Nintendo Pirate Settles Dispute for $1.5 Million

[DanDeFool]

How do they expect him to pay it?

The same way any average schmuck earns 1.5 million dollars. Drug dealing. I hear meth is fairly easy to make.

Or maybe professional murder.

Or if he's good-looking he could join a male escort service.

But seriously though, that's a good question.

Unfortunately, I am a firm believer in math and if I'm not mistaken then: Good games= More games sold= More money for corp= (Hopefully) More good games.

Yeah, but you have to remember the game in question was Super Mario Bros. Wii. That game was developed, released, and sold over a decade ago as Super Mario Bros. 3. All they did was add 4-player co-op and update the graphics. They probably didn't even invest 1.5 million in the development of that game.

Probably the big deal here is that he made the game available for dl before it was actually released. It's like how the MPAA really started getting pissed when theatrical screeners were getting leaked on the Internet before the first theater showing. If he had uploaded the game two months after it came out, Nintendo probably wouldn't have been as upset.

 

[Paddin]

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.

I completely agree, while its fine to defend your franchise and products, $1.5 million?! the fuck nintendo, taking out all your anger on one guy sends a message both ways: 1) dont mess with nintendo and 2) nintendo are pricks. This is one guy, who had his whole life ruined by uploading one game. Its something alot of people do, it would be like if you were downloading music one day, one in a million, and you suddenly got a 1.5 million fine. Youd feel victimised. And im not saying piracy is ok, its far from ok, but it seems like a harsh victimisation

 

[Krakyn]

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.

Nintendo has the right to do what they did, and I guess I agree with that right. Now, everyday of his life when he's unable to buy that new video game or afford to take his prospective girlfriend out to dinner, he'll be reminded of how stealing is bad, something he didn't understand before.

 

[Asehujiko]

To all you dirty, stinky pirates out there, it doesn't look like now is the time to mess with Nintendo.

So nintendo sues somebody for several time his yearly income, most likeky making him homeless and unable to get a job anywhere because of his "criminal" record and suddenly they are the good guys because you personally disagree with the group of people their punching bag of the day belongs to? For all the bitching about having "journalistic standards" every time somebody points out that the news room crew got beaten to bringing news, the escapist sure seems to fail at impartiality .

 

[olcohalic]

I agree to this fine, although it probably is too much - pirated wii games are less of a problem, because barely anyone does it. DS game piracy: THAT'S the real problem. So many people have R4s at my school, it's unbelievable. They should focus on headline kinda fines for DS piracy. That reaches out to all of the parents and average people, whereas wii piracy only reaches out to a select few who are prepared to hack their wii.

 

[Desert Tiger]

1.5 million. For a $60 game. Wowww

Eh, maybe so. But if ten thousand people were to download it, they'd lose $600,000. It's not like one copy not being bought - they care about the cumalative impact it has.

It's not a fair fine at all though.

 

[JDog888]

HAHA! What an Idiot...I wonder why Nintendo don't do that against homebrew?

 

[almostgold]

No, the punishment isn't proportional. It shouldn't be. Here's why: In the long run, this will prevent even more fines from being a paid. Fining him a proportional amount to the business he detracted wouldn't carry the same weight as 1.5 million. Ultimately, the damage by multiple uploads in the future would exceed this 1.5 mil. Sure, he got slammed and took it hard so an example could be made out of him, but fuck him, he's a pirate.

 

[BloodyThoughts]

Well, I support Nintendo on this. My hate has grown for them over the years, but now it is dropping. For the people that are saying "Wooow, 1.5 million is a bit harsh" Yeah it is, but it was probably also like a chance for them to say "you wanna Pirate our games do ya? well fuck you." and I approve.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

What they gave this man was a life sentence.

Most people will only make about $1 million in their entire lifetime. Nearly all of that money will be spent just on living expenses: food, housing, transportation, etc.

If this man was sentenced to 25 years in prison, at least he'd have 3 square meals a day and a bed to sleep on. As it is, he'll have to make an entire life's worth of income in addition to what he already needs just to survive. He just became Nintendo's slave for life.

It may be that he cost Nintendo $1.5 million. That may also a combination of acts of hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded the copy he uploaded. What's certain is that, no matter what they lost, legally making him their slave is going too far. This is beyond deterrence; it's one step short of ending his life entirely. Is this really necessary?

Maybe we should reconsider just how much we are willing to punish somebody for violating copyright and how we distribute blame in the online world. One man shouldn't be sacrificed because he enabled hundreds of thousands to break the law, otherwise we'd have a lot of politicians and bankers who should be indebted to us in perpetuity.

 

[CoverYourHead]

I agree with punishing him, but $1.5 million? Seems a bit harsh for one pirate...

 

[Captain Kail]

There is nothing more entertaining than watching people argue passionately about topics they barely understand. "This is wrong!" "Nintendo is evil!" "Piracy isn't stealing!"

Seriously, take a step back and look at the big picture.

 

[veloper]

you get less for murder

 

[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.

Nintendo has the right to do what they did, and I guess I agree with that right. Now, everyday of his life when he's unable to buy that new video game or afford to take his prospective girlfriend out to dinner, he'll be reminded of how stealing is bad, something he didn't understand before.

I was going to type another reasonable post to expand on my first about how he didn't actually steal anything.

But since you happily live by the idea that people should be eternally punished for such a minor crime as copyright infringement I realise there is no hope in you understanding.

 

[Baldry]

Well I got this story all wrong...I thought pirates had stole a shipment of games and nintendo where paying them...that would of been more interesting...hmm...oh well

OT: Poor guy...really poor Guy

 

[almostgold]

you get less for murder

What an incredibly meaningless argument.
One: no way to compare monetary fine to jail time. Differs from person to person. Some philosophies would say that it would be better to spend you whole life working than to give up a single year of freedom.
Two: Assuming the above problem didnt exist, and there is a way to measure mney against the loss of personal freedom: Offers no factual backup. If you can't prove that murder has a fair punishment (you can't, once again its subjective), the statement is nonsensical. Maybe murder just needs a more serious punishment.

See what I mean?

 

[Kazzak]

Down with the Pirates! Yay!

But if they can sue that one guy for a single upload, why don't they sue the creators and sellers of R4 cards. I mean, I can't be they don't know, you type in "R4 cards" on google and you get +1,350,000 hits. Every site that sold one could be sued for a lot more than $1.5 Million. I'd say they could take it past 100 Million. And these companies would probably be able to pay more money, therefore bigger bonus for Nintendo.

 

[Mr. GameBrain]

1.5 million dollars?! Ouch!

Sometimes I don't think its fair for the big companies to be able to sue individual people, I mean, you can't just scale up damages like that, and expect the average joe to pay it.
Unfortunately, the rich corporate fat cats already have most of our money in their pockets,
that sort of cash is just chump change to them.

To be honest, if I was in that situation, I would've rather have gone to jail.

In fact, if I had a debt like that, I would commit suicide, or commit a more serious crime, just so that I would go to jail.

I suppose in the end of the day, this is all scare tactics, which would be okay, if companies could actually prove that doing this actually makes a difference. (You know, with REAL figures!! XD)

People pirate, imagine why its called pirating in the first place. Its the sort of thing that has been done in one manner or another throughout all human history. Heck, even Babies steal, but that doesn't mean we sue their asses for all the money they could ever make in their life.

Some people have a compulsion to steal, a selfish desire to have something without paying for it, instead of punishing them to this extreme, maybe society, and those operating inside it, should try to find out why people pirate in the first place, and implement some preventative measures instead.

But unfortunately, the great force that is Capitalism will have none of that nonsense! XD

 

[WhamBamSam]

This article [link]http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5954[/link] says nsmb wii sold 1.3 million units. How exactly did this upload harm sales? The stupid part is that even if they sold 2 copies for every man woman and child on earth they would still claim that an uploaded game had hurt sales.

And for you publicly educated mouth breathers out there: piracy = stealing shit on the high seas, distributing a configuration of bits that someone claims to own = copyright infringement

handy graphic

As far as the developer is concerned, file sharing is a more significant theft than shoplifting, because in the latter case the retailer has already paid them for the game. If you aren't willing to pay for a game but still want to play it you should at least have the common decency to go into your local Best Buy, or Gamestop or whatever and get it the old fashioned way. At the very least the necessary running would constitute some exercise. Intellectual property is in many ways more important than physical possession, and that's only going to become more true as time goes on.

Still, 1.5 million is ridiculous. It's a $50 game, and it'd probably be an upper estimate if I said that Nintendo gets $30 back out of each sale. 1.5 million/30 comes to 50 thousand. It doesn't sound as though the number of downloads was that high, and the assumption that everyone who got the game as a free download would've paid to play it is laughable. I'd argue that the sentence is excessive by a factor of at least 10, especially when you consider the fact that Nintendo isn't exactly a little indie developer struggling to stay afloat. $150 thousand would have easily been debilitating enough.