DS Flash Cart Importer Jailed

[Giantcain]

ive seen em on sale in my town in stores about a day ago

 

[GamingAwesome1]

When did it become illegal to buy fucking flash cards?

I'm fully aware that it's illegal to pirate stuff with them but just fucking buying them? If he didn't steal anything from anyone, then the law has got fuck all on him. This is bullshit.

There are lots of things which are legal to buy in this country, but are illegal to import in large quantities without the proper authorisation.

If the police caught you with 26,000 pouches of tobacco or bottles of vodka in your lock up, you'd no doubt go to jail, unless you could prove you'd paid the thousands of pounds of Custom's Duty & tax on those products, possessed a valid importers license, and were authorised to sell them.

Like someone else pointed out, the crime was smuggling, not possession.

Ahhhh. I see, much clearer when you put it in that perspective, thanks!

 

[NLS]

Seems more probable the illegal act was in the importing of such huge quantities, and not the R4s themselves.

 

[Doug]

Yeah, seems a bit harsh.

In other news, why was I not informed that there is a gaming police (essentially)?

Yeah... no doubt he was selling them off though - unless he has 26,000 homebrewed items.

That said, I don't see how gaming companies can make this illegal - surely its a monopoly to control who can make DS cards/Xbox CDs/PS3 CDs/etc, etc? Same with peripherals...

But we live in a world where the DVD companies are legally allowed to create artifical trade barriers via their region locking, so... bah.

 

[Pimppeter2]

Gah,

Mixed feelings.

 

[Dogstile]

Its illegally importing them, not importing illegal ones. Get it right kids.

 

[l33tabix]

I agree with anyone who's saying this > He imposted some cartridges, wouldn't he have to pirate stuff, then sell them for it to be a crime. Maybe he just reeeeaaaallllllyyy wanted some carts lol, make a model home or something.

 

[purplegothchick]

Well even though the cards themselves may not be illegal, you can bet your arse that people will be using them for pirated games about 9 times out of 10. When I worked in a game shop, there were many people asking if we sold the cards simply because they were too cheap to actually buy the games for the DS. To save myself the hassle (as I'd usually get a shitload of abuse for telling them that we didn't sell them) I started to tell people that they were illegal, as they were used for pirating games. That shut them up ^_^

Would still prefer it if the police spent their time on more important social problems in this country, like knife crime or something like that...

 

[theultimateend]

Soooo. I wonder how many people use flash carts to carry their whole game collection around with them without fear of losing hundreds of dollars?

I know I can't be the only one.

I've even got my NES games on the flash cart .

I still think the whole issue of making console 'chipping' and 'modding' a criminal offence is stupid. I'm a developer. I want to write apps for just about everything. I can't write apps for the PS3, or a DS, or the iPhone withing shelling out cash I don't have - so I jailbreak, mod or hack them. Oh - but that makes me a criminal?

Twats. Or, more accurately, "The law is a ass"

if your a developer, then you know how much time and effort goes into making programs.

now look at the programs that you use........ someone made that.......stealing it via pirating is essentially stealing their income.

do I think $300 for photoshop is overpriced? yes, but I also understand that people put their time and effort into making it, that a company has to recover losses incurred from developing said program.

of course, this is only assuming your an actual developer, in otherwords, I call bullshit.

It is widely known that photoshop is not a stable program on Windows.

For 300 dollars I expect a program to be more stable than a 20 dollar program. Which it isn't.

Not that I advocate pirating it, just pointing out they charge WAY too much for a program with dozens of well known problems that have existed for multiple revisions now.

Sort of like how Rosetta Stone is WAY too expensive given the extremely hardcore DRM it uses. That DRM depreciates the value to such a degree I won't touch it till it ends up on a modest DRM like Steam.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

firstly i can't believe there was a report about anything that happens this abysmal little shit hole called Hull.

secondly wow thats a lot of pirated carts and thirdly, my neice got one of those horrid little R4 carts for her birthday. Those things are devil spawn.

 

[Adzma]

We're pretty anti-piracy around here, mate.

Yeah, that's what everyone says at any rate.

 

[darktheif28]

I really dont see why these are illegal, yes you can pirate games on them, but you can also do some interesting homebrew stuff on them. Hell, I bought my flash cart at Wal-Mart.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Yeah, seems a bit harsh.

In other news, why was I not informed that there is a gaming police (essentially)?

More like why were WE not informed there was a gaming police?

"The Man" wins once again!

 

[slopeslider]

Well even though the cards themselves may not be illegal, you can bet your arse that people will be using them for pirated games about 9 times out of 10. When I worked in a game shop, there were many people asking if we sold the cards simply because they were too cheap to actually buy the games for the DS. To save myself the hassle (as I'd usually get a shitload of abuse for telling them that we didn't sell them) I started to tell people that they were illegal, as they were used for pirating games. That shut them up ^_^

Would still prefer it if the police spent their time on more important social problems in this country, like knife crime or something like that...

'9 times out of 10' mp3 players are used to pirate music. We should make them illegal.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

*Commandoes smash through Humberside house windows*

FREEZE, MENG, YOU'RE SURROUNDED!

You'll never take me alive, coppah!

DON'T MOVE, HE'S GOT A DS

*Splosions*

That made me laugh so hard for a moment. Thank you.

 

[Gladion]

Banning flashcarts because you can pirate games is like banning the internet because you can use it to look at 4chan loli. Forget the totally legit uses lets focus one one 'illegal' aspect of it.

Yeah. The majority of people buying an R4 flash card will only use it for homebrew, only a small minority will use it to play pirated games - just like the internet. Most people use it to watch drawn child pornography instead of the gazillion other things you can do there.

'9 times out of 10' mp3 players are used to pirate music. We should make them illegal.

No? They may be used to play pirated music, but you can hardly download mp3 files with your player...

 

[Altorin]

a year isn't harsh at all for getting caught importing 26,000 units of an illegal device.

I mean, if he just imported one for his own use, I wouldn't care.. but the guy should have known they were illegal, and he imported a metric shit-ton of them

 

[DoW Lowen]

Banning Homebrew? That's freaking ridiculous.

If nintendo simply had better online support than they wouldn't have this problem. Said it once and I'll say it again.

Fuck Nintendo. The alienating bastards.