Man Arrested in Japan for Video Game Piracy

Authorities in Aichi, Japan have arrested a suspected video games pirate for the first time since the new December 2011 law was enacted.

The detainee, a 39-year-old man from Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo, is accused of selling flashcarts for the Nintendo DS online three times between Feb. 14 and March 9 for 7,200 Yen (US $91) each, according to Japan's Association of Copyright for Computer Software. The arrest is the first one under the new amendment to the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, introduced in December 2011, which made it a crime to sell devices that circumvent security controls.

The flashcarts being sold, also known as "majicon" devices, are widely available for the DS and other devices. The cartridges have rewriteable memory that can easily be flashed with illegal game files downloaded online, and also include features to use game cheats and evade copy protection software.

Majikon manufacturers and advocates of the technology claim the equipment is designed to allow gamers to run home-made software.

However, they have been widely used to play pirated games downloaded from the internet and copied onto the SD cards.

Although Japan outlawed the devices years ago, those found selling them were only issued warnings and did not face criminal sanctions. As a result trade of the equipment continued.

Japan is not the only country to target the equipment.

The UK's High Court banned the adapters in 2010. And there have been similar rulings in South Korea, Taiwan, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany.

According to PCWorld, Nintendo said a separate individual has already been found guilty under the new version of the law, for modifying Wii consoles in Fukuoka Prefecture on Japan's southern Kyushu Island.

In 2009, the Kyoto-based video game developing company and 54 software makers won an injunction from the Tokyo District Court that blocked the import and sale of the "RS Revolution for DS," a popular flashcart.

According to Arstechnica.com, illegal downloads of programs that enable the use of the adapters resulted in losses in sales of about 349.5 billion yen ($4.4 billion) for software used on Nintendo DS in the six years from 2004 to 2009.