[Nieuws] Geschreven door Joost op 2005-04-15 12:48:36
Chinezen in de kraag gegrepen
De FBI staat Nintendo bij in haar strijd tegen illegale games. Onlangs is een stel Chinezen door Amerika's elite politiekrachten in de kraag gevat vanwege het verhandelen van illegale Nintendo producten... Met pak en beet 40 FBI agenten werden de illegale praktijken van een viertal Chinezen, leefachtig in New York, een halt toegeroepen. De vier handelden namelijk illegaal in Nintendo consoles en games (o.a. Duckhunt en Mario Bros.). De hoeveelheid producten waarin ze deze handel dreven was absoluut niet voor de poes; maarliefst 60.000 illegale artikelen, die aan de man werden gebracht onder de franchise naam 'Power Player', werden in beslag genomen. [I]"Nintendo applauds the actions taken by the FBI. U.S. law enforcement authorities have played an instrumental role in attacking piracy in the U.S. and abroad,"[/I] aldus Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's director of anti-piracy. [I]"Nintendo will continue to work with local, state, national and international authorities to combat the growing problem of product piracy around the world."[/I] De illegale handel in producten van Nintendo is al jaren lang een luis in de pels van de Japanse gigant. Zie hieronder een aantal hoogtepunten uit Nintendo's anti-piracy acties uit 2004: [I][*] Nintendo estimated that piracy cost the company more than $860 million in lost sales in 2004 alone. [*] Around the world, authorities seized 1,556,487 counterfeit Nintendo products in 536 seizure actions in some 30 countries. [*] Nintendo terminated about 194,730 copies of games uploaded to the Internet and 75,452 auctions of counterfeit products. [*] In October, Nintendo won a preliminary injunction against kiosk owners selling hardware units with built-in multiple counterfeit NES games in Washington state. The court order was critical to persuade mall management companies across the United States to shut down kiosks in the malls they managed. Many of the operators were in the United States illegally and have since been deported to their respective homelands. [*] In China, five people received prison sentences and fines for manufacturing millions of counterfeit Game Boy® game cartridges. The breakthrough case marked the first time a counterfeiter of Nintendo products received a prison sentence in China. [*] In Taiwan, the owner-president and several employees of Yudian Corp. were convicted on all counts of criminal copyright and trademark offenses. Taiwan's High Court sentenced the president's assistant to four years in prison.[/I]