R4 Cartridges Declared Illegal in the U.K.

[m@]

fine but surely you didn't know about the seed packets, cause thats one of those useless facts that always surprises people

opps forgot to actually comment on your original post lol

yea i tend to agree that laws are to up hold our social values and morals but then i also think that SOME laws are only there for the purposes of the rich/powerful to keep them rich/powerful and if the individual decides to keep those laws or not is down to that individual

 

[Nimbus]

Hold up, DRM bypassing is illegal in the UK? Since when?

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Oh wait, I get it now. You're saying that since laws are impotent and ineffective we shouldn't bother making them or attempting to enforce them.

I'm sorry, are we speaking 2 different languages here? You seem to have totally missed the point of what I was saying and gone somewhere completely different.

Fine, I'll reiterate. What I'm saying is, this could be considered a good or a bad thing, in terms of what message it sends out, but in practical terms, it's inconsequential, because it will still continue to be made anyway.

And you've managed to move on from that and accuse me of being in favour of rape. I'm tempted to congratulate you on how far you managed to miss the point by.

Oh no no no no no no no! You completely misunderstand me! My apologies.

I'm certainly not accusing you of being in favour of rape. I'm not even accusing you of being in favour of piracy. Just of being overly pessimistic of the value of changes in law.

 

[merman]

I bought my R4 for homebrew. But this sort of ruling was inevitable. Back in the 1980s cheat and copy cartridges were similarly targeted - Nintendo lost the Game Genie case, Sega on the other hand welcomed the device. And yet even then the legal arguments were complicated by the fact that such devices often had more than one purpose.

I expect this ruling will stand up longer than the one allowing jail-breaking of phones in the US...

 

[BobisOnlyBob]

I have a feeling that only the sale of these devices has been restricted, not the items themselves.

 

[Nouw]

Aw heck I live in NZ. You'll never get me!

 

[fletch_talon]

And rightly so.
Pirates, its theft, or as good as. Someone else pointed out the part of the definition of theft where it says " a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent".
Regardless of whether you think someone's ideas (in the form of a game) counts as property, the work put into creating distributing and promoting a game definitely is a service. A service that should be paid for.

Your excuses are incredibly lame as well.
- I never would of bought it anyway.
And yet you still wanted it enough to download it?

-I don't have the money to buy every game.
Then you don't play them. I don't have money for a new car, so I don't get to have one. Why should the gaming (and music, movie and software industries) suffer, simply because they sell products that are digital in nature?

The best part of all this is that given the number of people on this site that think:
-Piracy is justifiable
and an equally large number that think:
-The rich shouldn't be taxed more to help the poor
So chances are there is an overlap in these groups. Quite ironic considering pirates' claims that "I don't have to pay cuz I'm poor" is essentially placing the rich in a situation where they should have to pay (for something the poor get free) in order to insure there are games for the pirates to keep stealing.

 

[Danpascooch]

I think it's stupid to make this cartridge illegal, why is that piece of plastic illegal? It's not physically dangerous, it has perfectly legal uses.

Guns have a perfectly legal use, they are still outlawed in England.
On the flip side, the people who pirate the games get them from the internet. They should make that illegal too.

Are you sarcastically saying that they should make the internet illegal as a joke? Or are you saying they should make posting roms on the internet illegal despite their legal uses?

 

[KEM10]

It was a sarcastic idea to outlaw the internet. However, they are trying to do something to limit pirating and I applaud them for that. It would be more effective if they hit the root of the problem (internet), or in realistic terms everyone's entitlement issues. The problem with fighting entitlement is that then the parties can't use it as a selling point on why they should be voted in.

 

[eljawa]

Rather, you should break all unjust laws

Eh...can't say as that's a great idea.

Bear in mind laws are created to uphold social values, just because you think something's ok doesn't mean society does.

Case in point: Uninsured drivers do so to avoid paying huge insurance fees, people hit by uninsured drivers are shit out of luck. Cannabis use isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, but look at smuggling (I come from a country where it's not native and won't grow in the wild even if introduced, not for more than four months or so anyway) and there are definitely victims of cannabis smugglers!

Your definition of 'unjust' isn't necessarily the same as everyone else's.

One word: Ghandi

 

[KaiRai]

I've never pirated before. But now, upon learning Nintendo hates it, I will churn them out by the million.

God Nintendo, quit throwing down your rattle over everything. Most people knew nothing about this till you went and banned it.

 

[jaeger138]

I'm sure many of us internet denizens have pirated, whtehr you watched a movie or tv show that was posted online, downloaded a game or song or whatever else has been done. This is something that's not going away soon, and any measurements taken will ultimately be circumvented. The question isn't 'What should we be doing to stop the pirates?!', it's 'How can we create a profitable business model from all this?' Eventually, music is going to be free. With sites like spottify released in the last couple of years we've already seen that music can be free, with the rise of flash games and social network gaming on sites like Facebook we've seen that games can not only be successful when free, but profitable!

I'll admit that a AAA title takes more time, money and manpower than Farmville, but it's a start. Recently a company in India announced a laptop that was made at the cost of $35, including all the standard hardware, wi-fi hardware and USB ports (http://wimp.com/indiacomputer/). This is huge for the technology and gaming industry and has many implications. For instance, who will want to spend £40 or $60 on a game when the hardware costs less? This will mean there has to be a lot of thinking done in these industries about how they are going to deal with this. Admittedly, the price of the laptop may rise depending on the software they decide to use for the operating system (here's hoping it's freeware) but this is still big.

Making the R4 illegal won't do a thing, people will still download the ROMs, still buy the cards and still commit these acts of piracy, they always will if they can. Even the gesture of outlawing it and claiming it as a win for Nintendo doesn't mean a thing in the long run. Looked at what happened at the start of the bif piracy panick, Napster got shut down and certain individuals were targeted for lawsuits for downloading illegal content. Did this stop the community at large? Did it make it harder to access and download illegal content? No, it didn't. If Nintendo wants to go on a tirade, wasting resources on bringing people to justice over this then so be it, but it won't stop anything, it will barely make a dent.

The world at large needs to have a big think about how we can give people what they want and still retain their ability to make profit off of it in some way.

 

[DayDark]

Fine, piracy is not in itself theft. It is however stealing the value of the product. By bootlegging software that is still available for sale you're taking away from the developers, the publishers, the distributors and, if you buy in bricks and mortar, the retailer.

So, once you've downloaded this item, you have then deprived these organizations, that employ real flesh and blood humans just like you and me, of their rightfully deserved money.

Now if we're talking about Abandonware than that's a different issue since no one stands to make money on something not commercially available.

Your assuming that pirating is a lost sale. Having been unemployed for six months, and only making around $5000 a year before that, I pirate because I can't afford to play games otherwise. If piracy was somehow completely shut down, I would not start buying anything I would just go outside or something.

I understand that developers should be paid for their work. I do buy games when I have the means. However I usually only have the means around Christmas when its the steam holiday sale.

Also in the rare case I do go buy I game I usually get it used since it's cheaper. Now the developers aren't getting any of that money, so is piracy any worse than that?

But see even this argument is flawed so you do not have the money that is fine and you can only afford the odd game here and there which is also fine. But pirating is still not fine. I went through a long stint in college where I could not afford to buy any games and guess what during that time I just did not play any new games I asked for them from parents and friends for christmas and birthday otherwise I went outside.

If you are not going to pay for the game you have no right to be playing the game. At least if you are playing a used game then someone at some time had payed for that game and at least once they sold it to gamestop or whatever they have relinquished their copy of the game so it is not just making more copies. They have in theory moved the game from their possession to yours. So both of you are not playing the game at the same time. Where as pirating the game is not only not even at least 1 sale for every 2 or 3 people that play the game. But it may be 1 sale to the initial uploader for hundreds or thousands of copies of a game where everyone in the chain still has the copy they got while giving more copies out to others.

I am sorry if you are unemployed or are not making the wages to be able to buy games. But there are tons of legally free games out there I can give you the sites of at least 20 without even having to work to hard or even deals like the humble indie bundle that comes around where you can pay as little or as much as you would like for games. So why do you think it is ok to get a paid version of a game for free?

The assumed potential loss argument is also flawed and can be used to justify anything.

How about regular theft? steal a TV, the TV is only a potential sale, it's possible the owner was never gonna sell that TV, it was only a potential loss, there's no guarantee anyone was gonna buy that, then nobody loses anything!

 

[eljawa]

Rather, you should break all unjust laws

Eh...can't say as that's a great idea.

Bear in mind laws are created to uphold social values, just because you think something's ok doesn't mean society does.

Case in point: Uninsured drivers do so to avoid paying huge insurance fees, people hit by uninsured drivers are shit out of luck. Cannabis use isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, but look at smuggling (I come from a country where it's not native and won't grow in the wild even if introduced, not for more than four months or so anyway) and there are definitely victims of cannabis smugglers!

Your definition of 'unjust' isn't necessarily the same as everyone else's.

One word: Ghandi

my point was, look at people like ghandi. They broke laws to make positive change.
Sorry but no, Gandhi was the figurehead of the independence movement but was by no means alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement

 

[eightbitsprite]

I personally don't know what to think. On one hand, R4s and other flashcarts can be used for non-illegal purposes, like homebrew games. On the other, I've never seen any of the people who have them ever use them for that purpose, instead just pirating games.

I've also noticed that the piracy arguments are popping up again. Guess everybody forgot about EC's piracy episode.

@Daydark
I notice you didn't answer the question, "So why do you think it is ok to get a paid version of a game for free?". I'm interested in hearing your answer.

 

[CrystalShadow]

This ruling seems a little bit weird to me. Somebody tell me if I'm misinterpreting it, but the implication seems to be that if you use a product in a way that the manufacturer disagrees with, then you're breaking the law. Because the R4 isn't inherently a piracy devise, right, it's just that it can be used for piracy?

Consider it part of the DMCA (Which england implements to some extent).
Which states that it is illegal to circumvent any technology designed to prevent unauthorised copying of copyrighted material.

It doesn't matter that it's not being used for such, the fact that an R4 needs to break such a protection mechanism to even be able to work, means it can be ruled to be an illegal device, because it circumvents a technological copyright protection mechanism.

Just the same as how Linux can't play DVD's without breaking any laws, because De-CSS circumvents copyright protection on DVD's, and is thus illegal by the terms of the DMCA.

 

[Sarcastic_Applause]

Well, if it makes Nintendo think they're going to make more money out of this, then good for them. Ignorance is bliss.

seeing as though their profits slumped 66%, they're going to need a LOOOT of ignorance. It seems really counter-productive to me in a way; i can understand them attempting to prevent video game piracy, but if anything that would stop people buying a DS in the first place and getting the chance to make their own games for use on the DS (a-la homebrew) which other major consoles are beginning to embrace in their motion controls like with The Kinect