Man Sentenced To 2.5 Years In Prison, Fined $96,000 For DS Downloads

***wraggster*** · August 3rd, 2009, 15:39

The Kyoto District Court has ruled against 38 year-old company employee Yoshiaki Asagiri, who was put on trial for distributing DS games online without permission and breaking Japanese copyright law.

Asagiri has been sentenced to 2 and half years in prison and fined approximately US$21,000, plus an additional fine of $75,000. Late last year, Asagiri was arrested for creating a website that made over 1,000 DS games available for download.

The judge who sentenced Asaigiri said his crime "tramples" the effort of the copyright holders who have spent tremendous time, effort and money in creating these games.

http://kotaku.com/5328613/man-senten...r-ds-downloads

**GODZEROXX** · August 3rd, 2009, 19:01

Thats not too bad considering 1 illegal song in america can be a few million in fines........

**marzsyndrome** · August 3rd, 2009, 20:32

I wonder if it was a website many of us would be quite familiar with, or just some obscure Japanese-language-only site? So far none of the news reports I've found have given anything away regarding the site, nor have even said if Nintendo got it shut down. Just that he ran one. Hmmm.

**skipboris** · August 3rd, 2009, 22:44

He deserves it.

**Hypershell** · August 4th, 2009, 00:31

It's about damn time somebody targets the ROM distributors instead of hardware developers. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there are legitimate reasons for commercial game compatibility in a flash card (undubs, romhacks, replacing loss/theft, etc.). But people who distribute copies of games to anybody who can click a link don't have a leg to stand on.