Two years ago, Nintendo began a court battle against the warez-hosting website RomUniverse, suing its owner, Mathew Storman for damages. Storman defended himself on his own, without a lawyer, and attempted to dismiss the charges by claiming that he himself did not upload any ROMs to RomUniverse, therefore he was innocent. Now the verdict is in, with both Nintendo's lawyers and the presiding judge disagreeing, finding that Storman was responsible for the distribution of the illegal and infringing games on his site. Nintendo sought $15 million dollars in damages and legal fees, however, the US District Court Judge found this to be too harsh, instead fining Storman $35,000 per illegal ROM hosted on RomUniverse.

This added up to be $1.7 million. On top of that, Storman was hit with a charge of $400,000 in statutory damages, making the total amount a whopping $2.1 million. Nintendo also sought permanent injunction, though the Judge denied this, stating that Nintendo couldn't prove it had been irreparably damaged by the existence of RomUniverse, and that the company was not at risk, given the fact that the site has been permanently taken down.

The Court Grants Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment as to Plaintiff’s copyright infringement, unfair competition and Lanham Act claims, and awards Plaintiff $1,715,000 in statutory damages under the Copyright Act and $400,000 in statutory damages under the Lanham Act for a total of $2,115,000 in statutory damages.

Source: Courtesy of TorrentFreak

 

[chrisrlink]

companies don't give a shit bout preservation (Sony practicly said themselves this during their plan to shut down the ps3/vtia store) your right but practicly selling roms is pure suicide

 

[Dungeonseeker]

Nintendo is gonna find out what the RIAA found out when suing people into oblivion. They'll just declare bankruptcy.

The point was never about getting paid, Nintendo have billions in both cash & assets, they're significantly the richest out of the big 3 gaming companies and a few million in fines is inconsequential to them.

The point was to send a message to other morons who wanna charge people for access to pirated content.

 

[chrisrlink]

before court i'm gonna make suicide pills thats for damn sure

 

[Pacheko17]

"Hurr durr good on Nintendo"

Goddamn bootlickers. Nintendo doesn't deserve a penny for 30-20 year old games that they re-re-re-re-re-re-release for $10 just to have an excuse to sue people who genuinely love their past (like me).

(But I do agree charging for downloads is wrong, that's really scummy)

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

this website fucking sucked anyways

 

[the_randomizer]

That's cute, but I still have a shitload of Snes ROMs, they can't do a damn thing about that

 

[Kioku]

"Hurr durr good on Nintendo"

Goddamn bootlickers. Nintendo doesn't deserve a penny for 30-20 year old games that they re-re-re-re-re-re-release for $10 just to have an excuse to sue people who genuinely love their past (like me).

(But I do agree charging for downloads is wrong, that's really scummy)

Why do people throw the term "bootlicker" around so loosely? Imagine getting mad at someone for doing something they're well within their rights to do.

What makes this even funnier is that this guy was CHARGING for access to these roms. So... What's your point here?

 

[NinStar]

Now tell them to sue archive.org.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

That's cute, but I still have a shitload of Snes ROMs, they can't do a damn thing about that

the_randomizer was later hunted and killed by nintendo ninjas

 

[Agusto101]

It doesn't matter they close 1 site and then 3 more pop out, so yeah good luck with that nintendo, just give up already.

 

[the_randomizer]

the_randomizer was later hunted and killed by nintendo ninjas

I'd just tell them, "bring it on, bitch"

 

[DonCaballero]

That's cute, but I still have a shitload of Snes ROMs, they can't do a damn thing about that

If you charge for them then you're screwed buddy.

 

[SeventhSon7]

Thought for the day: Nintendo's original video game success was proving that Donkey Kong did not infringe Universal Studios IP because King Kong was in the public domain.

 

[ZeroFX]

this site was shit, but that doesnt make this "law"suit a good thing.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Nintendo seems to be suing more than ever, especially during and after the "pandemic" (don't ask why it's in quotes). I don't remember reading about so many lawsuits before then. IIRC, Team Xecuters were caught during this time period, also.

I know of plenty of places where ROMs are hosted; not sure if they're still active now, though. Personally, I'd rather buy them legit if I can afford it, and play them on the original hardware. Not that I'm against ROM sites; I think that they help preserve games from being lost forever - I do wonder if Nintendo is trying to cause their own doom by restricting people from saving ROMs, but that's another story.

 

[souhukyafod]

the problem is that these retards are making bank out of stolen games. The archive hosts for free and it is a not-for-profit

 

[NinStar]

the problem is that these retards are making bank out of stolen games. The archive hosts for free and it is a not-for-profit

I'm pretty sure Nintendo sees no difference between these two things.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

How else would you phrase it? Yes they have the legal right to sue people distributing their roms but that doesn't make it morally right. Slightly advantageous now but long term they're only shooting themselves in the foot by stopping people form playing their games. Game dev students (the same people who Nintendo will eventually hire and will be publishing games on their platforms) are encouraged to play old games to try to understand what makes them work so well, it's important to understand the history of your field. Overall this is more harmful to society than it is beneficial to Nintendo.

Welcome to tech industry, you realize anyone working for any of these companies have to sign an NDA (even independent devs), trade secrets have a role in this, so these game dev students cannot legally do unauthorized "hacking" or "reverse engineering" projects, you aren't even allowed to develop using open source homebrew sdk all in house

Nintendo is, and has for years, trying to settle a legal precedent where a ROM site whatever the size or wether it sells the roms or charges its users, stores the roms or simply redistribute third party hosted content is instantly fulminated to the ground after simply pointing them with the finger (cease and desist).

They will keep doing absurd to more absurd legal claims until they transform sharing your private collection of original games, purchasing a flashcard or dumping your games and let some friends play with them into felonies with a couple of prison months and some steep fee. Until all freedom regarding videogame content is gone and left for good.

Nintendo is the TOP 1 undisputed handler of "You are only purchasing your right to play, you don't own the content" bullshit. Also at least in TOP 3 of "If you can redistribute (i.e. physically move an original cartridge over a table surface) the games, you only will do so by our terms and only in the channels we will let you to, at intervals we decide and if you could at all".

It is sickening to the core and it hurts every kind of customer.

That's why cfw and flashcards exists, I may not have rights for the software, but I 100% own the hardware, so it's subject to my terms and conditions

Never go pro se. $35,000 per ROM?

I don't care who you are, when you're involved in the legal system you should get a lawyer to prevent the justice system from totally fucking you. Even if you're a lawyer, you want a lawyer.

Then his lawyer better call Perry Mason and Ben Matlock

Guess he watched my cousin Vinny too many times

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Welcome to tech industry, you realize anyone working for any of these companies have to sign an NDA (even independent devs), trade secrets have a role in this, so these game dev students cannot legally do unauthorized "hacking" or "reverse engineering" projects, you aren't even allowed to develop using open source homebrew sdk all in house

I don't see how that has any relevance to what I was saying. Yes when you start working at game studios you have to sign NDAs but student game devs aren't working at game studios, else they wouldn't be students would they? Student's are encourage to study older games like Mario to understand why the gameplay was designed that way. When I was studying game dev at college my tutors linked us to an online snes emulator that was clearly running pirated roms and told us to write an essay on the design choices and how it effects the gameplay. That isn't a unique situation either, I know students at other places that have had similar assignments. Actions like the ones taken by Nintendo make this more difficult and harms their own industry by impeding the education of future developers. Yes in this case the roms were being sold but it's not like they haven't sued people giving out the roms for free in the past.

 

[the_randomizer]

If you charge for them then you're screwed buddy.

No kidding, I know that