Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Comments

Pro-piracy

[sopssa]

I often see many pro-piracy comments on slashdot on these things (probably also because pirates are more interested on the matter). But many times these are actual damages caused to companies. Putting out that game a week before surely counted a lot of illegal downloading and people not buying the game. Sure it's bad to for him, but those are the lost money for Nintendo. What's so wrong about them suing him?

Re:Pro-piracy

[Feef Lovecraft]

Having RTFA I'd be more intrested in how he obtained this advanced copy of the game for distribution, was it as simple as importating it from another region where it had been released or was it a lapse in security that enabled him to get hold of this game?

Re:Pro-piracy

[Alphathon]

Exactly. I don't think I've seen that many people on here advocate piracy, it's usually anti-anti-piracy laws, such as the proposed UK law where suspected filesharers can be cut off without trial, disproportionate fines (especially from the RIAA) or the treating of bittorrent as illigal regardless of what's being shared (open source software etc). This can't really be treated as any of those. It would seem that the fine is roughly equivalent to 15000 copies of the game. That's assuming none is added for the crime, so it seems like a fairly reasonable fine. The only possible problem I can see is that he had to give over access to social networking sites etc. as that has little to do with the crime.

Re:Pro-piracy

[jamesh]

Seriously. They aren't even trying. This isn't even remotely in the same league as Xbox 360 hacks and the like, which have evolved to be quite a bit stealthier due to Microsoft's detection efforts.

So the choices are...

1. don't try, and people will copy your stuff
2. try, and people will defeat it and copy your stuff.

I wonder which of the above two options is cheaper?

Re:Pro-piracy

[paeanblack]

There's nothing wrong with them suing him.

He should go to jail. He used the special access his job gave him to steal from Nintendo. Yes, I used the s-word. Redistributing unpublished content is theft...he stole something valuable and monetizable from Nintendo (the right of first publication), and they don't have it anymore.

What he did was deliberate and premeditated. He abused a position of trust. There is no "Haha, just kidding" defense or excuse for this crap. This kind of shit severely weakens the man-years of effort expended towards fixing broken copyright laws.

He's not cute. He's not funny. He's a criminal.

Re:Pro-piracy

[steelfood]

No, that's still not stealing. It's still copyright infringement. If he say, stole the disc from his company and kept it in a vault, then that would constitute theft. Otherwise, it's still copyright infringement.

Re:Pro-piracy

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention most of us are for fair copyright terms but fair was about 20 miles back and we have gotten into so disgustingly greedy it is ridiculous. I can point out what is wrong with this picture in a single sentence....Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been dead for nearly a half a century, yet one of his FIRST works, made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, is STILL under copyright.

There is a big fucking difference between fairly compensating the author so he/she can produce more art (which was the whole point of copyright, to enable those that create art incentive to create new works, which would then become ours through public domain) to allowing multinational corporations to pervert our system with treasonous bribery to create a license to steal. So while I am not a pirate, those that are? Really don't care. They robbed US FIRST, by stealing our public domain away from us, our kids, our grandkids, etc, and by locking our entire culture up behind a paywall. Copyrights were a contract, and the contract has been broken. "Forever minus a single day" is NOT limited copyrights, and until it changes and We, The People, get a spot at the negotiating table I can understand why folks wouldn't care about copyrights. After all, all they are doing is stealing from thieves.

Proportionality.

[headkase]

There should be some kind of proportion to the damages, seriously that amount ruins an ordinary person for the rest of their life. Did the court deliberately set out to give him a life sentence of sorts? And if the amounts are to be set at company rates for individuals he should have his own choice just to do some time for it. Seriously, go on a walk for 3 years and move on in your life instead of being sentenced to financial death for the rest of your natural time.

Re:Proportionality.

[twoshortplanks]

Break this down on a personal level - if someone takes a mallet to my car, I'm going to sue them for the value of the damage to the car, i.e. what it costs to compensate me for the damage they caused. If someone burns down my house, I should be able to sue them for the value of the house. The loss they have caused is not mitigated by the ability they have to pay for it.

Now, if you're going down these lines you need to separate out the punitive damages from the actual damages. The former should be taken in context of the ability for the person to pay (i.e. if you're suing a multinational, you expect punitive damages significant enough for them to sit up and take notice.) The later should probably not be.

Re:Indecent Proposal

[hanako]

Ignoring your rude suggestions (Slashdotters don't like women? What a surprise!) the exact money figure is mostly a distraction from the issue. If he's done something *actually wrong*, then the fact that he can't pay the fine shouldn't mean that he gets off scot free. If he's done something that ISN'T wrong, then the fine being a thousand instead of a million makes little difference.

Re:Indecent Proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

What a heap of ill thought-out bullshit.

The defendant not having enough money isn't a valid reason for giving him a fine that, to him, is an economical death-sentence. "Scot free" doesn't even enter it. Why should a multimilionaire get a slap on the wrist if even that, and a poor guy get the economical death-sentence for the same crime? And is this a "crime" that really should carry the economical deathpenalty? Should any offence? Is it even consistent with human rights and the constitution of the United States?

(Yes, I know this wasn't a criminal case, but we're discussing principles here.)

Re:There's a leak?

[Totenglocke]

One of the recent big ones was a cynical doctor with a lame leg and drug addiction.

I think you meant "One of the recent big ones was a completely honest doctor with a lame leg and takes prescription pain killers for the pain his lame leg causes him".

Sorry, but it really irks me when people call House a drug addict when it's been clearly shown that he's not (when his leg was temporarily better from the end of season 2 through early season 3, he didn't take any Vicodin - if he was addicted, he'd have continued to take Vicodin even after the pain was gone). Also, it bugs me that people call being honest about shitty things "cynical", but that's a lesser annoyance.