DS piracy article fabricated, says ELSPA
Surprised?
If only life were this predictable. ELSPA has confirmed that some of the quotes attributed to one of its employees in a recent article by The Sunday Post are false.
Hardly surprising stuff, really. The article had quoted John Hillier, manager of ELSPA's Intellectual Property Crime Unit, as claiming that a staggering 90 per cent of US-based DS users play pirated games as a result of the R4 cartridge (which allows game ROMs to be downloaded off the internet and played on Nintendo's handheld).
In reality, says ELSPA, the original article consists of facts taken from another article originating from Singapore, a genuine conversation with Hillier (with regards to the availability of the R4 cartridge in the UK) and quotes falsely attributed to him.
"The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said," an ELSPA spokesperson confirmed to industry site, gi.biz.
So that's the end of that. It was a staggering claim, true, though in fairness industry associations have on occasion interpreted statistics in creative fashion in order to arrive at some sensationalist conclusion (which, in turn, result in sensationalist headlines) so you can never be too certain about these things.
