Man Takes On Nintendo in Piracy Lawsuit

[eddieroolz]

To be frankly honest though, there was a time when a lot of my friends (>70%) had a NDS Lite and brought it to school regularly. None of them actually bought a game, but instead they bought a R4 card and then simply downloaded ripped ROMs.

For once, I actually agree with claims by Nintendo.

 

[jalek]

What's different about the thumb drive Nintendo sells that makes it not usable for the exact same thing? Brand labels and extra cost aren't magic barriers.

 

[_Cosmin_]

[citation][nom]kilo_17[/nom]He probably made a mistake assuming that.[/citation]

So if you sell a knife - you are responsible for what your customer does with it ?It can be use for making food or for killing someone... why should this be the vendor responsibility ???
If you break a window with an hammer... do you expect manufacturer to pay for that because they sell it to you?

 

[virtualban]

Spanish courts previously ruled that non-commercial file sharing is legal

[citation][nom]Preparing luggage, getting ticket, moving to Spain...[/nom] [/citation]

 

[fir_ser]

[citation][nom]_Cosmin_[/nom]So if you sell a knife - you are responsible for what your customer does with it ?It can be use for making food or for killing someone... why should this be the vendor responsibility ???If you break a window with an hammer... do you expect manufacturer to pay for that because they sell it to you?[/citation]
Good point.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]fir_ser[/nom]Good point.[/citation]
Not only. A knife can be used for many useful purposes. But a gun, a gun is to kill. Be that protect kill or attack kill, still a kill. Guns are legal.
Torrents can be used to distribute linux distros, patches for wow and many other goodies that are supposed to be free. Speed and flexibility being a good advantage. I even download directx, catalyst or physx updates from torrents because they go faster than the the amd, nvidia or microsoft servers.

 

[Steveymoo]

A suitable analogy of this would be:

Gun shop sells gun to people.
People may, or may not, use the gun to commit crime.

You could look at this in one of two ways.

a.) Go after the person that may or may not be committing a crime with the gun.
or
b.) Go after the shop that sells the guns, therefore preventing any chance of crime in the first place.

Option a is a long and complicated process... whereas option b is a lazy, faster, and ultimately cheaper process. Like going after drug dealers, or pimps. However, as far as I know, selling memory cards is not as big a crime as selling drugs, or pimpin' hoes out.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that option b, is always a more effective way of preventing crime, cut the source/enabler off.

 

[brianfulcher15]

its easier to catch the salesman than the users... guess tahts why they go after them.

 

[twile]

It's easier to go after the salesman than the users, but you can't punish the salesman for selling something legal with legitimate uses. You just can't. That's insane.

Now if that product was established as illegal, then that would be a different issue. But if it were illegal, this wouldn't be a case of Nintendo suing him for disclosing trade secrets, it would be some portion of the Spanish government charging him with willfully selling illegal merchandise. It seems to me that what Nintendo is trying to do here is get it ruled that the device is illegal, using this guy as the path to that ruling.

Now, I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US if you do something and it's later classified as a criminal act, you can't be charged for it. I hope they have something like that in place too, because it makes plenty of sense. If that's the case, then even if it is ruled that the cards are illegal, this guy is still off the hook unless he continues to sell them after that ruling. If I were a judge, I would throw this case out on the grounds that it's impossible for the defendant to be found guilty of a crime.

Seriously, everyone take a step back and consider. They want to lock somebody up for 23 years and fine him up to $1.24 million--effectively destroy his life. Who did he kill? What government agency did he betray? How many people did he sell into slavery? It's none of the above. He's a store owner who sold a product. At best he was offering a desired product and operating within the legal limits of the law. At worst he was aware that the product could be misused and simply didn't care, which is also not a crime. No matter how you slice it, there's nothing illegal this guy is doing, and certainly nothing to warrant taking 23 years of his life.

 

[hoofhearted]

I understand all the ideallogoy being argued in this thread, and agree with that Nintendo should not be able to shutdown a hardware device. But...

I could not find it on Amazon or Froogle, yet I did come across some shoddy hits on Google (tried to force popups and fake viruses into my browser), so I must conclude that it is probably illegal.

I think Nintendo is stupid in these cases though, I mean they are just educating more people about these devices. I, myself, never heard of an "M3 DS Real" until I read this article. Now I want one. This would be great. My kids could watch movies individually and not fight over the car DVD player.

I guess the real legality would be if these cards involve PKI and have a copy of Nintendos key on them in order to be able to run "unauthroized". Then this could be considered Nintendo's IP

To all these folk using analogies to hammers and knives, maybe change it to lockpicks (in case yu lock your keys in your car) or some device that can electronically detect a safe combination (in case you forget your safe combination).

 

[virtualban]

@Twile
Thumbs up!

 

[techguy911]

Just because something can be used for something else does not mean nintendo can do this what about businesses selling blank cd's and dvd's?.
What about places selling cold medication and fertilizer they can be used to make illegal things, those cards have other uses other than jailbreaking the DS.

 

[Steveymoo]

Sure sure, Nintendo would have to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this guy was selling these cards, as a way of enabling piracy.

This is not an easy thing to do.

Even though, and you can deny this all you want, in all likeliness, that was probably exactly the reason why he was selling them. Piracy is still a crime, enabling piracy is just as bad (esp if you know what the device you are selling is most likely to be used for.)

On the other hand, this is yet another case of unnecessary heavy handedness, on behalf of a massive corporation, using the small-timer as an example to anyone else that might have the same idea.

$1.24m, and 23 years in jail, is utterly disproportionate, and will probably never happen (to that extent.)

 

[Guest]

Yeah and I could use torrent sites for a legitimate purpose too. Doesn't stop the courts from closing them down either...

 

[Burodsx]

I hope his counter-suit gives Nintendo a wake-up call.

 

[happyballz]

So let me see, we should sue gun makers because gun can be used in a murder, robbery etc?
Seriously what a dumb excuse, how can this even be allowed to be a lawsuit? I can say this "could be used used for X" argument just about any object so what it gives a reason to sue anyone now? BS
It is sole responsibility of the USER of the object to stay within any applicable and ineffect laws. How the object is used is not sellers responsibility unless someone like nintendo lobbied and passed a crazy law that says otherwise.

 

[rohitbaran]

I just hope Nintendo gets nice billion dollar fine for this one. These corporations are trying to control how people use their hardware. This is too much.

 

[zkevwlu]

I think you're all missing the point of the law suit. Personally I don't think Nintendo actually believe they stand a chance in hell of getting what they are asking for (although M3/R4 being illegal to import and export in the UK kind of counters my point). What Nintendo hopes to accomplish with such a ridiculous lawsuit is to deter other merchants from selling them. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, the interim legal costs, the hassle, not to mention the emotional stress of having that suit hanging over your head is enough reasons for most vendors to avoid grey market products like the M3. That's Nintendo's ultimate goal, to scare enough people to stop selling them in order to reduce piracy. What they didn't expect was for people like Fernandez to fight back...

 

[thebigt42]

Its like suing Ford because I used the car to rob a bank or murder someone.

 

[Steveymoo]

No, certain guns shouldn't be sold in the first place anyway... I don't see any other use for handguns, other than shooting other people. In defence, or anger. Much like buying a memory card, with a hack for breaking copyright laws (please don't speel some BS about using it only as a memory card,) is enabling you to plagiarise other people's work.

Granted, the consequences are massively different. Taking someone's life is infinitely worse than stealing someone's work. So maybe this analogy isn't perfect, but the moral principles are the same.

Take, for example, a drug dealer. A drug dealer doesn't necessarily use any of his/her own drugs, Likewise, when the dealer sells those drugs to a client, he isn't necessarily forcing the client to take the drugs, also, the client isn't necessarily buying the drugs to ingest, maybe the client just wants to use them for scientific purposes...

So why then, are there laws to stop the dealer, and the client, from doing trade? Because they are dealing with a substance, that's most likely function is to consume, which is illegal.
When a retailer sells an item, that's main function is to break copyright laws (again, don't tell me it's primary function is to store personal files, because that's BS,) Why is this any different, morally?

Again, the consequences of these examples are massively different, but if you want to live in a morally balanced country, you can't be such a massive hypocrite. Stealing is morally wrong, enabling someone to steal, and then claiming ignorance, is just plain stupid.