Earlier this summer, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Jacob Mathias, otherwise known as the owner of LoveROMS and LoveRETRO, sites that notoriously hosted ROM files of retro Nintendo games. Immediately following the legal suit, both of the aforementioned domains were shut down to prevent further issue. Nintendo's legal action also had effects on other websites that had illegal content hosted on their servers, such as Emuparadise, which removed all download links shortly after the lawsuit was made public. Mathias and his wife, who were both charged on mass copyright infringement, plead guilty to the actions of trademark infringement and damages to Nintendo. They then entered settlement talks in order to find an agreeable amount of money to pay as reparations. Today, the final judgement for the case came in, showing that both Jacob Mathias and Nintendo had agreed for the former to pay $12,230,000 to the latter, over 12 million dollars.

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All copyrighted material owned by the couple must also be forfeited, and ownership of LoveROMs.com and LoveRETRO.co has been signed over to Nintendo of Japan.

Source

 

[SG854]

Arrrrgggg I got a lawsuit coming me way.

Which is fine. However, there's a very distinct difference between preserving them and illegally distributing them.

Preserving them to illegally distribute them.

 

[xxNathanxx]

right. like unlocking iphones for the fbi. come up with actual examples are shut up. you can hate apple but they are far better than petty ass nintendo.

Did you miss the part where the very day before the FBI was supposedly going to take Apple to court, the FBI suddenly dropped all charges and simply used one of the backdoors? Did you also miss all of the NSA documents where Apple is shown very clearly to be a part of all of the same spying programs as all of the other companies? Do you think they're only in there for fun?

And where did I even compare Apple and Nintendo?

 

[Localhorst86]

it's scare tactics. Nintendo knows full well he can't pay 12 Million dollars nor will they ever see any substantial ammount of money from this. Mathias will have to declare bankruptcy and be free of the $12 Million debt in a few years.

Not saying it's nice or that it's not annoying, but he will be able to live a normal life 5 years from now.

Nintendo's goal never was to get any (substantial ammount of) money from him though, it's goal was to make an example off him for others to look at. And that worked out just fine for them. With ROM sites taking down ROMs left and right and even some private retro-trackers taking down the no-intro torrents because of the nintendo roms contained within.

 

[WD_GASTER2]

reality is a good middle ground would be for companies to just sell the damn roms for a buck or 2 each without drm. didnt sega do something similar on steam a few years back?
of course nintendo is a dinosaur of a company with a fetish of clinging to old ways so doubt it will change any time soon.

 

[SG854]

Nintendo is fucking gangster,

Nintendo was always gangsta. They stopped VG rental service in Japan. They use their power to get their way like a G.
Guy not able to pay 12 million? No Fucks were given on this lawsuit.

 

[Kigiru]

12 millions for roms of games that Nintendo did not care to rerelease besides like 20 of them or so?
What kind of loss Nintendo claim to get? Most people that download roms are uninterested in purchasing their consoles and will not care to purchase their consoles even if your purge all the fucking roms. These 12 millions are made-up, and if Nintendo want to play the "made-up money" game then they have more to made-up because i'll not pay for their shit, simple.

 

[dimmidice]

12 million? What math did they use? Every rom downloaded = full price of game when it came out?

 

[WD_GASTER2]

they obviously counter the downloads for stadium events and figured they multiply it times 10 just for good measure.

 

[samedifference]

Nintendo can eat shit; They've demonstrated quite enough over the years that they're not willing to preserve their old games properly and make them easily accessible to everybody. This is absolutely excessive, and I can only assume that they're pretty much just doing this shit as some kind of twisted stunt to make an example. ROM hosting sites do what Nintendo will never do, period. Hearing news like this just makes me unreasonable irritated.

 

[Justinde75]

I can understand Nintendo not wanting people to get the roms, but man 12 million?

This honestly really sucks for Nintendo. Alot of people play older versions of games and then become a fan of them. Alot of people that I know started with roms of games like smash bros, pokemon and other nintendo games. They now buy all of the games that come out on the switch. They dont sell most of the retro games the site offered on ton the switch, so I dont see the harm on letting rom sites host. I'd only tell them to take away ads.
Its also pretty funny that he is forced to pay the "damages" as if that caused so much damage.

 

[Delerious]

I can't help but wonder if these lawsuits would ever have happened if Iwata were still around. It seems like Nintendo became more dickish since he died. Granted though, I don't know a whole lot of their history when it comes to past legal shit, apart from patent lawsuits against them. Rationally, the guy should have known better than to cross Nintendo, as I imagine they gave him a cease and desist letter. Such is usually the case with these things. But still, why now? Why, at this moment, does Nintendo suddenly "care" about their old properties enough that they want to push for lawsuits against people, and essentially start a war on emulation? It seems like they're just out to make a little extra cash on the side from these petty lawsuits.

 

[SG854]

I can't help but wonder if these lawsuits would ever have happened if Iwata were still around. It seems like Nintendo became more dickish since he died. Granted though, I don't know a whole lot of their history when it comes to past legal shit, apart from patent lawsuits against them. Rationally, the guy should have known better than to cross Nintendo, as I imagine they gave him a cease and desist letter. Such is usually the case with these things. But still, why now? Why, at this moment, does Nintendo suddenly "care" about their old properties enough that they want to push for lawsuits against people, and essentially start a war on emulation? It seems like they're just out to make a little extra cash on the side from these petty lawsuits.

Nintendo was pretty bad with lawsuits in the past. They made video game rentals illegal in Japan to stop piracy.
The only way to offer rentals is to get permission from publishers. They were always uptight on piracy and cracked down hard.

 

[marazzmatika]

There should be a law (just like with music), that after xx years, it should be free to use and share.

Tell me you stupid Ninty. Where am I supposed to get your OLD FOCKING GAMES???

Nerntendo Smeech still hasn't normal VC. They are pretty greedy...

 

[Delerious]

Nintendo was pretty bad with lawsuits in the past. They made video game rentals illegal in Japan to stop piracy.
The only way to offer rentals is to get permission from publishers. They were always uptight on piracy and cracked down hard.

Yeesh, I think they have a pretty unhealthy fetish going on here. I mean, they can only fuck so many people until they get an STD.

 

[lordelan]

How the fuck is a family man supposed to pay that amount?

You don't seem to know how much money a well visited website earns you.

 

[depaul]

Poor man and his wife, and his kids...
If the man had 12 Millions do you think he would be making living from hosting rom site? At the best he could make 2000$ a month. So how could the law charge him over 12M$ as damage? Do you think this law is fair? Nintendo could simply have sued all of his hardware

 

[DaveLister]

Queue DR evil meme with pinky held to mouth .

 

[SG854]

Yeesh, I think they have a pretty unhealthy fetish going on here. I mean, they can only fuck so many people until they get an STD.

STD=Suing To Destroy

They tried to make VG rentals illegal in the United States but nothing happened luckily. That's one STD they didn't spread.

 

[Condemned87]

How the fuck is a family man supposed to pay that amount?
And what damages is Nintendo claiming?
Sorry but that's bullshit, Nintendo loses nothing out from ROMs being shared online (outside of current gen consoles) and there is no way someone like Mathias will ever be able to pay such an absurd amount.

Fuck you, Nintendo.

Because of Nintendos Mini Classic Series?

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I think the Switch will be the last console I buy from them. Nintendo you lost a customer. Thanks for not playing your games in the future.

That is so stupid. You are pissed because Nintendo are protecting their own old games against piracy? Seriously?

 

[Lucifer666]

Why is Nintendo protecting their properties?!?1?!
Unforgivable!!! /s

Seriously though, this guy chose to make money with his site by uploading ROMs, so I really can't be bothered to feel sorry for him. He should've known Nintendo would come for him.

It's not like there's a legal way to pay Nintendo to play N64 games besides the limited selection of virtual console stuff. Pretty much all the retros are simply not profitable for them anymore because they don't even sell them (again, besides VC & stuff like that), so it honestly makes no sense for them to be bothered enough to ruin a man's life with debt he will most likely never pay off.

EDIT: Now I'm real curious, is there truly no way to anonymously register a domain and host a site?