The never-ending legal battle that sees Nintendo face off against the latest copyright circumventing piracy device continues with two brand new lawsuits. On May 15th, Nintendo filed a couple of lawsuits involving entities responsible for reselling devices used for the "sole purpose of which is to hack the Nintendo Switch video game console in order to allow people to play pirated video games." The first lawsuit is against a group of websites and their respective "John Doe" owners, for anxchip.com, axiogame.com, flashcarda.com, mod3dscards.com, nx-card.com, sxflashcard.com, txswitch.com, and usachips.com, while the second suit specifically targets Tom Dilts Jr. and their company Uberchips.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTNORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIOWESTERN DIVISIONNINTENDO OF AMERICA INC.
Plaintiff
,v.
TOM DILTS, JR.
and
UBERCHIPS, LLC, d/b/a UBERCHIPS.COM

Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc., by and through its counsel, on personal knowledge as to its own actions and on information and belief as to the actions, capabilities, and motivations of others, hereby alleges as follows:

What all these sites have in common is that they sell Team Xecuter's SX dongle, which allows users to bypass the protection on the Nintendo Switch in order to load custom firmware. Nintendo alleges that these products are used purely for piracy. In the past, Nintendo's taken on TX multiple times, perhaps most notably in 2018 where they won a lawsuit against several people who were selling hacked NES Classic systems and SX chips for the Switch on Offerup.

Nintendo is seeking compensation for "irreparable" damages to the company, as all of the websites have warehouses within the United States, and thus fall within the confines of the law. The monetary demands amount to $2,500 per violation of 17 U.S.C. 1201 (a DMCA provision), as well as $150,000 per violation of Nintendo's rights under the U.S. Copyright Act, in addition to possibly requesting profits the resellers received from selling the offending devices.

Source 1 / 2

 

[XDel]

It works both way. Try the games. Don't like it. Not buying.

Demo is there for a reason. With limited gameplay to incite curiosity even if initial impression fails. Give everyone access to full game, then more often than not, a wrong move by game developer, the game would bomb.

If some hidden gem games failed their sale, the game studio can learn and improve. A game totally bombs for the mass would be a mountain for the game studio to climb in their next project, especially the new kid in block game studios.

Unless everything and everyone are totally the same, it's all but a pipe dream. Hot weather would require cooling, while cold weather would require heating. One live all their lives in one area can't be the same as another in different area. If they are to leave to experience different then this are would lose a person, and somehow to replace that person, or eventually it's a dead area. Naturally things "trade". To get one thing you have to give something in return = market.

It's impossible for everyone to be the same and to allow everyone to access everything to their heart's desire. Individual, small community can afford some sort some equality ideal; yet history has proven over and over again this would fail on large scale.

True true, there has always been trade, but there has not always been the market place, just as strictly materialistic values have not always superseded other values. We missed something along the way and it has crippled out ability to be self sufficient, rational, and in accord with this natural creation and it's natural technologies.

 

[MetoMeto]

Let the people play video games whatever way they want, pirated or legitimate, for fucks sake!!!
Who WANT they will buy your fucking games for the love of....the ones that won't buy, they wont buy, no matter if pirates exist or not!
Jesus christ with these lawsuits already....

Nintendo is really becoming annoying company as of lately.

 

[Xzi]

If this is a genuine product, TX wouldn't need these distributors in the first place!

That's not necessarily true, everyday products are sold through resellers all the time. Hell, even Amazon is just one big reseller. OTOH I will concede that resellers shouldn't have to mask their identities if they truly believe their products are free of legal issues.

the ones that won't buy, they wont buy, no matter if pirates exist or not!

I mean, that's kinda the point. Nintendo would rather have people who refuse to buy their products not be able to play them. The same is true of every AAA developer/publisher. Indie games are sometimes the exception because their developers are just happy to get more exposure one way or another.

 

[linuxares]

Let the people play video games whatever way they want, pirated or legitimate, for fucks sake!!!
Who WANT they will buy your fucking games for the love of....the ones that won't buy, they wont buy, no matter if pirates exist or not!
Jesus christ with these lawsuits already....

Nintendo is really becoming annoying company as of lately.

Well... the same would be said for any store. They rather people never visited it if they didn't intend to buy anything. Especially if they gonna steal a Milk carton, they rather never set foot there in the first place.

I do understand why they do these lawsuits. They kind of have to do it.

 

[SuperDan]

Nintendo is on a roll this month as much as I love my hacked switch and other consoles... I can't blame them for doing this... If it was. My company I'd probably do the same.... But still I'm interested in how this will work out... But this won't stop the glorious hackers out there.... But I bet the people involved with TX are shit scared... As I would be

 

[MetoMeto]

Well... the same would be said for any store. They rather people never visited it if they didn't intend to buy anything. Especially if they gonna steal a Milk carton, they rather never set foot there in the first place.

I do understand why they do these lawsuits. They kind of have to do it.

I think you misinterpreted the point...that's all i will say.

 

[leerpsp]

Same thing happened with R4 cards back in the day something will happen with other modchips from now tell the day we die its a cat and mouse game that can not be won. When the successor to the switch comes out I think I will go full legit and stop with the cfw and all, Hell I got an unhacked switch lite that I plan on keeping that way and been buying my games legit I only have the hacked switch to transfer a few items/pokemon I need and really don't use it anymore since I got the switch lite and I'm in a good place in life to were I have the money to buy my games without a problem and witch is what Iv been doing and I find the games I buy I beat unlike the ones I had on my hacked switch.

 

[MetoMeto]

Nintendo is on a roll this month as much as I love my hacked switch and other consoles... I can't blame them for doing this... If it was. My company I'd probably do the same.... But still I'm interested in how this will work out... But this won't stop the glorious hackers out there.... But I bet the people involved with TX are shit scared... As I would be

That's probably why you understand them, because you would do the same... to me that's a problem, when someone justify someone because they sympathies with them.

You know what, laws are made by humans, humans are imperfect, so just because its their right it doesnt mean they are in the right.
There are many ways, many better ways to do the same thing.

This is just aggressive and bad way imo. It's a temporary good, but in long run i dont think it will be or it will attract completly different audience to nintendo. Eather way, Nintendo is not what it used to be. Im not saying they wherent sueing, but they where not this greedy and sue focused even though internet wasnt that big before, still, politics of a company was different and i dont need to know details i can just see that they changed. After iwata nothing is the same tbh.

 

[tivu100]

That's not necessarily true, everyday products are sold through resellers all the time. Hell, even Amazon is just one big reseller. OTOH I will concede that resellers shouldn't have to mask their identities if they truly believe their products are free of legal issues.


I mean, that's kinda the point. Nintendo would rather have people who refuse to buy their products not be able to play them. The same is true of every AAA developer/publisher. Indie games are sometimes the exception because their developers are just happy to get more exposure one way or another.

I know what you meant I am sure you would know my angle too.

Nintendo sells their new consoles via retailers, so we don't need to go far for an example. Manufacturers are the one who are dealing all kind of paperwork for their products to be permitted to be sold to consumers. Retailers provide infrastructure, the know how to direct the interact and support consumers. The middleman (retailer) are that good at what they're doing, or all manufacturers would just sell directly to increase profit margin.

Onto TX, are they business legal in the first place? Their distributors ain't exactly licensed retailers either. These sites popped up to sell and disappeared sometime later. Not the kind of infrastructure and consumer-retailer relationship, that real manufacturers would require their service to build a market for their product. This kind of set up results in what we see right now with these lawsuit. These distributors are the fall guy, where they have nothing to fight back, while TX can just ditch them like they never knew each other.

No licensed retailer, reseller would submit their businesses to this kind situation where they're on their own to deal with all legal stuffs. This is just smuggling.

 

[depaul]

-Nintendo will pay millions for lawyers
-TX will pay millions for lawyers
-Courts will make the case take longer and longer ... maybe years... so that every party pay more lawyer fees. Not to talk about probable bribes and courts expenses.

I hate law because it's working like this.

 

[linuxares]

-Nintendo will pay millions for lawyers
-TX will pay millions for lawyers
-Courts will make the case take longer and longer ... maybe years... so that every party pay more lawyer fees. Not to talk about probable bribes and courts expenses.

I hate law because it's working like this.

TX won't pay shit. This isn't their issue, it's the stores that sells them.

 

[SuperDan]

That's probably why you understand them, because you would do the same... to me that's a problem, when someone justify someone because they sympathies with them.

You know what, laws are made by humans, humans are imperfect, so just because its their right it doesnt mean they are in the right.
There are many ways, many better ways, to do the same thing.

This is just aggressive and bad way imo. It's a temporary good, but in long run i dont think it will be or it will attract completly different audience to nintendo. Eather way, Nintendo is not what it used to be. Im not saying they wherent sueing, but they where not this greedy and sue focused even though internet wasnt that big before, still, politics of a company was different and i dont need to know details i can just see that they changed. After iwata nothing is the same tbh.

Fair enough.. But if someone stole from you & you found out... What would you do about it?... Anyways I would find them and deal with them... One way or another.. But I do see your point I grew up playing Nintendo games as a broke kid from a broken home for me its a karma flex.. Nintendo prices for games has always been a joke over the years... But that's enough Ranting for me.. I'm at work

 

[placez]

just get a warehouse outside the US

 

[Tatsuna]

Piracy does hurts the industry, especially those smaller game studios. Imagine you start up, and release your game on a platform which got compromised and can't make sale. Piracy is the reason, it comes into the era that you have to pay for hundreds of stupid DLCs, addons, and game studios decided to split toward certain platform leading gamers having to purchase other consoles & theirs services, instead of focusing on building library for their preferred console.

Distributors ain't employees. If these people are indeed TX employees, prove that, and they're clear. They're employees to do their job, and the company as an entity is the one to deal with the lawsuit, with employees act as witnesses. Calling TX a business is sarcastic in case you still don't get it.

No distributors, then it's checkmate for TX hide and seek business model. TX either distribute these device themselves or they make little sale. Nintendo goes after the distributors for a reason: Nobody would be able to help you against a giant. Is it worth the risk, having your life fucked up for some cowards to taking the big chunk of profits?

Sorry but no matter how much you ramble, lots of studies have been made and it's always been noticed how piracy doesn't really affect the industry. What you may lose in one-not-paying-customer is overrun by word of mouth and spreading of same game which makes other people actually buy it.

I repeat: several studies and researches, not just a random one. I always smile thinking people could really believe that gaming studios wouldn't spam all over their pages how bad piracy is if only they could and studies were on their same page.

 

[JustBrandonT]

Bypassing copy protection mechanisms is illegal under both US and Mexican law (and these are far from the only countries that have such a provision).
Because of the DMCA (and equivalent laws in other countries), SX OS is quite illegal.

This is false. By-passing/Circumventions is completely legal when done correctly. IE: Blackbox by-passing is just one example.

One famous case of reverse engineering was the first non-IBM implementation of the PC BIOS which launched the historic IBM PC compatible industry that has been the overwhelmingly dominant computer hardware platform for many years. Reverse engineering of software is protected in the U.S. by the fair use exception in copyright law.[16] The Samba software, which allows systems that are not running Microsoft Windows systems to share files with systems that are, is a classic example of software reverse engineering,[17] since the Samba project had to reverse-engineer unpublished information about how Windows file sharing worked, so that non-Windows computers could emulate it. The Wine project does the same thing for the Windows API, and OpenOffice.org is one party doing this for the Microsoft Office file formats.

- Wikipedia
​

It is true. Wine is very famous for emulating and reverse engineering WinAPI which is copyrighted work. OpenOffice exists by literally reverse engineering and by-passing all of the copy protections to write an open version of Microsoft Office for Linux and other operating systems..
Perhaps the most famous of all is ReactOS which is literally Windows OS reverse engineered fully.. Likewise Hackintosh is only illegal by Eula and wouldn't stand up in court as Apple refuses to support hardware such as Nvidia GPUs and certain CPUs. You are allowed to reverse engineer stuff for compatibility.

One reason rdpwrap got taken down for is because Microsoft literally owns Github and enforced their Eula. That's about it.

The only problem is that TX actually markets their shit for piracy and even ships with signature patches? IIRC. If that statement is true, they are fucked.

-
As a company, I'd be reasonable and offer a trial.. but the fight will still be there for a licensed version of anything I make. It would suck if someone came into my house and stole my game collections. Likewise, companies feel the same.

 

[medoli900]

Sorry but no matter how much you ramble, lots of studies have been made and it's always been noticed how piracy doesn't really affect the industry. What you may lose in one-not-paying-customer is overrun by word of mouth and spreading of same game which makes other people actually buy it.

I repeat: several studies and researches, not just a random one. I always smile thinking people could really believe that gaming studios wouldn't spam all over their pages how bad piracy is if only they could and studies were on their same page.

https://www.greenheartgames.com/201...lator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

 

[weatMod]

It's sole purpose is to bypass copy protection, which is illegal in the US. Under the DMCA that makes it an illegal product.

"Section 1201 proscribes devices or services that fall within any one of the
following three categories:
- they are primarily designed or produced to circumvent;
- they have only limited commercially significant purpose or use other
than to circumvent; or
- they are marketed for use in circumventing."

It's an illegal product, at least in the US. The reason blank storage mediums (CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, etc) aren't illegal there is because they have legitimate legal uses. I used cable splitters as an earlier example, they have legitimate uses, like plugging in an extra modem or cable box, so they're legal even though they could also be used to "steal" cable.

but it isn't it allows you to run linux and android among other things

 

[Mrperson0]

but it isn't it allows you to run linux and android among other things

Doesn't matter. It comes shipped with SX OS, which runs a modified Nintendo OS, and uses Nintendo's code to emulate carts.

 

[weatMod]

Doesn't matter. It comes shipped with SX OS, which runs a modified Nintendo OS, and uses Nintendo's code to emulate carts.

it comes with no software in the box

 

[Mrperson0]

it comes with no software in the box

Both the old variant and the new modchip come with their bootloader and SX OS.