enragedSo I just got back from going with my father to Northwest Plaza. The most interesting device was for sale at a kiosk- one of the game system things that's just the controller with the chipset on-board, plugged directly into the television. And it was all Nintendo.
The people were not. This miraculous N-in-one for very large N device was, as stated in this news article, fully and entirely an instance of software piracy. There is really no faster way to piss off a programmer than to confront him directly with wholesale thievery of his sort of work, trying to make a fucking profit ofof other peoples' software. I'm against personal piracy (downloading your own copy without paying for it- I really don't give a flying fuck if you wouldn't have bought it anyway, you don't have the right to use it without giving the developer his due) moderately, but this is the first time I've been confronted with wholesale commercial piracy.
WANT MALLET SMASH SMASH SMASH.
Not having that availible to me at the time, I have made do by merely informing Nintendo of this additional branch of this company.
Something else interesting at the mall was the reversed minority demographic. It feels weird for me and my father to be the only visible white persons. Everybody else, no exceptions, who we saw at Northwest Plaza was of clearly African decent. It was, as they say, an interesting experience...
It was like that at Underground Atlanta when Arkyan, Aranedlor, and I went there to see what was around.
I honestly don't understand racism. From my experience at the Science Center, skin color has no correlation to liklihood to cause trouble.
It does vary somewhat by the company. Nintendo, unlike the RIAA, is not openly hostile to their customers, making me rather more sympathetic to their plight.
I am not anti-corporation. (I know that's an ideological difference between you and I.) I am against corporations that abuse their workers. From talking to a few people on campus who have worked at or with the company in question, Nintendo is not one of those companies.
No, I don't think it makes a lot of difference that it's a corporation fighting for its assets rather than an individual programmer fighting for his or her code. Nintendo honestly bought the code, with rights, from the programmer, in the form of salary. And royalties. It is therefore their property- and I fully support their going out and defending what's theirs.
I suppose the reason why I'm as glad to see Nintendo doing this as I am is that software piracy, like most crimes involving intellectual property, is downplayed, because there's nothing physical stolen, and so no harm done, right? Most people simply don't appreciate the very real work involved- work that needs to be rewarded. And in a capitalistic society- which I do not call the ideal, merely what is currently set up in America and, to challenge it, should be done through channels other than hurting individuals, or individual corporations- the fairest way of determining the value of even intellectual work is finding out how many people will buy it.
Feels like that every day, for me.
And just a week or two ago I had the opportunity to attend Wy's grandfather's birthday party; her father's side of the family is very traditional Hispanic. Being the stick-out is never a comfortable experience, even when you're among friends and good company.
Those all-in-one machines are over here too - same ones, I imagine. With that vast of a reach, either someone got license to sell these, somebody's committing an egregiously moronic act of commercial piracy, or someone's bribing the living heck out of Nintendo.