So wrong: Aussie game pirate told to pay Nintendo $1.5 million

An Aussie gamer who illegally uploaded a copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii has been ordered to pay maker Nintendo AU$1.5 million ($1.3 million) in what many are calling a landmark decision for game companies. James Burt, 24, will also have to pay a further AU$100,000 in court costs. In Mario terms, that’s a lot of gold coins.

In case you hadn’t guessed from the title, I find this utterly ludicrous, and a perfect example of how punishments for game piracy are vastly disproportionate to the crime.

Let’s get this straight from the beginning, before I haul out my soapbox: what James Burt did was wrong, and he deserves to be prosecuted. Piracy is theft, and it should be tackled by the law. It damages the games industry, and often seriously affects smaller developers and publishers. I don’t blame Nintendo one bit for taking action.

Yet there’s punishing somebody, and then there’s completely ruining their life. Burt, who works at a Brisbane freight forwarding company, will now spend the rest of his life paying back this ridiculous fine – at 24, he is essentially tied to a colossal debt until the day he dies.

Is that a morally justifiable punishment for somebody who uploaded a $50 game without even attempting to make a financial gain? Once again, the law is an ass. (As an aside, New Super Mario Bros. Wii recently sold its ten millionth copy. I think Nintendo will get by, with or without James Burt’s lifetime earnings.)

Oh, I know the counter-arguments already. Through his foolish actions, James Burt cost Nintendo revenue from sales of the game. And that’s true, he probably did. But how much revenue? Nobody knows. Nintendo Australia head Rose Lappin has since said that Burt’s upload was downloaded by more than 50,000 people around the world, causing what she called “untold losses.”

“Untold” is the key word here. Lappin has no way of demonstrating that all 50,000 downloaders would have bought the game – it is simply unprovable. Yet that hasn’t stopped the courts from dropping a completely arbitrary fine on Burt. Until we get a proper study of how piracy actually affects sales of games, then this kind of thing will happen again and again.

Game piracy is a crime. Like all crimes, it requires a punishment that fits.

[Via The Daily Telegraph]