Police in Japan have arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of selling illegally modified Pokémon save data to customers online — a practice which is banned under the country’s 2019 Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
Forgive me if I’m saying something stupid, as I know nothing about Pokemon. But two minutes of searching turns up this repo that apparently lets you edit save files and more.
Which raises the disturbing question: do people really pay to get data they could make themselves for free?
Although I could be missing something obvious and perhaps this man was selling something this project or others like it couldn’t generate. Like I said, I don’t know the first thing about Pokemon.
As for this guy being arrested for selling fake stuff, is it really dystopic? It’s no different than selling fake Rolex watches or fake signed sports memorabilia: you’re either deceiving customers if they don’t know what they’re buying from you, or you’re damaging / debasing a company’s brand.
As for this guy being arrested for selling fake stuff
Modified, not fake. They’re not selling a fake Rolex watch, they’re selling custom watch hands. The article does not suggest they misrepresented what they were selling at any point.
Not to disagree with you, but PKHex is not a CLI application. It relies heavily on a visual interface.
The problem is not (necessarily) using the program, but loading the save files to it.
Modding an OG switch is relatively simple but dangerous process if you do something wrong. Modding any modern switch is practically impossible to do as a normal individual.
But once you have that it’s a dead simple process to do it, and just a little bit time consuming to gen and trade the mons
Suppose I’m playing an 80’s RPG on real legal hardware and I’m tired of grinding for XP. I use a cart reader to dump the save file, apply a patch I downloaded from the web and finish the game. I don’t even have to access any copyrighted data to do this!
Forgive me if I’m saying something stupid, as I know nothing about Pokemon. But two minutes of searching turns up this repo that apparently lets you edit save files and more.
Which raises the disturbing question: do people really pay to get data they could make themselves for free?
Although I could be missing something obvious and perhaps this man was selling something this project or others like it couldn’t generate. Like I said, I don’t know the first thing about Pokemon.
As for this guy being arrested for selling fake stuff, is it really dystopic? It’s no different than selling fake Rolex watches or fake signed sports memorabilia: you’re either deceiving customers if they don’t know what they’re buying from you, or you’re damaging / debasing a company’s brand.
Modified, not fake. They’re not selling a fake Rolex watch, they’re selling custom watch hands. The article does not suggest they misrepresented what they were selling at any point.
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Not to disagree with you, but PKHex is not a CLI application. It relies heavily on a visual interface.
The problem is not (necessarily) using the program, but loading the save files to it.
Modding an OG switch is relatively simple but dangerous process if you do something wrong. Modding any modern switch is practically impossible to do as a normal individual.
But once you have that it’s a dead simple process to do it, and just a little bit time consuming to gen and trade the mons
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OP possibly wanted to point out:
What is the crime? That is the part that is disturbing.
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it’s SAVE FILES. the base game has to use them. they can’t do anything on their own.
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Even if we agree with copyright law as is, that’s hardly a valid analogy. Save files alone are not a complete game.
Unironically, yes. Copyright law should be completely removed. It was not created to protect artists. It was created to protect shareholder interests.
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Suppose I’m playing an 80’s RPG on real legal hardware and I’m tired of grinding for XP. I use a cart reader to dump the save file, apply a patch I downloaded from the web and finish the game. I don’t even have to access any copyrighted data to do this!
Unless you think data that amounts to
{ "rtc": 1713006754, "savestates": [ { "name": " Red", "xp": 1760, "pokemon": [ { "species": 115, "name": "Fluff", "hp": 24 }, { "species": 92, "name": "Bonk", "hp": 11 } ] } ] }(abriged example in JSON-y format) is copyright-protected, that is. And making a personal backup copy of software is legal (in the US) anyway.
Oh no
Anyways