features in upgrade packs usually get copied as well, so why bother.

But you have your Ferrari. Too bad no one cares, because now everyone else does too.

You see, it's not just economics and legality that are at issue here, it's innovation and incentive for those who produce these things. It's why we have things like Madden '08 and Tony Hawk Ultra Super Neat Skater 7, but no Skies of Arcadia 2 (or any number of original properties that never saw the light of day). Companies are banking more on established games that will reach the masses rather than new material or indie stuff, because apparently a lot of people who would actually be interested in newer stuff are the same kinds who have the ability and desire to download instead of pay for them.

So before you pirate, think of the Ferraris.

* I've ignored a whole other part of the requisite auto analogy that would cause it to break down, such as other immaterial things that can't be copied like insurance, registration, etc.

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Scudsucker]

but then why steal them?

Do you have a hard time telling the difference between arson and cannibalism? No? Then why do you have a hard time telling the difference between copyright infringement and theft?

but we both know that is not only poor people that pirate.

Pirating isn't about getting stuff for "free", it's about convenience. If you make decent money and don't have a lot of debt, it is more convenient to buy than to deal with the hassle of searching for the file you want, cracks, dealing with slow seeders, people who disconnect on you, incomplete files, incorrect files, badly encoded files, or fake ones. If you don't make decent money or do have a lot of debt (in which case you are a good little consumer anyway), you aren't going to be buying the stuff anyway so their is zero difference to the content creator.

You see, it's not just economics and legality that are at issue here, it's innovation and incentive for those who produce these things.

1) I find it funny that you mention innovation and Madden in the same breath.
2) Ever bought anything used, Ryo?

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[RyoShin]

Do you have a hard time telling the difference between arson and cannibalism? No? Then why do you have a hard time telling the difference between copyright infringement and theft?

I do admit that I often revert to using the "scare tactic" word to refer to things like illegal file sharing and copyright infringement. Calling it "theft" is the wrong title, but it's become so entrenched in the media that I have a hard time not using it for the wider recognition it has. While I will try not to, I likely will again, but I do know the difference.

If you make decent money and don't have a lot of debt, it is more convenient to buy than to deal with the hassle

This was much more true ten, maybe even five, years ago, when things were majorly underground and finding places to upload/download was much harder. But now, in many cases (especially where things like console modding is concerned), it's incredibly easy to find and download/torrent many games at once. I personally know of many "honest" (as in thieves) sources (not because I partake in that kind of thing but because I frequent sites where others do).

You also seem to be assuming the best in humanity- that those with the ability do. I agree that it is likely less common with the more well-off, but not a rare thing.

1) I find it funny that you mention innovation and Madden in the same breath.

I'm not certain which way you mean that (as in it's funny that I try to equate them, or that I don't see them as the same thing). I don't play Madden, but I do know that they try to add features with every game, but to my knowledge it's mostly been small incremental upgrades since the transition to 3D. The main formula has always stayed the same. To its credit, it seems to do it well, and some people don't get tired of the same recipe, likely why it still sells.

2) Ever bought anything used, Ryo?

Aha!, I see your trap. I have, and think you want to respond with something like "Well the game companies don't get money, so it's the same thing as pirating." This used to be something that I thought, as well, but that never sat well with me. I recently realized why, and will try to explain to you how I see the difference between file sharing and the second-hand market. (Please note that the following is all personal conjecture, so feel free to poke holes as you wish so I can firm it up.)

With piracy, a one-to-many model, one person can buy (or even steal!) one copy of one game and upload it. Once this (and whatever cracking) is done, the game is now available for almost unlimited distribution. One $50 payment (assuming they were honest enough to purchase it) can put the game into the hands of potentially millions. (I am unfamiliar with the actual download statistics, but I'm certain they're not that big.) Yes, some of them wouldn't have bought it anyway, but not all.

Let's say that a huge game like Halo 3 makes it to the web and is downloaded by a quarter million people (with over 10 million 360s on the market, I don't think that's an unwarranted number). Let's say that only 10% of those people would have purchased the game otherwise. That's 25,000 people at $50/game, with a gross revenue of $1.25M. That, in my opinion, is not small potatoes.

Now, the second hand market, a one-to-one model, works differently. Let's take the same quarter million people, and now they're all willing to purchase the game, but not all at full price. So we have the same 10% who are willing to buy it at full price, and through various channels the games they buy eventually work their way to the other 90% of the people. You only ever have one game for each purchase on the market (one-to-one).

Do you see the difference? In the piracy scenario of our sample, the game grossed $50 (if that). In the secondary market, the game grossed $1.25M. (I assume that the numbers outside of the sample would be the same in both cases.) So secondary sales,

Re:"Blatant Stealing."

[Deliveranc3]

"AAA homebrew"...

I wonder if CS can claim to be that triple A homebrew? They are using another dev's engine but it's also a total conversion?

Re:How do they want to crack down on this?

[Spookticus]

heh....its works very wiil....and the "cons: cons belong in prison" reviews people left on newegg

Speaking of scrathed disks

[wannabegeek2]

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? :-)

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[FlopEJoe]

For the adult stuff my wife and I

Your lucky... I wish my GF liked pr0n :(

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[xtracto]

Your lucky... I wish my GF liked pr0n :(

I'll give you a tip, it depends on what kind of porn. I know that in stores like Ann Summers they sell "adult movies" which are "suitable" for girls, or at least, they like them. You could always also start with "Pirates" which has a pretty funny story.

Btw, the first porn movie I saw with my girlfriend (we had a really good time as the movie is hilarious these days) was Deep Throat (the original). My GF got interested after the documentary was released, so I got it and we watched it...

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[Alaria Phrozen]

I thought they give instructions on how to receive a replacement disc for like the cost of shipping and maybe $5? It's in the back of the manual of every game you buy. I've done this with multiple computer games, even 5+ year old titles like Descent 3.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[muffen]

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.

Had this happen to a few discs, and just so you know you probably dont have to buy a new disc.
Those machines they sometimes have in gameshops / CD stores, where they charge you like $5 to replace the plastic on CDs / DVDs work great for this type of damage. So far I've had this happen to four discs, each one has been fixed by that CD fixing machine (no idea whats its called) for a total cost of $20.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[GreenEnvy22]

Wow, another Descent 3 player. I didn't think I'd ever come across one outside of the DescentBB or in game. I wish D3 had done better so we'd get a Descent4. Oh the countless LAN parties of Descent 1/2/3 over the years, Califest, the $50,000K tourney (I won a sound card, a shirt, and a sidewinder force feedback)

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[Kiuas]

Your lucky... I wish my GF liked pr0n :( Your lucky, this is Slashdot after all... Most of us just wish we had a girlfriend :(

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[toleraen]

Wine + Cinemax on-demand. You might want to watch a few episodes of MST3K as a precursor, it helps with the riffing.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[nb caffeine]

my local video rental place will run their disk doctor (or whatever it is they have) on games/cds/dvds for $1.99. I got the scratches on my copy of Forza2 (without moving my 360). I've been meaning to take it down there and see if they can take that out.

Otherwise, furniture polish had worked for me in the past

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[stmfreak]

anyone have any favorite, tried and true, game disk restoration tips?

• $40 grinder from your favorite home-store.
  
• Buffing wheel attachments ~$20
  
• plastic rouge/polish (near the grinders) ~$5
  
• PATIENCE
  

If you go too fast, too hard or work the disc too long, it can overheat and tear the polycarbonate. But if you are slow and develop your technique, you can restore most discs quite readily. Always buff from the center toward the edge (radially) and focus on the circular scratches.

I restored 30 fubared XBOX CDROMs over a couple weekends last year. DVD2XBOX was really helpful since it would copy what it could and report the nubmer of bad files. I would go polish for a few minutes and try again, the file count would go down. If I didn't interrupt the XBOX, it would just try to copy those bad files, speeding things up considerably. Eventually, I'd get the whole game, retire the disc and start on another dead game.

This worked WAY better than toothpaste or those stupid disc doctor things they sell OTC. It was fast, and could fix deep scratches too!

There were some discs that the kids had ruined beyond repair, but as long as they weren't cracked or scratched on the label side, I could generally repair them with time. YMMV.

Yea, I know, they claim they will replace broken discs for $5. But that's only if you can figure out which company to call and spend the appropriate amount of time on the phone finding out where to send them and if they have replacement copies. I can fix a disc in that amount of time, and I don't have to wait 4-6 weeks for processing! More importantly, now that I have a copy I'll never have this problem again.

If PC and OS vendors provided us with a product that was impossible to backup, there would be a riot. The game industry gets away with it because loss and replacement IS THEIR BUSINESS MODEL! They want you to buy the games again and again.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[turtledawn]

Oh, by the way, anyone have any favorite, tried and true, game disk restoration tips? :-)

Teaching your kids not to be asses with their property? Really, all you have to do is teach them to put the discs back in the case and voila, no more scratched discs. Refuse to replace or repair the damaged ones and they'll get the idea. It also makes it easier to find the one you're looking for if it's in the right case on the right shelf, not sliding around in a drawer or getting stepped on in front of the TV.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[MadUndergrad]

Hmm, I think I smell an Ask Slashdot:

Dear Slashdot,

I have a girlfriend (no, really!) The thing is, being a good slashdotter I like porn, but it doesn't really do anything for her. How can I get my girlfriend to enjoy watching it with me?

PS: In Soviet Russia Natalie Portman imagines a beowulf cluster (does it run linux?) 2. ????? 3.profit you!

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[Mista2]

I use my chipped xbox as a DVD player quite often. The Drive in that puppy sems to handle scratched a fuzzy DVD's much better then either of my high end sony players. I have ripped a couple of movies with DVD:RIP as the paranoia system sems to make a good copy off the disk even if my other players cant read it or end up skipping.

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[UnbelieverOz]

Your lucky... I wish my GF liked pr0n :( Your lucky, this is Slashdot after all... Most of us just wish we had a girlfriend :( I see YOUR problem. YOU'RE unaware that girls only go for Slashdotters that can spell. :^) Although looking at the previous posters' reply .....

Re:Speaking of scrathed disks

[moloko_synthemesc]

I bought a Data Dr. from Fry's several years ago for around $30. It's a disc resurfacer of the manual (hand-cranked) sort that removes a very thin layer of plastic. For deeper scratches you have to crank more. So far it's more than paid for itself in my experience.

These were also packaged as "DVD Dr.", "Game Dr.", etc., depending on what area of the store you were in. They're all the exact same unit. They also made motorized versions. I don't know if they still make or sell these economical resurfacers, but it's worth looking into.

Typical lies

[foreverdisillusioned]

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.

Re:Typical lies

[CGDR2]

All of you MAFIAA shills can whine "oh but that's not what you guys are REALLY using them for!" all you want...
Why, yes, thank you; I shall. Discs really aren't that fragile - trust me, I've always treated my CDs / DVDs like shit, and I've had very few breaks. Besides, why are these people letting small children play videogames by themselves? I'd be more worried about the parenting failure than $40 on a Wii game.

Re:Typical lies

[Doctor_Jest]

Nintendo's "bait and switch" region-coding scheme should be enough to piss off even the staunchest nintendo supporter...

"We're going region-free!" (and the crowd rejoiced)

"Wait, scratch that... we're not..." (and the crowd missed the announcement)

I'd have felt better if they'd have kept it to themselves... but it was most likely just an "also-ran" press release to keep in the news... (all too quickly retracted.)

Meh... that really annoys me to no end.. Their motive? Regional pricing is all I can think of. I mean, the Wii doesn't play movies... so it's not at the behest of the MPAA... It's solely so the big "N" can force price A for Japan (and game library)... and price B for NA... and so forth. Even the PS3 is region-free for games (but blu-ray's not.. I suspect that's part of Sony picture's interest in the thing...)

Let's not give the customer choice even though the little bastards in the clown car "would like to play". Just don't do it outside your region, or they'll thump you with a wiimote. (Yes yes.. I know most people who are the Wii's target market are not interested in playing Japanese games... but the principle still stands...)

Re:Typical lies

[jamar0303]

I don't think you adressed the issue he was talking about, though. Doesn't matter how sturdy the disc is if it's region-locked to Japan and he wants to play on an American Wii. And no, buying another Wii is not an acceptable solution.

Re:Typical lies

[bentcd]

-1: Argument by anecdote -1: Modding by proxy

Re:Typical lies

[Abcd1234]

Besides, why are these people letting small children play videogames by themselves?

Obviously you don't have children. What makes you think they're playing the games? Hmm... bright shiny disc, fun for throwing... I can't imagine how or why a child might end up damaging something like that.

Re:Typical lies

[p0tat03]

Yes, because your anecdotal (and apparently minority) evidence proves that Nintendo is talking out of their ass, and that the vast majority of the world is just like you and don't use their mod chips for piracy. Yeeeeeeeees.

Re:Typical lies

[foreverdisillusioned]

Ok, so why don't you give me non-anecdotal evidence showing that non-illegal use of modchips is so rare as to be insignificant?

Re:Typical lies

[foreverdisillusioned]

Ok, so why don't you guys give me non-anecdotal evidence showing that non-illegal use of modchips is so rare as to be insignificant? You can't denounce my use of anecdotal evidence if you have nothing better to show.

Re:Typical lies

[rabiddeity]

I'll back you up, except that I go the other way. I have a Japanese Wii that I've bought here in Japan. Sometimes I want to play a game that I see on the shelf at the local stores. But sometimes I just want to sit down and play a game in English. Unfortunately, since Nintendo released their system region locked, a mod chip is the only way I can reasonably do that. If the MAFIAA broke down my door today, they'd find a chipped Wii and a bunch of legally purchased Japanese and US games, and no "backups". Yeah, I actually do buy my games. But what, does Nintendo want me to buy two systems which are identical except for the region lock? Sorry, no quack. I want to play games ON the system, not play games WITH the system.

The DS raids I can kinda understand their reasoning. DS is already region free, and there are no discs to scratch, so that nixes the two main legitimate reasons to install a modchip. But that doesn't mean it should be illegal to mod a system you've purchased. I would hope if they continue to attack the modchip makers instead of the illegal software distributors the doctrine of first sale is going to eventually come around and bite them in the ass.

The way this article really reads

[SmallFurryCreature]

He, I can mod my Wii? Never knew that, thanks.

You would be suprised how many people learn about filesharing from the medias attack on it.

What kind of excuse is this?

[SailorSpork]

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.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[dbIII]

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?

DS Linux, DSorganise and other assorted homebrew makes the perfectly legit Mario Kart machine just a little bit more useful for one example.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

... we even replaced the one with a bullet hole in it.
Thanks. I've always been wondering how those holes in my CD's got there.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm.... in case you didn't know, making a backup copy is also a legal solution.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I own the fucking hardware. I put a modchip on it if I fucking want, fer crying outloud.
Nintendo[or]Sony[or]Microsoft sold the console to you. The hardware, after the sale, is not theirs, it's yours to do whatever the fuck you want to.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Mushdot]

Not only was your post hilarious, it hits the nail on the head perfectly when it comes to people using modchips for legitimate reasons. I call +5 Insightfunny.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Foxxxy]

Not trying to kid anyone. Why would I pay $50 for a game and $3 for insurance when I can pay $0.25 for a DVD to back it up myself. Then I don't need the hassle of driving to the store and fighting with someone that it actually doesn't work and I did buy it at that store.

Perfect example, back before I got smart about OS choices, I BOUGHT a copy of Windows 95 on floppy. After initial install, I messed up some things, went to re-isntall and disk 13 (strange but true) didn't read. I contacted the store I bought it at, they said go to M$, I went to M$ and they said buy another copy.

Ever since then, I have backed up every legit disc I have ever paid $0.01 for. So when I bought my first CD Burner and was called an evil pirate, I just laughed it off.

I will continue to back up every bit of data I ever see. I do not currently have a mod chip in my Wii but as soon as one of my legit game discs gets damaged, I will have one installed, and not feel the slightest bit guilty for doing so.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[jamar0303]

I don't really care so much about discs breaking, I care about perfectly good games not working simply because of an arbitrary decision not to allow games bought in Japan to play in consoles from the US (Wii). So far, none of the anti-modchip people have adressed that.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I don't really care what people use them for. Nintendo simply should not have the right to stop people from producing their own hardware.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Mike89]

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

It's obvious you don't have kids, from your post. Living in a family with 3 younger siblings, I know things happen 'by accident' and no matter what you do, something will inevitably stop working. Originally, my nine year old brother wasn't allowed to load Wii discs, but now he is. Eventually that will go wrong, but there isn't always someone there to help him and he needs to learn how to do it and be careful eventually. If I wasn't so protective, they'd be careless with the discs eventually and they'd stop working. What do you suggest I do, buy a new Wii sports disc? (And how do I get cover on that, it comes with the Wii..) I'm not sure if that's even possible, but it's certainly not something I'd be pleased to do.

Alternately, if there was some sort of service where I could send back scratched up discs and get a new one for $5 or something. Then, I'd understand them cracking down, but for now, backups is a perfectly legitimate 'excuse'.
(Note: my Wii isn't chipped, but it will be as soon as any of my discs stop working)

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[jgoemat]

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.

Which does little good for the saved games it's taken you hundreds of hours to create. With the R4 and M3 DS Simply, you can backup all your games and saved game files by dragging them to your hard drive. You also can play any of your games and not have to carry around and swap out all of your cartridges. The R4 also has a built-in cheat system to allow you to play the games by your own rules. I buy games if I like them. I have a legal right to make backup copies of software I own.

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.

That is sad, but the answer is not to destroy a product that has many legitimate uses and fills a need that Nintendo was unwilling to fulfill itself. The movie industry tried to kill the VCR when it came out because of fears of copyright monopoly violation. Later they started making more money from movie rentals and sales than they did from theatrical runs, due to a technology they tried to have axed, but that's not the point. You can't only think what's good for copyright holders, the important thing is the public good. The public good is the whole reason for copyright's existence, we shouldn't let this limited government-granted (non-natural) right trample on our natural rights.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[argmanah]

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....

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.... How did this get modded up? -1 Troll. First, it's unrealistic to ask people to treat everything that they own with the same care that they treat a firearm. If you did everything in your house would be locked up in a safe. The analogy is asinine.

And, as many people have pointed out, yes, poor college/high school students tend to pirate games. Your "college dorm room" example may be true, but it also represents a portion of the population that wouldn't have bought the game anyways. People with real jobs and disposable incomes generally buy games because they are willing to support the software company and because it's simply a more efficient use of their time to purchase the game than it is to download, find crack, play with DVD/CD imaging tool, etc.

In any case, the world doesn't begin and end in the college dorm room. Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but those of us with real jobs like to be able to back up the games that we buy.

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[catprog]

So what happens if you don't break the encyryption when you copy the disk. Example 101010101010 is the code 010101010101 is what is on the disk 010101010101 is what I copy 101010101010 is what the authorised device sees. copy made wihtout breaking encryption

Re:What kind of excuse is this?

[Badaro]

I have a modded PS2, and not a single pirated game in sight. Reason? Japanese-only games. I'm a hug fan of the Super Robot Wars series, and 95% of the games in that series were never released stateside.

But I agree with you that this is a very rare case, and it's hard to defend modchips when only a tiny portion of the users are using they for "proper" reasons.

Likewise

[Nursie]

I have a "hacked" ps2 (softmod, not hardmod, using HD Advance) and use it to store games on the HD. The advantage? No more scratches and wrecked disks, no more worn out lasers and much faster loading times (in game it makes a huge difference). It also allows me to play out of region games.

I'm not a pirate, so leave me the hell alone.

GBA Flash2Advance / eBay / ESA Tale Of Woe

[pandrijeczko]

I recently sold my Gameboy Advance & two Flash2Advance backup cartridges on eBay (all of them separately). Along with the F2A cartridges, I threw in with each a DVD full of **ONLY** GBA PD ROMs.

Fortunately, the auctions ended & the buyers had paid me before eBay informed me that they were taking the F2A listings down due to software piracy. When I questioned eBay as to why this had been done when I was not advertising any commercially copied software with the cartridges, they told me to get in touch with the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) who had asked for the listings to be removed.

So far, I have emailed the officious tosspots at the ESA four times & demanded an explanation as to why they insisted the F2As be removed when eBay can still advertise writable CDs & DVDs, USB flash keys and DVD writers, all of which can be used for piracy in a similar fashion.

In over 4 weeks now, I have not received one reply from the ESA who, as far as I am concerned, have accused me of being a software pirate & been heavy-handed in their attitude - even though I made it clear to them that the F2A can be a legitimate developer tool for homebrew GBA ROMs.

All these heavy-handed corporations are just assholes!

Re:GBA Flash2Advance / eBay / ESA Tale Of Woe

[jamar0303]

BTW- I think PD stands for Public Domain, correct?

Re:GBA Flash2Advance / eBay / ESA Tale Of Woe

[pandrijeczko]

So what distinguishes these items from a DVD writer or a USB Flash key, both of which are hardware items capable of creating and/or storing pirated media files?

Also, no matter how you argue this, there ***IS*** a legitimate use for a Flash2Advance device for the development of home brew ROMs. Sure, it's quite possible that many people don't use them just for that purpose but supposedly in our advanced society, one is assumed innocent until ***PROVEN*** guilty.

And if the ESA think I am getting on bended knees to them for some kind of appeal, they can forget it! At the end of it all, the F2As were taken down too late to stop the sale going through so I achieved what I set out to do. I was hoping for an apology / explanation from the ESA - but they're obviously just a bunch of bureaucratic mindless tosspots.

Re:GBA Flash2Advance / eBay / ESA Tale Of Woe

[jamar0303]

Fool. Their media player never got sold outside Japan/China.

Re:Microsoft's tactic of winning the masses

[jamar0303]

They haven't done such a thing so far, thank goodness. The latest firmware works fine with modded Wiis.

Re:Soooo much homebrew

[jamar0303]

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.

This is already how most Wii mods work.

[Boinger69]

Wii Mod chips dont crack the encryption, really they dont do much of anything. They wire to the serial programming interface of the drive controller, and tell it to lie to the console about the disc's authenticity. Past that the chip shuts off and any encryption on the disc is being decoded by the console.

HOMEBREW -- lsdj, nanoloop....

[capseed]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the impact on the homebrew scene. I don't really think of backup as neccessary for cartridges, but AFAIK these devices are the only way to make a http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/ or http://www.nanoloop.de/ cartridge. I don't know much about the DS/Wii scene, but I bet they are also targeting stuff that affects thriving GBA and GBC homebrew projects. The problem here seems to be that console makers don't offer any legitimate means for users to create software for their platforms without forking over lots of cash for a developer license (and a machine that runs unsigned code).

Homebrew anymore

[lastskypainter]

Given that nintendo DS is so cheap to develop hombrew apps with a backup devices, I could only be worried about this.

R4

[tepples]

In the case of DS games, that somewhat depends on whether or not these chips are the ones used by homebrewers. Yes, the R4 card that's popular with pirates is the same R4 card that's popular with homebrew users and even developers such as myself. Likewise, on PCs, pirates and legit users use the same DVD burners.

Colors!

[tepples]

I'd bet a lot of money that use of these devices for the purpose of personal backups pales in comparison to their use for playing copied games. Some people on the gbadev.org forums have stated that they bought a DS and a homebrew card just to use Colors!. So I have only one thing to say about your assertion: Citation needed.

Re:Colors!

[Von Helmet]

The entire forum membership at gbadev.org is just over 9000 i.e. less than the number of devices siezed from one factory. Even allowing for the Wii chips included in that figure, I think it's fair to say that "some" of 9000 is markedly less than the number of R4s et al being used for illegal purposes.

That being said, thanks for making me aware of that colors thing. I'll be picking that up if and when I find myself an R4.

Re:Colors!

[Wordsmith]

It doesn't matter that only a few people use the devices for legitimate purposes. What matters is that legitimate purposes exist.

Re:Colors!

[tepples]

The entire forum membership at gbadev.org is just over 9000 For one thing, forum lurkers need not have accounts. For another, forums other than gbadev.org have Colors! discussion on them.

Re:Shooting the messager

[CRCulver]

Socialized medicine would have failed me for my surgery last year. I'll take insurance instead with a reasonable deductable. The care is there if I need it for major care.

In many countries with socialized medicine, the free health care is a basic safety net, but in addition to it one can also purchase private insurance. However, since the private health care industry is competing with the free public system, it must keep costs very low. For example, in Spain, I was paying 200 euro a year for private insurance. Sounds like a win for everyone except those who would let the poor suffer to pad their own wallets.

With insurance, it's scheduled and done. With government health care, getting an appointment is the same as getting an appointment to renew you drivers license because you can't drop-in and spend time in line.

In many countries one gets a card in the mail every few months to alert them to a routine dental appointment.

Have you ever lived in a country with socialized medicine? Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. In the U.S., I could hardly afford decent health care, but in the countries I've lived in since leaving the U.S., health matters are quite comfortable.

Re:Shooting the messager

[CastrTroy]

I live in Canada, and we have socialized healthcare. If I call up my doctor, i can get an appointment within days, or the same day if it's actually something that I really need to have looked at on that day. Scheduled appointments are booked in advance. There's no problem getting one. There's a lot of horror stories that get passed around, like long waiting times, and not being able to find a family doctor. Some are true, some are hyperbole, some are outright false. But none of those are as bad as the ones I hear about the US health system. Where even people who have been paying their insurance, are denied payment, because of some inconsistency in the way they filled out the forms, or because a certain type of treatment isn't covered, or because they didn't get pre-approval (for emergency care no less). I probably sound a lot like a certain Michael Moore movie, but to me, that is what I find to be the worst thing about privatized health care. Even if you are paying, and you have insurance, you may not be covered, and you may still not be able to afford treatment when you get sick.

I have a Cyclo DS Evolution

[Zero_Independent]

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.

Re:I have a Cyclo DS Evolution

[Winckle]

Wait, HOMEBREW WEP CRACKER?

I need to get in on that.

Nothing New

[Anonymous Coward]

Console manufacturers have been eliminating freedom for years. This is why people should be going with a PC with GNU/Linux as an operating system and open-source games. No more lockout and it is totally legal. Pretendo, Sony-Bony, and Microshaft are all in it for the money and are willing to eliminate freedom by cracking down on the mod chips and copying devices to earn that money. The Mod chips give people the freedom to play open-source games on their console, something Microshaft, Sony-Bony, and Pretendo don't want. The copying devices and mod chips allows someone to back up their games, something else the big three don't want so they can milk even more money from their sheep. GNU/Linux has no need for mod chips. A copying device for GNU/Linux is a cd/dvd burner, flash drive, hard drive, solid state drive, etc.

As anyone can see, GNU/Linux and open-source wins hands down when compared to Sony-Bony, Microshaft, and Pretendo.

Re:Nothing New

[Asky314159]

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.

Re:Nothing New

[HappySqurriel]

Congratulations, you have now (officially) made the dumbest comment on Slashdot ...

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are not preventing you from buying a high end gaming rig and playing your open-source PC games on it. What Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are doing is producing low cost, high performance, closed gaming platform with a standard user interface in order to provide a high quality gaming experience.

If we move towards an opensource platform we get the joy of eliminating all hardware inovation because group think will never allow for unconventional ideas to be produced. In other words the Wii or Nintendo DS would never be produced because conventional though would be that everyone wanted a keyboard and mouse, gamepad or conventional handheld to play videogames ...

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[gabrieltss]

My family owns an original Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo64, Nintendo Gamecube, and a Nintendo Gameboy Advanced. We are a Nintendo specific game family. We have purchased litterly hundreds of ORIGINAL cartridges and CD's for these systems that totals up to A LOT of money spent. I was able to get ahold of a Super Wildcard for my super nintendo a few years back and yes I did backup ALL my cartridges for my Super Nintendo and I am glad I did. I now have two that won't work anymore becuase the contacts on the cartridge are so worn. Even cleaning them didn't help. Do you know how HARD it is to find OLD nintendo cartridges to replace them? Even GameStop is slowly phasing out nintendo stuff to put in more XCrock shit! I don't own an XBox, I WON'T own an XBox. I'm starting to think Microsoft bought up GameStop too. At least I can still play my LEGALLY purchased Super Nintendo games on ZNes on the PC in Linux. At this rate I don't know if I will buy a Wii. Anyone know of a legit place that won't rip you off to purchase backup devices for the old nintendo NES, nintendo64's and gamecubes. I have one gamecube Cd that is starting to have problems now too! I want to be able to LEGALLY backup my games damit! Fuck the RIAA, MPAA, Nintedo et al.. If I won't be allowed to backup up my LEGALLY purchased stuff I won't be doing anymore purchasing. It will save me a lot of money at least and less in the pockets of the media outlets that seem to think it is their god given right to get my money!

My thought is that the game console makers should produce their own game backup units that would allow you to legally backup your games. Even if it put like a serial number into the backup of the game so it could be traced back to the original owner if they decided to "pirate" them. This I think would protect BOTH the consumer and the media outlets rights. The consumer could legally backup his legally purchased media and if they gave out a copy to someone else and the meida outlet found a copy floating around they could trace it back to whoomever gave it out and prosecute them. Simple I think.

At least I have my old Amiga 2000 system and all the tons of games I bought for it. Oh that's right I am glad I made backup copies of those too so I could play them on UAE under Linux on my PC, since my Amiga 2000 floppy drive died and try to get a replacement for one of those!

Starting to see the LEGITIMATE need for backup software/devices??????

Real estate cost

[tepples]

I think you should look at your spending and figure out how you got $50k in debt. How much does land cost, let alone a house to put on it?

Re:Microsoft's tactic of winning the masses

[jamar0303]

Oh. Well, I suppose I was talking out my rear then- I only play Japan-region Wii games on my Japanese Wii- the mod is something I use for my American Gamecube games (which work without issues).

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[Shados]

I definately do. For all 4 of you that will use these devices legitimately. The line between something legitimate and something thats not is in how people use it. If the vast majority uses it for something legitimate, then no law will be written against it, and it will stay legitimate. If the vast majority doesn't, well....

Thats why butterknives are mostly legal everywhere. If everyone started to use bufferknives as weapons, actions would be taken against em. Everything's legal (even murder!) until too many people start using it the wrong way.

What rental service though?

[vlad_petric]

I've tried GameFly in the states, and had nothing but trouble with them (somehow quite a few games got lost in mail ... OTOH I had no trouble with a parallel Netflix subscription. WTF?). Almost all mail-driven rental services in the States have really poor ratings and come with similar horror stories.

Re:What rental service though?

[Aladrin]

I've had Gamefly for over a year. There was a period of a couple months where about 1 in 10 games got lost somehow. I had never placed it in a mailbox without a lock, so there was no issue. I don't know what they'd have said if they weren't in locked mailboxes. There was never one that didn't get to me, it was always outgoing ones that got lost.

Outside of that, I've never had any real issues with them, except that they seem to do what Netflix does: If you send them back too quickly, they delay receipt of the game for a bit so they can slow it down. I've got no proof of that, but it only happened when I was sending games back the next day. Games that got sent back a week later arrived days earlier than ones that were sent back the next day.

I've considered Blockbuster's service, but their local terms suck (5 trades per month max, I think it was) and their selection has historically sucked as well. I haven't looked in the last 2 years, though, so that could have changed.

I'm currently on a 2-at-a-time plan because there were so many games that I felt were worth a purchase (I'll learn my lesson 1 day) but I've done the 4-at-a-time plan as well. I may move to 3 soon if decent games with 0-replay keep coming out. (Bioshock, I'm looking at you!) I can always rent them again if they get addons/updates, too.

one word: Evaluation

[mu22le]

I am not a gamer, I can count on one hand the number of games I actually completed. I get easily bored and only keep play if the game is really amazing me.

I actively pirate games and I am looking forward to mod my new wii because there is no way I am going to spend 60 euros for a game I play for 3 times and then forget about. If I really like a game I usually end up buying it sooner or later, even if I pirated it the first time. Most games cost too much and are total crap, if I could not download and try them I wouldn't even have bought my console in the first place.

I hope Nintendo starts giving away demos in their online store just as MS and Sony do (I mean _real_ demos, not stupid trailers like Metroid)., then I would have very little reason to pirate them.

Re:one word: Evaluation

[mu22le]

Buy vs Pirate are not the only options. Ever try a rental store? Used games? No, I never tried a rental store, it's just that it's so much easier get a torrent, go to sleep and find the game ready the next morning, and I don't even have to leave my cosy basement! (I do not leave in a basement... I just wanted to play the stereotype :)

Or are you just making excuses so you feel better about ripping people off? You maybe right :) Maybe I'm just too cheap to actually pay for my games. But to tell you the truth there are very few games I'd be willing to pay their full price to get them. 60 E for Paper Mario? Who's ripping off who?

Homebrew development earned me a career

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Homebrew development earned me a career

[Applekid]

While your story is most inspirational:

. . . but testing on real hardware was an invaluable experience that an emulator cannot replicate. That's only because cycle-accurate emulators are hard. By classic definition, though, an emulator is just like the real thing.

Testing on actual hardware overcomes the limitation of an inaccurate emulator AND has the (probably more important) benefit of being able to show off your work in person and develop pride for it, which helps feed the motivation to continue developing.

Re:Soooo much homebrew including Linux!

[SonnyJimATC]

Don't forget that you need some kind of homebrew device (I refuse to call them 'pirate devices') to run DSLinux. http://www.dslinux.org/

Re:Shooting the messager

[DeepZenPill]

Blaming the private market ignores the other half of the picture. Why is health care in the US so expensive? Malpractice insurance for doctors and hospitals is one oft-referenced factor. Looking solely at the cost of malpractice insurance, however, underestimates the total cost that this screwed up tort system contributes. A very large chunk of administration is dedicated to dealing with the insurance industry, introducing an substantial cost burden above and beyond malpractice insurance costs. This cost is passed on to patients and their insurance, which must then foot the bill for this increased expense which they were the cause of in the first place, further driving up insurance costs.

Clearly there's a problem with this system, but is socialized health care going to do anything other than shift your insurance premium into your taxes? By all means, let's provide the means for healthcare for those who otherwise can't afford it, but involve the private market, and make the market fucking compete. The competition that exists now is a joke, and everyone's paying for it.

Region Codes

[kisrael]

I might be on Nintendo's side for stuff like this if it wasn't for the #$&(U@#$ region lock codes.

Re:Region Codes

[SonnyJimATC]

Most of the time (I believe) the region lock codes exist for the games publishers, not the console manufacturers. Nintendo have to prove to the publishers that they can provide a secure platform for them to develop for. Also there is the issue of copyright. A game published in Japan by a company may only have the rights to use that character/music/theme in that specific region. Nintendo have to offer them a mechanism to make sure that the game publishers can assure the copyright holders that it won't just get exported to another country where they don't have copyright permission. If you think about it, it doesn't do any favours for Nintendo to region lock stuff, it's just to placate the publishers.

Re:Region Codes

[kisrael]

Yeah, but Nintendo does it too.

The current bee in my bonnet is the way they cancelled a US version of Puzzle Collection for GC.
So the only reason I have a Free Loader is to play that damn game.

And I guess I still don't buy it. As long as the publishers don't publish in places where they don't have copyright, do they really care if someone can play the software there? So that means we're at least 3 steps removed from the people who might care.

Re:Shooting the messager

[Blakey Rat]

I think pretty much everyone agrees that the current US system is broken and badly in need of reform. The real issue is whether a socialized system is the best way to do it... it's pretty counter to the American way of thinking, so it's going to really need to prove itself before people can get behind it. And, who knows, there's always the possibility we'll find something better which makes more use of the free market we all love.

Datel GnM is NOT for warez

[SonnyJimATC]

The Datel GnM isn't designed for playing warez. It was actually a semi reasonable attempt at producing a homebrew device for the masses. Yes it can be used for playing backups/copies/whatever you want to call piracy, but compared to other cheaper cards it's compatibilty is poor. I would be over the moon if someone produced a card capable of running homebrew that wouldn't be able to run backups, which I thought the GnM would do. It is very annoying the fact that there is a great DS homebrew scene that gets tainted by the fact that most of the devices used to boot homebrew can also boot warez.

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[SonnyJimATC]

Try to get a Amiga 2000 replacement drive? http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-2000-2MB-RAM-C-Card-Genlock-OCS-Joystick_W0QQitemZ200164535987QQihZ010QQcategoryZ4598QQcmdZViewItem You can buy a whole system including an external drive and genlock for less than $30, so your argument falls flat on it's face.

If you don't provide for backup/homebrew/etc...

[sjonke]

... 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.

Re:If you don't provide for backup/homebrew/etc...

[tepples]

If Nintendo et. al. provided [...] free tools for developing and running homebrew (or for a very nominal fee) As I understand warioworld.com, you're supposed to demonstrate your skill on a platform that's officially open to hobbyist developers before you can apply for a license. This would mean that the intended tool for developing homebrew is a PC, a video card that supports OpenGL and TV output, a USB gamepad, a PC operating system such as GNU/Linux or Windows, and native GCC for that platform.

Re:Shooting the messager

[CastrTroy]

How is it counter to the American way of thinking. Education (through highschool), police, firefighters, highway system, social security (I know this doesn't work well), and many other things are provided to the American people in a socialized fashion. What makes healthcare any different from the services that are already provided?

Re:Shooting the messager

[Rayonic]

In many countries with socialized medicine, the free health care is a basic safety net, but in addition to it one can also purchase private insurance.

Oddly enough, in Canada, private insurance is outlawed. That in itself seems pretty repressive.

Re:Shooting the messager

[dwlovell]

You dont know anything about the American system, you live in Canada. Michael Moore is a blowhard that consistently distorts facts. Google the false claims in pretty much every one of his movies. The Atlanta Children's hospital has a sign in their admissions area that says "We do not refuse service to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay". Pretty much every emergency room will treat anyone that shows up, even if they cant pay. Publix supermarkets are now offering free anti-biotics for common problems like ear-infections and UTI. I haven't heard of anyone having problems getting their insured level of treatment. Sure there are cases of insurances companies trying to screw people out of paying a claim, but its not the norm. Many people come to America to get the best medical treatment possible. The system is by no means perfect, but its at least as good or better than anywhere else. -David

Copyright terms differ throughout the world

[tepples]

Meh... that really annoys me to no end.. Their motive? Regional pricing is all I can think of. If some company were to publish a video game adaptation of one of the Peter Pan stories, it would have to pay royalties to GOSH for each copy sold in Europe, which has a copyright term of 70 years pma. It would not have to pay royalties elsewhere in the world, which uses either a 50 years pma term or moved to 70 years pma after J.M. Barrie's copyrights had already expired.

Re:Copyright terms differ throughout the world

[Doctor_Jest]

That should be prime motivation _not_ to use Peter Pan as a character. :) heh.

But that's just me...

Huh?

[LordVader717]

WTF?

...which "should have been for Pocket PC"

[tepples]

The DS has a thriving homebrew community. I'm working on a home brew game. And I've written at least one program that helped turn my DS into a PDA.

You're not DragonMinded, author of DSOrganize, are you?

But seriously, Nintendo's argument would be "If hobbyists want an open handheld development platform, they should go buy a PDA that runs Windows Mobile." The Windows Mobile homebrew community even has its own wannabe PocketNES.

Re:Shooting the messager

[king-manic]

Clearly there's a problem with this system, but is socialized health care going to do anything other than shift your insurance premium into your taxes? By all means, let's provide the means for healthcare for those who otherwise can't afford it, but involve the private market, and make the market fucking compete. The competition that exists now is a joke, and everyone's paying for it.

A little known fact, Canada's "socialized" health care is a "single payer" partly private industry. The various GP and Labs compete with each other to provide services. Major institutions like hospitals are public but many of the medi-centres are private. It's not open competition as such since demand is far out stripped by supply right now due to demographics, as well as having the price regulated but we do get fairly reasonable care for our dollar while the US spends x2 in total for a worser average, median, and modal performance. The only upside is the US gets better care if your at the top. All other segments would have done better in Canada. The increased cost is mostly due to the "profit" margin on products and your right there isn't that much competition in the US market. When I hear of people pushing for privatized Canadian health care I have to point out all the parties pushing for it can be linked backed to the highly corrupt, inefficient, and inhumanr US health care industry.

Pocket PC

[tepples]

Given that nintendo DS is so cheap to develop hombrew apps with a backup devices, I could only be worried about this. How does homebrew on Nintendo DS, which is officially a platform closed to hobbyists, compare with homebrew on Windows Mobile, which is officially a platform open to hobbyists?

Re:Pocket PC

[lastskypainter]

Well

I used to think the way you do, I never had a Windows Movile though, too expensive for a hobbyist like me. So I will be pleased if you(anyone?) share your experience, here is mine with the DS:

Pros:

• 3D on your device.
• Two screens.
• If it works in your device works in millions of others without modification.
• Two CPUs for only one program(it doesnt hava an OS, this is bad and good).
• Very good support from the GameBoy Advance community.
• Look at this http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/ and the gallery here: http://colors.brombra.net/ please tell me if I can do this with Windows Mobile, I will be delighted.
• Cheap, from mass production and Nintendo losing money with every device (they get money from the games, like printers fron cartridges).
• Cheap programming, the develop enviroment cost 0 EUR

BAD:

• You need a expensive cartridge, total cost are much much less than a Windows movile.
• Platform is closed(difficult to debug).

If I can get this in an open platform, I would be sold, so I'm waiting for OLPC and OpenMoko, Asus eee.

Re:Pocket PC

[tepples]

[DS advantage:] Two screens. DS screen: 256x472 with an 88px gap across the middle, touch-sensitive in only the bottom 192px. Pocket PC screen: up to 320x480, touch-sensitive in the whole screen.

[DS advantage:] Look at this http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/ and the gallery here: http://colors.brombra.net/ please tell me if I can do this with Windows Mobile, I will be delighted. In fact, I have submitted this picture to the Colors! gallery. The only reason that you can't port Colors! to Windows Mobile is that Colors! does not come with source code.

[DS disadvantage:] You need a expensive cartridge, total cost are much much less than a Windows movile. And it will become even more expensive once Nintendo cracks down on R4 and the rest. Nintendo has succeeded once: it was impossible to find new Game Boy Color flash cards during the last year of Game Boy Color's life (which coincided with the first year of Game Boy Advance's life).

Re:Pocket PC

[lastskypainter]

I completely agree with you...

in fact I contacted Jens to open colors so I could do a handwriting notes version.To make a long story short, I created my own notes program, independent from Jens.

DS is not serious for professional third party apps, although it works for testing mobile versions of your programs until something better appears. I'm testing my own voice recognition software on it, you English people(*) don't know how difficult are your pronunciation rules, the homebrew DS has the power(33Mhz!!) but not the tools (debugger).

I repeat, I hadn't used Windows mobile, but I know won't feel good on it, I learned to program with MASM and Visual C/C++, but now I prefer vim, gcc and gdb...

(*)Seems you are from USA, even more difficult.

Re:Pocket PC

[tepples]

I'm testing my own voice recognition software on it, you English people [USA even more difficult] don't know how difficult are your pronunciation rules, the homebrew DS has the power(33Mhz!!) but not the tools (debugger). Isn't American English speech recognition an algorithm that could be prototyped on the PC first? Or are you having trouble capturing the sound in the first place?

Re:Pocket PC

[lastskypainter]

Yes, it is.

Well, not an "algorithm", more like a series of algorithms connected.

If it couldn't be prototyped it will be impossible for me to do on the DS.

The problem is that the sound system is completely different from the PC one. So you have to do some code without debugging(painful and slow).

By the way English pronunciation rules are way way harder than other languages like Spanish or Japanese.

Re:Pocket PC

[tepples]

The problem is that the sound system is completely different from the PC one. How is that a problem? Audio input can be separated from audio pattern-matching. You can debug the audio input separately from the recognition, right?

Re:Pocket PC

[lastskypainter]

In theory there is not problem, in practice there is.

DS programming only support(as far as I know) assembly debugging, so getting the audio input to work perfect is the problem(takes a lot of effort, time...).

Simple errors, like a mistype could (will) generate a chain of errors under certain situations.

It's a pain in the ass to found them, with proper debugging you find them all in 5 minutes,not hours or days.

"Nintendo Representatives"

[Anonymous Coward]

More commonly known in the Hong Kong and Chicago underground as "Goombas".

(How do they get from Chicago to Hong Kong so fast? Pipes, my friend. Pipes.)

You, sir, == unimaginative asshole.

[ClioCJS]

I had to get that out. Not only are you incapable of imagining one of the many points made by the many people who responded to your troll, but you waste everyone else's time by posting a stupid fucking post that is sympathetic to companies taking away our Right Of First Sale Doctrine. Go fuck yourself.

Re:Soooo much homebrew

[Von Helmet]

Wikipedia says that Chinese DS' can play games from other regions... However, DS' from other regions can't play Chinese games. So, either Wikipedia is wrong, or you are.

If it's Wikipedia, perhaps you should cruise on over and edit it...

Re:Soooo much homebrew

[jamar0303]

Hmmm. I got a Japanese DS and played fan-translations (a pirate is me, I know) because I read numerous reports on Chinese forums about that. Naturally Wikipedia is inaccessable for me so someone else'll have to edit the entry.

so, um, what is the best modchip for a Wii?

[ClioCJS]

Just curious. Does Wiikey still work?

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[stud9920]

Thats why butterknives are mostly legal everywhere. If everyone started to use bufferknives as weapons, actions would be taken against em

If everyone started to use bufferknives (???) as weapons, lawmakers would have other worries than banning the butterknives. The crime is already banned, why ban the tools.

Re:Shooting the messager

[steveo777]

There are two side to that coin, sir. And they're both ugly... Either there is socialized care, or commercial. Either way, you'll pay for it (taxes or pocket).

If the US went to socialized care, I have a feeling that a lot of hospitals would slow their growth, and eventually become under-funded because people don't like to pay taxes. (look at our education system).

The average US citizen is so damned irresponsible with their money (government isn't much better) that they don't know how to pay for things they need first. I live in the Twin Cities (MN). What you have is tons of people who basically expend their credit to the point of breaking with expensive cars, TV, stereos... And kids that they can't feed on their welfare checks, and houses that were purchased on a First Time Buyer's or Low Income program (some are literally better than most people with excellent credit can get) who don't/can't pay their mortgages, and they're losing these houses at an alarming rate. This is becoming 'normal'. The average US citizen is $8562 in debt (2004). These are not the only people who don't want to pay the taxes for better schools or better health care... but they don't know how to spend the money they do have and vote down anyone who mentions taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but when the people who are served by them don't want them, it's a problem. Burden on society? Yeah. But some how they need to be educated and helped. Or it just gets worse.

THAT is why social health care cannot work in the US. We already see the ugly side of commercial health care in the US. Reform is needed. But so is education, responsibility, accountability...

Re:Microsoft's tactic of winning the masses

[Hatta]

They let you bring game consoles to the office?

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[Shados]

Thats the whole point I was trying to make: as long as butter knives are used in significant proportion for good purposes, you can use that argument. Once the overwhelming majority of people carrying butterknives around do so with the intent of harming somebody, they'll get regulated and/or banned.

If the overwhelming majority of people using stuff like R4 and modchips used em for backups, no one would say anything, or would simply deal with the "crime", not the tool as you put it. Thats why you can buy CDs and DVD-Rs at Best Buys, but you can't buy R4s there, and thats why PC games have stupidly awkward copy protection bullsh*t (still better than not being able to buy CDs).

Yes, I understand where you're coming from, and I too will use backup tools to make backups (and absolutely nothing else), but when you see someone with an R4 in the bus, if you have to place bets on if the game they're playing is a backup or a so called illegal copy, I sure as hell would not bet on the former.

Missing the point...

[big_paul76]

That' not the point.

OK, you're right, to read /. you get the impression "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.", but that doesn't mean you're not within your rights to backup.

What we're seeing here, and the reason many /.ers are so zealous, is a steady erosion of the rights of consumers in the interest of protecting copyright holders from a dubious threat. And many people feel that there are powerful monied interests in our society that see the scenario described in Stallman's "Right to Read" as their eventual end goal.

The actions of pirates/infringers is only worth worrying about if you accept the copyright holders' ludicrous assertion that every incident of copyright infringement = 1 lost sale. The thing that companies have trouble accepting is that there's some people who will use your product if they can get it free, but are STILL UNWILLING TO PAY $$ for it!

Commercial operations in China/former soviet characters that are cranking out hundreds or thousands of disks, and selling them? Throw the book at them. Those are the people copyright law was designed to stop.

But non-commercial copyright infringement? Who cares? When I was poor, living hand to mouth, and I pirated games from whatever source, but if pirating had been made non-feasible by whatever means (technical or legal) that wouldn't have made me magically be able to afford all the games I was pirating. It just would've meant I would've spent more time reading or something. Which would've got me less in the habit of playing and enjoying video games in general.

If a small number of individuals can't afford games, and pirate, the best thing to do is let em run free. When those people can afford it, the vast majority of them will just buy the games.

Huh?

[Besna]

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.

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[stud9920]

No, my point is that if everyone uses butter knives to kill each other, banning butter knives should be the lowest priority of lawmakers.

Devil's advocate

[tepples]

There aren't any Windows Mobile devices with the game-playing form factor of the Nintendo DS. Nintendo subsidizes this form factor. If you want access to this form factor, Nintendo wants you to have a couple hundred thousand in the bank to show that you mean business.

They aren't designed to be manipulated with two hands Citation needed that you need more than one hand on the screen and one on the stylus to play Kirby: Canvas Curse. The big reason that it's on the DS and not the Pocket PC is it has Kirby in it.

their "directional controllers" aren't designed to smoothly move objects around the screen

Citation needed that you can't move things around the screen in Meteos using the stylus.

Your arguments are arguments for Game Boy Advance homebrew, not specifically for DS homebrew.

Which is another thing that the other guy mentioned, but I think needs elaboration: There is a smaller audience for games on a PDA than there is on the DS.

Nintendo subsidizes this audience. If you want access to this audience, Nintendo wants you to have a couple hundred thousand in the bank to show that you mean business.

I'm a fan of DS homebrew and a DS homebrew developer myself. But somebody needs to explain the devil's advocate arguments.

Contrived justifications won't get what you want

[SIIHP]

I think it's important for you to understand, the only reason your point has any traction is because you're posting it on Slashdot.

Much of the world hears your justification for copying and thinks "really? that's the best he could come up with?"

Making backups, while convenient, is really not going to get you the support you need in this argument.

And, honestly, the whole idea wounds contrived as a means to find legitimate reasons for making copies. Which, frankly, is exactly what it is.

GBA ?

[wikthemighty]

Doom and Doom II are both available on for the GBA, and quite playable! (Though it is not easy to find copies...)

Come on! This can't be real!

[urcreepyneighbor]

"Supreme Factory"? Did the HK police have to fight the "Final Boss", too?!

What's that line...

[SIIHP]

"Methinks he doth protest too much."

That's the feeling I get when I read these "I don't play copied games, I use it to play imports and my own backups" posts.

Of course you do guys, of course you do...

Disney Fairies

[tepples]

That should be prime motivation _not_ to use Peter Pan as a character. :) heh. Disney doesn't care. It's scaling up its version of the Peter Pan franchise, and a video game adaptation just might end up on Wii.

Re:Disney Fairies

[Doctor_Jest]

Yeah, let them milk the franchise until it bleeds... that means I won't be buying it. It'll still make it on the console, I imagine... Disney hasn't had an original idea, in, well... forever.

What monopoly does eBay have?

[tepples]

your listing could be the only target or could be one of hundreds, and the ESA may simple never have got to your appeal. Which is why 17 USC 512 takedowns end automatically after two weeks if the person who posted the disputed information files a counter-notice. Do VeRO takedowns follow this practice of allowing a relist by default following the counter-notice? And there exist selling communities other than eBay, right?

Selling devices and software that break copyrights is illegal under US Law Citation needed if the seller markets the device for use with original works (e.g. homebrew) and uses that fall under the copyright exemptions of 17 USC 107 through 122. Sony v. Universal and MGM v. Grokster support this view.

Incidently, citing any law that allows you sell such a device will also get it removed, as you are not a lawyer. Lawyers know better. So if a seller states that he has retained a lawyer, does that make the listing safer? Or does eBay's "our server is our private property" defense trump all?

Nintendo is not paid any money in licensing for these devices, and THAT is why they are illegal. What citation do you have that trumps Sega v. Accolade, Chamberlain v. Skylink, and Lexmark v. Static Control?

Nintendo makes their own media player for the GBA/NDS so don't throw your 'but I can use it to play music' excuse. Citation needed that Nintendo of America Inc. has ever marketed the Play-Yan product.

That leaves the only reason someone would want these is to play backups or homebrew, and the average joe sixpack doesn't know butt all about ARM assembly. You don't need to know ARM assembly language to use homebrew. Heck, I develop homebrew, and I don't know much ARM assembly language. (I use C.)

Re:Contrived justifications won't get what you wan

[Trelane]

Good to know you wish to ban my rights on the basis of unsubstantiated (indeed, indefensible really, were you to actually know me) blanket attempts to impugn my character.

You are a vile, wretched creature indeed.

Re:Contrived justifications won't get what you wan

[Trelane]

Sorry, I was being overly harsh. I apologize.

The point stands, however. I am not using backups to justify breaking my side of the copyright bargain, despite your baseless accusation.

Would you like to have a second attempt to address my actual post instead of launching off into tangential land?

Why didn't they

[AntiRush]

just brick all the modded Wii's?

Nintendo would rather see it on Pocket PC

[tepples]

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 Would it have been the same had you developed the game for Pocket PC, which (unlike GBA and DS) is intentionally open to applications developed by hobbyists? Based on my reading of warioworld.com, I believe Nintendo's intended use case is that you develop the prototype for Windows or Windows Mobile, shop it around to publishers, and then get the official devkit to port it to a Nintendo handheld.

Re: What kind of excuse is this? - This one!

[b00fhead]

We replaced a FDD in our A1200 (10+ years ago!) with a modified Panasonic JU257, which are quite common. Try this

.

misleading description, fixed it for ya:

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

"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

Nope

[el_munkie]

Our democracy is not a continuous thing. The will of the people is heard every four years in the case of the presidency. The president is not obliged to change his actions or opinions every time a new poll comes out.

Partly True

[el_munkie]

But the U.S. isn't run like a corporation. Sorry. If you don't like it, campaign to have the rules changed.

The economy went to shit when the dot-com bubble burst. This happened around January 2000, before Bush was inaugurated. The attacks on September 11th fucked things up much more.