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Nintendo Nabs Pirates
mtxblau - Feb 12, 2003
  mtxblau Feb 12, 2003
More than 300,000 units of pirated material are seized in China.

Nintendo of America has announced that three successful antipiracy raids have recently been conducted by the proper authorities in China. The three raids netted more than 300,000 pieces of pirated software, as well components used to make unofficial devices. The company claims that more than $649 million in sales are lost every year due to piracy activities around the world.

"Nintendo has never been more aggressive in protecting our unique global brand and our key intellectual properties, and China can expect the largest share of our attention again in 2003," said Jodi Daugherty, director of antipiracy, Nintendo of America."

To date, Nintendo's antipiracy campaign has focused mainly on online retailer Lik Sang, which reportedly sold devices that enabled users to make multiple copies of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance software. Other raids have been successfully carried out in Mexico and Paraguay.

Click Here... for the article at Gamespot.

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The thing MS did Lik-Sang was kindof interesting, but anti-piracy raids???

 Myname Feb 12, 2003
I don't see your point, to be honest. Are you saying they should just let pirates make money from their games? Surely if Sega did the same thing we'd all be cheering.

The Microsoft thing seems different to me because the focus is on modboards rather than pirated material, which is a little less blatant since mods can be used for homebrew stuff and legitimate backing up of your games.

 Curtis Feb 12, 2003
If you follow that last thought through Myname, you realise that MS's beef is the same. Modboards use illegaly gained and modified BIOSes to make them work, so MS is just protecting their IP as well.

True it can be used legitimately, but the bits that make it work are illegal under just about any copyright law.

 Myname Feb 12, 2003
I didn't say it was different, I said it seems different to me in the way I think about things . Do you think Microsoft would care about it's intellectual property being abused if they weren't losing any money through it? Where the law is concerned, modboards and pirate games might amount to the same thing, but in practice the result isn't always the same.

 mtxblau Feb 12, 2003
My point, if there was one, was that as far as I know, MS went as far as shutting down Lik-Sang. Nintendo did that AND are running Elian Gonzalez like busts on piracy groups which simply amazes me.

Of course Nintendo wants to protect its interests, but a global assault (quite literally) seems pretty unexpected, and very 'pro-active' on Nintendo's part to combat piracy.

 antime Feb 12, 2003
I fail to see what the fuss is about. Bootleggers are busted worldwide more or less regularly, and with the masses of pirate carts flowing out of China Nintendo had a very big incentive to do something about it. Oh, and before Lik-Sang got into trouble there was this company called Bung..., remember them?

 Taelon Feb 12, 2003
I also fail to see how Nintendo's piracy bust in CHINA can be called a GLOBAL ASSAULT... China is not the world and to me, there's a difference between what some of us do ... obtaining games for free and burning them ... and what the REAL pirates do ... which is to actually make counterfeit software that looks like the real thing, and SELL it for illegal profit. And that would understandably bother Nintendo much, much more.

Heck, the TITLE of this thread alone bugs me. "Nintendo shuts down pirates, and you thought MS was bad." How is either company "bad" in protecting their interests? I wasn't happy either when MS had Lik-Sang shut down (I agree that modboards and pirated games ARE different things), but nonetheless the companies have been acting within their rights.

If anything's bad, it's large-scale professional piracy.

(edited for spelling...sigh)

 mtxblau Feb 12, 2003
Bad = furor over the fact that MS was cracking down on piracy. I will never get over the fact that here as well as other gaming sites really ripped into MS for 'protecting their interests'. The poll they had at GameFAQs really stuck out - it was like 80% were mad that they made such a move. The net was abuzz when it happened. However, when Nintendo and PS2 do it, no says anything. Essentially, I feel as though MS does a lot of things but gets a lot more heat for it just because they're MS.

Global = more than one country. And more to come.

 ExCyber Feb 12, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Do you think Microsoft would care about it's intellectual property being abused if they weren't losing any money through it?


Yes. Exclusivity is at the core of Microsoft's business. There is no need for them to think about whether or not money will be lost by not protecting it; they will not let it go unless they believe that money or influence will almost certainly be gained by doing so.