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Broward Palm Beach – Selling Used Video Games Now Requires Essentially Getting Booked — A trend I’m telling you.
I’m in line at Gamestop the other day, breaking down and finally buying the much-hated NCAA Football ’09, when I hear the clerk ask the guy in front of me for his fingerprints. He’s returning a game, and the clerk breaks out some kind of form. He swipes his thumb across an ink pad stuck to the counter and then puts his mark in the appropriate box.
What the deuce? “The sheriff’s office has been making us do it,” the clerk told me. “People hate it.”
Found by Sir Felix.
Wonder if someone at E3 has a booth selling identity security technology??!
They do this if you sell used CDs too. The RIAA lobbied for this law to kill used CD stores.
Scrap metal sellers have to do the same thing. Too much metal being sold wasn’t scrap. It was stolen. If they know who you are they know who to send to jail when the owner shows up.
This may have been more of the same. There is a nice big market in stolen video games and cell phones.
Imagine a thick German accent…
“You vill have to come vith us. Your papers are not in order.”
cheap way to collect finger prints.. with name and address, and all the info..
This is used to deter the selling of stolen property and has been required by pawn brokers for a while.
However when you have many duplicate non serialized items like game disks, how do you actually track this stuff?
Say I sell my GTA disk to the game store, then someone reports their copy of GTA stolen. The police then come to my home asking me where I purchase it or for the original receipt…. yeah like I keep those for a game I cant return in the first place.
This works for one off items that you may see every once in a while but for items like games that could be sold in the 10’s per week, to the same store, it’s worthless.
Like mentioned above, I have a feeling the likes of the RIAA had something to do with this mess.
Also I was under the impression you had to be at least 18 to sell a game back to a game store..
Theft prevention doesn’t seem like a good reason. Except for the most recent games they give you peanuts.
Now if you buy the game when it first comes out, copy it, and return it…. you essentially get the game for half price. Since nobody is going to report the game missing I’m not seeing the reason. The buy, copy, and return subgroup is also not likely to face legal action. Can you imagine the state raiding a house to see if it can match copied games with gamestop returns?
The only reason I can see to do this is to prove that a significant number of people are enabled to copy games by using the store. Then maybe the store would be liable, a la napster.
But to prove this the state would first need access to the records, then they would need to turn those records over to the game industry version of riaa. Stealing records? Something everyone gets involved in, eh?
Donate it to charity, next time. Get a receipt, claim it off your income tax as a charitable donation. Saves getting ink on your fingers.
I would like to find out from some of the store employees how often the sheriff checks the fingerprints. Daily, weekly, monthly or maybe once a year. I would even bet there will more prosecutions of stores/clerks who do not get the required fingerprint from a customer than there will be arrests of people selling stolen games.
Does remind me of a local video rental store I tried around 1990. A copy of your license was required for membership, a statement had to be signed with every rental (stating that you were aware of the dire consequences of not returning the movie) and you had to show your license along with your membership card on every transaction. I had been a member for six months when they asked for my social security number. Required by the District Attorney was the excuse they gave me. Did not give my ss# and never used the store again.
Now if those people would just use pirated games they’d never have to go get fingerprinted.
If the sheriff is thinking with his ass what the heck is he doing with his brain.
i’m all about giving florida back to mexico. Who’s with me?
The Gamestop was probably in the inner-city or in an area where theft of video games or consoles is high. I live in the suburbs and none of the Gamestops I go to do this. Every Gamestop Ive been to in the city does.
I seem to remeber an article last year about how the game industry was heavily lobbying for this. This is NOT to deter theft. It’s to deter resale of games of which they get no cut.
These are all steps toward the pay-for-play system they’ve always wanted.
#11 The US/Andrew Jackson took Florida from Spain and then offered them some money which they took.
Florida was never part of Mexico.
Ah. Yet one more right being trampled upon on the quest to protect our precious intellectual properties.
Because if we don’t treat everyone like a criminal, people will stop thinking and inventing shit!
(Actually, *several* rights are being trampled upon, and this *screams* of 1st, 4th and 5th amendment violations, not to mention the freedom of contract, but the one I specifically meant was the first sale doctrine.)
This is why people should vote single issue rather than for a political party, and be willing to cross party lines with their votes. The NRA will endorse any incumbent that gets a good grade, regardless of party, while the unions will spend money to knock out union-friendly Republicans. That’s why gun control isn’t on the agenda while unions lose when Republicans are in charge.
No one ever accused our leaders and law enforcement of critical thinking.
The seem never able to see the unintended
consequences of their actions.
When I was required to give my fingerprints
or Social Security Number I refused and told them they just lost a customer.
Papers, Please!
next:
when you buy porn DVDs you’ll have to give your sperm sample (fresh only, procured on premises – hopefully not in front some homo sales assisstant hahaha)
“Union friendly republicans”???,is there such a thing??
#20, Please don’t share your private fantasies with the rest of us.