Raid on local fair results in arrest of five games pirates

[wraggster]

Five people have been arrested at a computer fair in Wolverhampton for selling pirated games, modified chips and 'chipped' consoles, following a raid by 30 local Police and Trading Standards officers.

The raid took place on the evening of Tuesday 11th April, following successful test purchases by an ELSPA investigator on behalf of Wolverhampton City Council Trading Standards.

The two stalls targeted were offering games and digital media made to order, as well as a chipping service for Xbox and Playstation 2 consoles. Officials found approximately 50 modified chips and wiring diagrams behind one of the stalls. They also uncovered 'downgrader' software for Sony's PSP console and a large number of pirated PSP titles.

The five people arrested were held over night in jail and two of the suspects' homes were searched. Officials discovered two fully operational piracy 'factories' - inside one home and in the garage of the other house - containing four computers, nine burning towers and numerous computer and video game master copies.

ELSPA works closely with local Police and Trading Standards across the country, said Michael Rawlinson, deputy director general of ELSPA. We were pleased to assist the Wolverhampton authorities in this case and would like to thank all involved for their hard work in uncovering these counterfeiting operations.

A financial investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act is underway. This can lead to serious financial loss for those criminals involved.

That was a press release from elspa

[grin.ch]

This reminds me of when I was in Korea. I would go down to the video game store in the mall and buy pirated games for 7 bucks. (for PSX and at this time, the games were new releases) I had a mod chip put in my PSX and remember buying FFVII for 20 bucks. The guy that pwned the store would go to Japan every weekend to buy the pirated games and resell them. It was so funny seeing the "Please prevent piracy" screen while the game was loading. And over there, you can get so many games you could never get in the united states. I remember a game called "Mad Panic Coaster" where you were in a roller coaster car and you had to make it jump over holes in the tracks and over zombies and stuff. Asia has it all when it comes to video games. Man, I wish I lived there.

[Apoklepz]

Very smart of them to put up sales in a computer fair...Give out flyers with a phone number that won't trace the cops directly to you next time.....A friend of mine did the Piracy thing with DVD's three years for a while, but things started to get ugly so he backed out just in time. He doesn't support piracy anymore, but he likes to say if you're gonna sell it, approach the customer in the least expected place, supermarket, barber shop, gas station, etc. and hand them a card with an untraceable number, like a public phone etc.

I bet the cops are having loads of fun with their findings too.... *******s.

[PoorWhiteTrash]

That is what happens when you are stupid enough to get caught.

[nal]

my question is, is a psp downgrader and mod chips unlawfull? you do on your system and should be able to do what ever the hell you want with it...am i right on this?

[chronoswing]

Meh they probably won't be able to do anything about the mod chips but they can prosicute them for selling illegal copie's of games.

[felonyr301]

dont do the CRIME if you cant do the TIME yEAa

[moogster66]

They might as well have flown the skull and crossbones over the stall! AAARRRGGGHHH!

[KriMe]

What im wondering is why it took 30 cops to take down 5 guys.. It probablly cost the american tax payers several thousand dollars plus a coupple hundred man hours not to mention now they have to go to trial.

Personally I think its a waste of time and money. Those 30 cops could have been out stopping real criminals that do physical harm and not monotary harm to the general public. I just dont undersand it. I bet after these guys are out of jail and have paid off their fines they will go back to doing it again.

I myself dont understand the point, its a waste of time, money and resourses. The honest people will stay honest and the dis-honest ones wont, its something that will never change.

[Forever~Zero]

5 people? That's really nothing compared to Malaysia. Every PS2 and Xbox here have mod chips in it and they are selling it in the public. The police can even walk past a few shops selling them. Same goes with computer games.

[b8a]

What im wondering is why it took 30 cops to take down 5 guys.. It probablly cost the <b>american</b> tax payers several thousand dollars plus a coupple hundred man hours not to mention now they have to go to trial.

Personally I think its a waste of time and money. Those 30 cops could have been out stopping real criminals that do physical harm and not monotary harm to the general public. I just dont undersand it. I bet after these guys are out of jail and have paid off their fines they will go back to doing it again.

I myself dont understand the point, its a waste of time, money and resourses. The honest people will stay honest and the dis-honest ones wont, its something that will never change.

The lack of intelligence that you pro-piracy, wannabe thugs continually exhibit never fails to amaze me.

If American tax payers truly did directly fund those officer's wages, then the American public should indeed be very outraged!!! (sarcasm)

There's obviously a lot of things you don't understand, my friend (geography, spelling, economics, social politics, justice). Maybe you're just very young? Whatever your excuse, I can guarantee you that selling pirated games is a very real crime, and if anything, the actions in this article indicate an underwhelming response to the problem, not an overwhelming one.

[RedKing14CA]

WHat they are doing is shining negative light on perfectly legal things like: CD burners, game backups, mod chips, and downgrade software. The ONLY thing they did that was illegal was sell copies of downloaded/ copied games. The american media has always done this, it is called twisting the truth, telling people what you want them to hear, censorship.

[robotdevil]

The ONLY thing they did that was illegal was sell copies of downloaded/ copied games.

That's not entirely true, the problem comes in that Americans don't OWN anything, we lease it. Read the EULA with your US PSP, XBOX or PS2, you'll see that you don't OWN the hardware, you simply lease it for a one-time fee. That being said, it actually states in the EULA (at least it did in my PS2) that any modification to the hardware is in direct violation of the EULA and may contian civil and criminal penalties. So yes, mod chips and downgrade software is illegal. And selling a modified product also implies the manufacturers concent to do so, which is where most of your criminal charges come from. Technically speaking, all homebrew is illegal, but that's not surprising. If you dig long enough, you'll find that anything you do in the US is illegal at some point.

Do I agree with piracy? No. Not by a long shot. People work long and hard on those games, and it's their only source of income. Let's put it this way, if you took off work for 1 year (avg development time for a PS2 game now) and created a game using all the time you had (putting in 50-60 hour weeks) would you then release that game to the general public free of charge? Unless you're one of the welthiest people in the world, probably not. Nor would most people expect you to. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see homebrew stop and everyone go commercial. I think homebrew is great, and I hope that the good coders get picked up by development studios and work on commercial projects there (but still bring us homebrew on the side ;) ).

I think people should be allowed to modify their systems to better suit their need, and they should be allowed to make backup copies of the games they've leased (yes I said it again). But I don't think people should be selling those backup copies. If you like a game you should buy it (or at least donate to the author), if you can't afford it buy it used, or borrow it from a (rich?) friend. I would say that a good 90% of the games I have (mostly PC) are on CD-R, I've owned the originals at some point in the past, but should I have to buy the game 5 times just because I'm too lazy to put it in the CD/DVD case?

(probably, but I'm not on trial here)

[KriMe]

The lack of intelligence that you pro-piracy, wannabe thugs continually exhibit never fails to amaze me.

If American tax payers truly did directly fund those officer's wages, then the American public should indeed be very outraged!!! (sarcasm)

There's obviously a lot of things you don't understand, my friend (geography, spelling, economics, social politics, justice). Maybe you're just very young? Whatever your excuse, I can guarantee you that selling pirated games is a very real crime, and if anything, the actions in this article indicate an underwhelming response to the problem, not an overwhelming one.

Interesting, Im a pro-piracy thug... I never said selling pirated games wasn't a crime. I do not agree with it or the negative reprocussions it has on our economy.

That being said there is so much of it going on from the 12 year old that lives next door downloading the newest Britney Spears track to the guys who release games, movies and music before they accually come out to the market. The US government needs to accually get people in government and police enforcement that accually understand what it is that these people do and how they do it. I think it was a waste for 30 cops to take these 5 guys out. it should have taken a total of maybe 5-7 cops to arresst them and 2-3 to do the accuall investigation.

Its just like the "war on drugs" the US spends billions of dollars year on it, shows one big bust every now and then to show their doing a good job when accually it is a waste of money. Drugs are more pure, easier to get ahold of, and cheaper now than they were 20 years ago just like the piracy-multimedia. (No i do not do any drugs at all, Check out "Penn & Teller: Bullshit" on showtime for the war on drugs info.)

With the advent of the internet and faster computers it has made piracy alot easier for not only the computer savy but anyone with a computer and an internet connection. It is a huge problem but instead of beat cops lets get some people into power that accually know what is going on, how these pirates work and how they go about doing what they do.

Allz-right im out gotta go shine the 9 in. spinners on my cpu fan and buff out the chrome on my custom PC case, kuz im a thug like dat.

[b8a]

robotdevil:
You shouldn't necessarily believe something just because it sounds and looks official. Companies have the right to say that you don't own your hardware, but there's no legal merrit behind that declaration. You often have to buy a system (and yes, when you plunk down money for a system, you very rarely do so with the understanding that it isn't your property) and open it up (meaning that you can no longer return it for a refund) before you're ever presented with documentation claiming that you don't own the hardware, so any company that tried to enforce that declaration would quickly loose in court. In fact, there was a posting on these boards a little while back about that very thing happening in Australia. Sony (or some other console manufacturer) tried to sue mod chip manufacturers, but ultimately lost on the grounds that the machine was the private property of the owners, and as such, they were free to do whatever they'd like with their property.

It's just like Nintendo's well-known proclimation that backup copies are illegal. We all know that backup copies ARE legal (in many cases). There's no question about that. If there was, downloading games off the internet wouldn't be the big problem that it is. But Nintendo's still free to claim that they aren't legal, and you're free to believe them or not. Companies make these declarations not because they have any legal backing or merrit, but because they know that it WILL stop SOME people from engaging in activities that are counter to their own interests.

Think about it: If, in America, you signed a document that ceeded your freedom to someone else, making you their slave and property, would that be a legally binding document? Nope. Same thing.


KriMe:
I'm not going to attempt to go into who you are in real life, but I will appologize if I incorrectly made the assumption that you're one of the wannabe thugs that hang out around here, cheering on piracy. But when you choose a handle like KriMe, can you really blame me?


Interesting, Im a pro-piracy thug... I never said selling pirated games wasn't a crime. I do not agree with it or the negative reprocussions it has on our economy. Yes, you did say that selling pirated games wasn't a crime. You very specifically said:
Those 30 cops could have been out stopping <b>real</b> criminals If you're anti-piracy, then you need to be very specific about your stance on the issue. Either it's a crime or not, and when you say that the people perpitrating it aren't <i>real</i> criminals, you're propogating the notion that piracy is a harmless, victimless crime.

Furthermore, this is the sort of issue that lawmakers can do very little about precisely because of such permissive attitudes such as you have displayed. The sum of your two postings comes down to, "everybody's doing it, so what's the point in fighting it?" If you really understand the damage that piracy does to the economy and society, then you need to take a more aggressive stand against it, and that means making sure that everyone knows what your stance is. 12-year-olds are very impressionable, so if that 12-year-old living next door is downloading BS for free, give them shite about it every time you see them. Gently harrass them, and it won't take them long to get the picture that what they're doing is wrong and unacceptable.

See, the big problem with your postings is that crime always happens. Always has, and always will. You got that point correct. Now, the real issue is, just because it's going to happen anyway, does that mean we should just sit back and do nothing about it? No, for goodness sakes, we should not. Neither as a society, nor as individuals. And it really is more of an issue of what we do as individuals. Governments can do so little about this problem precisely because so many of the tools of the trade are perfectly legal on a small scale. 100% crack down on piracy is entirely possible, but it would mean discarding perfectly reasonable rights. Private citizens have more power to actually combat this by refusing to support it in any way, shape, or form. Don't support it yourself, and make it clear that you don't support those who do either. If you know people who are supporting these activities, make it perfectly clear to them that they are criminals and that you don't want to have anything to do with someone who's going to blatantly violate other people's rights.

If no one supports it, it will go away. That's the only reasonable answer to the problem.

By the way, I work in an industry greatly affected by piracy, and I can't even afford paid television, so I can't check out that program that you mentioned. Not everyone on the internet is American, can afford luxuries like paid TV, or has a high speed connection, and I wish people would stop assuming that we are, can, or do.