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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."
What's so wrong about them suing him?
There's nothing wrong with them suing him.
The Pro-piracy comments you've seen is (probably) more directed towards "freedom" as the technologies/laws that limits piracy also limits that much valued freedom.
Ergo pro freedom = there will be piracy
And yet they still don't give a damn about piracy, technologically speaking, or at least they care about it a lot less than they care to annoy homebrewers and importers.
Proof: the last three iterations of Wii System Updates closed exploits used to run homebrew, but an ancient exploit that is still being used for piracy has remained untouched for that long (and counting). More proof: it would be trivial for them to detect and block modchips at the system update level, but so far they haven't even tried. Even more proof: NIntendo seems to be happy deliberately bricking your Wii if you have imported it, but it certainly hasn't even crossed their mind to do that for people who pirate. Yes, System Update 4.2 deliberately bricked all Korean Wiis that had been switched to the USA or EUR region. And by this I mean an explicit if(korean_detected()) { show_error_code_on_boot(003); }.
You have a point. BUT... the guy didn't just trip over and somehow end up leaking the game by accident. He made a conscious decision to do what he did, knowing full well it could land him in hot water. It was an easily avoidable situation which he chose to place himself into, and paid the price. A very high price, and probably an immoral price, but he made his choice.
Nintendo is going to do what any other software mongrel in the free world is going to do when their production is illegally propagated to the masses. However, let's not overshadow the fact that the New Super Mario Bros Wii game did sell over 10 million copies as pointed out a little over 2 weeks ago.
Just for fun, I'd like to see what Nintendo's exterior argument was from 'loosing sales' because, clearly, they capitalized on the sales aspect and in any retail store I've been in recently in my area, even a month or better past the holiday season, has the game completely sold out.
Furthermore, pirating a game like New Super Mario Bros Wii, to me, seems quite contradictory. It's $50 in the store, but it's not like you don't get the gameplay you desire out of it. My wife and I have had this game since late Decemeber 2009 and we've played it daily ever since. With 8 regular levels and 8 unlockable coin levels to conquer, all the easter eggs to discover and the nostaliga of getting to play a killer 2-D game again on a modern-day gaming console, if you don't think that's worth your $50, I pitty you.
here 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.
Your suggestion seems to be setting the amount as punishment, not as restitution for lost sales. Now, I think the $1.5 million in lost sales is highly debatable, but I would think that whatever amount is awarded should be to recover the amount of lost sales, not a punitive amount as punishment that's scaled to what the person makes.
To flip this around, if someone committed a premeditated violent crime that they are sentenced to jail for 20 years, I wouldn't expect them to reduce the sentence for a 70 year old because "20 years might be all he's got left, it's a life sentence" vs. the 25 year old who committed the same crime.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
Recentrly, Spain's Plumbers association honored Mario "For 28 Years Of Plumbing Accomplishments"
My other signature is a car
Hey marcan, first let me tip my hat for your work.
Second, I use some of those "oh noes piratz" enhancing mechanisms to copy my legally purchased games to a USB hard disk and play them. Note that I bought my Wii console while living in Britain, I have bought games in Mexico (where I am from) and USA (cheaper to ask a relative to get them from there) AND Germany (where I am currently living and playing games).
When I moved to Germany, I refused to take all my CDs/DVDs with me [Laugagge handlers at Lufthansa are a bunch of monkeys.. you should see the state of my bags when they arrived to Germany], therefore I put all the content (serveral music CDs, some DVD movies and several Wii games) into magnetic media and took them with me.
Having said that, I really applaud Nintendo for doing this specific move, and I completely believe that this is the *right* move to combat piracy.
It is not illegal to modify hardware you buy, it is not illegal to play a copy of your purchased media, however, IT IS illegal to distribute such media without copyright permit; and that is what Nintendo prosecuted with this guy.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
More chilling - a corporation with suspicion of someone not 'busted' can get a court to confiscate every computer and device someone owns, and force them to turn over every password to every account they have so the company can root around for evidence for a civil matter (copyright infringement).
Maybe when the MafIAA alleges an IP address that might have been assigned to you at some point was infringing, and gets the thugs to toss your place and take anything they want and look at all your emails, texts, and friends online you might then want to complain, but you won't own anything electronic anymore to complain with.