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

 

[Nomi20]

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

Exactly correct.

 

[Sathya]

I love WiiU usb helper. The very very legal roms site

 

[White_Raven_X]

I'd be running to all the Banks trying to get as many loans as possible... Hide that money and declare bankrupt 6 months later! Fack'em all! Lol

 

[SG854]

Soulja Boy they are coming after you next

 

[Deleted member 514389]

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.

I'll let my
name be the answer for this one...


(Also, what you are describing is standart practice with iOS devices since -ever, and you can bet S@#y and Micro$oft aren't above this thing either.)

"Games as a service" take this to extreme heights...

As far as preservation goes: Nintendo enthusiast cover that..

Also: youtube.com/watch?v=IqTEBX5cAQQ

 

[Clydefrosch]

why would anyone try and defend themselves... that poor moron...

for his sake, I hope he made some money with the site

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I wonder how they are expecting to collect on this because I highly doubt that he has this money and that he will even be able to get this money.

i guess he'll go for whatever insolvency is in his country?

 

[eriol33]

Who would buy those roms? How did they lose sales at all?

 

[Shadow_The_Hedgehog82]

why would anyone try and defend themselves... that poor moron...

for his sake, I hope he made some money with the site

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i guess he'll go for whatever insolvency is in his country?

I doubt a lawyer would have helped much they never do in piracy cases

 

[Viri]

I wonder how they are expecting to collect on this because I highly doubt that he has this money and that he will even be able to get this money.

Doubt it. He'll most likely declare bankruptcy. Here is a video on what happened to the people sued by the RIAA for music piracy.

Spoiler

 

[Spider_Man]

Got to love the way nintendo focus more on hacks/mods/rom sites than they do making decent consoles and games.

Damages is laughable, nintendo no longer make any profit off any console game that is no longer in production or sale.

As for the shit switch, us gamers should be able to sue nintendo for its yet again lie claiming better support..... guess that turned out to be shit old ports of games we already own.

 

[MetalTail]

I understand gaming companies need to protect their own products, and I have no clue what kinda of roms they are talking about, but this just seems excessive, specially if they relate to older hardware, I know Nintendo has the virtual console but it's kinda of a joke, stuff I had on the Wii U doesn't appear on the Switch because reasons???, also a lot of older games don't even appear on the virtual console so unless you are lucky enough to own the cartridge and a working console you can never play them again.

 

[Sheimi]

I understand gaming companies need to protect their own products, and I have no clue what kinda of roms they are talking about, but this just seems excessive, specially if they relate to older hardware, I know Nintendo has the virtual console but it's kinda of a joke, stuff I had on the Wii U doesn't appear on the Switch because reasons???, also a lot of older games don't even appear on the virtual console so unless you are lucky enough to own the cartridge and a working console you can never play them again.

To add a bit more, if it doesn't cost over 100 bucks for said game. For example: Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

 

[Brigand]

I guess they'll sue archive.org next.

I really hope not. There's stuff on archive.org that is way more important in terms of preservation and availability in the public domain than roms. I'm all for video game preservation, but I think we've got that covered well and truly by now, and I'm really against people hosting roms there. It will only be a matter of time before Nintendo does catch on to the amount of their IP being hosted there, and while I believe it's silly to think archive.org would get taken down just because of that, it would no doubt lead to some tightening on archive's end in terms of what gets hosted, which if nothing else means more resources (money) spent on that and not on preserving/digitising things. It might sound like a trivial concern, but next time you need to find an obscure journal article or book that you can't get in print and it has no official scan, there's a good chance archive has it, as well as a plethora of other things.

 

[munnimann]

Someone uses some lines of Open Source code without crediting: Get out the pitchforks, boys, and burn this soulless thief of intellectual property! We need to protect the author's right to their own creation!

Nintendo stops someone from effectively selling their intellectual property: Muh gAmE PrEseRVaTiON. Fuck Nintendo!

 

[NeoGranzon]

Here is another site that has gone the way of Emuparadise!

 

[HideoKojima]

"Storman defended himself on his own, without a lawyer..."

That's what happens when you play a lot of Phoenix Wright pirated roms.
Also 2mn probably isn't enough to cover the legal expenses spent by Ninty so the goal is to deter people from creating these kind of websites...

 

[Sheimi]

"Storman defended himself on his own, without a lawyer..."

That's what happens when you play a lot of Phoenix Wright pirated roms

Not a lot of lawyers are going to take on a piracy case like this.

 

[Phenj]

Get rekt pirate scum

Looks like he'll be Storman off to prison

(for real tho what a moron...not even getting a lawyer lmfao)

POV: You've never felt the touch of a woman

 

[HideoKojima]

Not a lot of lawyers are going to take on a piracy case like this.

There's always a lawyer to do the job whatever it is but the guy wasn't consistant, he said he did upload then said he didn't which is a lame excuse to start with, so yeah you're right.

 

[Sheimi]

There's always a lawyer to do the job whatever it is but the guy wasn't consistant, he said he did upload then said he didn't which is a lame excuse to start with, so yeah you're right.

What he should have done is not say he uploaded roms in the first place and kept his mouth shut. We'll never know when he potentially went to see a lawyer. Wherever it will be after he got the notice or after his first testimony. Could of not had the funds to hire a lawyer or they did not want to take on the case.