News
Nintendo Piracy Problem 200802
While China remains the primary source of manufacturing pirated Nintendo DS and Wii games, Korea has emerged as the leader in distributing illegal game files via the Internet. Despite aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by Nintendo, Brazil and Mexico remain saturated with counterfeit Nintendo software. Meanwhile, Paraguay and Hong Kong continue to serve as major transshipment points for global distribution of illegal goods."The unprecedented momentum enjoyed by Nintendo DS and Wii makes Nintendo an attractive target for counterfeiters," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "We estimate that in 2007, Nintendo, together with its publishers and developers, suffered nearly $975 million US Dollars worldwide in lost sales as a result of piracy. Nintendo will continue to work with governments around the world to aggressively curtail this illegal activity."
Below is a summary of Nintendo's filing:
OVERALL: Nintendo recommends stronger laws in all countries
against the circumvention of technological security
measures. Video game pirates have developed DS game-copying
devices and modification chips to target the security found
in Nintendo's hardware systems and allow the play of
counterfeit software or games illegally downloaded via the
Internet.
CHINA: China must pursue criminal prosecutions against
people involved in large-scale piracy operations. Nintendo
works with Chinese authorities, who seized more than 1
million fake Nintendo products in China during the past
year. But not one counterfeiter has been prosecuted.
KOREA: Nintendo supports the Korea-U.S. Free Trade
Agreement, but suggests that it must be ratified immediately
to address service providers who are profiting from the
uploading and downloading of illegal Nintendo content. Korea
is an important market for Nintendo, and Internet piracy is
seriously affecting the growth of the video game industry in
the country.
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA: Latin America remains a haven for
piracy. Evidence supporting this claim includes escalated
violence in Mexico against police conducting anti-piracy
raids, extraordinarily high tariffs and taxes placed on the
sale of authentic video games in Brazil and widespread
corruption in Paraguay. During the past year, Nintendo
assisted local authorities with more than 65 actions that
resulted in the seizure of approximately 230,000 counterfeit
Nintendo games in Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay alone. Despite
Nintendo's efforts, the piracy levels continued to rise.
Nintendo is calling for significant changes to laws and to
the enforcement regimes in those countries.