YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds
I’m so tired of these titles “Person arrested for perfectly legal thing”. He wasn’t arrested for reviewing gaming handhelds, he was arrested for copyright infringement.
Exactly. Copyright infringement? He was reviewing handheld that came with ROMs which is the copyright infringement apparently?
I agree the title is fine because the whole reason why he was arrested because he was reviewing the handheld that had the games on them. That is making an argument out of nothing
I understand your concern, potential employer, but I was never arrested for Chicago Sunroofing the Popemobile. There aren’t even any laws that say it’s illegal, I don’t know why people keep calling me that
It’s not pedantic. The title not only intentionally misrepresents the situation but it explains absolutely nothing. Reviewing hardware on YouTube is not a crime in any country to my knowledge, so how could he be arrested for it?
I agree, the title is literally false, just to get more engagement.
(If it was literal than any ads about such handhelds would be in the same category, not to mention YouTube as it allows this en masse.)
And this isn’t a comment abut the arrest (megacorps are always scumbags), just how “journalism” works nowdays.
It’s just a fact that the title could have easily explained why was he arrested - and it’s a fact that was omitted on purpose so that you have to click on it to see what the actual reason was (what potentially isn’t in accordance with the law).
(You don’t get the key info of the whole story until you pay for that info by clicking on the article so they get engagement monies.)
That is literally the charge/what they are investigating.
Afaik the difference will come down to if he was ever paid for a review (which would be the difference between a regular consumer buying a thing legally & showing what he bought vs him being part of the promo campaigns by the manufacturer … you know, like Google is).
And if there is no newer specific law (the old one ofc doesn’t explain shit since it’s from pre-computer era), it might come down to him receiving free consoles to review, and maybe having a bunch of SD cards full of ROMs in his apartment.
(Meaning that if they say free review merch is a form of payment, they go to trial. As I understand he didn’t/it’s not common practice to return stuff like this after review, tho some reviewers do it and some manufacturers demand it.)
He can be arrested for anything. If you want to argue that it wasn’t copyright infringement, you’ll have to take it up with the author. That’s what they said.
No, copyright infringement is a criminal offence in this case* - there won’t be any Nintendo/Sony lawyers in any part of the investigation or trial. They might have just reported a crime.
Nobody is getting sued by Nintendo (like would be the usual business in USA).
*it has it’s own jail sentence & a 15k€ fine, tho again not clear if per case or whatever bcs the law infrastructure just isn’t up to date (never was?)
Is anyone familiar with the channel itself? Because based on the article, it sounds like mostly (presumably he) is getting made an example of for reviewing hardware that comes with ROMs on an SD Card? But… a LOT of these “retro consoles” do and outlets just ignore it in favor of their totally legit collection that they don’t talk about.
Did OWN actually show what is on the SD Card and emphasize that these units came with it?
He seems super unsavvy when it comes to legal/formal proceedings or authority in general (I don’t mean that as a bad thing, we are all different, just that it can def affect how things go and escalate).
For one he got the notice in mid April & just continued to review (among other things?) such consoles this whole time (which makes me think now a trial is even more likely) & didn’t prepare for anything (his channels, personal things, SD cards with all them ROMs, etc).
The panic & the whole ‘why is this happening to me’ anger makes more sense in view of this (not that is isn’t warranted, from what I’ve seen it’s def stupid anyone is doing anything about this guy in general).
But other shit-showy things happened too - they took his phone to make a copy & didn’t return it for two months (it’s unclear if they had a warrant for it or if he volunteered it - or indeed if Italian law recognises what a “personal device” is as EU has yet to compile a delegated act that will unify definitions & personal rights for such modern necessities for all members).
(If a cop takes my phone & doesn’t promptly return it still locked I’m marring their mom & make them call me daddy before the trial starts. Then submit my phone in evidence with saucy newlywed pics. I would be angy too if they took my phone, not to mention some poor data retrieval specialist getting a lifetime dose of ptsd.)
An Italian youtuber with some legal experience explains a bit more (in Italian): youtube./zSEB4if2pJQ#.
What I was thinking is that the complaint had to be specific, ie some lawyer (for a Japanese megacorp?) found an exact thing to complain about (eg in this exact second of this specific vid he admits this personal gain and shows that illegal thing, etc). Not just something vague.
They are looking at all his communication, finances, and content on his channels (but might be focusing only on one YT channel - this and the fact they mention an Anbernic device makes me think it’s a very specific complaint).
I don’t know that much about Italian law enforcement but I agree that is a bit sus they went after him at all - there might be more to the story that he either isn’t saying or thinks (in your average “law ignorance” way) irrelevant but is very relevant. Idk.
I'm surprised they've gotten away with shipping preloaded SD cards for so long. That was a risk waiting to blow up in someone's face, though it obviously isn't fair to be going after some guy rather than the distributors.
To be fair, they (anbernic at least) sidestep the obvious minefields. No Mario, Pokemon, etc. A bunch of really sketchy and somewhat janky MAME ROMs, and a bunch of NES and others, on my 35xxV and 406h.
Aah, the Guardia di Finanza, the one police organ all italians actually respect and fear ( or so I hear ).
The charges don’t make sense though. Maybe by reviewing “pirate” material he was indirectly bypassing paying the italian state its due and thus they jumped him?
According to the video, officials are not required to disclose what exactly the charges are or who has brought them until the initial investigation is complete under Italian law. At that point, the case is either dismissed or goes to trial. The complaint specifically mentions reproduction of copyrighted material from Nintendo and Sony, but the case may originate from the agency itself.
So for now we don’t actually know the charges or if the trial will procede, but yeah definitely not fair.
In 2011, in a second autobiography called Starting Over, La Toya Jackson retracted her allegations against both her brother Michael and her father Joe, saying that she was forced to make them by her husband at the time, whom she accused of being abusive.
“My family and Michael knew that wasn’t really me talking,” the Daily Beast quotes her as saying in an interview. “I never believed for a minute my brother was guilty of anything like that.”>
The Daily Beast reports in 2013 that after very publicly and repeatedly defending Jackson, Robson now says that Jackson sexually molested him for seven years.
Two years later, in May 2015, a judge in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Mitchell L. Beckloff, dismisses Robson’s suit against the estate, saying that he waited too long to file his claim. In December 2017, the same judge dismisses the rest of Robson’s suit, filed against Jackson’s two companies, MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, because the two corporations could not be found liable for Jackson’s alleged behavior. Notably, neither of these judgments address the credibility of Robson’s accusations.
James Safechuck files a similar suit against MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures in 2014, alleging that Jackson abused him on “hundreds” of occasions between 1988 and 1992. Beckloff, who is also the presiding judge in this suit, rejects Safechuck’s suit in June 2017 on the same grounds he gave Robson.>
His sister walked back her accusations citing her husband being abusive to try and get money from Michael’s downfall. The two accusers, AFTER HE DIED, were literally told they had no case. One of them had originally defended MJ.
Nintendo 5 years from now: "After suing multiple fan projects and intimidating them to cease projects, Nintendo admits that they were just fan projects"
This is the company by the way that's behind on the times of technology. Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
They killed Splatoon's grassroots Esport community thanks to them making a quick buck with splatoon 3, that promised a bunch of network functionality improvements that never materialized.
So now, a game that used to have multiple small but growing international tournaments now has nothing. Hell, they used to have tournaments on the main stage at PAX East.
It’s a great game with a very high skill ceiling, but the MMR and team balancing was absolute garbage. It was very rare that it was a close match. You usually clapped or got clapped.
How they treated professional Melee and especially Project M was the moment I realized Nintendo was just another out-of-touch company. So many indie devs would kill for fans that passionate, let alone a modding scene that robust. Nintendo threw it all away.
Edit: and that ignores the graveyard of fan games Nintendo has killed. AM2R, Pokémon Uranium…
I recommend going the extra mile and no longer buying their hardware or software.
Emulation is in a great state right now, and it’s only getting better. The fewer resources scummy companies like Nintendo have from sales, the fewer resources they’ll have to go after community products.
Really hoping this isn’t a 3DS situation where they added a notch to gamecarts. Its so dumb that we can’t use game consoles like a PC and just fucking install discs if we want to without a shitty checking system.
I never understood why they abandoned Splatoon 2. Like, I get that they have a new game, and that’s great, I guess…but why not support Splatoon 2 until Switch 2 comes out? I never bought the splatoon 3, because I JUST bought splatoon 2 like 2-3 years prior when it came out. You NEED online to play that game.
So you’re paying $59.99 for the game, and then $20 a year for online. All for a game that exists in a time bubble. Once it’s time for the next game, fuck you. Buy the new game. Your old game means nothing.
Well fuck you too Nintendo. I’ll just not buy Splatoon 3, and not pay for online anymore. How about that?
As one of the leaders in said community for the NA scene I wouldn’t lay the blame entirely on Splat3. Things were slowing down before then and a lot of the old guard were hanging up their hats.
Networking left much to be desired, but we also started the grassroots on the Wii U after all.
Fair, I have connections to a few that were fairly serious during 2, most of which were in tournies, one of those never bought 3, but the rest gave it a shot.
The ripoff that is S3 seems to be nails in the proverbial coffin.
Yeah the transition between games was hard. 1 to 2 was ok-ish as there was excitement on the switch. 2 to 3 was rough as the average comp player was between high school and college aged which had less disposable income to get the game right away. Not to mention each time was a hard reset on both maps and equipment that slowly rolled out over time made getting cohesive teams extra hard…
Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
As on addon or built-in? I know the GameCube had an Ethernet add-on and I think the N64 had a dialup addon (Would have been the fastest at the time for home users, nobody had home broadband on N64 release)
Yep, and some PS2s (like mine) came with the network adapter built-in!
Never going to forget the days of having a 30-foot ethernet cable running across my living room (right under the doorway) so I can play Battlefront 2, Ratchet and Clank 3, and of course, MGS3 online.
Folks pointing out GCN/Wii internet abilities are missing that the experience was awful. Like sure, the guts of broadband were there, but actually playing a game with friends online was way more trouble than it was worth.
So to your point, real online gaming was indeed way behind other consoles (IMHO).
I stopped playing Mario Kart online with others on the Wii. Some players had set an infinite blue shells hack on. Just wasn’t fun to play. Complained to Nintendo and they replied like there was nothing they could do or something like that.
Yup, they changed their minds. Bluetooth, Titles on mobile. It’s this mish-mash of bullheadedness for the sake of being bullheaded, then the try like a decade later.
Nintendo is competent at exactly 1 thing - designing great video games.
They are run by the equivalent of dwarven master blacksmiths… They’re one of the few gaming companies with employees on staff with more than 40 years experience of game dev (and whom have ONLY ever worked at Nintendo their entire careers) in charge of things.
That’s great if you like Zelda and Mario games… but because they’re run by a bunch of old-school grandpas… they’re not good at much else.
Terrible store, multiplayer, ancillary modern network-driven services like voice chat and partying up, little to no 3rd-party support (whether it’s games, media apps, or even tech integrations with formats like Dolby ATMOS), and - as a benefit - really terrible device security so it’s usually pretty easy for folks to reverse engineer, run custom boot-loaders / jailbreak / scrape their store servers / etc. - stuff that companies like Sony and Microsoft either never had issues with - or have taken seriously long enough that they have locked down.
The only reason they’re still in business is that they still do the one thing that matters most the best - design really great game-play mechanics for IP that is beloved by multiple generations of gamers who will overlook everything else.
I don’t think people remember, but there was a time when no twitch streamer or youtuber would play Nintendo games because they fucking take down their streams for copyright infringement.
That’s not entirely true, you could keep the videos up if all the ad revenue went to Nintendo. In other words, if you paid them so you could promote their game.
I’m personally surprised by Nintendo continuing to include user accessible SD cards in their consoles from the DS through the Switch. It becomes incredibly convenient for piracy and I would have thought they were doing it on purpose to at least sell the hardware if it wasn’t for all the evidence you the contrary.
The ps5 port only requires one screw to access. I know the hard drive on the PS4 was only one screw to access as well. I’m uncertain of the Xbox, they had a proprietary hard drive for the 360 so I didn’t go down that path. While that is slightly more complicated than inserting a SD card, it is not technical.
M.2 seems easier for normies to mess up and SD cards have traditionally been significantly cheaper… plus a microSD card is smaller than M.2 by an order of magnitude.
Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
While I agree they’re behind the times on their consoles re online, I think it’s more a software issue. I don’t think criticising the hardware functionality is quite fair.
The predecessor to the Wii was the Gamecube which came out in 2001, where few people had broadband internet
The other consoles in that generation were the ps2, xbox, and briefly dreamcast. Of those, only the xbox came with built in networking, until the playstation slim release in 2004. The dreamcast, ps2 and Gamecube all offered additional adapters to provide ethernet (and the dreamcast and Gamecube had dial up modems available too). So the Gamecube was in line with most of the competition.
The Wii had out of the box WiFi (and an adapter for ethernet available) which put it in a similar space to its competitors. Only the ps3 had both WiFi and ethernet out of the box at launch. The 360 only had ethernet until a refresh that added WIFI. And the Wii was also coming in at a significantly lower price point.
Not sure why this is getting down votes. Price is the key factor most parents look at, and most people who aren’t into technology probably don’t know what the steam deck is or know what “gaming on Linux” means. That is what is stopping a good friend of mine. Price is a huge factor, but the intimidation from lack of knowledge is just as big
Nah, you’re not giving the steam deck nearly enough credit. It fills a very similar niche to the switch - a viable mobile gaming option that can also be readily used for couch gaming. You don’t need a large steam library to get use out of that, just like how the average switch owner probably only has a few switch games.
That is not true. Steam games are normally much cheaper, you can also get tons of free games over Steam or Epic. Biggest issue with Steam Deck is the size. It is adult sized even my wife is not comfortable with it and it is too big for children. You would need to use it in combination with a controller.
No, it’s just straight up misinformation, or at least a disingenuous oversimplification.
The base model steam deck is $400 (and you can get steam-certified refurbished ones for even cheaper), and we don’t know the price of the Switch 2 yet. If it comes with even some of the hardware upgrades that have been leaked, I very much doubt it’ll retail for as low as $350.
The base SteamDeck doesn’t have an OLED screen and is still more expensive than the Switch OLED. As for the price of the Switch 2, it’s a well-known and documented practice that console manufacturers sell them at a loss and make back the profits in games. If anything, you’re the one spewing misinformation.
The base steam deck blows the OLED switch out of the water specs-wise on everything other than the screen. Nothing I’ve said is untrue, the relevant top comment is pure speculation at best.
See? This is what I mean by disconnected from the real world. Next you’re gonna tell me how open source allows you to unlock the full potential of the Steamdeck’s hardware.
Nothing I’ve said is untrue, the relevant top comment is pure speculation at best.
Brother, you literally said the Switch 2 is not gonna be around 350 USD. You have exactly as much evidence of that as the relevant top comment has that it will be. The difference is that only your comment was serious.
Dawg you gotta be a troll if you think I’m “disconnected from the real world” just because I know that better specs is why the steam deck can handle modern games and the switch can’t. Also I said that we don’t know what the switch 2 will cost, and that I’d be surprised if it was that low. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Nope, you’re disconnected from the real world because you don’t understand the average user doesn’t care about specs they can’t see. You walking back your words now doesn’t mean you didn’t say them. Nobody is putting anything in your mouth.
I agree. Stupid lemmings not understanding that 400 usd switch 2, plus 70 dollar switch games that nintendo says you are allowed to play, plus paying for internet again is way cheaper than 400 usd steam deck that will get you around 20 or so games for the price of a single nintendo game off humble bundle.
I feel on every single social media platform I have ever been on I will see the comment
[This social media platform’s users] are completely disconnected from the real world.
I never know how seriously to take this. I always want to automatically dismiss it because it seems like a “everyone here is delusional” type of comment and if I have had a majority of pleasant, reasonable-seeming interactions there I will really not like the idea that these seemingly nice people who had a civil, reasonable discussion with me are actually delusional, and by extension I probably am delusional too. And since I have seen it everywhere it basically seems to say nowhere online has (a decent amount of) people in touch with reality. But setting that aside for a moment…
Obviously every platform will attract different types of people, probably not a fully representative sample of the population, a skew towards this or that type of person… but how far skewed from the “normal” experience is each platform on average? What is normal? If one platform has a wild skew towards one type of person, but that type of person makes up most of what I’ll see in real life due to my environment (like who my friends and family are, what my workplace is like), does its distance from normal matter if it’s no different from my real life normal? How much? Given that a lot of people spend a lot of time online, in which they often express opinions they truly hold that they would not vocalize in real life, would you say people who eschew social media have their own disconnect from reality in some way? What social media platform is closest to the average real life normal, which is the least “disconnected from the real world”?
Let’s preface by making clear that when I say Lemmings are disconnected from reality, I don’t mean they’re delusional. I mean they’re so immersed in their unix-like free-as-in-freedom open-source technobubble that they’ve forgotten what regular people want.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, every social media will attract its own niche of people but not every platform is equally as disconnected from the real world. For example, nobody in Fragrantica (perfume social media) would recommend a regular person to buy a perfume that smells like cocaine and magazines, even though its one of the most popular fragrances among people who like perfumes. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, people love to pretend the SteamDeck is an actual alternative to the Switch.
Thanks for clarifying. I do my best to compensate for any of my differences from what the average person wants, but it’s a bit hard if you and your environment also skews in that direction.
At least with tech I feel I’ve got a somewhat decent handle on “normal,” at least for my age group, which is not “grandparent struggling to turn on the computer”. I probably skew a little more crazy compared to average, I did switch my computer’s OS to Linux, but way less than people on this instance. Although I have no comment on the Switch/Steam Deck thing, I have zero desire to participate in console gaming and none of my friends are passionate enough about consoles to leak any information over to me. I’ve seen Switches around and have no idea what a Deck looks like, which might be telling, but it is also possible some of my friends have Decks and I just dismissed it as “some object”.
Plenty of people do or use a lot of things that more people don’t. My point was that not everyone knows what a SteamDeck is. You rebutted by saying people on steam know what it is. Do you not see how terrible of an argument that is? You were basically conceding, but you worded it like you weren’t trying to make my point, even though you did.
Yes, people on steam know about the SteamDeck, the majority of the US and world population, do NOT know what steam is. Therefore, by your own logic, most people don’t know about the SteamDeck.
It’s getting down voted because it’s not $600 it’s $400. Which is exactly how much the switch costed at launch. Well not exactly. The switch cost money to play online. So it’s actually cheaper
Additionally you can get the games much cheaper. Steam games are normally much cheaper than the Nintendo closed store. You also have Hero launcher which allows you Epic And Gog games. Epic gifts every week a new game. That alone is more than most switch players will own.
Don’t you gotta buy Switch accessories too? Like kinda the same things, if you need them… a dock, extra controllers, memory card, etc? But the deck, you can use existing controllers (from other consoles, or a mouse and keyboard you might have lying around) and buy a 3rd party dock that works just as well.
I have a switch and I loved it for some games, but now that I have a steamdeck, it’s the most I’ve played games in years. Comparing accessories is moot imo, and can be cheaper on a deck… and the deck is just way more versatile overall. The Switch’s benefit is proprietary Nintendo games and that doesn’t tip the scales enough for me to buy a 2nd gen version. I’ll choose the versatility of the deck any day, it got me playing more games again
I have 0 accessories. You get everything you need: case and charger. Most accessories are completely pointless rice, unless for some reason you want to use your deck as a pc. In which case it is still cheaper than switch and a pc.
Since I bring mine to libraries and gatherings, I use it like a Switch to plug into big TVs and four controllers. Thankfully it’s all still cheaper than the good stuff for a Switch 👍
SD is way cheaper in the long run. You already have a sizeable library and if you don’t 620 on steam deck and humble bundle is going to get you way more games than 620 spent on switch and overpriced nintendo copy paste games. Didn’t you have to pay for the internet again on switch?
To be fair, (I hate Nintendo because of their crusade on open source software), but to be fair,
ps2 had issues on some Ps1 games, the list is short though, and the last few revisions of ps2 even software emulated Ps1 (don’t know the compatibility difference with hardware backwards compatibility)
Ps3 had issues with even more ps2 games, and only the first few revisions had hardware backwards compatibility, the ps2 emulation on ps3 without hardware compatibility is a mess
PS5 has issues with some ps4 games, including but not limited to psvr games, and I think I saw an official in incompatibility list by sony
Wii backwards compatibility i dont know about any issues except with games that use hardware accessories, maybe someone knows more? Later revisions dropped backward compatibility, but the hardware is still present, and homebrew will help you.
As for switch 2 to switch 1 backwards compatibility speculation, here is a educated guess. The asterisk is referring to lobo games and some other games with accessories. Why this speculative conclusion? Because of the way the hardware inside it works.
The arm cpu can be optionally designed to be completely backwards compatible. But is it? (more on that soon). The gpu part of the SOC, is most certainly not 100% binary compatible, because of what we already know about the architecture changes between these gpu generations. This isn’t limited to arm and nvidia gpus, ps5 also has these issues with x86 jaguar to ryzen, and Radeon generations.
So what about your experience with pc gpus, and cpus, and ps5 to ps4 compatibility etc? Well, emulation, the instructions, that are not compatible are emulated in software, this is common place, and in practice it works quite well. The main issue comes down to timing. Some things take different amount of time to do, like an instruction can take fewer cycles. Or if it’s emulated it can take more cycles. Emulation does work well, even if it often can have timing issues. Some times instructions from a future generation can possibly be emulated on your pc cpu. I can remember my friends computer using an installed windows driver, to emulate a future version of the SSE instruction set, I think it was SSE 2 or 2.1, it worked well enough to play VR games (oculus rift dev kit 1 days).
Another issue is that when cpu makers deprecate instructions some times, but they do this in a quite annoying way, they can add a wait, so an instruction takes much longer to run than previous cpus.
I’m not confident enough to talk in this detail about GPUs, because as we all experience, the high level compatibility api like directX or vulkan do all this all the time for us, and I don’t know graphics programming. But I do know this is more of an issue on consoles talking more directly to the hardware. But lots of switch games use vulkan so, those should TM work fine… But some games can also be programmed (intentionally like rogue squadron on GameCube, or unintentionally) to need an unintended or undocumented feature of the vulkan implementation on the switch, and those may or may not work on switch 2
Nvidia also is responsible for the Cpu design, directly or indirectly. I don’t know how much they care about being as backwards compatible with the cpu instructions as possible though. Probsbly if Nintendo has anything to say about it, they can be 99.999% compatible, with only some timing issues, which may or may not affect games.
So what is the conclusions? Of course this is speculation, and users have to test games, it will take years to know the full extent, but I think we will see near 100% compatibility for games that don’t need hardware accessories that are not compatible. If we exclude shovelware (low effort crap that somehow got into the eshop) maybe a couple to a handful of games will have big enough issues that they can’t be played. Maybe more games will have minor graphics issues, or things that look fine, but just slightly different to switch1
The Switch 2 has a new hardware size and some software (like Labo and Ring Fit) has a physical component that is sized to the original Switch/Joy-Con. It could be referring to that.
Yeha but the pessimist in me thinks of box’s backwards compatibility where only the games they curated would work. Still can’t play eternal sonata anymore.
Man I’m so sorry to hear that. For me it was Lucasarts’ Gladius and they finally did add that one somewhat recently. It’s the only game I was keeping my original Xbox for.
Just as a heads up, Eternal Sonata was released on the PS3 and Xbox360. Both RCPS3 and Xenia can play Eternal Sonata even on a steamdeck. If they wont let you play it legitimately, and youve bought a copy for your old systems… thats more than enough justification to emulate in my books.
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