| hsrob said: I haven't had time to read this entire thread and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but this was an OUT-OF-COURT settlement. This means that our infamous pirate was presumably given legal advice that the 1.5 million was a pretty good deal and that going to court could have resulted in even more severe punishment. Nintendo didn't have to offer him a deal and if it went to court they could have buried any lawyer this guy could have secured. |
There are a couple more explanations.
The guy could just be really stupid (actually, he is, that's why he was caught) and had very, very stupid lawyers (now this get's quite unlikelly)
Or, as some people said earlier, Nintendo offerd him to settle on this value just for the headline material. He won't pay anything and Nintendo won't ever ask for it. This way it's good for Nintendo (get's lots and lots of anti-piracy pubicity instead of just some thousand dollars) and good for the guy (get's out for free or about that, gets to appear on tv, lays low and stays quite).
Really, there's no way $1.5 million would be awarded on court. If you just factor the fact that Nintendo doesn't get even near 100% of the retail price of games, it would mean about 70% of the downloads would have to actually mean lost sales, wich is a very hard case to deffend, as tehre are still other factors that would put the number down. But it would make sense for him to settle on this value if he was afraid of doing jail time. He most likelly won't pay/won't pay it all, but won't get out of it nearly as well as in the last supposition.
So, again, I think it's absurdly unlikelly that he would have to pay even more had the case gone to court.
