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A revision to Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Act has reportedly introduced criminal penalties for reselling software product keys without permission, distributing save-game editors, and offering to edit save data as a service. Speculation is rampant as to how broadly the data-editing ban may apply.
http://mmofallout.com/japan-criminalizes-editing-save-games-punishable-with-jail-time-and-fines/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/333748/Japan_has_made_reselling_digital_game_keys_illegal.php
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Japan Cracks Down on Game Mods, Cheats, and Reselling
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< nobse> bleh... last night I had a dream... someone NMU'ed vim...
nightmare
-- in #debian-devel
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Saturday January 05 2019, @02:50PM (2 children)
And in a mysteriously linked display of laziness and actual agency, I ran parts of the copied and pasted Japanese article thru a translation service and got the following:
"Act 3: Perform remodeling of save data, substitute remodeling of game machines"
It seems to be a site called In the Computer Software Copyright Association (ACCS) and they seem to be a software industry PAC focused on strengthening the Japanese equiv of the DMCA. Not a legislative body or judge's legal finding or whatevs. So their "We gonna smash those hackers" stuff might just be the usual political action committee chest thumping.
Or maybe using online translation services is not 100% accurate. Still I put forth a reasonable effort and am tentatively not overly impressed. Maybe someone with better Japanese reading skills (AKA any at all) could chime in?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @05:27PM
What do you intrepret to mean, and what do you think of how it applies to you, in that Google filtered your results for this search?
Seems like a great way to suppress arguments if they are silently removed prior to your searching for it, based on what Google believes would be harmful for you to know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Saturday January 05 2019, @10:20PM
Several Japanese news sites are carrying this same headline and article text: https://news.biglobe.ne.jp/it/1220/nlb_181220_5434014301.html [biglobe.ne.jp]
It notes that the Cyber Gadget save editor has been withdrawn and raises the question as to whether the Unfair Competition Prevention Act was the reason. Cyber Gadget did not confirm whether that was the reason. There's no additional information.
The ACCS link lists the three things mentioned in (my) TFS. It links to this page which appears to have the complete text of the law, including a 2018 amendment: http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/economy/chizai/chiteki/kaisei_archive.html [meti.go.jp]
The legalese is way beyond me and since they are PDFs I can't do a search or copy-and-paste words into the dictionary :(
It's weird that I can't seem to find any commentary or reaction to the passing of the law.
Here is another brief article in English: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/01/it_is_now_illegal_to_sell_unauthorised_game_keys_in_japan_save_file_editors_also_banned [nintendolife.com]