Nintendo Pirate Settles Dispute for $1.5 Million

[Zac_Dai]

Thats a fucking life sentence for someone on average income and all for a console game.

Even rapists, paedophiles and murderers don't get that kind of punishment.

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.

Ok lets compare that to more traditional bank heists.

A little research turned up the Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomis_Fargo_Bank_Robbery] where the perpetrators stole $17 million in 1997. The highest sentence given out to robbers was 11 years.

Now thats 11 years for stealing a real tangible $17 million.

Now with this Nintendo case we have an imaginary amount of "lost sales". Since its impossible to prove how many pirates would have bought the game without piracy as an option its a meaningless statistic to throw around.

For his punishment of losing Nintendo imaginary money he's fined a life breaking $1.5 million, he probably settled because he had no way to fight a case against such a corporate giant.

As he worked as a game store manager his annual income would be average at best. Given he will probably has about 60 years left to live he would have to pay $25000 a year for the rest of his entire life.

That my friend is a life sentence of debt misery compared to 11 years loss of liberty for a crime in the same bracket.

If you some how still think thats fair justice then I feel sorry for you.

 

[IHaveNoCoolness]

Given the grand scope of circumstances, the guy uploading a copy of the game prior to it being able to be purchased, I don't think this kind of fine is that out of line. It's hard to know exactly how many people downloaded this that would have paid for it, but the fact of the matter is this guy stole and illegally distributed their product.

If this was some random guy who downloaded this game and they came down on him like that, i would be inclined to agree with the posters here who think Nintendo and the judicial system is being too harsh, but this isn't just some random downloader. This guy took the product prior to release, ripped it to a format that is transferable online, and uploaded it and shared it with millions of downloaders... possibly on his own site generating revenue from advertisements, etc. He stole potential millions from Nintendo and they are getting revenge.

 

[mjc0961]

Could it be?

Could my hatred of nintendo actually grow stronger?

1.5 million? Wake the fuck up nintendo! Not all of us are swiming in dollar bills got for nosepicking!

Also, if anyone thinks this is right, then you have a fucked up sence of justice.

So we should feel sorry for the pirating dickwad? He shouldn't have illegally duplicated and distributed the game if he couldn't afford to pay the fines for doing so. Plus, read the article again: said pirating dickwad settled. He could have taken his chances in court, but he agreed to just pay this instead.

Really, how anyone can see Nintendo as the bad guy is beyond me. There is no fucked up sense of justice on their part: Their property was stolen and illegally distributed, and they caught the guy and made him answer for his crimes. Is it also "a fucked up sense of justice" to arrest and put on trial those people who steal physical items? There's really no difference: The game cost a lot of money to develop, Nintendo didn't just snap their fingers and a complete game appeared in front of them for them to sell.

As for this crap about "This doesn't do anything to stop piracy", are you really that dense? Are you saying that if you were a pirate, this wouldn't make you think twice before uploading Nintendo's next hot new game? If I were I pirate, I sure as hell would stop and think long and hard about whether or not I to be sued so hard that my grandkids will still be paying the bill.

Yeah, that's right. He likely isn't expected to just hand Nintendo a check for $1.5 million RIGHT NAO OR ELSEORZ!! If he doesn't have the money, which is likely, they'll be taking part of his paychecks for years to come. So really, stop with this "Nintendo ruined his life!" shit. You clearly have no idea how the legal system works, plus as was already said, this guy brought it upon himself when he illegally uploaded the game for others to download. Nintendo didn't ruin his life, he ruined his own life.

 

[Bilbo536]

Sorry buddy, shouldn't have been such a selfish jerk.

Here is a question!

How is uploading something selfish?

Because you're stealing.
Last time I checked, thievery was pretty selfish.

 

[chimmers]

Thats a fucking life sentence for someone on average income and all for a console game.

Even rapists, paedophiles and murderers don't get that kind of punishment.

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.

Ok lets compare that to more traditional bank heists.

A little research turned up the Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomis_Fargo_Bank_Robbery] where the perpetrators stole $17 million in 1997. The highest sentence given out to robbers was 11 years.

Now thats 11 years for stealing a real tangible $17 million.

Now with this Nintendo case we have an imaginary amount of "lost sales". Since its impossible to prove how many pirates would have bought the game without piracy as an option its a meaningless statistic to throw around.

For his punishment of losing Nintendo imaginary money he's fined a life breaking $1.5 million, he probably settled because he had no way to fight a case against such a corporate giant.

As he worked as a game store manager his annual income would be average at best. Given he will probably has about 60 years left to live he would have to pay $25000 a year for the rest of his entire life.

That my friend is a life sentence of debt misery compared to 11 years loss of liberty for a crime in the same bracket.

If you some how still think thats fair justice then I feel sorry for you.

I think it is fair, here's why.
Nintendo don't punish bank robbers, but if they did they would fuck them up. It's not their fault that other people get off light

 

[zauxz]

Sorry buddy, shouldn't have been such a selfish jerk.

Here is a question!

How is uploading something selfish?

Because you're stealing.
Last time I checked, thievery was pretty selfish.

He didnt got payed for it. How is stealing and giving away selfish?

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

Well at least they're finally going after the right people.

True. Makes more sense to go after the people uploading the files, rather than people who download 'em.

But $1.6m?! Yikes!!

 

[zauxz]

Really, how anyone can see Nintendo as the bad guy is beyond me.

Yeah. That big mean man hurt poor Nintendo!

 

[Jak The Great]

Could it be?

Could my hatred of nintendo actually grow stronger?

1.5 million? Wake the fuck up nintendo! Not all of us are swiming in dollar bills got for nosepicking!

Also, if anyone thinks this is right, then you have a fucked up sence of justice.

Stealing something that cost a lot to develop is wrong.
Maybe you should wake up. If you steal something, you're bound to face the consequences.

Oh now I see it!

Downloading/uploading is such a serious crime, it's punishment is to ruin the entire life of the downloader!

Thanks! I'll kill the next person I'll see litering!

That's justice, right?

Yes, it IS reasonable to draw parallels between punishing theft with a fine and punishing littering with murder.

Piracy isn't theft.

I go out and steal a copy of the game from a someone, that's theft, he or she has now lost a game. (herp derp u lost the gaem lol)
I pirate a game online, that's piracy, it's shared online. Noone is losing anything.

They are two different things and should be treated as such.

if that's the case, why is counterfeiting illegal? I'm only making a copy of money, Am I stealing anything? The punishment for that is pretty extreme as well.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/counterfeit6.htm

It's the same thing, you're reproducing the information (in this case the coding on the game) that someone else has protected rights on. It states this in the direction manual, and several other copyright areas throughout the booklet. And whether or not you consider piracy and theft to be 2 different definitions, the legal system does not separate the two, and he got nailed for that.

 

[zauxz]

And whether or not you consider piracy and theft to be 2 different definitions, the legal system does not separate the two, and he got nailed for that.

Yeah. The legal system is bullshit. We knew that.

 

[Silvance]

Sorry buddy, shouldn't have been such a selfish jerk.

Here is a question!

How is uploading something selfish?

Because you're stealing.
Last time I checked, thievery was pretty selfish.

He didnt got payed for it. How is stealing and giving away selfish?

Stealing and giving away is selfish because the developers that worked their ass off on the game are being cheated out of their due reward. Every person that downloaded that game is $50 that the people at Nintendo will never see. A developer's lifeline is its profits, and the lower those profits, the more job cuts and studio closings we will see, negatively affecting the economy.

This is of course an exaggeration, as I'm sure his pirating didn't do this much, but it's why piracy is selfish.

 

[xyrafhoan]

Thank god Nintendo is getting down to the real issues rather than pushing ineffective DRM. In Japan, they had an anonymous tip line to report R4 and other DS flash cart devices. Now they're going after a source of pirated games. People defending someone who released a game a week ahead of its release date, violating their agreement with Nintendo, the distributor, to not release the game before x date should be punished seeing as this is a case of the obvious. At the very least, at least Nintendo didn't make thousands of consoles unplayable permanently. Sure, there was the case of bricked Wiis during system updates to overwrite the mods on consoles (caused if the power supply was interrupted during the update), but they offered to fix them.

 

[Zac_Dai]

Thats a fucking life sentence for someone on average income and all for a console game.

Even rapists, paedophiles and murderers don't get that kind of punishment.

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.

Ok lets compare that to more traditional bank heists.

A little research turned up the Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomis_Fargo_Bank_Robbery] where the perpetrators stole $17 million in 1997. The highest sentence given out to robbers was 11 years.

Now thats 11 years for stealing a real tangible $17 million.

Now with this Nintendo case we have an imaginary amount of "lost sales". Since its impossible to prove how many pirates would have bought the game without piracy as an option its a meaningless statistic to throw around.

For his punishment of losing Nintendo imaginary money he's fined a life breaking $1.5 million, he probably settled because he had no way to fight a case against such a corporate giant.

As he worked as a game store manager his annual income would be average at best. Given he will probably has about 60 years left to live he would have to pay $25000 a year for the rest of his entire life.

That my friend is a life sentence of debt misery compared to 11 years loss of liberty for a crime in the same bracket.

If you some how still think thats fair justice then I feel sorry for you.

I think it is fair, here's why.
Nintendo don't punish bank robbers, but if they did they would fuck them up. It's not their fault that other people get off light

Ok then so you believe in harsh sentences.

Would you grade sentences for robbery or fraud then on the amount stolen or would it be a flat a sentence applied from everything from stealing a chocolate bar to stealing £1 million?

 

[Magnalian]

1.5 million. For a $60 game. Wowww

Karma's a *****, I guess.

 

[Space Spoons]

Good for them. Pirates deserve nothing less than treatment like this. It's the only way to hold back the tide of "gamers" who's sense of entitlement is so ridiculously huge that they think they can upload and distribute a brand new game a week ahead of its release date and get away with it.

 

[Silvance]

Ok then so you believe in harsh sentences.

Would you grade sentences for robbery or fraud then on the amount stolen or would it be a flat a sentence applied from everything from stealing a chocolate bar to stealing £1 million?

But he didn't steal a chocolate bar, he stole a video game. And that video game he uploaded to "thousands and thousands" of people. Those thousands of people won't be buying the game. So in effect he could have stolen $50,000-$100,000 or more.

 

[zauxz]

Ok then so you believe in harsh sentences.

Would you grade sentences for robbery or fraud then on the amount stolen or would it be a flat a sentence applied from everything from stealing a chocolate bar to stealing £1 million?

But he didn't steal a chocolate bar, he stole a video game. And that video game he uploaded to "thousands and thousands" of people. Those thousands of people won't be buying the game. So in effect he could have stolen $50,000-$100,000 or more.

Yeah! Now nintendo only sold 10.5 million copies! How will they feed they'r families???

Fuck the guy who lost 1.5 m. right?

 

[secretsantaone]

Could it be?

Could my hatred of nintendo actually grow stronger?

1.5 million? Wake the fuck up nintendo! Not all of us are swiming in dollar bills got for nosepicking!

Also, if anyone thinks this is right, then you have a fucked up sence of justice.

Stealing something that cost a lot to develop is wrong.
Maybe you should wake up. If you steal something, you're bound to face the consequences.

Oh now I see it!

Downloading/uploading is such a serious crime, it's punishment is to ruin the entire life of the downloader!

Thanks! I'll kill the next person I'll see litering!

That's justice, right?

Yes, it IS reasonable to draw parallels between punishing theft with a fine and punishing littering with murder.

Piracy isn't theft.

I go out and steal a copy of the game from a someone, that's theft, he or she has now lost a game. (herp derp u lost the gaem lol)
I pirate a game online, that's piracy, it's shared online. Noone is losing anything.

They are two different things and should be treated as such.

if that's the case, why is counterfeiting illegal? I'm only making a copy of money, Am I stealing anything? The punishment for that is pretty extreme as well.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/counterfeit6.htm

It's the same thing, you're reproducing the information (in this case the coding on the game) that someone else has protected rights on. It states this in the direction manual, and several other copyright areas throughout the booklet. And whether or not you consider piracy and theft to be 2 different definitions, the legal system does not separate the two, and he got nailed for that.

Did I say it wasn't illegal?

No, just that it's completely different from theft, which many people refer to it as. In the same vein that counterfeiting is not theft.

Of course countefeiting has a larger sentence, you're reproducing CURRENCY. You cannot seriously compare producing material currency and pirating a game online.

The legal system does differentiate between the two, quite rightly so. It's copyright infringement not stealing.

It's misconceptions like this that give piracy such a bad rap. It's impact is minimal compared to second hand games.

 

[Silvance]

Yeah! Now nintendo only sold 10.5 million copies! How will they feed they'r families???

Fuck the guy who lost 1.5 m. right?

Yeah, but does that make any difference? If you stole $1,000,000 from a man who only had 1.5 mil and another guy stole 1 mil from a man with $60 billion, should you be punished more harshly than him?

Besides, the guy that lost 1.5 m. brought it on himself. He's the one that broke the law, he's the one that has to face the consequences. If they had made him pay $50 for each and every game that was downloaded from him, he'd still be paying into the hundreds of thousands.