NES games piracy will give Florida man 3 years in prison and a $415,000 fine

26 August 2008

Posted by:Josh

In case you need any reminder that video game pirating is bad business, just ask this NES copyright pirate extraordinaire.

Kifah Maswadi has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined $415,000, according to Games Press. After serving his time in prison, Maswadi will face three years of supervised release and “perform 50 hours of community service, which includes educating the public on copyright infringement and how it can lead to bad, bad things if you get into as deep as this guy.

So what exactly was his crime?

He was busted in April of 2007 by the FBI who raided his home after investigating him for a full year. He was arrested for selling a “Power Player” device, which is an illegal game console that contains ROMs of over 76 built-in games (just like the other plug-and-play ones you see in stores, but this one is unauthorized). Most of the games on the “Power Player” came from the NES and Famicon.

He would buy the games wholesale from China for $7 to $9 a pop, and then would turn around and sell the devices to unknowing customers for $23.99 or $47.99 depending on the model. This netted him upwards of $390,000 from selling the illegal units.

Once again, it’s a painful reminder that pirating games is not the way to go, and can only land you in deep, deep trouble if you expect to profit off of it.

Via 1-Up

Categories: News, Retro News, Wii News

Bloink

I can understand the beef against Chinese famiclone systems, but why’d they go after the GUY and not the people in China manufacturing the systems? I saw a similar device being sold in a store at the mall called the “Vii” an obvious attempt to copycat the Wii, complete with an Infrared Remote version of the Wii-mote and a crapton of dodgy-looking NES games, should Nintendo have sued the -STORE- carrying that unit, even if they didn’t know about its illegality or its origins?

And as for the “Waaah, Pirates are ruing our sales.” Let’s take a look at the systems these pirates are emulating on their computers. NES, SNES, etc… mayhaps this just means that gamers are getting older and longing for the more simplistic days. Mayhaps Nintendo should put more effort into the Virtual Console system. The list of VC games in Japan totals around 559, the list for the U.S. only totals around 354. And when they haven’t even bothered to try adding the fan-translated favorites like Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Secret of Mana 2) or Tales of Phantasia (SNES version pwnz the crappy GBA port) its no suprise that people will go the emulation route.

Stop punishing the fans for liking your old stuff, all it means is they think that the older stuff was better.
mc schoowyarms

Umad Nintendo?