[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]
“Sega announced on Thursday it had crushed more than 60 illegal
web sites and 125 auction sites flogging pirated versions of its
Dreamcast games, until recently viewed as one of the most secure
digital entertainment systems on the market.”
“In attacking Dreamcast, the pirates were taking on what many
industry analysts regarded as a Fort Knox of online intellectual
properties — equipped with far more complex protections than the
relatively simple music, film and video files targeted by
controversial services like Napster and Scour. Sega’s Dreamcast
system features both internal copy protection and a proprietary
“GD-ROM” compact disc capable of storing almost twice as much data
as an ordinary disc.”
“Charles Bellfield, Sega’s director of communications, said
the company’s drive against the Internet trade of pirated
versions of Dreamcast marked one of the first times that the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 had been used to go after
the web hosting companies and Internet Service Providers used by
pirate traders. “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 said.”