Stephen's Battle against Profiteering from Piracy
This weekend a new kiosk in the mall opened up called Power Play. They are selling emulation. I don't have any problems with downloading a ROM of some 15 year old Nintendo game to play around with in your own home. I don't think that's such a big deal. I DO have a problem when someone is charging you $40 to play emulated NES games. Since it's opened I've gotten a lot of Gameware customers to go over to the Power Play kiosk and question the legality of what they're selling. The kids working the cart seem to change the story at random. I don't think they were properly trained against this type of question.
The responses range from:
"Nintendo owns this product"
"The games are so old it's public domain by now."
"I know it's legal in America, but maybe not in Japan."
"All the games are actually licensed from the companies that made them and it's legit in one package"
The product has absolutely zero contact information. There's no phone number, website, or address. There's only a white slip of paper with operation instructions.
On Sunday I got the phone number of the guy that runs the kiosk (it's the same guy that runs Krusty Krab, Tom Barbee) and I spoke with his wife. She basically ran me in circles. She didn't know anything about the product, which is understandable. The Barbee's simply bought this thing in bulk from some random distributor. They didn't make them or anything.
This morning I spoke with mall manager Todd Denton. He thought their product was similar to the Namco/Atari boxes that EVERYONE sells. He wasn't aware that the Power Player device was unlicensed. I don't think I'll get anywhere with him. He said he'll look into it. He's putting Stacy Whitecotton on the case .... which means absolutely nothing will happened.
Later this morning after some digging I found two distrubuters online selling the Power Player/Super Joy III wholesale. This is exactly what I needed. They had contact information: phone numbers, addresses, and site listing. I made a phonecall to the Nintendo Power hotline (hehe) and the customer service representative said lots of people were reporting these carts selling Power Player in malls, but I was the first to get her contact information of distributers selling them.
We'll see what happens. I still want to talk to Tom Barbee. I want that kiosk shut down.
The responses range from:
"Nintendo owns this product"
"The games are so old it's public domain by now."
"I know it's legal in America, but maybe not in Japan."
"All the games are actually licensed from the companies that made them and it's legit in one package"
The product has absolutely zero contact information. There's no phone number, website, or address. There's only a white slip of paper with operation instructions.
On Sunday I got the phone number of the guy that runs the kiosk (it's the same guy that runs Krusty Krab, Tom Barbee) and I spoke with his wife. She basically ran me in circles. She didn't know anything about the product, which is understandable. The Barbee's simply bought this thing in bulk from some random distributor. They didn't make them or anything.
This morning I spoke with mall manager Todd Denton. He thought their product was similar to the Namco/Atari boxes that EVERYONE sells. He wasn't aware that the Power Player device was unlicensed. I don't think I'll get anywhere with him. He said he'll look into it. He's putting Stacy Whitecotton on the case .... which means absolutely nothing will happened.
Later this morning after some digging I found two distrubuters online selling the Power Player/Super Joy III wholesale. This is exactly what I needed. They had contact information: phone numbers, addresses, and site listing. I made a phonecall to the Nintendo Power hotline (hehe) and the customer service representative said lots of people were reporting these carts selling Power Player in malls, but I was the first to get her contact information of distributers selling them.
We'll see what happens. I still want to talk to Tom Barbee. I want that kiosk shut down.