Warez-hosting ROMsite RomUniverse finds itself back in the headlines, after a change to the ruling of a court case that wrapped up earlier this year. In 2019, Nintendo and its legal time brought up a lawsuit against the owner of RomUniverse, Mathew Storman. When faced with charges, Storman decided to defend himself in court, without a laywer, claiming innocence for the uploading of ROMs to his website, only for lawyers to prove he did indeed upload illegal content, as well as knowingly allowed others to upload such files. This May, a judge ruled that Storman owed Nintendo $2.1 million dollars for damages, though while Nintendo sought a permanent injunction against Storman, the judge denied this, as there was no proof that RomUniverse had caused "irreparable harm". .

Now, however, that has changed. In the past month, Storman has made claims that he might possibly want to bring his ROM website back online, although with the caveat that it would lack all Nintendo-related titles. Following this, it was submitted to the court, where the judge reversed his decision and hit Storman and RomUniverse with a permanent injunction, under the belief that with the possible revival of the copyright-infringing site, Nintendo could be at harm of further damage.

Storman has been ordered to destroy all illegal copies of Nintendo games, movies, books, music, and other illegally obtained files featuring Nintendo's IPs. The defendant has until August 17th to delete the offending content and comply.

Source

 

[subcon959]

I can personally list dozens of games I would have bought that I didn't because I didn't have to.

And I can list plenty of games that I wasn't going to buy but then did after 'trying' them. Individual anecdotes aren't really a reliable indicator of the true overall effect though.

 

[ut2k4master]

Again, why doesn’t Nintendo take on bigger sites? Oh right, they download roms from there
themselves

they dont. that was debunked years ago, but people like you still keep spreading this bs

 

[ZeroFX]

lol, thats a rip, playing dumb with ninteninjas won't do.

 

[eyeliner]

And I can list plenty of games that I wasn't going to buy but then did after 'trying' them. Individual anecdotes aren't really a reliable indicator of the true overall effect though.

For one of him, there's one of you.

I'd say that the best example of an industry that tackled piracy was music. They adapted, and I'd say that piracy in music is barely existent, and they make more money than ever.

Gaming, on the other hand has the problem of availabity and too few competitors outside of PC. And that's the problem. It's almost a monopoly that one powerful company tries hard to maintain. To varying degrees of success.

I'd say Nintendo is doing good, but they need to embrace their past and let it go already. 8 bit games interest very few people nowadays. They are completely right in protecting the most recent systems, and they do.

Today, there's so many ways of having games for free that your only problem is to find time to play them.

Really, how many games do you play from your rom collection?

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

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Warez-hosting ROMsite RomUniverse finds itself back in the headlines, after a change to the ruling of a court case that wrapped up earlier this year. In 2019, Nintendo and its legal time brought up a lawsuit against the owner of RomUniverse, Mathew Storman. When faced with charges, Storman decided to defend himself in court, without a laywer, claiming innocence for the uploading of ROMs to his website, only for lawyers to prove he did indeed upload illegal content, as well as knowingly allowed others to upload such files. This May, a judge ruled that Storman owed Nintendo $2.1 million dollars for damages, though while Nintendo sought a permanent injunction against Storman, the judge denied this, as there was no proof that RomUniverse had caused "irreparable harm". .

Now, however, that has changed. In the past month, Storman has made claims that he might possibly want to bring his ROM website back online, although with the caveat that it would lack all Nintendo-related titles. Following this, it was submitted to the court, where the judge reversed his decision and hit Storman and RomUniverse with a permanent injunction, under the belief that with the possible revival of the copyright-infringing site, Nintendo could be at harm of further damage.

Storman has been ordered to destroy all illegal copies of Nintendo games, movies, books, music, and other illegally obtained files featuring Nintendo's IPs. The defendant has until August 17th to delete the offending content and comply.

Source

I have 0 problems with romulation websites, or just websites that allow people to download games in general for free, however, if you wanna go around asking people for money just to download the games itself yeah no bye you deserve to be sued, and go to jail - simple as that.
Now for rom case...this crap makes no dang sense at all, but I ain't surprised there discussing about a California judge smh, worst state ever so I don't know how they wanna now make it seem like they follow the laws when they allow criminal activity to allowing abusive mothers keep children instead of the dad, the list goes on, anyway, I am pretty sure the judge got paid lots of money to actually give a dang this time xD..if not and that is a judge that 'cares' than woooow great job...I suppose?

Another thing if you still not getting to what I am pointing out, California is a dumpster fire, and I seriously advice you all to not even go there to live, go to Florida, because unless you want to be homeless within like seconds to being stabbed robbed easily to just outright being robbed,, screwed over by the people over there in your job, I don't know why you wanna be in that dumpster fire of a place.
--I am glad to have done my research before everything exploded into the cuckery mode online.
Lastly I just find it amazing that these people at rom continued on even though nazi new nintendo decided to do a giant lawsuit against them...just yikes, I don't know if it's dumb amazing or good amazing just eh.

 

[TheZander]

Is this a symbolic gesture how do you go about proving you deleted all your roms?

Do they have to empty the recycle bin as well?

 

[NeoGranzon]

Same thing that happened some time ago to another EmuParadise site.

 

[mightymuffy]

I'm impressed by the guy's gall to be honest, and just read he's allowed to pay back the $2.1M fine in monthly installments of $50? Well that won't take long will it.... although he'd already missed his first payment so that might add up for him ...but he tried to put his site back up as well? Fukkin legend

 

[Spider_Man]

I laugh at how nintendo put more time into hunting down rom sites than they do actually giving gamers something new to play.

I also laugh how nintendo seem to think they can sue for millions claiming damages..... come off it, your games are not that good anymore and how can you claim damages off old games.

Is it because you seem to think new gamers wont buy your old shit you keep recycling and porting to the switch if they can save money from not having to buy your shit inferior tablet clone to buy your shit recycled games when they can emulate it on multiple devices they already own.

 

[Bladexdsl]

serves him right for charging for roms all roms should be free. fucking idiot deserved everything he got. now go get a job at mcdonalds that's all you'll be doing from now on

 

[thekarter104]

I laugh at how nintendo put more time into hunting down rom sites than they do actually giving gamers something new to play.

I also laugh how nintendo seem to think they can sue for millions claiming damages..... come off it, your games are not that good anymore and how can you claim damages off old games.

Is it because you seem to think new gamers wont buy your old shit you keep recycling and porting to the switch if they can save money from not having to buy your shit inferior tablet clone to buy your shit recycled games when they can emulate it on multiple devices they already own.

Exactly. A good example is Super Mario 3D All Stars. They're emulated except Galaxy, so by today's standards we can easily emulate Super Mario 64 in wide-screen, HD etc.
Hahahha yet they do 4:3 only. In 2021 while wide-screen options were widespread already a few years ago on emulators!

 

[subcon959]

I laugh at how nintendo put more time into hunting down rom sites than they do actually giving gamers something new to play.

You do realise the lawyers are not the ones making the games right?

 

[Spider_Man]

You do realise the lawyers are not the ones making the games right?

No shit sherlock, but these lawyers are acting on nintendonts instruction.

 

[HellGhast]

How could Nintendo be at risk of further damages if he brings the website back online without any Nintendo content? If he deletes all his Nintendo content from his local machines, then is he allowed to bring the site back online?

Coz Nintendo and other big corporations have turned into a bunch of fascist tech nazis, they can pretty much manipulate the system to their greedy whims.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

I'd say maybe not them but maybe other companies...
However, it's been already proven that piracy has no impact on sales

Lmao take a $60 game, if 100,000 people pirate it, that's almost 10 million lost, scale that to 1 million people, it can bankrupt a small or medium dev studio


People realize that game sales have to cover the peogramming, art/graphic design, r&D, testing, advertising, and also to pay back investors


If they sell a million copies, they are not taking home every penny, something called business expenses

As a dev why should I even bother putting effort in a game if all people want to do is steal it

Then the same people complain that the sequel is horse shit, cause they put less funding in it

 

[FAST6191]

I did not ask for such a popcorn worthy legal case but I will take it anyway. Only sad part is the guy is probably giving Nintendo's lawyers a masterclass in how to use the law if your opponent is irrational which means they will do some serious damage when they go become political consultancy slimes in a few years.

How could Nintendo be at risk of further damages if he brings the website back online without any Nintendo content? If he deletes all his Nintendo content from his local machines, then is he allowed to bring the site back online?

Not sure how Nintendo would be at further risk to damages if no Nintendo content.

I would imagine the part of the thing that says he allowed others to upload. If that returns then so does the potential for Nintendo's stuff to come back as well which would in turn constitute a harm, even if he does not personally do it again.

Here is something interesting: from the perspective of most companies, second hand games are just as damaging as pirated games.

If you smack yourself in the head with a hammer and also try to think like an accountant then sure. If you actually think within the law and general commerce (if you have something you can sell it) for... all of human history really, and certainly in places where people want to live/markets are comparatively free, then not so much.

 

[SaberLilly]

well, the man had guts for trying to revive his website, i'll give him that. He was still stupid though.

 

[DJPlace]

just image if nintendo/steam/sony/microsoft all made one company then the world of piracy would be screwed.

 

[Sheimi]

I would imagine the part of the thing that says he allowed others to upload. If that returns then so does the potential for Nintendo's stuff to come back as well which would in turn constitute a harm, even if he does not personally do it again.

That makes perfect sense. Ty :3

 

[Technicmaster0]

Lmao take a $60 game, if 100,000 people pirate it, that's almost 10 million lost, scale that to 1 million people, it can bankrupt a small or medium dev studio

But would people really buy the games instead? Or do they pirate more than what they can pay for? Because then the dev wouldn't have gotten anything anyways.