2 of my friends bought R4s for the "kawaii anime" stand in the dealers room on monday. Upon inspection later, we can confirm that they are fake.
Is there anything to be done about this? i know there is no chance of getting any refund, but is kawaii anime allowed to do this?
you say fake, as in bootlegged? Fanime dose not allow bootlegs and dose sweeps though the Dealers room to find and remove such items. however some items can be missed in the search or placed later after one. But without this being found and reported in the dealers room at the time I don't think much can be done. but next year If anyone thinks their is a bootleg for sale, report what the item is and what booth and we can look into it.
Thank you for your input, hopefully this won't happen to any one else after this incident.
This is the same booth that my friend bought his at. He tried setting it up in our hotel room later (with three of us in the room owning our own legit R4s, so it's not like we didn't know what we were doing), and his DS just stayed at a black screen. The packaging looked identical to a real one, as well as everything inside. He tried everything to get the thing to work, and I think he's still trying. If this booth intentionally sold fake R4s, I think they shouldn't be allowed to come back next year. There should be at least some kind of disciplinary action.
Did you try the R4 on the DSi or DS?
I believe R4 is illegal to sell. I think you should report to fanime officlal
Quote from: slimchance on May 25, 2009, 08:58:35 PM
I believe R4 is illegal to sell. I think you should report to fanime officlal
I don't see how R4 would be illegal. I use to it for homebrew games (and to play 'backup' games :P). lol
Quote from: chanocular on May 25, 2009, 10:46:24 PM
Quote from: slimchance on May 25, 2009, 08:58:35 PM
I believe R4 is illegal to sell. I think you should report to fanime officlal
I don't see how R4 would be illegal. I use to it for homebrew games (and to play 'backup' games :P). lol
The device itself isn't illegal, but it's most commonly used for illegal purposes.
By chanocular's quoting of backup, I'm assuming he's one of the ones who use it for illegal purposes.
Quote from: MeowDesu on May 25, 2009, 08:46:55 PM
This is the same booth that my friend bought his at. He tried setting it up in our hotel room later (with three of us in the room owning our own legit R4s, so it's not like we didn't know what we were doing), and his DS just stayed at a black screen. The packaging looked identical to a real one, as well as everything inside. He tried everything to get the thing to work, and I think he's still trying. If this booth intentionally sold fake R4s, I think they shouldn't be allowed to come back next year. There should be at least some kind of disciplinary action.
Heh me being said friend. I'll just add my story here and hope it can help those that bought this fake cart.
At first when I was testing this I used the MicroSD from my phone, a 2GB Kingston card, on my DSLite. None of the firmwares worked, not even the latest one (v1.24) from the site listed on the box (http://www.r4new.com/index-en.htm). After some googling is when I found this cart to be a fake, and started looking for alternative firmwares to use.
Today before the con closed I talked to the guys in the booth about my problem. They said to use the firmware on the site www.ndsl.com which happens to be a parked domain as of this post -_-'' They also said they tested each individual card before selling them to make sure they worked, since they use the same cards personally. Other than that I got the impression I was pretty much on my own from there.
I eventually found a firmware that works after I stopped using the 2GB Kingston. My guess is that since this cart isn't made as well as a legit R4 there's some alignment issues with the contacts of the cards and so it wasn't being recognized. I'm now using a new 8GB Polaroid/PNY card from Fry's and it appears to be stable. I'm using the latest firmware (v1.25) from http://www.r4sdhc.com/index-en.htm. Of course with all of this YMMV, I just hope this can help someone who ended up stuck with a useless 40$ piece of plastic.
Other than that, I don't know where this falls under the Dealer's Room policies since it's an electronic device and not bootlegged anime/manga... They were selling another DS flash cart like this, I think it was called a TTDS? As for that being fake as well I can't say, I only know of the R4 I bought. Like Akito said above there's probably not much ConOps can do until next year, if anything, since we are the ones who didn't check it first for legitimacy ^_^''
PS: They were booth #503, if anyone needs this as a reference.
by any chance did the R4 box look exactly like this (http://www.r4dsusa.com/cart.php?m=popup&id=25)?
The box that I got was this (http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/23443/R4sdhc.jpg) one here, but the contents were almost exactly the same down to the style and colors: USB MicroSD reader, R4 SDHC card and case. No disc or lanyard though.
did it say
the www.r4ds.com
in the lower right corner of the box
if not its a fake
o_o
Quote from: chanocular on May 25, 2009, 10:46:24 PM
Quote from: slimchance on May 25, 2009, 08:58:35 PM
I believe R4 is illegal to sell. I think you should report to fanime officlal
I don't see how R4 would be illegal. I use to it for homebrew games (and to play 'backup' games :P). lol
It is illegal to sell R4 in Japan, but it is legal to own one; as for playing 'backup' games, then that is 100% illegal.
Quote from: otakuapprentice on May 26, 2009, 11:15:06 PM
Quote from: chanocular on May 25, 2009, 10:46:24 PM
Quote from: slimchance on May 25, 2009, 08:58:35 PM
I believe R4 is illegal to sell. I think you should report to fanime officlal
I don't see how R4 would be illegal. I use to it for homebrew games (and to play 'backup' games :P). lol
It is illegal to sell R4 in Japan, but it is legal to own one; as for playing 'backup' games, then that is 100% illegal.
But, is it illegal to sell in the US?
Apparently, Kawaii Anime's website is conveniently down now. Plus, they never responded to my past emails on other issues regarding their booth at FanimeCon.
The best thing I can suggest is to call or visit their storefront directly in Pasadena to settle your dispute.
This is the only info I can find online, I can confirm this is the same dealer in our Dealer's Room.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/kawaii-anime-pasadena
To add to Camilla's post, please do not discuss what is legal or not legal without providing evidence of this.
The only thing that I can see is that it's illegal to sell these in Japan (http://kotaku.com/5161340/japanese-courts-block-sales-of-the-dss-r4-cart) but I don't know about having one in your possession or selling/having one in the US.
I appreciate both of your inputs. If this matter goes unresolved with an effort from the buyers to resolve the issue (not to mention my friend already DID try to resolve it with them, and they just pointed him to the bogus website), how would we go about filing a formal complaint against them to Fanime? I would not like this type of vendor to be making money off us at all, so I was wondering if it would be possible to get them banned from returning.
I would also suggest giving 1 star reviews on their Yelp site saying exactly what happened.
Quote from: Dracil on May 29, 2009, 12:00:21 PM
I would also suggest giving 1 star reviews on their Yelp site saying exactly what happened.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/kawaii-anime-pasadena
http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/consumer-selfhelp.shtml
Report them to the Calif Dept. of Consumer Affairs if all else fails. Please read above link for tips!
Quote from: MPLe on May 29, 2009, 03:37:11 AM
To add to Camilla's post, please do not discuss what is legal or not legal without providing evidence of this.
The thing is, you normally can't show anything is legal to sell. You can only show that it's illegal. You'd need a court case to be clear, and there hasn't been one in the US over them.