DS piracy nonsense

Sadly, I am aware that there is a lot of DS pirating going on out there... and some of the bastards are really brazen about it too, happily advertising all over google adsense their '80 in 1' rom collections, and neither the sites nor adsense seem to give a damn. I would really like to see those people stopped.

But reading articles on the subject is also baffling.

If you happen to own the standard DS though, you're faced with a tantalizing moral dilemma. To pirate or not to pirate?

and in a comment:

So why do I do it? Because it so damn easy to do.

No. No, it isn't. The dilemna is not staring you in the face and it is not so damn easy to do.

With casual PC games, there is a whole insane search-engine-spam system going on frantically copying links to rapidshared game copies to every blog they can, because they know Google is extremely hesitant to act on piracy complaints. A standard search for the name of any casual game - especially ones that haven't even been released yet - will reveal DOZENS of pirate copies of the game right there for you to download at the click of a button. Heck, sometimes, the actual site the game is sold on is buried out of sight beneath pages of piracy links.

It is, in some cases, harder for a potential customer to find the real game to buy than to just swipe it free.

This is not the case with the DS. If you want to pirate games, you first have to investigate the whole piracy things. You have to find out HOW to do it. You can't just fall into it by accident. The steps may be simple enough, but you have to learn them. And you have to go buy specialised equipment that is almost entirely for the purposes of piracy. (Yes, there's some homebrew. But seriously, how many people with the equipment are using it solely for that?) You can't just stick your toe in the water, downloading a game quickly thinking it means nothing, or somehow being misled that what you're doing is legal. (Unless you were suckered into one of those 80-in-1 things and failed to realise they were bootleg.)

Dumbass pirates comment that the DS games are too expensive. They're not cheap, no, except for the handful of bargainware. And if you live in the UK it's even worse. (Which is why I import!) But the equipment for stealing the games isn't cheap either. From what I understand, you have to make a BIGGER upfront investment if you want to be a thief. You have to decide outright that you would rather spend a lot of money on stealing games and not to spend that money on buying them.

The game is already cheaper than beginning to steal. Making games even cheaper, probably not affecting much.

Anyway. The DS has not presented me with a "tantalising moral dilemna". Not in the slightest. I have NEVER felt in the slightest bit tempted to put a pirate game on my DS. I'm not saying this to be holier-than-thou, I will also admit that if I had a working DS emulator, I might be interested in checking out ROMs of dubious games which are probably too crap to buy, but which have gone under the radar of the mainstream games press and therefore have few/no reviews and no way for me to learn much about them. I don't currently have a DS emulator at all (please don't link to them in comments here) so it's obviously not a burning desire. But I might do it, and I wouldn't consider it particularly harmful.

Buying equipment designed only for stealing? Never. What's wrong with you people?