Pirate told to pay Nintendo $1.5 million News

LOL

£10 per week for 84,000 weeks? It's worth him asking.

Serves him right.

The only pirates I respect had big old beards and wooden legs.

That's an incredible fine for one man. Unless they continue this method en mass I fail to see a law case against a single induvidual putting off the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pirates out there!

Aussie games are nearly that much bought new anyway aren't they? Wouldn't be too much of a sting for him! ;)

edit: typo

For those interested:

The guy bought the game legit, early, from a retailer in Australia. He then posted on the GBATemp.net forums that he had got the game early. Nobody believed him, so he uploaded a picture of his receipt, complete with all the store details. Oh, yeah, and he uploaded the game to some public website, as well.

Needless to say, Nintendo followed up on it, gave the retailer a slap on the wrists, and proceeded legal dealings with this guy.

Here's the post where he uploaded pics of the receipt.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?s=23906e8ad...

Stupid kid.

Surely of he has $1.5 mill to pay Nintendo then he can afford to buy a game!

Nice. Have some.

"sophisticated technological forensics"

lol love the phrasing on that

Haha. Love the anti-piracy site within the link above. Mainly because of the rather disgruntled looking Mario in the banner! :D

Jeez, you guys. He's being asked to pay an arbitrary sum of money even if the actual damage made to the company was never proven. NSMB Wii sold over ten million copies so at 50 bucks a piece, this kind of sentence suggests another 30,000 people would have bought it if this guy hadn't uploaded the game. Which is unproven and pretty much unprovable. Until there is a serious study of how piracy actually affects game sales these kinds of sentences are little more than bullying and extortion.

If he was the first person to upload the game to the net, there would probably be a lot more than 30,000 people downloading it. Besides, there is plenty of proof found in the huge numbers of traffic that these torrents get, surely? Or do people just download the game and delete it straight away? I think not.

Oh dear, if only this online safety cartoon existed for him, maybe he wouldn't owe 1.5 million now.

Yeah i agree Meho.
Where do they pull these figures from?

It's pure speculation they have no actual proof they lost 30K+ sales.

Which is unproven and pretty much unprovable.
I don't think it's unprovable, and I believe he's actually lucky that they considered 30K iliegal downloads, I believe it could/should have been considered a lot more.

You can't hit pirates too hard. Bring it on.

Have to disagree regardless of the reason piracy is piracy theft of anothers property doesn't matter how much the fine or who it's directed at they get what they deserve.

If you got it early, why upload it for everyone else? Shirley it's much more fun to gloat and mock them?

If federal court is like UK high court then the standard of proof is not ' beyond all reasonable doubt '. It serves the dunce right.
And please dont call me shirley.

@ MasterNameless: But you have to prove that all the people who downloaded it would have bought it otherwise. I suspect most of them just wouldn't have bothered. The fine amount is completely arbitrary.

It's a ridiculous fine, because he can't pay it anyway. They might as well say he owes Nintendo $674 trillion for all the difference it makes.

this kind of sentence suggests another 30,000 people would have bought it if this guy hadn't uploaded the game. Which is unproven and pretty much unprovable

Which is why it's fair to let the infringer carry that burden of proof, not the infringed party. Basic rule in IP worldwide, or you could never ever claim any damages whatsoever from patent, trademark or other IP infringements.

They have to try and send out a message, lets be honest piracy is having a major issue on the PC platform. The wii is getting hit very hard (previous figures were suggesting games like SMB had been pirated higher than the hundreds of thousands i think).. if they dont attempt to stop it then it will just continue.

The kid got it coming, its just a shame that he wont be able to pay and so probably wont have any effect.

@PlugMonkey

That's a very good point, yeah. It is probably why they settled on a figure of 30k too, as I imagine the figures were probably an awful lot higher than that!

And yes, there wouldn't much point fining him more than that anyway, as it's difficult to see how the hell he could pay back such a huge amount of money.

Idk how it works in Au, but here if you can't afford to pay a fine the court issues a order to the company you work for and a cut from your wage is directed to pay the fine, each month, for years.

Love all the idiots on here defending Nintendo fining someone £840,000 for file-sharing a game.

I love the "used sophisticated forensics"....er you mean the guy shopped himself online by bragging about uploading and then posting details of where he bought the game, what area he lived in and pretty much did all the legwork for Nintendo.

I think the fine was a bit much though, I guess he's going to need to appeal just like every games dev does when a small outfit that they've ripped off tries to sue them.

^ that's what I say puke smells beter than poo, but I don't like either, soz.

I don't see people defending Nintendo,they just put the evidence before a court, evidence provided by the ' Accused '.

Whatever you think about piracy, a fine of $1.5 million is arbitrary and unreasonable. Like a previous poster has already stated, it may as well be trillions of dollars for all the years it will take to pay it off.

Yes, the guy was wrong and should not have uploaded the game, but what in theory could be a single mistake is going to ruin his entire life. You could commit benefit/tax fraud and get less of a punishment (short custodial, perhaps, but no/limited fine).

Piracy needs to be punished, but the punishments need to be sensible, measured and regulated.

"The only pirates I respect had big old beards and wooden legs. "

Yes because pillaging, raping and murdering is so much morally superior than uploading a piece of software to the internet.

Meho's right, marking down a reasonable argument is what I'd expect of Daily Mail readers, not EG.
While it's fair to get him to pay them or it, $1.5 million is a number pulled right out of their arses. 60% is more realistic (The percentage of people who paid more than $1 for World of Goo on the 'pay what you want to' offer), anyone unwilling to pay a realistic price would be unlikely to buy the game. Next we assume that 20% (The sort of numbers publishers claim when having a go at retailers for "lost revenue") are going to buy it preowned. So knock that off.
This leaves us with $633600 (AU$722304) as a realistic estimate of what it cost nintendo. Adding a million on top of that is simply ridiculous, their legal costs can't have been anywhere near that much, and murderers have been ordered to pay less than $200,000 in damages - so even with boh those factors it shouldn't break the million mark...

And as others have said, we need a proper study into this. I'd assume the same people at Cambridge who determined the optimum maximum length for copyright is 14 years would be all over this one.

"Ha ha! Splendid. I hope the little twat suffers horribly. "

He who is without sin, cast the first stone. I highly doubt that you will find many people on this planet (you included) that have never used a form of piracy in any way. Should I be screaming for your blood?

I dont argue that we cannot prove the sales lost, as people would not buy it for any price but would download anything free. BUT piracy DO need to be tackled, sure on several approaches going on and not just the criminal proceedings.

I dont believe just reducing prices would solve the world problem of piracy nor is pursuiting just one man for what is a global problem.

WHAT we can do is individually takes our responsibility and decide how we would act, hypocritical but I limit myself to DS piracy and only for certain titles that I would not bought!

All else is bought for inc Spirit Track, and 40 other DS titles.

Shifting responsibility wont do, blaming publishers or others as they are an easy tagets.

@NGS

It won't ruin his life. If he doesn't have the cash (and who would) he goes bankrupt and starts again owing nothing but with a poor credit rating.

If you can't do the time (fine) don't do the crime (or civil offence)

""The only pirates I respect had big old beards and wooden legs. "

Yes because pillaging, raping and murdering is so much morally superior than uploading a piece of software to the internet."

Bloody hell, I think that was meant to be a joke, lighten the hell up. Besides, you're describing actual pirates. DoctorZoidberg was describing Pirates of the Caribbean/Monkey Island-type pirates. Believe it or not, there is quite a substantial difference - if you want to get all serious.

Eldritch "You can't hit pirates too hard. Bring it on."

Fuck yeah, lets hunt down and murder GamesConnoisseur and his entire extended family right now.

"I limit myself to DS piracy and only for certain titles that I would not bought!"

@superted1974

Actually, no. That's not how it works.

The government will ensure that a fixed sum (in %, I believe) will be removed from every pay packet he ever receives, until (and IF ever) the fine is cleared.

Also, your last comment defines exactly WHY this issue needs to be discussed, formally. There is no set 'time' or punishment for commiting piracy. Fines have ranged from $300 to $30m, with no real basis for comparison.

What often happens is that the licensees will charge a fairly small fee for piracy offences ($000's), but if the accused refuses they are taken to court and fined an astonomical amount. Here's an example case: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,5272... - they offered to settle for $3-5000, but when she refused it went to court and she now owes $1.9 million.

Also - in spite of my call for rationality - I do think he's an absolute idiot. For shopping himself (Sorry, allowing "sophisticated electronic forensics" experts to see a "digital optical capture" he "electronically transmitted" to a "complex database of text uploads"...)

It seems to me that this guy was a one-off offender, egged on by his peers.

Would be better to target the various scenes where they do it all day long

Jesus christ. At the end of the day all he did was made some software available

You get less fines and punishments for causing accidents while drink driving or assaulting someone...

It's all a bit backwards.

Jesus christ. At the end of the day all he did was made some software available

I've seen lesser fines for people causing accidents while drink driving or assaulting someone...

It's all a bit backwards.

Definitely. The sum is ridiculous, and no private person with no intention to gain profit from the infringement should be fined to such a degree. In my post above, I was defending the general mechanics of the burden of proof in IP and the "virtual" damages, not the specifics of this case.

While I'm not massively sympathetic the fine does seem arbitrarily large.

Genuine study is needed into the effects of piracy on sales. Take the anti-piracy bill that the UK is seeing forced through, that would see pirates potentially fined £50,000 per file shared, uploaded or downloaded. You could walk into HMV and steal a cd album (ten tracks) and get a fine a couple of hundred quid, or you could download the album and end up with a fine of half a million, it's madness.

what happens if he declares himself bankrupt?! wouldn't that solve the problem

You can get drunk, get in a car and speed down the road at 90 mph and get a lot less than that.

At least they don't cause large corporations to lose some money though eh? Worst they might do is kill someone, which is cheap.

But yeah, all the self righteous people in the thread (grawr, I'm cool because I hate piracy) are right, THIS guy is the problem.

If the sum is as accurate as possible a reflection of lost earnings, then it is not as ridiculous as people are bleating.
Irrelevant whether it's "first offence, just one bloke, a silly mistake", etc.

The article says 'The legal proceeding resulted in a settlement', this seems to imply that the case was settled out of court and never went to court and the pirate was never actually prosecuted.
What probably happened is that Nintendo actually threatened to sue the pirate for a lot more than $1.5 million and it looks like the pirate decided to accept liability at a lesser amount. I wonder what would have happened if the case had gone ahead, I suspect the fine (if successfully prosecuted) would have been a lot less.

Whilst I have no sympathy for the pirate, the fine is too high.
And this kind of tactic can prove very risky for corporations. If they use it too often it can backfire like it did when the American record companies they tried taking individuals to court for piracy.

@Golgo

It is ridiculous. I consider assaulting someone or getting in a car drunk and putting the lives of others in danger infinity worse than file sharing... Yet the punishment for file sharing is far worse.

The sum may be a bit much but I have no doubt that uploading a game (especially such a huge title) a week before it was released may easily be the cause for 30k less sales. However, that's not really the point.

At least this is a clear-cut case. It's not a company suing someone because they think someone downloaded something using a bittorrent client. It's not some other case where someone chipped his console and also burned a few discs for his friend. He may not be a "big time pirate" but the stupidity of boasting on an internet forum and uploading a game not yet released is obviously something he should not have done. Nintendo's claim is ten times more valid than so many other lawsuits from companies that dragged people to court with nothing but a few torrent logs to get people to settle out of court.

Relax. The guy is a sheer incompetent idiot and moron for uploading it but he wont be paying that much. Nintendo will probably bring it down to around $50,000-$100,000 quietly when the press dies down since they want to make a statement of "Dont pirate our product or face the consequences" in the press but don't want the bad publicity of ruining a persons life over an idiotic mistake since the RIAA and MPAA have had a really rough ride in the press over it once its dragged out. See RIAA Vs Rassett for example.

As for a study. It would be great but the dickheads running ELSPA would freak if there ever was one as it would show that the rate of piracy is either very low or it will show how game pricing effects low income families who turn to pirated software. I have recently seen market stalls offering R4 cards with DS games pre-loaded on them and most families would rather pick one up for the same price as one or two DS games, particularly as the downturn is really going to effect the working class and money for entertainment goods will be quite tight. This of course ruining the entire "OMG PIRATES ARE FUNDING PEDOS AND TERRORISTS AND ONLY CRIMINALS BUY PIRATED GAMES BECAUSE THEY WANT TO PIRATE" moral panic ELSPA tries to induce every time this comes about to try dodge the question of "Are games too expensive?"