Hell hath no fury like Nintendo scorned. (Hey, this is free here, don’t complain.) And Nintendo is pretty damn scorned (?) at the following countries for letting piracy run amok: China, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Spain and Paraguay. According to Nintendo, these countries aren’t doing enough to stop the wanton piracy that’s going on there.
Of course, I just read a story in El País [hardcopy, can’t find a link] about how street piracy is punished to an absurd degree in Spain, and that human rights types want to see punishments lessened; piracy is primarily a poor people issue, created and consumed by the less well off. Then I also just read that police in Spain, the most fearsome in all of Europe, with their cute little berets they wear, confiscated a whole lot of Nintendo-related piracy equipment all over the country. So maybe Nintendo should take Spain off this Most Wanted list.
The countries were singled out for different reasons. Brazil, for example, doesn’t bother to prosecute piracy cases, and high taxes and tariffs make it difficult for consumers there to buy legitimate copies of games; in Paraguay, local officials are “in on it” (read: corruption); and in Mexico, apparently no one gives a damn (perhaps Mexico has bigger problems to worry about than whether a 10-year-old is playing an illegal copy of Pokémon?), with no real law enforcement/anti-piracy measures in place.
That Nintnedo has now asked the U.S. Trade Commission to chime in isn’t surprising, but it seems to me that Nintendo is fighting a losing fight here. You try going to the plate-full Mexican government and asking them to devote more resources to fighting piracy and they’ll laugh in your face, or so I imagine.