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The first sentence puts it into a little bit of perspective: "Police in Japan have arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of selling illegally modified Pokémo
by sosborn 2y ago
The first sentence puts it into a little bit of perspective:
"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."
Now, it's still a ridiculous story, but it's a little easier to see how this happened.
- idle_zealot 2y agoDoes that sentence actually change the perspective? It still implies that the modification itself was illegal.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoYes. It changes it entirely. Obviously? Selling or otherwise distributing was illegal, or using hacked data with an on-line service, not merely hacking your own property.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zamadatix 2y agoThe law may seem silly/not worthwhile but at least it gives perspective there is a law saying selling modified things in a way that might make competition unfair is explicitly illegal instead of someone just deciding save edits are bad and something worth arresting for in a vacuum.
- Dylan16807 2y agoBut the law is about business competition. So how is that competition becoming unfair? Just naming this law without a lot more explanation does pretty much nothing for perspective.
- zamadatix 2y agoThe perspective is seeing the law explicitly says said activity is unfair and illegal independent of whether one's ideology agrees said law is reasonable or should exist. E.g. if there was a 2022 law calling for arrest of those holding ice cream cones upside down because of risk to the sidewalk cleanliness then knowing that gives perspective to why someone was arrested for holding an ice cream cone upside down beyond just a random arrest decision for something one thinks everyone would consider harmless. That doesn't mean it convinces you personally that the law is reasonable and, just that it was indeed an explicitly illegal activity.
- Dylan16807 2y ago> The perspective is seeing the law explicitly says said activity is unfair and illegal independent of whether one's ideology agrees said law is reasonable or should exist. It still needs an explanation because at a surface level the crime and the name of the law have nothing to do with each other. Until that explanation exists of how the law says it's illegal, I don't have the perspective of seeing the law explicitly say that! I am not even in the realm of talking about whether the law makes sense.
- zamadatix 2y agoThe name of the law is neither here nor there in the end (most laws have useless names really) and you don't have to possess an explanation of why it's covered under that law to be given the perspective that it is. On that front though, and following the link to the body of the law, a shortened version might be: The saves are encrypted and proprietary. As a result modifying them to get rare items runs afoul into the "trade secrets" verbiage. Selling work based on such trade secrets then falls under the unfair competition definition and is what results in said penalties. My stab at the likely background reasoning for having these rules (i.e. not explicitly written into the law but rather why the law might have been made) is something along the lines that the guy made money off of devaluing the rarity of IP the company was supposed to have control of distributing through their proprietary means.
- VS1999 2y agoThe selling part is more important than the modification part because the law he broke specifically references selling or renting.
- anigbrowl 2y agoIt does not. Selling your cheat mod is fundamentally different from playing around with it on your own workbench.
- qwerty456127 2y ago[flagged]
- tumult 2y agoHousing is already affordable in Japan.
- qwerty456127 2y agoHousing can always use becoming more affordable. Perfectly affordable housing is when an ordinary worker without a university degree can buy a decent single-bedroom apartment in just some years of saving (which sounds totally unrealistic so there always is room to improve). I've read it even is hard to rent a decent apartment in Japan because they always require huge deposits only the rich can afford easily. There are homeless people, at least some of them not particularly happy about being homeless, also 30+ yr. old people having to live with their parents - means housing is not affordable enough.
- kalleboo 2y ago> I've read it even is hard to rent a decent apartment in Japan because they always require huge deposits only the rich can afford easily. Are you thinking about South Korea? Deposit in Japan is maybe 1-2 months of rent.
- qwerty456127 2y agoYou probably are right, supposed facts about Korea and Japan may have intermixed in my memory.
- LoganDark 2y agoTo be fair, housing alone is a low bar. I'm sure plenty of homeless people could technically afford somewhere to live, but don't find any of their available options worth it for whatever reason. Wonder if there have been any surveys on this.
- 2y ago
- bottled_poe 2y agoSeems like fraud would be a more likely charge.
- LegitShady 2y agoI don't think its reasonable though. I have a hard time believing that its a good use of public resources. He wasn't pirating software, he was selling a savegame file. That it was 'tampered with' doesn't really matter except when the letter of the law is used to punish people doing nothing wrong.
- ranger_danger 2y agoThis same law also makes console modding services illegal. One particular company, Cyber Gadget, even used to sell commercial save game editor apps, and they had to pull them after this law was introduced.