Capcom joins R4 lawsuit

According to a report on Game Politics, Capcom is the latest company to join in on a lawsuit against R4 flash cartridge makers using Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act as the hammer.

Capcom joined Nintendo and 53 other game publishers in this lawsuit that hopes to curtail the use of this game copying device for the Nintendo DS. While Nintendo managed to get an injunction against the makers of these devices last year in a Tokyo court, that doesn’t seem to have had much impact of the situation.

“We are expecting the entire society including users to recognize that our company and other software manufactures have extremely sustained damages from proliferation of illegal instruments, such as the Game Copying Devices,” said Capcom is a statement today. “..and the computer industries have sustained serious damages because of those vendors, and we expect to influence the society to eliminate such illegal instruments from the market.”

It will be interesting to see if Nintendo and friends can do anything to curtail the use of the R4 in Japan. While it’s not impossible, it won’t be easy either. It will be a lot harder to deal with the use of the R4 in places like China where piracy and black markets are an integral part of the consumer shopping experience.

ECA launches Gamers for Digital Rights

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has formed a new work group called Gamers for Digital Rights. This new group’s online presence is already now live and offering information for consumers who want to learn more about their legal rights and understand more about digital content distribution, license agreements, virtual property, and piracy. Gamers for Digital Rights is free to join and provided the tools and resources that the ECA says will help protect the rights of video game consumers today.

The ECA also announced that it recently hired Robert L. Hunter, IV as its Digital Rights Consultant. In his new role, Mr. Hunter will head up the ECA’s efforts on related outreach and educational programs for the Government Affairs team. Mr. Hunter also currently serves as the President of Global Intellectual Property Securities, a consulting firm dedicated to helping multinational clients develop IP education and enforcement programs. Previously, he was the Director of Strategic Operations and Development for IPSA International, as well as Manager for IP Enforcement with the Entertainment Software Association.

To learn more about digital rights and how to join the Gamers for Digital Rights group, visit www.theeca.com.

File sharing site The Pirate Bay going legit

You can’t make this stuff up. Stockholm, Sweden-based Global Gaming Factory X AB (or GGF, if you like) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the notorious The Pirate Bay website (www.thepiratebay.org) and plans to legitimize it. Won’t regular users of the web site be surprised! Technology company Peerialism has developed next generation file-sharing technology that it plans to roll out on the web site, along with a new business model that allows compensation to content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled to happen sometime in August.

GGF has also entered into an agreement to acquire all the shares in Peerialism AB. Peerialism AB is a homegrown software technology company with origins in KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The deal will give GGF control of the company new file sharing technology and employees.

One of the company’s biggest road blocks? Financing. GGF says that it intends to issue new shares in order to obtain the necessary financing for the acquisition. We’ll keep you posted.

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Paradox to use Stardock’s GOO

Stardock announced that publishing partner Paradox Interactive has adopted Stardock’s Game Object Obfuscation (better known as GOO) to protect Paradox PC game titles from piracy. Beginning with the Paradox title Majesty 2 and continuing on with other titles for both retail and electronic software sales, Paradox will wrap the games in GOO.

Announced by Stardock earlier this year at the Game Developers Conference, GOO is a new technology that developers can use to protect their game executable. When a protected game is run for the first-time, the player simply needs to enter in their email address and serial number. Once validated, the game can be played normally and typically never needs to connect to the Internet account.

More information about GOO can be found www.impulsedriven.com/developers.aspx.

ESA Applauds San Jose Piracy Conviction

The ESA is excited that someone will be locked up for ten months and have to pay them $5,000 USD. Take that, person with whom the ESA is very displeased. The Entertainment Software Association today gave the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara a high five a soul kiss for the recent jail sentence imposed on a California game pirate.

This pirate - who is not to be confused with the kind of pirate that takes American captains hostage - is named Khuong Van Truong. At an April 22, 2009 hearing, Judge Rene Navarro sentenced Van Truong of San Jose, CA to 10 months in jail and ordered him to pay the ESA $5,000 in restitution for illegally pirating entertainment software.

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ESA Applauds Pirate Bay Convictions

The Entertainment Software Association issued a statement this afternoon applauding the conviction and sentencing of key members of the infamous Torrent site, Pirate Bay. Key members of the Piracy group and site, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom, were recently found guilty of intellectual property rights by creating and facilitating a forum that illegally distributed copyrighted products via Torrents.

Pirate Bay admins Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty in the case, along with Carl Lundström, who was accused of financially backing the five-year-old online operation. Each were sentenced to one year in prison, and ordered to pay damages in the amount of 30 million kronor (that’s roughly $3.6 million USD) to various music, movie and video game publishers.

“Piracy is the single greatest threat to the development and release of innovative and creative entertainment software that consumers demand and enjoy. It’s a job killer in an economy that needs millions more jobs, not less,” said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers. “This decision confirms that the harm being inflicted on creators of digital works by BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay will not be tolerated, and that such actions are subject to criminal sanctions.”

The Pirate Bay convictions come hot on the heels of a new Swedish law that makes it easier to identify and prosecute individuals and groups that use file-sharing by requiring Internet service providers to disclose the identities of individuals’ Internet protocol-addresses.

Nintendo Points the Finger at Pirates

So, you’re a software pirate and you’re looking to take a little working vacation, eh? Problem is, you want to visit the world but still hock your shady wares without too much extra stress. No worries, guys. Nintendo’s already got your itinerary planned out.

Every year since 1974, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which handles the development and recommendation of US trade policy, has put together its annual “Special 301 Report”, which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” in the global marketplace. The USTR invites comments from a variety of businesses, and this year, Nintendo added its two cents worth to the talks, pulling no punches by singling out countries where it says piracy is rampant, asking the United States to take further steps to fight it.

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