Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

So...Serveral years ago I was chilling with my mom in the Mall of American...when a heavily accented man operateing a Kiosk tells me to come over. He shows me this Plug-in-and play game system that has a N64 controller, A SNES controller, and a Super scope thingy. It apparently had 40 nintendo games for only 70$. I tell him I'm going to have to discuss it with my mom.

When she comes over I point out NOWHERE on the box does it have a Copyright Nintendo...I also pointed out the cheap, plasticy material of the contollers. I belived they were pirated. I tell her we should report it to the BBB or somthing and she's like "NONONO haven't you ever heard of fair use? It lets you use other peoples work"

At the time I took her word for it, since I had never heard of fair use.

Several year later today, I opened my EGM magazine with an Ad saying "PIRACY IS A CRIME. Showing a picture of the man I saw alongside a picture of the System called "Power Player" He had tried to sell me.

For Piracy He was Sentenced 60 months in prison, Had hundreds of thousands of dollars taken away from him, and being deported to Israel.

For me, this is the Biggest I TOLD YOU SO!!! Of all time. I'm going to cut out this article and show everyone at school how right I was.

Anyways...here's what I'm pretty sure is the wikipedia article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_player

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I REMEMBER THAT THING! I've seen it in malls before. And I, too, said it was piracy, but noooo.......

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Whoa, your'e pretty lucky that you didn't buy it.

How did you even think of copyright stuff like that?

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No, I lied. I'm never going to have a good sig. So just forget about it.

C'yeah! You go, man! I saw something like that once, only instead of that dude and a player, it was a Game Boy cartridge (original GB) with something like 50 games on it. My friends tried to point it out to me, but I said it was piracy, too. Read your copyright laws, kiddies. If you try to sell it, and it ain't yours and it ain't a parody, it's automatically piracy, no matter what.

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You look like you need a hug.
*hug*
There, now don't you feel better?

I saw something like that in a flea market one time. My dad wanted to get it, but i said if I want to play NES games illegally I might as well just get the ROMs.

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While ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, the guy at the mall who was selling these things probably had no idea he was doing anything illegal. Though in this instance the manufacturer was in fact guilty of illegal distribution of those games (and no doubt was aware of it), it's hardly unreasonable for the people who run those kiosks in the mall (who are just small-time entrepreneurs who have no more connection to the manufacturer than a vending machine owner does to PepsiCo) to assume that the manufacturer was on the level and obtaining the proper license to distribute those games. In this case, most of the retailers were probably victims of the manufacturer's shady practices just as much, if not more so, than the people who bought the games.

Edit: Re-reading the original post I see that I may have jumped to conclusions. If the guy was sentenced to five years in prison, he was obviously in a lot deeper than the innocent kiosk owner I described above. However, I'll leave my comment above intact, so that people don't start to get ideas about assaulting mall kiosk operators.

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Woah, now that really is a big I told you so. Now Im gonna be more careful what I buy.

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Can I please have your brain?

It's actually fairly easy, and he had the right idea in the original post: Look for the copyrights. If it's there, it's probably legit, and if it's not, you KNOW you're dealing with a pirate.

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You look like you need a hug.
*hug*
There, now don't you feel better?

I'll remeber that.

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Can I please have your brain?

A friend of mine used to have one of those. He didn't know about it being piracy or anything... Later he bought a real Nes though. He threw the Power Player away after that...

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Actually, screw this. I'm out.