It's not just the Japanese throwing people in prison over R4 flash cartridges; Britain is in on the act too, with a man sentenced to prison for importing R4 carts.
Yun Can Meng, a British resident, will spend the next twelve months behind bars after importing 26,500 of the cartridges, with the intention of selling them in the United Kingdom.
R4 carts, and other similar devices, circumvent the copy-protection measures in place on Nintendo's DS handhelds, allowing users to play not only custom titles or backups of games they legally own, but in some cases pirated copies of games as well.
He was busted after a joint investigation by the The Entertainment and Leisure Software Association's Crime Unit and local police.
The ELSPA's Michael Ralinson was understandably pleased, beaming "Our crime unit is pleased with the outcome of this trial and pleased to see the Court of Appeal's copyright judgement is being robustly enforced. Intellectual property (IP) theft is an important issue for the country's videogames industry - as is protecting it."
Imagine how long he'd have been locked up for if they'd caught him with a blank DVD!
UK R4 Card Importer Sentenced [GamePolitics]