Nintendo piracy crackdown continues

Nintendo Australia has said it will continue its crackdown on piracy after a company selling copying devices for its portable consoles has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay $620,000 in damages.

The incident comes after a Queensland gamer was fined $1.5 million for uploading a copy of the company’s Super Mario Brothers Wii game before its release date, allowing thousands of users to download it illegally. The company claimed it lost revenue as a result.

In the latest piracy incident, RSJ IT Solutions, which trades as GadgetGear, has been ordered in the Federal Court to pay $620,000 to Nintendo for selling devices which allowed games to be copied illegally. Nintendo said the latest incident demonstrates the importance it places on piracy cases, and that it will continue to take action against offenders.

“Nintendo will pursue those who attempt to jeopardise the gaming industry by using all means available to it under the law. In particular, Nintendo is currently contemplating bringing further actions against other sellers of game copying devices in Australia,” it said.

The devices used by RSJ IT are types of memory cards known as R4 cards. Designed for use with the popular DS portable console, users download games from the internet through various sources, and add games to the R4 card like any other memory chip.

Users then simply add the memory card to the DS console, where they can then access all the games they downloaded for free. However, these cards do not act as normal cards and have their own operating system installed.

However, the company and its two directors, Patrick and James Li, have been forced to stop these practices.

“GadgetGear and its directors have now acknowledged that game copying devices infringe both Nintendo’s copyright and Nintendo’s trademarks and that they are illegal circumvention devices,” it said in a statement. “As a result, GadgetGear and the directors have agreed to permanently refrain from importing, offering for sale and/or selling game copier devices.”

“GadgetGear and the directors will also pay Nintendo a total of $620,000 by way of damages. GadgetGear will also be delivering to Nintendo all its stock of game copiers for destruction.”

The incident comes after Queensland gamer James Burt was ordered to pay $1.5 million in damages after he illegally copied the new Super Mario Brothers Wii game, allowing others to download it.

Nintendo argued it lost significant amounts of revenue because of Burt’s actions, as the Super Mario game was eagerly anticipated by the gaming community.