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.”