Are you a witch? Are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party? Do you sell an R4? You haven’t? Funny because your friends say you do!

Oh haven’t you heard? Witch Hunts are in style once again thanks to Nintendo in Japan. The company, along with a coalition of other gaming industry companies are asking people to rat out people or companies selling the R4 backup player for the Nintendo DS. In a secure and anonymous website users are asked to tip Nintendo off about individuals or companies selling the device which allows you to play downloaded copies of games, they are even going after personal auctions selling an R4. The intention is to use the information in a legal suit Nintendo has against the selling of the device.

Call me old fashioned but when you’re asking your customers to rat out on each other, even on a personal level, that’s just asking for trouble. Thankfully this is only in Japan, sadly this is only in Japan and unless Nintendo somehow insults the nationalist spirit of Japan no one is going to say as much as a peep about it.

[Kotaku]

Rest in Peace, we hardley knew ye.

With a recent announcement of acquisition by the Swedish tech company, Global Gaming Factory X, The Pirate bay seems to be going the way of Napster. The company reportedly paid around 7.7 million dollars for the online piracy hub, which for those of you who are curious, is well above the old owners recent legal fines of 3.6 million.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Global Gaming CEO Hans Pandeya.

With this announcement, they are clearly trying to move the site and community forward past these recent legal troubles into a completely legitimate operation. I wish them the best of luck, but we all know how well Napster did after trying the same thing.

You had a hell of a run, TPB, and will be sorely missed by many.

[InformationWeek][The Pirate Bay]

A year ago, Odex, an anime licenser/distributor in Singapore sent cease and desist orders to users, and even had Internet company Comcast involved. [original post] The courts slapped them on the wrist saying that they cannot take someone to court because they do not own the original copyright. They then appealed to 5 major animation companies in Japan, and they decided to step forward. Showgate, Geneon Entertainment, TV Tokyo, GDH, and Sunrise have all stepped forward to help, they have sent letters to 4 persons to make them stop. The 4 have all refused to settle out of court.

[ANN]

It seems America isn’t the only place that the police is cracking down on media pirates. The “Kyoto Prefectural Police’s High-Tech Crime Task Force” recently arrested three well known anime video cappers that were allegedly uploading recordings of most popular anime television shows to the Japanese P2P network, Share. If you have watched a few fansubs in the past couple of years, chances are the raw video came from one of these guys. While it is currently legal in Japan to download unauthorized copies for personal use, it is not legal to upload them.

[kyoto-np.co.jp][accsjp.or.jp]

Today on the early hours of the morning a group of 300 riot police officers raided Meave street in downtown Mexico City, a place known as a Mecca for piracy, looking to confiscate pirated Video Games and arrest the people behind the operation. Things didn’t go as planned though, as tens of store owners and patrons attacked the police from 5 different flanks. The fight went on for hours until 3AM when the merchants retreated, some people got arrested and a huge amount of consoles, mod-chips, pirated games and even hacked arcades were confiscated. In other news I’m leaving on a plane to go bribe the police evidence depot guard.

[Hechos]

Final Fantasy XII has been leaked onto the net since yesterday. The game was set for release in a month. It was all a rumor back then but as the hours passed, reports from people who had downloaded the files off popular torrent sites. The verdict? The files where legit. This kind of leaks have happened in the past to equally important titles, but its the first time its happened to Square Enix.

So far it seems the company has started moving its legal engine in an effort to stop sites from distributing the torrent. But we’ve seen it before, there’s no stopping the internet. The ending for FFXII is already up on YouTube, cries of ‘dumbledore dies’ echo in my head as I learn this. Working at Square seems to be really cool, wonder if now they’ll give you a cavity search before leaving the premises.

[1up]

The Motion Picture Association of America, cousin of the Recording Industry Association of America, finally screwed up with their practically automated suing. This time their little electronic cross-hairs settled on Shawn Hogan, a multi millionaire programmer. Shawn’s not happy.

Shawn was accused of downloading a copy of Meet the Fockers on Bit Torrent, a movie he says he already owns in DVD. The MPAA rarely has to take their cases to court, most people decide to settle for around $2,500 USD. But Shawn wont, and he’s looking to spend “well into the millions on this” to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. Shawn Hogan is now an internet hero.

The MPAA, being the collected devil it is, just replied via John G. Malcom:

I hear Mr. Hogan has said, ‘I’m absolutely going to go to trial,’ and that is his prerogative. (….) We look forward to addressing his issues in a court of law.

We look forward to an epic fight, go forth Shawn Hogan, go forth!

[Wired / Via BoingBoing]

Just today we started to get the first reports of DS pirated games, and reports do say that this copies don’t vary much price-wise to an original. Still some retailers, specially the shady ones in auction sites like ebay, are trying to sell you pirated copies and spotting them might prove a little hard.

Thats where 4 color rebellion comes in with a nice collection of tips on how to identify pirated copies. And while these tips are a nice way to protect yourself from contraband, its always good to remember the basics:

We highly suggest that you also run through the usual checklist when buying games through eBay: research the item you’re buying, review the seller’s history and feedback, ensure the manual/box are authentic, etc.

[4 color rebellion]