RSSNintendo looks to address game piracy issues worldwide
By Ed Oswald | Published February 14, 2008, 1:19 PM
Nintendo of America has asked the office of the US Trade Representative to begin pressuring foreign governments to crack down on counterfeit material.
Using an process called a "Special 301," Nintendo filed its complaint with the USTR. Through that method, the agency opens up the process to the public for comment in order to pinpoint areas of concern.
Nintendo says a majority of the piracy and counterfeiting seems to be localized in China. Recently, however, new areas of concern have popped up. Counterfeiters have appeared in Korea, for example, and both Brazil and Mexico are "saturated" with pirated material.
Since Hong Kong and Paraguay are two major shipping distribution points, they are major targets for counterfeits. Nintendo estimates it has lost as much at $975 million in sales due to illicit material there.
"Nintendo will continue to work with governments around the world to aggressively curtail this illegal activity," the company's anti-piracy chief Jodi Daugherty said in a statement.
In China, Nintendo has asked for the prosecution of those already caught pirating their products. It is also asking the US to ratify its trade agreement with Korea to help deal with piracy issues there.
In Latin and South America, the region which the company called a "haven for piracy," Nintendo asked for both changes to laws, and the ways in which they are enforced.
Well, I must agree piracy is bad but at the same as I have stated many times and many come to disagree with me at the same time but, I thank Piracy in a way simply because it has lead me to buy the original material afterwards. Whenever I am interested in a program or game, I download a cracked version first, try it out with its full potentials (I dislike demos).If I see that it's worthy enough for me to throw in my dollars at the price point that is being asked for, then I'm more than happy to do it for the following reasons.
A) The need of a conscious mind that I OWN A LEGIT COPY of whatever I buy.
B) Cracked version sometimes tend to be crappy and buggy.
C) Play fair, many people are involved in the development of software, so do the right thing =)
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haaa haaaa haaaa ^^
Brazil ? significant changes to the law ?
(there already are laws against piracy, that state sth like the following: "You can´t sell pirated stuff"... whats to change here ?)
Ok, perhaps one could try to change the enforcement of those laws... but this is one of the laws that don´t really 'stick'(one would call it that way here in Brazil)(it means that there is the law, nobody really follows it and/so the authorities in charge don't make much effort...)
Also, where do you think the ilegal games(since we are speaking of nintendo) come from ? if one was to wait for the release of the game in Brazil it could take a while and not many games get pt_br translation anyways...
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Nintendo can't keep the shelves full of Wii - so that loss number must just be either games or games+DS sales, since they wouldn't be able to provide a Wii for the country any way...
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Piracy will always be around. Government took out big piracy group all the time, but as soon as they took one out, 5 new one are created.
People who won't buy now will never buy even when there is no piracy.
My advise is just make good hardware and software that people want to buy. Just look at how successful is the WII and SSBB, Mario Galaxy, etc. Just continue this path, and I guarantee you, Nintendo will make a lot of money.
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Jeez, I think this piece was edited by a pirate. It sure reads like a poor copy of Betanews.
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