Mighty Nintendo Smashes 10,000 Piracy Devices In Hong Kong
Upon Nintendo's beckoning, the Hong Kong High Court stepped in to disrupt a "global distribution operation involving game copying devices and modification chips ("mod chips") that violate its copyrights and trademarks in the Nintendo DS and Wii systems." In a press release, the court ordered a raid on the facilities of Supreme Factory Limited on October 8th. The representatives from Nintendo seized over 10,000 "game copying devices and mod chips." The copy devices connect to the Nintendo DS and are used to copy and play game files offered illegally over the Internet. As for the mod chips, they allow pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of Nintendo games to be obtained via the internet.
Other things were turned up during the raid. It was discovered that Supreme Factory Limited is connected to a French Company called, Divineo SARL. The principal of that company is Max Louarn. Both Loauarn and Divineo are named in the legal actions initiated by Nintendo. The High Court has ordered the companies to disengage their distribution of these devices and ordered any disposable portion of their assets to be frozen until the outcome of the legal proceedings.
Piracy hurts companies and sometimes the pirated copies of game fail to work, anyways. At least in cartridge based ones. A couple of my friends who received some shady looking GameBoy Advance games had them fail on him after two or three days of play. I certainly don't want that happening to me. Besides, when you buy a pirated game (yes, I know you know this song and dance) it only hurts the developers and, in the end, us. I'm happy Nintendo is so steadfast in their mission to take pirates down. Over 100 companies create, license, market and sell Nintendo gaming products. It is estimated that loses due to counterfeiting in 2006 was $762 million in sales. The release also made mention that in 2005, Nintendo was awarded over $5 million in damages from the Hong Kong High Court against Lik Sang. In the U.S., a judge ordered "Bung Enterprises to pay Nintendo $7 million in damages in connection with its involvement in manufacturing and distribution of such products." Bung, that sounds dirty. Anyways, enough anti-piracy rhetoric from me.
What do you think of Nintendo's latest victory over pirates?
Super Timsy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 23 October 2007
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: Divineo SARL, Hong Kong High Court, Max Louarn, Nintendo, Piracy, Supreme Factory Limited
I think it's great that they got all those Wii modchips, because Wii modchips are useless for anything but piracy. No one seems to have defeated the Wii's code signing yet, and I guess even the region-free hacks are pretty lousy.
They were more vague on the "game copying devices", though. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have never even once used any of my GBA or DS flash cartridges -- devices like the Datel Games'n'Music or M3 Simply that plug into Slot 1 or Slot 2 and accept a CF, SD or MicroSD card -- to copy a commercial game. My most recent use for my flash cart was as an MP3 player (pretty awesome for podcasts), and before that, I was using them to compose MOD files (simple sample-based musical compositions) so that I could remember melodies and arrangements for later. They basically turn the DS into a tiny, low-powered touch screen laptop, one on which you can even run Linux if you're a bit of a tool.
If the "game copying devices" they seized were flash carts, devices that add thousands of awesome and totally legitimate functions to the DS.... then for shame, Nintendo, for shame.
These game companies need to make region free consoles. That's the only reason I'd ever put a chip in my system. I mean really, I don't need a JPN, EUR and US system. The company will get its money anyway when the POS eventually dies from being used too much and I have to buy a new one anyhow.
Thank God for PS3.
I have to say that i'm torn between "go pirates" and "go nintendo/sony/microsoft". I live in a country where it's very hard and expensive to get a console system, the companies don't care about that down here (Argentina), we don't have big game shops, or big conventions, or big anything console related. We don't get ads on magazines, or tv (execpt for the Wii). Microsoft only cares on selling software for PC. Nintendo doesn't even exist on ppl's heads, and Sony only care about non console hardware (tv's, radio, etc). That's it. So, when piracy begins to spread on my country it's actually a good sign that ppl is buying the machine, which by the way it's still expensive, i mean the PS3 (forget about all the models, we only got the 60 GB on some game stores) it's 1250 us dollars. 1250!!!!! God the PSP it's 600 dollars. Don't even make me begin on how much the games cost. The Wii and XBOX360 the same. The only console that it's selling good down here (mainly becuase of piracy) it's the Wii, and of course the PS2. It's hard to explain (mainly because english is not my mother language), but it's like ppl want to buy original stuff but we don't get answers from the companies; when the original XBOX came out Microsoft Argentina made all the plans to sell the system, but they never, NEVER, talked about it. They talked to a magazine about it, and that's it, no ads, the system put on sale. Because they don't care.
I agree with the above that systems need to be region free. That's certainly step one.
I don't root for anything Nintendo does, ever, that isn't a game or system, and then only rarely. They've always been litigious control freaks when it comes to unauthorized hardware on their systems, and they've also used that bent for monopolizing tactics. (They sabotaged the Master System by cutting illegal deals with department stores to shelve the NES exclusively.)
Bung and Lik-Sang were both great companies that offered some amazing products. I bought Jaguar and Neo Geo Pocket games from Lik-Sang long after the systems were dead and buried. One of Bung's top-selling products was a flash cart for Game Boy, and they used to host homebrew competitions, making all the entries available for download.
The kinds of piracy that go on in the streets of Hong Kong is excessive and blatantly damaging to the copyright holders, but flash carts both protect an investment and increase interest in a platform. We probably all differ on just how much piracy is acceptable, but I don't think any serious gamer has a scruple over abandonware, and that's exactly the sort of thing flash carts are great for.
Nintendo is hardly any different from the RIAA in this move. Their business model is not in any danger from piracy or anything else. It's not about material losses. They're selling more Wiis than they can make and making more money than they can count. This is about controlling the customer.
there is, of course, nothing illegal about a DS flash cart. they have hundreds of legal uses. the fact that you can play roms on them is neither here nor there legally - you can listen to pirated music on an MP3 player as well, and indeed a huge proportion of users do just that, but still most of the world's largest technology companies make them.
from the way the article is worded (and presumably the press release its ctrl+c/ctrl+v from) it seems like they just got them on trademark infringement - the carts probably say "for Nintendo DS" somewhere on them, which is just about enough. same goes for Sony taking legal action against companies importing PSPs into Europe - they were using the PSP trademark without permission, which is illegal. importing/exporting the consoles isn't.
i also like (not really) the way you/they try and connect flash carts to pirated GBA games, which are a whole different thing - those are most definitely illegal, and generally of poor quality. interestingly Nintendo hasn't been doing much about those of late, despite a number of companies openly offering them on various websites, and the recent appearance of actual pirated DS carts on ebay. it must be easier for them to go after legal products that are sold by reputable retailers, I suppose.