38-year-old Yoshiaki Asagiri has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and a fine of $96,000 for running a website that enabled users to illegally download Nintendo DS games.
Asagiri was arrested late last year for creating and operating a website that hosted more than a thousand Nintendo DS ROMs for illegal download. He was found guilty of breaking Japanese copyright law and putting the games online without permission, and yesterday the Kyoto District Court sentenced Asagiri to two-and-a-half years in prison, as well as two separate fines of $21,000 and $75,000.
The presiding judge said that Asagiri’s crime “tramples” the effort of the original copyright holders who spend great amounts of time, money, and manpower creating the games that Asagiri was making available for free.
This ruling comes directly on the heels of a firmware update for Nintendo’s DSi that gave the console Facebook functionality – and, some reports say, stopped certain piracy-enabling devices from working on the handheld as well.
