Police have announced charges of criminal copyright infringement against the admin and players of an unauthorised Aion: The Tower of Eternity server, marking Japan’s first ever prosecution of an emulated MMORPG server.
Kanagawa police say they intend to prosecute an Osaka man in his twenties for criminal copyright infringement, after complaints from Korean MMORPG developer NCsoft that he was running a “pirate server” for Aion: The Tower of Eternity (“The Tower of AION” in Japan), and disgracefully allowing people to play for free.
NCsoft and the police also intend to prosecute anyone who played on the server. Both prosecuting an unauthorised server and going so far as to charge its users are firsts for Japan.
Though he is accused of running a “pirate server” using the game and illegally inducing others to play on it, it is not clear whether he somehow obtained a copy of the server code (the freely available client would not be sufficient), or instead operated an emulated server, as has long been common practice in the world of MMORPGs.
He and his users admit using the server, though it is not clear whether they intend to contest the validity of this unconventional interpretation of the scope of NCsoft’s copyright.
The impetus behind the prosecution appears to be NCsoft’s concerns that his free server was depriving them of precious lucre.
Online there is the usual suspicion that Japan’s copyright laws are more than a little one-sided:
“But there were loads of free shards back in the days of UO? Although if he did get hold of the server executables, it seems fair game to arrest him.”
“Lineage II had them too.”
“Surely this is legal? The client is freely distributed, and he must have cooked up the server side himself.”
“Just because it is free doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like with it. And just because he made it himself doesn’t mean it isn’t plagiarism.”
“If the server was based on a stolen program and the users knew, they can expect to be arrested.”
“You people don’t even realise what a serious crime this is!”
“Remember, he’s not been arrested – they just intend to file charges.”
“Who cares, only scum play play online games!”
“At least it’s cheaper than pachinko.”
“Is anyone still playing this old Korean garbage?”
“It is probably against the TOS to connect to or run an unauthorised server.”
“If you’re going to play on an emulated server you may as well just play SP.”
“After they got downloading criminalised all the different jurisdictions are just going to use this minor stuff they would normally have ignored to pad out their arrest figures. I bet that’s why the cops were so keen on this law.”
“How the hell can they prosecute him for copyright infringement if all the data is on the client and the packets coming off the server are only emulated, not copied?”
“If they can interpret copyright laws this broadly they can arrest you for practically anything. It’s worse than ACTA, they have a totally free hand to make anything into criminal infringement.”
“This is like arresting visitors to a site for copyright infringement because the site was made with pirated software.”
“Arresting the users too? I don’t like the direction things are going on the net these days…”
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So wait the korean version didn't swap over to free to play like the other version did?
Guess not.
Apparently they needed to make more money so they can make more shitty mmos.
I would think no since they had somewhere over 2 million people playing it in Korea when the NA version went F2P
The scary thing here is the arrests are because of complaints of someone outside of Japan.
This case is much like the guy in the UK who got arrested for linking video streams on his website.
The Japanese people should be all kinds of pissed off over this kangaroo court justice.
The korean and japanese versions together have around 4 million players. That is still enough to make a great profit so no, it is not f2p over there.
The only reason it has gone f2p in EU and NA is because we only have around 300,000 players altogether if not less.
wow Japan...I used to play L2 in private 'pirate' servers for years. Aion as well. No issues, ever, expect from the infamous L2extremme (those who played L2 will remember that).
cops again? wanna hear bout armsdealer koko or new anime. just leave that noob cops. in the end, just give money to them and then every thing fine.
This is as stupid as Cops Arresting a Skyrim modder for modding Skyrim and anyone who downloaded the mod ....
Not really, hosting and playing private servers are against the TOS which every Aion player had to accept. I agree that cops taking action in this matter is a bit too much, a C&D letter sent to the hoster would be a better idea.
Anyway, Skyrim comes with Construction Set and you're allowed (even encouraged) to mod it, so your analogy sucks.
There are other games that have been heavily modded despite the publishers not wanting any mods, i.e. modders had to temper with game files and modifying game files is against the EULA etc. The general idea behind his analogy is still valid.
Except you get to download the software before you accept any terms of "Service" and if you create your own server emulation software, they are no longer providing you with a service, and only a free product, so how can their terms of service be in any way binding since you're not using it?
Again, this has NOTHING to do with the Terms of Service.
This is about copyright infringement.
This also has to do with NCsoft reporting lower profits every quarter for the last year or so. Last quarter they actually posted a loss.
Hence the reason why they are cutting Paragon Studios (City of Heroes) lose and why they are going after people who are competing against them WITH THEIR OWN GAME.
copyright infringement is of only use when the person is making money off your product, but in this cause its pointless since they will only be losing money by pressing charges.
"copyright infringement is of only use when the person is making money off your product,"
Absolutely false.
Copyright infringement covers the use, duplication and / or the distribution of any copyrighted material without the consent of the owner of the copyright, whether there is money involved or not.
Again, this is just like making illegal copies of movies and music and sharing them on the internet, which is patently illegal. Why do you think they shut down all those p2p sites like Kazaa, Napster and Limelight? Why do you think most torrent sites have closed up or have made vast changes to how they operate? It's because sharing copyrighted material is illegal.
"but in this cause its pointless since they will only be losing money by pressing charges."
Again false.
It does not cost you anything to press charges against someone. By all indications this is being treated as a criminal case, which means it will be handled and tried by the government, not NCsoft. If it were a civil case, as in NC was suing these people, then it wold be a different matter and NC would have to foot the bill.
"copyright infringement is of only use when the person is making money off your product,"
Absolutely false.
You can be prosecuted for copyright infringement whether or not you directly make a profit from it. Whether you personally make money or not, you're still removing potential income from the people who hold the copyright.
The laws are in place to protect the people holding the copyrights, not the people who are pirating their property.
"but in this cause its pointless since they will only be losing money by pressing charges.
Again, false.
NCsoft is not suing these people. Thus they will incur no costs. This, from all indications, is being treated as a criminal case, which puts the costs on the government, not NCsoft. It doesn't cost anything to file charges.
I don't know why this is downvoted because it's true. Seriously, modding is allowed and private servers aren't. srsly gais
Yeah getting arrested for modding and making your own server is very stupid
All of you are cheap bastards. Get out of the house and get a job you NEETS
NOTRLYDOOD.
Game is F2P*COUGH* Oh wait, I mean P2W/P2HF
Learn how to speak english DOOD.
No.. This is same as procecuting users for creating their own Steam-like server which fools downloaded Skyrim to think it is legit copy. Anyone who willfully utilize it must be at some level aware what they are doing.
Not saying there should not be room for servers like this. Back in ages of Ultima Online, Origin did sue quite a lot of shards, until they realized it is rather futile attempt. Their solution was to strike deal with server-modders: You don't get paid for our work, and we don't bother hunting you down. I'm not sure but there might have been something along the lines "make sure players know this is not the official server". And then they tried to compete with all the free servers by providing more pleasant and worthwhile experience as a server.
Based my view of things solely on this article I cannot say if the pirate-server did ask for money to server costs or even ask for donations to feed the server admin, but if money was involved there is no wonder NCSoft got interested, all that money could potentially be theirs. Making it essentially stealing money directly from them, at least in their perspective. And you know how companies and money go along.
Son of bitch!! Not my precious Aion! oh well back to GW2...
i played CoD on alteriwnet before they were forced to close... lucky i didn't get arrested.
NcSoft are a bunch of fucktards.
Awwww, poor baby is upset that his GW2 trading outpost isn't working like HE wants.
News flash, fuckhead. The GW2 trading server is CROSS SERVER. It's getting hit from all worlds at once. It's going to be handling one hell of a load and outages are to be expected.
Boycott time. Not like I was ever interested in their games anyway.
First, city of Heroes gets suddenly killed off, and now this! Did some corporate "experts" take over NCsoft?
City of Heroes died so Aion can go on sucking. What a fucking mess.
"it's probably against the TOS" good thing they didn't agree to said ToS
This has nothing to do with the ToS. It's about copyrights and copyright infringement. NCSoft is perfectly within their rights, legally, to go after these people. It's much the same as pirating music and movies. Someone is using their product without paying them and, as a result, NC can take legal action against the people infringing on their copyright.
Now whether they should or shouldn't have chosen to do what they did is more of a moral issue. Are these people actually impacting NC's bottom line? Would a cease and desist order have been sufficient (and was one issued and ignored)? Or did NC find out about the server and go straight to the "HANG THEM!!!" option?
Personally, I think NC handled this poorly, but in a legal sense they are certainly acting within their rights.
'' when you support huge entertainment corporations by buying their shit you support criminals '' because those are the real bad guys here.
City of Heroes was fun back in those days when you had to subscribe its sad that Aion might suffer the same fate if they can't find better content to challenge players with.
Running an emulated server is not a *copyright* violation!
(As long as they didn't illegally copy the server code...)
Running an emulated server might be a violation of some other Corporate-Revenue-Protectionist-Law, though.
And naturally it makes sense to boycott something you don't use, therefore your boycott is useless. Brilliant.
I don't see the issue here. Making a private server goes way beyond fair usage.
really? You havent seen NEXON then
Quotes in their NA forums from them saying "Pando Media Booster is a great tool! There's nothing wrong with it and we will continue to use it!"
In response to "God damn it, I don't want to keep pando media booster installed to freaking update the game!!!"
Why? Because they're not getting paid for a game it cost them money to develop? Because someone is running an illegal server? If you found out a guy from Korea or China was doing the same with a Japanese company's game you'd be in line at the torch & pitchfork store.
Finally!!!!!!! Someone here with a brain. Thank you for saying that. Sankaku is getting way too biased as everything here is turning anti-anything thats not made in Japan. Its a great country, if some of its people realized that the world isnt made up of fat ugly barbarians trying to steal their stuff. Japan is an amazing country, but just like every other one out there it has skeletons in its closet and dirty hands. Its time for some of its citizens to stop stroking their egos and stop letting their pride blind them to the world.
Are you fucking joking?!
This site's pretty much pro-Korean.
The question is how much is fair for them to get payed?
Truth is they are paid just fine as it is, regardless of piracy.
Furthermore how much more they would be paid if this server didn't exist?
It is false to relate pirating with lost sales. Most people use the pirate version because they don't have the money or don't think it is worth to pay for the good. If the pirated version didn't exist most of these people still wouldn't buy the game.
"Furthermore how much more they would be paid if this server didn't exist?"
True, but then that's like saying you believe that Levis already gets paid enough for the clothes they make so shoplifting a few pairs at the mall is okay. Stealing is stealing.
"It is false to relate pirating with lost sales. Most people use the pirate version because they don't have the money or don't think it is worth to pay for the good. If the pirated version didn't exist most of these people still wouldn't buy the game."
As you say, "most".
Even if 1% decided to buy the real thing if they couldn't get the pirated version, that's still more money for the people who created the product that was pirated.
I hate to get all cliche here, but pirating copyrighted property is a form of theft, regardless of how you want to rationalize or justify it.
@06:19
Here we go with the same bullshit arguments..
"I pirate because I can't afford a game."
I'd like to have a Ferrari, but you know what? I can't afford one. Doesn't give me the right to steal one, does it?
"I pirate because I don't think it's worth that much."
Well you know what? Too bad. I don't think I should have to pay what I do for internet, but you know what? I still have to pay it. I don't feel like paying $10 to go see a movie but if I get caught sneaking in they have a right to boot me.
Anyone who deludes themselves into thinking they're somehow entitled to pirate something because they don't have the money for it is a pathetic thief. Heck, even lower than that, thieves often get caught and face real consequences for their actions. They are scum.
So wrote the American. where game and hardware costs less than a sandwich.!
I wanted to see you open the mouth and play the hypocrite when it is 200% import tax like in my country Brazil!
By your line of thinking why not steal a transatlantic ship or even a country?
To everything there is a limit, and many companies now sell games that are a garbage, promising a totally different game and servers even worse
Thank your President Obama, because nowadays pirate was even harder!
In exchange for favoring people even richer and not be wrong!
"So wrote the American. where game and hardware costs less than a sandwich.!"
Jeebers, how much do you pay for sandwiches?
To all the copyright zealots in this thread:
Copyright is not theft by any legal or even logic definition of the term. It is another infraction entirely.
Copyright exists for a few hundred years, which is basically nothing compared to the History of the human race. Most of humanity's creation came before its existence. It was created because society felt that it would be a benign stimulus to creation, and for some time it was.
Formerly copyright was 14 years after creation with a possible 14 years renewal in some cases. Then it became 28 years. Then 28 years with a 14 years renewal. Then 75 years or 50 years after the death of the author. Now it was extended to 120 years with automatic renewal.
Allowing a single person maintain to the exclusive control over thoughts and ideas for this long is a violence against Humanity as a whole and only serves the interests of big corporations.
Furthermore everything has a little bit of originality and a lot of copy, and most of the copy comes from the public domain. It is only natural that the public domain must receive what it gave to the author. With the ridiculous laws we have today extending copyrights to absurd lengths it is not what is happening. What is happening is that authors and publishers leech the public domain and give nothing in return for hundreds of years.
RE; To all the copyright zealots in this thread:
Regardless of how draconian copyright laws have become (yes, I agree they've stretched the limitations far too much), Aion has only been out for 3 years. Which means that it would still be protected even under the most lax timeline you've described.
@cpc65: Stealing has nothing to do with copyright. It is not legally the same and will never be. Nobody can "steal intellectual property" as it can be copied endlessly at no cost.
What needs to be discussed is how much return should someone have for "creating" something, and at which point whatever he created should become Public Domain.
@Anon 16:37 - There are problems not only about the duration of copyright but also regarding its scope. This case specifically is very complicated. Should a company have the right to force you to use its server? Accordingly to current laws they can, but should this be the case?
The person was only interfacing his software with the official client software. He didn't use the proprietary server code. In my opinion this is fair use and should be acceptable.
"re: The person was only interfacing his software with the official client software. He didn't use the proprietary server code. In my opinion this is fair use and should be acceptable."
At the very least, the person running the pirate server knowingly, and purposefully, facilitated the infringement by allowing people to use his server to bypass having to pay NCSoft. This would make him just as guilty, whether he used the actual NCSoft server program or not.
This is much the same as Youtube and other video hosting sites. They do not provide the actual content, but they are responsible for how copyrighted material is handled.
Look at what happened to Megaupload and Megavideo. These sites did not provide any content, they simply allowed people to use their servers to share videos and files. Due to the rampant amount of sharing of copyrighted materials, the government stepped in and forced them to shut down the sites and they arrested 7 "key" people.
Waaaaah I don't want to pay to play, it should be free! So I'm going to steal it and then play dumb when I get in trouble for stealing. Last time I checked, stealing is illegal. If you don't want to pay for your online games then go play League or better yet, GW2. But don't try to justify stealing, or your stupidity.
Host server in Russia. Then left at N-Fail Soft
NCsoft has shown dwindling profits for the last year or so. In the last quarter, they've actually shown a loss.
This is why they've decided to cut Paragon Studios (City of Heroes) loose.
This is also why they've decided to go after people who are directly competing against them WITH THEIR OWN GAME.