For all the money Nintendo is packing in right now, it could be making more if it weren’t for those darned software pirates.

Apparently, the Big N has a yearly tradition of telling the U.S. Trade Representative which countries are the worst at cracking down on piracy. In 2007, Nintendo, along with its publishers and developers, lost a collective $975 million in sales, if you believe that people would buy the products if they couldn’t be stolen.

This time, the company didn’t say how much was lost during 2008, but many of the same naughty countries return from the previous report. New to the list is Spain, which has an “alarming” availability of game copying devices, Nintendo said.

Overall, there seems to be either an unwillingness or inability from these countries to really stick it to software pirates. Efforts to prosecute in China, Brazil and Mexico are nowhere near what Nintendo would like, and Spain appears to lack laws against Internet piracy entirely. In Brazil, customs agents didn’t seize a single shipment of illicit Nintendo products. The situation is stickier in Paraguay, where corruption makes it easier for pirates to do business.

There are some bright spots in Nintendo’s letter. Korea has been seizing lots of material at customs and holding perpetrators accountable, and Mexico seems willing to let trademark owners train customs and postal service workers. In Spain, customs agents are getting a bit more cooperative.

It’s not clear what happens to these comments, or how involved Nintendo gets from here on, but I do like the idea of an annual report. Whether you’re an upstanding citizen or shameless pirate, it’s pretty interesting to see where all this stuff comes from.

 
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