AUS: R4 distributor fined $520k

[wraggster]

Nintendo awarded over half a million Australian dollars for sale of DS piracy device
Nintendo is celebrating another victory in the war against the R4 card with news that an Australian distributor has been heavily fined for selling the device.
ITnews reports that RSJ IT Solutions has been ordered to pay AUS$520,000 to Nintendo as a result of offering the R4 to customers. It has also been instructed to stop selling the R4 through one of its ecommerce portals.
The owners of the company have also been banned from selling the R4 in any Australian territory and must name the suppliers from which it obtained the device by the end of the week.
It’s the third major piracy victory for Nintendo in the space of a month.
In January a UK court sentenced a man found guilty of importing thousands of R4 cards to a year behind bars. Earlier this month an Australian man was fined $1.3m after it was discovered that he uploaded a copy of Super Mario Bros Wii to the internet before the game was officially released.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/37609/AUS-R4-distributor-fined-520k

[Sonny_Jim]

In January a UK court sentenced a man found guilty of importing thousands of R4 cards to a year behind bars.

I think they got that guy on tax evasion, bit like Al Capone. There's no specific law in the UK that makes the sale of the R4 illegal.

The only reason the other two happened is because Aussie politicians are a bunch of idiots.

[ChaoticanarchyX]

Nintendos probably flaunting this around as a "huge" victory only after Spain and a few other contries Slapped nintendo with thier big wooden ruler about the actual devices and the question of thier legality. Its like a damn gun, you can either do good or bad with it, it all depends on the person using it..... I agree with Spains ruling, the flashcarts ADD FUNTIONALITY to the DS that nintendo neglected to incorperate into it. I wouldnt be suprised that if nintendo somehow happend to beat out the rest of the cases of the flashcarts they would make Mp3 capibilities and movie abilities available for the right price. At least nintendos current trend would point to this.......

[Sonny_Jim]

Its like a damn gun, you can either do good or bad

Spoken like a true American.......

[LDAsh]

The point he's making is true. Although I'd assume well over 50%+ of flashcart users own them in order to play downloaded pirated dumps, some folks use them purely for homebrew and multimedia, and few others use them to _actually_ _develop_ with, which, believe it or not, is their original intended use! GBA/NDS is actually a golden age for the amateur developer to make something of themselves on a handheld console platform, an age that may never been seen again, and has been ruined by greedy pirates with false sense of entitlement, common mindset of current generation-gimme.

Without such flashcarts, some developers would never have the chance to exist.

If it were easier for Nintendo to crack down on ROMs and those who upload and host them, that would be the best thing, and then everyone wins except the pirates. Unfortunately that's near impossible, so they have no other choice but to target the hardware.