Wii mod-chips seized - all your base are belong to us!

[lonewolfxix]

Today U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents executed 32 federal search warrants in 16 states as part of an investigation into the alleged sale and distribution of illegal modification chips for various video game consoles, including the Wii. The mod chips designed for the Wii console circumvent the security embedded in the hardware and allow users to play counterfeit Wii software.

This Immigrations and Customs Enforcement investigation represents the largest national enforcement action of its kind targeting video game piracy. Nintendo has worked closely with this branch of the Department of Homeland Security, and fully supports its actions and other investigations currently underway.

"Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "Nintendo's anti-piracy team works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to seize mod chips and counterfeit software. Since April, Nintendo has seized more than 91,000 counterfeit Wii discs globally."

Rumours that the mod-chips were manufactured in France and that President Bush is planning a carpet bombing of Paris this weekend are, sadly, untrue.

US Customs officials are quoted as saying "We R0x0Rs" and added, "L4m3rZ" before tea-bagging their haul of chips.

[LiNuX]

whoa, what a story, thanks for the info, and now we know you can get prosecuted for stuff like this, and if i was nintendo, i'd be angry to lose that much money

thanks for the story, +rep given

[lonewolfxix]

It's pretty obvious that buying such things like that would be illegal, about the only case I can think of where it wasn't in modern days of computing is the playstation 2 where you could buy the SONY "Messiah" chip for your playstation 2 to copy your own games as backups, before that, the only time I can think of is back in the days of floppy disk based games where you were encouraged as floppy disks have a notoriously short life span if you looked after them or not, and full games were given away for free with magazines back then, anyway.

[LiNuX]

i remember those floppy disk games lol, i think i still have some and i already knew this was illegal in most parts, but in some countries with low authority over this wouldn't be able to do anything. Unless the USA goes in and fights to save the day lol, like everytime huh

[lonewolfxix]

In a few countries it's legal, I know in Sweden until recently it was legal to download pirated software and music etc. (but not to share it, rofl) They actually have a political party now called "The Piraat Partiet" Which is Swedish for "The Pirate Party" believe it or not :P Who are running for the governing body of Sweden. Personally, I'd welcome them with open arms, not for the legality of sharing pirated stuff but for I expect they'll be able to run a country damn sight better than most other political parties in the world

Add: and so can I, if I learnt how to spell properly 8-) rofl.

[LiNuX]

wow retards, when ur downloading it from somewhere, its being shared LOL - love that party name tho

[lonewolfxix]

You were allowed to share it while you were downloading, just when you finished it had to be unshared, or it might of been you couldn't share with other people in Sweden.. I have no idea.. I just remember hearing about that from my friend in Oland, Sweden (off the East coast of mainland Sweden, south). He was pretty displeased about it and asked his mom and dad to vote for The Piraat Partiet

[FattaT]

hahaha, I have mod chip for my Wii... and there are no laws in Australia saying they are illegal =)

[lonewolfxix]

I expect there are, you just don't know about them, lol, Australia uses quite a few of Britains laws (common wealth) and they're illegal here, it's just USA is a hell of a lot easier to hit than most other countries ^^