99% plagiarism of Mario Kart Wii!


Hey everyone, hold your horses, this may not be a direct "rip" of the game. This could of easily been done using an "on-the-fly" patcher called Riivolution (official website found here http://rvlution.net/ ) which makes it more of a "gray area" than a direct pirated/counterfeited knockoff copy that's being commercially sold.


I may be wrong about this specific release, however there are tons of Mario Kart mods that have been developed using this program (and I'm willing to bet many more are still being developed).


See the Riivolution patcher, requires you to have an official retail disc of the game in order to use it, as stated on their website. In fact, if you try to use Riivolution with a pirated copy of the game it will not let you dump any of the required data off the disc to make the patches, nor will it let you apply any of them. Even if you use a modchip and/or backup loader, it will not work. Riivolution has some kind of detection built in for such workarounds. Of course no protection scheme is 100% full proof. Any security made by humans can be taken apart by humans, simple fact, but from what I understand the Riivolution modchip/backup loading protection scheme is pretty damn good thus far (I wouldn't be surprised if it gets hacked eventually, or if it already has been and I'm just unaware of this).


The only reason I would consider Riivolution as being a legal "gray area" is because it does require you to dump some of the content off the original game disc if you are developing the patches yourself. Since Wii games are encrypted to prevent such copying/dumping of content, the program you would need to dump said content would have to effectively circumvent this copy protection which is illegal in some countries. This is where it get's hairy so to speak.


Riivolution patches are typically distributed for free (it may even be a requirement in the EULA for Riivolution and the associated programs), so if someone decides to use these commercially they could be potentially held liable for breaching the EULA as well as any applicable Anti-Circumvention laws. Of course I'm by no means a legal expert, or attorney, but this is my personal understanding of how this thing works and how the law could affect it.


If the game in this video is just a straight up iso distribution/burnt disc, or otherwise using a full dump of the original game, than you can pretty much guarantee that's it's illegal in almost every country (if not all countries).


If this is a non commercial release like I suspect, then I would think of it as more of a "tribute" to Mario Kart than anything else. Of course Nintendo's lawyers may beg to differ on that notion ;) .
 
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^ It's not a modification, or for the Wii at all... It's a release for Apple's App Store. The logo's pretty clear there at the end of the video. :p


The video very clearly shows that the tracks, which I listed in another post, are ripped directly from Mario Kart Wii.


So, there are no horses to be holding - taking someone else's tracks from their game on a different system, and putting them into a look-alike game to be sold on another one entirely is not what would fall under the term "tribute". ;)
 
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The game is out on iOS as 'Mole Kart' right now. If you want it, you'd better get it because the game will surely be pulled soon.
 
The Chinese people are the only people who get away with straight plagiarizing. Judging by all the iPad/iPods/iPhone and PSP clones out there, they never seem to get sued.
 
Prometheus said:
^ The company behind this rips off TV shows as well? :blink: They sure must have a lot of resources...
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Not the company, the country. :p


Stuff like this seems fairly common:


http://www.animenation.net/blog/2009/09/02/latest-anime-rip-off-from-china-discovered/


http://www.japanator.com/another-day-another-chinese-rip-off-now-about-trains-20012.phtml


I can't help but laugh when I see these... Really, if they're capable of this quality, they should do something original, at least.
 
Remember the article posted here a while back about the British entrepreneur having motorbikes made in China?

Chris returns to the factory floor, but most of the engineers are not working on Chris' bikes, but are instead in a small back room, smoking and "designing" new bikes.

Bright Mountain's design process involves taking apart a well-known bike, perhaps a Vespa or a Honda, and reverse-engineering it until the factory has its own pirated version to offer to its customers. Today, the men appear to be working on a version of a Harley-Davidson.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6962490/Come-back-Not-for-all-the-scooters-in-China.html


Heh.
 
Reminds me of angry birds, such a rip off of castle crusher, but with a world wide budget (investors) to promote.


I wonder if they actually made enough profit on it, my guess is they did not, otherwise we would be flooded on ripoffs like that.


I don´t even know the name of the company that produced angry birds, did they release anything else? single music band? bah.


But I´m sure you guys know the name of the company that produced minecraft, or sensible soccer, or shadow of the beast?
 
SONY said:
The Chinese people are the only people who get away with straight plagiarizing. Judging by all the iPad/iPods/iPhone and PSP clones out there, they never seem to get sued.
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Well, I don't know where they're stationed, but Yobo's SNES controllers, which have the Nintendo logo slapped on them without Nintendo's permission, are listed on Amazon as if they were manufactured by Nintendo, and I think some people are under the false impression that Nintendo actually gave Yobo permission to do this. Now that is REALLY getting away with it.
 
^ The picture showing the advertised controller (the one with the other controllers and consoles in-shot with it) has no logo. :blink:


I was wondering who was making those things, though. They seem to pop up a lot!
 
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Wasn´t there an economic move that had things manufactured in the far east in exchange of delivering them the ability to re-produce things(after a few years) quite a long time ago?


I was discussing such with my parents couple weeks ago.


My amiga4000(1994 canadian computer) was 99% korean stuff, and so was my colour computer 2 ((1983 EUA computer)named cp400 color II in brazil).


If this move actually holds truth, them that is the only reason(IMHO) a home computer does not cost 20k, or a handheld can be bought for as cheap as 100-500$.


I would not blame it on countries though, I think it is more of a corporation movement, and those are owned by parties from different places.
 
The video has been pulled due a copyright claim by Nintendo. I guess that answers any question's about there being any doubt it was a rip off.


Click the video link , you will get the message about Nintendo's copyright claim and that it has been removed.
 
Hmm... not sure how I feel about that. While it is pretty obvious the tracks were lifted from Mario Kart, that is a copy into their game, not into the video. The video itself was no more infringing on Nintendo's copyright than a letsplay or similar; even less so, actually, since it was at least all new textures.


If someone makes a texture mod and then puts a video on youtube, should Nintendo have the right to have that video pulled for copyright infringement? From my understanding of copyright, the answer is no, they shouldn't. Trademark yes, but not copyright.


Put another way, if you make a machine, and then I steal the blueprints and make a copy of that machine with a different coat of paint and then video tape the machine in operation, am I violating copyright by recording the machine in operation, or is it just when I built the machine? I'm pretty sure it is the latter, that copyright was infringed upon only with the duplicate machine and that my video of the machine is not infringing on your original copyright at all.
 
Prometheus said:
^ The picture showing the advertised controller (the one with the other controllers and consoles in-shot with it) has no logo. :blink:


I was wondering who was making those things, though. They seem to pop up a lot!
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Not the box, the controller itself. It's molded into the plastic where the Super Nintendo logo would be on the Nintendo-made controller.
 
WizardStan said:
Hmm... not sure how I feel about that. While it is pretty obvious the tracks were lifted from Mario Kart, that is a copy into their game, not into the video. The video itself was no more infringing on Nintendo's copyright than a letsplay or similar; even less so, actually, since it was at least all new textures.


If someone makes a texture mod and then puts a video on youtube, should Nintendo have the right to have that video pulled for copyright infringement? From my understanding of copyright, the answer is no, they shouldn't. Trademark yes, but not copyright.


Put another way, if you make a machine, and then I steal the blueprints and make a copy of that machine with a different coat of paint and then video tape the machine in operation, am I violating copyright by recording the machine in operation, or is it just when I built the machine? I'm pretty sure it is the latter, that copyright was infringed upon only with the duplicate machine and that my video of the machine is not infringing on your original copyright at all.
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Agreed. Nintendo should have every right to go after the game itself (provided they can prove a case) but taking down the video should not be within their rights. It is mere evidence of the existence of something. This sort of behaviour is only going to get uglier if SOPA goes through.
 
Gruso said:
WizardStan said:
Hmm... not sure how I feel about that. While it is pretty obvious the tracks were lifted from Mario Kart, that is a copy into their game, not into the video. The video itself was no more infringing on Nintendo's copyright than a letsplay or similar; even less so, actually, since it was at least all new textures.


If someone makes a texture mod and then puts a video on youtube, should Nintendo have the right to have that video pulled for copyright infringement? From my understanding of copyright, the answer is no, they shouldn't. Trademark yes, but not copyright.


Put another way, if you make a machine, and then I steal the blueprints and make a copy of that machine with a different coat of paint and then video tape the machine in operation, am I violating copyright by recording the machine in operation, or is it just when I built the machine? I'm pretty sure it is the latter, that copyright was infringed upon only with the duplicate machine and that my video of the machine is not infringing on your original copyright at all.
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Agreed. Nintendo should have every right to go after the game itself (provided they can prove a case) but taking down the video should not be within their rights. It is mere evidence of the existence of something. This sort of behaviour is only going to get uglier if SOPA goes through.
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its a different story when its a video made by some user, and when the company makes a video advertisement and tries to sell an obvious illegal clone/mod
 
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