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Nintendo Wins Lawsuit Over R4 Mod Chip Piracy
schliz writes "The Federal Court has ordered an Australian distributor to pay Nintendo over half a million dollars for selling the R4 mod chip, which allows users to circumvent technology protection measures in Nintendo's DS consoles. The distributor, RSJ IT Solutions, has been ordered to cease selling the chip through its gadgetgear.com.au site and any other sites it controls, as well as paying Nintendo $520,000 in damages."
Did the Playstation chipping case occur before or after the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement? If you weren't aware, our copyright laws were heavily modified by that "trade" agreement.
Disagree != mod troll.
Oh goodie. Yet another thing to thank Johnny Howard for.
Given I'm talking about the original playstation (which is when I heard about this legal loophole that allowed stores to openly selling their services to chip playstations) and the PS2 came out in 2000, I'm going to assume it happened before the free trade agreement ;) (I don't remember the exact date I saw stores openly selling playstation modding services, but I do remember being quite surprised and either seeing something about it on the news or looking it up on the internet).
That said don't misconstrue this as to have any actual sympathy for people selling devices to get around copyright protection. I understand that these devices can be used for homebrewing. And I'll support the first to support any company that actually tries to make a business out of homebrewing for the Nintendo DS. But first that company will have to do a pretty damn good job convincing me they really are trying to make a business out of homebrewing and aren't using it as a legal pretext to allow people to pirate DS games.
>Sure you do but profiting off it is another matter.
I hope you don;t mean that.
If I buy object "a", and create useful additions to that object, I bloody well should be able to profit from it.
If the leased me the DS then it would be a different matter. But I purchased it, so I shouldn't be considered a criminal if I hack it, paint it, blow it up, whatever. It's now mine, and my business what I do with it.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
It most obviously does NOT mean "technical measures which protects from running unauthorized code", because then the R4 wouldn't exist.
If there was such a thing as a 100% reliable technical protection measure, there would be no need for such a law to exist.
You should be allowed to do what ever you want to your system. Are they going to sue me for putting a mod chip in my Game Cube? Modding my SNES? Even modding my Gameboy. If you paid for the system you can do what you want to it.
It's funny now to go back and look at "Mad Max" and realize that the premise of that movie was that the future of Australia would involve too much lawlessness and a lack of legal enforcement (criminals going free, no law to protect citizens, etc.). Now here we are in the actual future and Australia of late is looking at actively censoring the internet, banning any videogame that shows blood, imposing criminal and civil sanctions on people for modding their videogame consoles, and even banning criticism of lawmakers. It seems that the Australia of 2010 turned out to be more of a police state than a free-wheeling lawless anarchy. Turns Tina Turner was right. We didn't really need Max at all.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So GP posts to a site about a homebrew/indie game to give an example of a reason to legitimately own an R4 (or similar device) and you come back with "The R4 used entirely for counterfeiting and piracy?"
Do you work for Nintendo's PR department, or are you just functionally illiterate? And if there is a legitimate use (even if it is, as you claim "Very little") then why the hell would those who use it as such NOT cry foul at the sale of the device being banned?
I wrote a fairly popular DS app a few years ago, but I saw the writing on the wall for this platform. Between Nintendo making it harder to get these chips, and cell phones becoming more open, I don't see much point in writing for the DS. It's a shame: I think Nintendo could be where Apple is today with the iPhone, had they opened the DS. It had so much potential. Now, it is simply out of date.