Anyone should be able to code any piece of software, any time, and offer it free for download, without it being illegal.
Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#42How on earth is this a criminal offense? Copyright law should never, ever be that powerful.
Things are far too out of hand, my friend.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there's also a lot of xenophobia, but that's not relevant to this case.
I get triggered whenever Japan is mentioned as an honest and law abiding country with zen buddhist tradition. Makes people think the fence is made of sausages yonder. The reality of the social situation is far worse than what Westerners perceive.
I get triggered when people say they get triggered by things.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#44After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (f…
If you were to share a bunch of copyrighted material in the States, the MPAA/RIAA et. al. would come and threaten you with a law suit (and you'd settle out of court). In Japan, if you do the exact same thing, you will be arrested [1]. It's a difference in "what is normal". [1] http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-ille...
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Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#45I remember when I thought crime was about bad guys actually hurting people. The more frivolous the world and its economy gets, the more frivolous the reasons for taking away somebody's freedom.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
While an arrest doesn't equate to prosecution, in Japan, prosecution almost equates conviction (somewhere around 99.9%).
Well, closer to 99.7%[1]. But many less charges are filed, per capita, than the United States. This is partially due to things like honor and culture, but more to do with the fact that Japanese prosecutors have double the caseload of their American counterparts. And perhaps even more to do with the use of judges to decide verdicts.
It's also a false contrast. 97% of prosecutions in the US are resolved by plea bargain.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#47After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (f…
It's not clear to me what copyright is being violated here.
Is there copyrighted content that is being distributed without license?
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#48Slight NSFW warning on the ads, despite using adBlock.
This will boot up the number of curious minds.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#49After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (f…
It's not clear to me what copyright is being violated here. Is there copyrighted content that is being distributed without license?
Japanese law is pretty different from the US on this stuff. In chatting with people about this case I learned about something called the "right to preservation of identity" for copyright works - particularly works that are deemed to be "movie-like", under which games apparently qualify.
I don't follow the details but the famous test case was apparently in the late 90s when Konami successfully sued companies for selling memory cards pre-loaded with save data for a particularly hard game.
Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack
#50Puzzles and Dragons makes money from monster eggs and other power ups. If you can supe up your monsters, you have no need to pay them.
It's copyright because they see the ability to update monster stats as proprietary technology. Only they can do that and users of this software are stealing from the developers and ruining the game for themselves.
At least, that seems to be what's going on.