Peter Moore, president and CEO of Sega of America said: “Pirates
are parasites that hurt this community and will not be tolerated by
Sega. This is just the first step in an even bigger action the
company will undertake to stop this problem.”
Dreamcast was regarded as one of the most secure game systems on
the market, featuring both internal copy protection and a
proprietary GD-ROM system capable of storing twice as much data as
an ordinary disc.
Earlier this month, a group of hackers calling themselves
“Utopia” announced they had managed to copy Dreamcast games on to
normal CD-ROMs by stripping them of non-essential files and had
developed booting software which would trick Sega’s hardware into
playing the pirated versions. Numerous Sega titles have since been
traded on web sites and Internet Relay Chat.
The company is working with Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, eBay and
Amazon to shut down auctions of the illegal products. Sega’s
Director of Communications, Charles Bellfield, commented that the
action against the internet trade of pirated copies is one of the
first uses of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to go
after the web hosting companies and ISPs used by pirate
traders.
He is reported as saying “We’ve done the first level, which is
cease and desist orders to auction companies and also to web
hosting companies. If they do not comply then legal prosecutions
will start.”
Bellfield continued: “This is the first time this act has been
used not just to stop piracy, but also physical sales over the
internet… It is the first time that web hosting companies and web
auction sites are being held accountable for the contents of what
is being sold.”
