Nintendo Pirate Settles Dispute for $1.5 Million
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
Meh, just smells like more scare tactics to me. Every so often you get the news that a single "big pirate" has been given a ridiculous fine so he'll have to hand in every single paycheck he makes for the rest of his life, but it has never made the slightest impact.
They need to either start cracking down on every pirate they can find, or start treating the whole piracy problem in a way that actually makes sense (DRM hurts legal users far more than it has ever hurt pirates), because just singling out one guy and destroying his entire life over one leaked game is as petty, cruel, and ineffective as it gets. And there's no way to fight it, because in court a single person will only get buttfucked by a horde of corporate lawyers.
They need to either start cracking down on every pirate they can find, or start treating the whole piracy problem in a way that actually makes sense (DRM hurts legal users far more than it has ever hurt pirates), because just singling out one guy and destroying his entire life over one leaked game is as petty, cruel, and ineffective as it gets. And there's no way to fight it, because in court a single person will only get buttfucked by a horde of corporate lawyers.
You'd be surprised. But hating Nintendo for protecting their products is just silly.zauxz said:
Well, if he just downloaded it, he wouldn't have gotten fined that much. But he shared it, which made Nintendo lose a lot more than just $49.99. If you're caught pirating one game, you probably get fined like $2000. If he seeded to only 750 people, then that's $1.5 million, and knowing how popular the Mario franchise is, it was probably a good 5000.Zac_Dai said:
It's not that they're protecting their product, it's doing so in a way that has absolutely zero effect on piracy while completely destroying a person's life. The punishment is useless in the big picture and completely out of proportions compared to the crime committed.Aura Guardian said:
Gotta feel sorry for this guy.
But at least if people are too scared to don the old peg leg, we won't have to deal with DRM.
But at least if people are too scared to don the old peg leg, we won't have to deal with DRM.
Hopefully this will proceed to send a message out to people who do this. I don't want to call them pirates as it sounds semi cool... i need a new name for them.Aura Guardian said:
All in all, if you commit a crime you should be punished. It's a shame this is the only way to make many people understand that crime is wrong...
Maybe if people wouldn't steal their stuff, then they wouldn't have this "Fucked up sense of Justice".zauxz said:
I think people are missing the point, it's not 1.5 million dollars leveled against him for downloading a free copy of the game, but for uploading it and apparently being the source of the copies. Details here like whether he was CHARGING for this are unknown.
The other thing that makes me go "WTF" here is how they expect to get 1.5 million dollars out of this guy, unless there is something we aren't hearing, like how he managed to get that much money by selling copies of the game. Winning a suit against someone for millions is entirely pointless if they don't have it.
Not enough details here to judget whether this was reasonable or unreasonable.
My gut feeling is however that this guy must have been somehow making money off of his pirating, probably not just that one, but other games as well. He probably settled with Nintendo for 1.5 million because he made more money than that overall. The negotiation is probably based around the fact that everyone (including Nintendo) gains more this way than by a trial which would go into his overall behavior and probably see all his money tied up indefintatly with nobody getting anything.
The other thing that makes me go "WTF" here is how they expect to get 1.5 million dollars out of this guy, unless there is something we aren't hearing, like how he managed to get that much money by selling copies of the game. Winning a suit against someone for millions is entirely pointless if they don't have it.
Not enough details here to judget whether this was reasonable or unreasonable.
My gut feeling is however that this guy must have been somehow making money off of his pirating, probably not just that one, but other games as well. He probably settled with Nintendo for 1.5 million because he made more money than that overall. The negotiation is probably based around the fact that everyone (including Nintendo) gains more this way than by a trial which would go into his overall behavior and probably see all his money tied up indefintatly with nobody getting anything.