ELSPA wants pirates stranded without R4
by Phil Larsen 
{ Jul 10th 2008 at 11:45AM }
According to the ELSPA, "The supply of these items is an infringement and an offence under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994." So, how did they get onto shelves in the first place? Clearly the yawn-inducing law behind it all is more complex than simply "they are illegal," otherwise the shops wouldn't still be selling them. Which they are.
Long story short, it's a mess of regulations and red tape, and we've heard it all before. It's hardly a crystal-clear situation where legal teams "will take action where and when appropriate." If a blanket ban of selling flash carts suddenly falls over England, and police start breaking down doors of R4 traders, we'll let you know. Until then, get out there and buy some good games, and use any external device responsibly.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Char6296 @ Jul 10th 2008 12:19PM
I confess that I own an R4, and use it for ROMs and Homebrew. However, I did buy GBA and GBC games legally (save a few ROMS on the Visualboy Advance, after Sonic Advance 3 was burnt in the toaster, it's justified for that one ROM), do buy Wii games and have bought a 8 legal DS games. And they only want the R4 banned? What about M3s, Supercards, etc... All of those are capable of the same things as the R4, so I don't see any reason to blame the R4 alone.
Joop @ Jul 10th 2008 12:36PM
R4 has just become the genericized trademark of flash cart. That's when people start referring to a type of product by one of its more popular popular brand names, like Q-Tip, Kleenex, Frisbee, or Flipflop.
I have one and always buy the games I download and end up liking. Plus it's nice to be able to store your entire collection on a single card.
Char6296 @ Jul 10th 2008 1:05PM
Ahkay, thanks, Joop. I get it now.
ryan @ Jul 10th 2008 12:42PM
I've got an R4 and I do use it to play ROMs (along with homebrew), but I own the retail carts for nearly all the games I play and the rest are generally games that I'm trying to decide whether to buy. There are too many games that are not worth paying $30 for without having ever had a chance to play it. If there were a way to legally demo ANY game, I'd never have anything but software I own on my R4.
In fact, I'll be that you'd see a lot less 'piracy' if demos were much more widespread in the gaming industry. People may download a lot of games, but I'll bet they never spend more than 20 minutes on the majority of them.
chispito @ Jul 10th 2008 1:33PM
I'm in the same boat you are. I have an R4 that I use for backups. Granted, it's convenient to be able to download a backup while you wait for the out-of-stock cart to come in.
Well, to be totally honest I have a bunch of GBA games on there I didn't buy, and never will, but most of those are imports or out of print. If someone really wanted to draw issue with them I wouldn't have any problem deleting them. All the stuff I really care about I have purchased or it's homebrew.
Danny @ Jul 13th 2008 1:11PM
$30?! New games cost 30 here! That's $60 to you. For as long as people get shafted like this, piracy will flourish.
TheCoats @ Jul 10th 2008 12:47PM
I have an R4 (brand) R4.
And I am happy to say, I only use it for homebrew and to backup and carry around roms of games i own legitly....
animeman_59 @ Jul 10th 2008 2:45PM
Welcome to England: The Nanny State
gukid @ Jul 10th 2008 4:55PM
Lately I've been using my R4 more and more really to play games the way I want to, and that sometimes involves not buying them (otherwise I wouldn't have bought Etrian Odyssey 2, FFTA2 and a used copy of Contact in the last month...)
For example, playing through TWEWY with the japanese voices put back in, an UNDUB. Did the same with FFCC. Made a NODUB of Megaman ZX Advent and removed the voices (since you can't disable them...) and the text boxes load and scroll much faster without them. I'll probably also try to heavily modify the Dragon Quest 4 script when it comes out and change as much stuff back to how it was with Dragon Warrior 4, since I have a really soft spot for that game (and old DW/DQ in general)...
I know it's probably not the most legal thing, to mess around with games, but I always buy them anyway when I feel a company has really put an effort in to making a really great game.
Kogita @ Jul 10th 2008 6:03PM
Here's an idea to whoever's selling them: Advertise the multitude of awesomeness Flash carts can do, from watching videos, to reading ebooks, to chatting on IRC and drawing, to playing and developing your own homebrew!
Take it a step further, and make a seperate firmware that won't run commercial games and bundle that with the hardware instead.
When I got my DS, I don't remember any EULA saying I can't use Third party hardware. Using the logic they're trying to push, you couldn't use third party rumble packs, carrying cases, or even styluses!
rookie.of.the.year @ Jul 10th 2008 8:53PM
If demos or rental copies were more freely available, or if the games weren't so frigging expensive (and if a large portion of the games weren't utter toss), piracy would be a less appealing option. The thing with R4's and the like is you don't have to carry around a ton of cartridges, or swap cartridges or anything, it's just convenient.
Smoot @ Jul 11th 2008 1:57AM
So has r4 officially been genericized to mean "any DS flashcart"? Edge-DS for lyfe.
Christopher @ Jul 12th 2008 12:53PM
"Clearly the yawn-inducing law behind it all is more complex than simply "they are illegal," otherwise the shops wouldn't still be selling them. Which they are."
It's because ELSPA is full of crap. Owning these is NOT against the law. Running illegal code on them IS. They're trying to say that the device enables pirating DS games, well by that logic they should go bust down every door of people who own CD/DVD players because they clearly enable piracy, right?
They're just trying to stem the tide by plugging the hole in the dam by shoving their finger into it.