Pirate told to pay Nintendo $1.5 million

[Shrygue]

via Eurogamer


An Australian man convicted of videogame piracy has been ordered to pay Nintendo AU$1.5 million in compensation.

James Burt was accused of uploading New Super Mario Bros. Wii to the internet. According to Nintendo, "sophisticated technological forensics" were used to track him down as the source. A Federal Court search order was then obtained for Burt's home and the authorities seized some of his property.

"The legal proceeding resulted in a settlement in which the individual will pay to Nintendo the sum of $1.5 Million dollars by way of damages to compensate Nintendo for the loss of sales revenue caused by the individual's actions," the company said in a statement.

That's equivalent to nearly £840,000. Oof.

[BlueCrab]

Serves him right.

[djdynamite123]

Serves him right.

lol, we all do some form of piracy, I certainly would never upload anything like that.

Is this guy convicted rich? otherwise how can he pay that?!

[watupgroupie]

Serves him right.

I'm on the total opposite of this than you. This is crap, they claim to demand that because of that lost revenue... But 1.5 million lost in revenue? I doubt it.

[BlueCrab]

I'm on the total opposite of this than you. This is crap, they claim to demand that because of that lost revenue... But 1.5 million lost in revenue? I doubt it.

In the United States (I have no idea about Australia, so I really can't say about there), the copyright holder is allowed to seek up to $250,000 per instance of copyright infringement. This would mean, to my understanding, that for EACH person that downloaded the version that he uploaded, they'd be able to seek $250,000 in damages, so, that'd be 6 downloads for $1,500,000. I'm sure many more people than 6 probably downloaded the version he uploaded if Nintendo was going after him.

Unfortunately, most software pirates have the mentality that these software-developing companies don't need to make any revenue from what they sell. That is incorrect, illogical, and immoral. I bet that if the tables were turned (the pirate was selling a piece of software for $50 a piece, and someone were to leak it onto the internet for everyone to download for free), the pirates would want to sue the pants off of anyone that were to pirate it. Once again, illogical and immoral reasoning on their parts.

I have worked for a major software company (that many, many people pirate software from) in the past (for two summers), so I have some understanding of how all this works. If these companies lose money on piracy, they don't have the money to pay the staff working on the code, and thus quality suffers or things don't get released. Just because some huge company is behind a piece of software, doesn't mean that there weren't a bunch of individuals at that company pouring their hearts into writing the piece of software. Those people have to get paid too (not to mention the artists, musicians and all). Games these days cost huge sums of money to make even without paying the programmers salaries.

[watupgroupie]

I get what you're saying, just the amount they're aloud to come after you with seems ridiculously high. And I know you've heard this before, but a lot (and I mean quite a few) pirates never would have bought that to begin with. They'll either find a free option or just stop caring about it.

I don't want to start a fight, just saying what I think.

[PSPdemon]

Well then....lets put it in this perspective...

If the game costs $50... and he was charged for $1.3 million... hes only paying for 26,000 copies that were downloaded....

So yea.... I think he got the better part of the deal than most do.