Now this was definitely an interesting way of dealing with piracy issues as I have never seen anything like this before. This incident had to deal with a man named Yonatan Cohen who has been operating a large business that sold a product called the “Power Player†through various kiosks in highly populated shopping malls. The Power Player is basically a device that contained pirated versions of popular Nintendo games such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. He was eventually convicted guilty for his crime and has to face penalties such as spending 60 months in prison and after his prison sentence is served he will be deported back to Israel. But the real shocker was this advertisement that was published in a video game magazine:
As stated on the bottom of the page “This ad was paid for by Yonatan Cohen as part of his restitution to warn others about the dangers and penalties associated with violating the copyright lawsâ€. Basically, he had to use some of the funds that he earned through selling these illegal Power Play products to fund an advertisement about his crime and punishment. I have honestly never seen anything like this before. Hopefully this will also raise some awareness for all of those unsuspecting customers as well who purchased these products in the mall thinking that it is a perfectly legal product.
Let this be a lesson to aspiring entrepreneurs that just because something is very profitable doesn’t mean you should do it if it is illegal as you’ll end up losing everything and so much more.