AfterDawn: News

Nintendo DS pirate gets jail time

A Japanese Nintendo DS game pirate has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and given a nearly $100,000 USD fine, after being convicted of making 1000 ROMs of DS games available for download.

The man, Yoshiaki Asagiri, was arrested in late 2008 and was charged with "distributing games online without permission" and the "breaking of Japanese copyright law," says Kotaku.



The sentencing judge called Asagiri's crime a "trampling" of the efforts of the game developers and publishers, who have spent time and money on bringing the games to the public.

Nintendo has stepped up their efforts against piracy of late, with the new decision following right on the footsteps of a DSi firmware update that has completely killed off flash carts used to play pirated games and run unauthorized software.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Aug 2009 11:38

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• 4 comments

• Ryoohki

  These companies will never learn. You cannot stop innovation. Someone will enable flash carts to be used again. It is only a matter of time. Commercial companies cannot keep up with the global community who live for the challenge of jailbreaking their devices to free them of restrictions. I rarely play games on my DS. I use it mainly to listen to music and watch videos on my lunch break at work. There are perfectly legitimate reasons someone would want to use flash carts. Why must companies always try to restrict what we do with equipment we legally purchase? If I want to use homebrew applications on my DS, that is my business.

  5.8.2009 12:35 #1

• XSilvenX

  Originally posted by Ryoohki: These companies will never learn. You cannot stop innovation. Someone will enable flash carts to be used again. It is only a matter of time. Commercial companies cannot keep up with the global community who live for the challenge of jailbreaking their devices to free them of restrictions. I rarely play games on my DS. I use it mainly to listen to music and watch videos on my lunch break at work. There are perfectly legitimate reasons someone would want to use flash carts. Why must companies always try to restrict what we do with equipment we legally purchase? If I want to use homebrew applications on my DS, that is my business.Amen dude.

  6.8.2009 23:09 #2

• homesick

  again he could be a decent size drug dealer and he would have gotten less time.
  

  
  

  7.8.2009 10:45 #3

• XSilvenX

  Funny thing is, they've already cracked the new firmware too ...lmao @ companies trying to stop pirates.

  7.8.2009 11:20 #4