I know it is illegal in the UK to advertise, purchase or sell a DS flashcard. But is it still legal to do said actions with GBA flashcards, and 3DS flashcards?
The ruling by London's High Court specifies R4 and R4-derrivative carts and those carts only. That being said, the ban could be expanded further almost instantaneously since a precedence was established by the prior case, but as it stands today, only DS flashcarts are covered by it.
When you look at it that way, yes, I suppose it would. That being said, GBA flashcarts are in the clear and flashcarts for a myriad of other systems aren't even considered part of the equation since nobody other than Nintendo submitted any complaints...Wouldn't that by default ban the Gateway and clones, since you need a DS cart to activate the system for the 3DS cart?
Why? Because it would be stupid and silly to make a law so specific to one particular product. They would obviously include all products within the same broad category.
You will generally find most lawyers are less inclined to deal in absolutes than scientists; nobody tends to even know how many laws each country has, let alone how any relevant ones might get interpreted on the day, how other laws might overrule them (and in the UK that can mean a lot of EU stuff too which only magnifies the "how many laws" problem) and so on.Delve deeper! Is it or is it not legal?
https://ap.nintendo.com/_pdf/news/627078272.pdf
It states that the high courts in the UK ruled a judgment which determined "Game copiers" which are used with the Nintendo DS are considered unlawful.
https://ap.nintendo.com/_pdf/news/627078272.pdf
It states that the high courts in the UK ruled a judgment which determined "Game copiers" which are used with the Nintendo DS are considered unlawful. Now it does specifically mention the DS, but I would assume that the distribution of 'game copiers' for other Nintendo platforms that "circumvent Nintendo’s security systems before any non-infringing application can be played" would trigger a losing lawsuit.
The entire argument is really different though in different countries. A similar lawsuit was filed and won by Nintendo for the distribution of R4 cards in Australia, but there are still sites based in Australia that sell them without problems. And the basis for bans is apparently due to the security circumvention, but modchips are considered legal in Australia despite the fact that they basically circumvent system security to play backups and homebrew. The law is a weird beast sometimes.
They actually let you plug in a game and... COPY IT, unlike flashcarts which just play back games already copied elsewhere.
Delve deeper! Is it or is it not legal?
Tagging Foxi4 because he is teh cleverest person on whole interwebz.