For anyone living in the United States, buying a RCM Loader just got much more difficult.

As you may have heard, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in November 2020 against Vietnamese resident Le Hoang Minh, who manufactured RCM Loaders and sold them on Amazon under the name "Winmart". This came after a DMCA takedown request from Nintendo, resulting in Amazon taking down his listings. Le disputed the request, allowing him to resume selling the devices. Nintendo called this an abuse of the DMCA's counternotification system, since Le lives in Vietnam, where any consequences for wrongly disputing DMCA takedowns are unenforceable. Due to this, Nintendo sought an injunction by a U.S. court. After the lawsuit was filed, Le did not respond to it, nor did Le enter discussions with Nintendo. This led Nintendo to seek a default judgment.

According to Nintendo, here is why the product is illegal:

Once this circumvention has occurred, the unauthorized CFW modifies the authorized Nintendo Switch operating system, thereby allowing users to obtain and play virtually any pirated game made for the Nintendo Switch. All of this happens without authorization or compensation to Nintendo or to any authorized game publishers

On April 15, 2021, the U.S. court to which Nintendo brought the case has ruled in favor of Nintendo's request for a default judgment. Any online store selling RCM Loaders is now prohibited from shipping them to the U.S.

Nintendo is seeking a total of $2,500 in damages (down from their original request for $2,500 per violation) in an effort to not drag the litigation out much longer:

This request for a $2,500 award is intended to be very conservative and does not reflect anything close to the full amount of damages Nintendo could reasonably seek from Defendant,” the company writes.

Nintendo could…credibly seek a separate award for every device Defendant sold — almost certainly many devices, given that Defendant’s RCM Loader device was available online for many months. However, rather than attempt to quantify Defendant’s total sales, Nintendo seeks to facilitate an efficient resolution of this case through entry of judgment awarding damages for a single § 1201 violation.

The injunction also applies to "any and all products, services, devices, components or parts thereof” that circumvent Nintendo's security measures. Does this mean that Le Hoang Minh (and anyone working with him) can't even sell paperclips?

Source (courtesy of TorrentFreak)

 

[godreborn]

the irony here is that Nintendo's actions brought awareness to this product. I had no idea this existed, because I haven't been following the switch scene, so thank you, Nintendo!

 

[TheZander]

Weird how no one has pointed out how funny it would be if they went after paperclip makers

https://gbatemp.net/posts/9450530/

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

https://gbatemp.net/members/wiimiiswitch.546149/

It was a joke since like 20000 people made that exact joke

 

[TheZander]

It was a joke since like 20000 people made that exact joke

Well i fucked that one up then

 

[Steel-Winged_Pegasus]

POV: He doesn't know the nintendo switch can do usb audio, which can receive bluetooth audio with some fancy components, therefore you can use bluetooth audio on your switch. What a dumbass

Pardon me if I read it wrong, but I assume that little jab is at the seller? Jokes fly way over my head on the Internet via text a lot of the time, lol, so if it was, ignore everything else after this. If that was directed at me, well... I actually do have a BT audio receiver for my Switch, so don't think I don't know.

Still, calling an RCM loader a BT audio receiver is... definitely a way to try to skirt around getting caught by Nintendo, even if it doesn't work. My BT audio receiver is one of those cheapo ones from eBay, and it looks fairly similar to my RCM loader, if you were to cover up the "RCM loader" logo, haha, so some confused parent might get suckered into that. No idea if that attempt actually did work, but I wouldn't be surprised if the seller disappeared from Amazon even before this "ban" started.

 

[smallissue]

Pardon me if I read it wrong, but I assume that little jab is at the seller? Jokes fly way over my head on the Internet via text a lot of the time, lol, so if it was, ignore everything else after this. If that was directed at me, well... I actually do have a BT audio receiver for my Switch, so don't think I don't know.

Still, calling an RCM loader a BT audio receiver is... definitely a way to try to skirt around getting caught by Nintendo, even if it doesn't work. My BT audio receiver is one of those cheapo ones from eBay, and it looks fairly similar to my RCM loader, if you were to cover up the "RCM loader" logo, haha, so some confused parent might get suckered into that. No idea if that attempt actually did work, but I wouldn't be surprised if the seller disappeared from Amazon even before this "ban" started.

Wait...
So you have a bt audio receiver for your Switch??
what if someone bought it thinking it actually does do bluetooth audio and got scammed

 

[Clydefrosch]

still doesn't make any sense.
while the purpose of the device is obvious, as it's sold, without payloads, it does not do what nintendo claims on it's own, it's just a board with some buttons and a usb c connector.

any smartphone can also be an injector and they couldn't ban sales of those on these grounds.

 

[Mrperson0]

while the purpose of the device is obvious, as it's sold, without payloads,

One user said it comes with the Gateway payload though. Maybe some sellers did indeed have the SX OS payload, which is why they were successfully sued by Nintendo?

 

[jellybeangreen2]

I ordered an RCMLoader One this morning and had it sent via same day shipping from Amazon. - I now have one for when I switch from SXOS to Atmosphere and they're impossible to get hold of.

 

[tabzer]

still doesn't make any sense.
while the purpose of the device is obvious, as it's sold, without payloads, it does not do what nintendo claims on it's own, it's just a board with some buttons and a usb c connector.

any smartphone can also be an injector and they couldn't ban sales of those on these grounds.

One user said it comes with the Gateway payload though. Maybe some sellers did indeed have the SX OS payload, which is why they were successfully sued by Nintendo?

Nintendo can sue Sega because they make videogames too. If Sega doesn't show up to court to defend themselves legally, then a default judgement is awarded to Nintendo.

Even if Nintendo is wrong, it doesn't even matter.

 

[WARIOTOPANWA]

.

 

[jesus96]

So having a usb c cable and a pc is illegal as well?

 

[MrCokeacola]

Nintendo secures RCM loader ban

Oh no!

in the U.S.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

This is complete bullshit. The RCM Loader is not "enabling" piracy. Any potential lawsuit should be avoided by simply not including any CFW pre-loaded on the device. Aside from that, RCM Loader is a glorified microcontroller and rechargeable battery.

What's Nintendo going to ban next? Paper clips and USB-C cables that could be used to send payloads to the Switch?

Sure, almost nobody with an RCM Loader is using it without involving piracy, but there are legitimate uses, like running Linux or Android.

If Nintendo wants to go after SX OS, that's fine, they were including keys that were owned by Nintendo, with the sole purpose of enabling piracy. Going after Atmosphere doesn't really work, because Atmosphere by itself doesn't enable piracy. If anything, Nintendo should go after the people releasing sigpatches for Atmosphere. But of course they're not going to waste their time with that because the software can easily be copied and distributed on all sorts of file-sharing hosts.

 

[banjo2]

This is getting worse than firmware update threads

 

[smf]

Still, calling an RCM loader a BT audio receiver is... definitely a way to try to skirt around getting caught by Nintendo,

There are loads of ways to avoid laws, but advertising it as a BT audio receiver is unlikely to get many sales.

still doesn't make any sense.
while the purpose of the device is obvious, as it's sold, without payloads, it does not do what nintendo claims on it's own, it's just a board with some buttons and a usb c connector.

any smartphone can also be an injector and they couldn't ban sales of those on these grounds.

If it wasn't sold as RCM loader, like if it was an existing product that people said to buy (like the teensy during the ps3) and someone else just produced free software, then sure nintendo couldn't get a ban on it.

But if the seller went around telling people (even in secret) that it could run payloads in any way then expect a ban.

This is complete bullshit. The RCM Loader is not "enabling" piracy. Any potential lawsuit should be avoided by simply not including any CFW pre-loaded on the device. Aside from that, RCM Loader is a glorified microcontroller and rechargeable battery.

Guns are just lumps of metal, drugs are just chemicals. What it is advertised as is quite important.

What's Nintendo going to ban next? Paper clips and USB-C cables that could be used to send payloads to the Switch?

No, but they could ban you telling people exactly how to bend the paperclip or the software to run on a PC.

You know Nintendo don't just get to decide what can be banned? The DMCA has allowed them to do this for two decades.

Sure, almost nobody with an RCM Loader is using it without involving piracy, but there are legitimate uses, like running Linux or Android.

The law accepts that some products could have legitimate use, but being able to run Linux or Android on a games console is not seen as important enough. If you don't like it then don't buy a games console to run Linux or Android (or at least don't complain if it turns out to require something illegal).

Going after Atmosphere doesn't really work, because Atmosphere by itself doesn't enable piracy.

I don't believe it needs to enable piracy to break the law, the way it derives the keys is probably enough. The non commercial nature of atmosphere is more likely why it hasn't been taken down. Although maybe it's just that Nintendo are slow to act.

 

[slaphappygamer]

THIS JUST IN!!!

Nintendo bans words, because some written instructions CAN lead to piracy.

 

[DrunkenMonk]

So after actually reading the ruling, it's a default judgement in favor of Nintendo (that has no implications on anything else by the way) due to the lack of response from the guy in China who didn't even acknowledge there was a case against him in the US to begin with, nevermind actually holding a defence.
People are misconstruing the injuction and ruling big time ‍

TL;DR
The judge ruled in favour of the only side that said anything. (I know right? Who would've guessed!)

 

[mmz16x]

Just another crybaby act by N

 

[ELY_M]

I am very super pissed off. I wish TRump is still president!!!! I would tell trump to repeal this copyright crap and DMCA crap