Nintendo Sues Owner of 2 Prominent ROM-Hosting Sites

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Nintendo has filed a lawsuit through the federal court in the state of Arizona against the owner of 2 major ROM hosting sites, Jacob Mathias, and his Arizona-based company, Mathias Designs L.L.C. The company is being sued for unfair competition, as well as trademark and copyright infringement for featuring readily accessible retro ROMs, proprietary BIOS software, and copyrighted musical recordings and sounds.

This includes the copyrighted BIOS files for the Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, and Nintendo DS systems. Defendants also make a vast library of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyrighted musical works

These contents are reportedly uploaded and maintained directly by Mathias's company on a regular basis. In the motion, Nintendo also claims that the defendant is profiteering off of the popularity and subsequent ad-revenue of his sites, with one site regularly reaching over 17 million visitors per month. This is popularity gained, of course, exclusively from providing Nintendo's copyrighted content, that being both in the form of software as well as copyrighted visual logos to advertise the content.

Under the count of "unfair competition", Nintendo claims that:
Defendants’ conduct constitutes unfair competition that is contrary to honest practice in commercial matters under Arizona common law. Specifically, Defendants have traded on Nintendo’s reputation for quality and integrity in order to pass off their unauthorized copies of Nintendo video games and other copyrighted works to consumers. By advertising these copies as genuine Nintendo products, Defendants have actively misled consumers about the true source of these copies.

Nintendo is seeking compensation of $150,000 in statutory damages, on top of up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo trademark. Because there are more than 140 copyrighted titles and 40 trademarks reportedly being infringed, this could possibly result in upwards of $100 million in damages when totaled. In addition, they are demanding that Mathias provide them information on the sources of any and all infringing material hosted on his sites. Of course, Nintendo also seeks to shut both sites down with this motion. Mathias himself has yet to publicly respond to the allegations.

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aaronz77

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Thankfully I think the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) part of this small business will protect him from losing any personal property after the $100 million dollar judgement is filed. I understand Nintendo has got to do what is best for them BUT.. once again, bringing mainstream public attention to ROM's is far worse for Nintendo in the long run.
 

the_randomizer

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If you would be US based and hosted then you probably should have seen it coming. It is probably more surprising it took as long as it did.



Are they trying to stop everything including the hardcode or just make it harder for the "I followed a guide on a forum" set? The latter group are a far larger one and probably the bulk of the "losses" they make from such activities.

C'est la vie I suppose. Maybe if Nintendo actually had a decent digital library of games, people would be willing to spend more on legit ROMs.
 

wurstpistole

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For every website going down there's then more coming up. In Germany there's a saying called a fight against windmills, which applies here pretty well... It's no use. Nothing can stop sharing and piracy, it's just impossible.

On a side note, I have never heard of either of those sites.
 
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Giga_Gaia

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yeah great, sue them so you can re-release a SNES classic for the fourth time

whenever i feel bad for pirating nintendo games they do something stupid that makes me relish the act even more

I feel zero remorse pirating Nintendo stuff. In fact, it helps me sleep at night knowing that I steal from them.

Nintendo deserves people stealing their stuff. Between them, Sony and Microsoft, they are by far the greediest company.

Their games takes forever to get a permanent price drop.

Their games almost never go on sale and when they do, the sale is pretty much garbage. I mean Zelda BOTW has been out for more than a year and they are so greedy I almost never see it on sale for more than $15 off (25%). I mean it's been a year and it's all you can offer on your first party titles? It's extremely weak. Sony and Microsoft would be 50% or 75% off by then and you get sales much more regularly.

They force you to pay to back up your saves via cloud on Switch, holding your saves hostage. Sony and Microsoft makes you pay, but at least you have the option to do local backups for free.

Their controller is more expensive than a PS4 or Xbox One controller and it really doesn't do anything those 2 controllers don't do that justify the extra price.

The price for their accessories is also ridiculously high. $30 for an official charger that probably cost like $1-2 to produce, the dock is sold for like $90 (which is far too expensive) and now they sell you a pokeball for $50, which is only gonna be useful for like 1 game.

Yeah, I feel no remorse at all. I wish piracy was even more rampant, like I said they deserve it. Never seen anyone so greedy. You can hate me if you want, but it really won't bother me.
 
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Song of storms

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Thankfully I think the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) part of this small business will protect him from losing any personal property after the $100 million dollar judgement is filed. I understand Nintendo has got to do what is best for them BUT.. once again, bringing mainstream public attention to ROM's is far worse for Nintendo in the long run.
They're suing the owner of the company, not the company. He's still going to lose big.
 
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Son of a bitch, they don't even sell anything gba related. This is just Nintendo being assholes. And yes I do understand that you have to protect your patents, but this is a weird case of Nintendo just messing with someone, look how they don't (and probably can't) do shit about the 100000 chinese websites.
Less Nintendo being assholes, more those two guys being dumbasses for hosting a ROM site in Arizona. Nintendo has a legal obligation to defend their property when possible, that's why you host somewhere with lax copyright laws.
 
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wurstpistole

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Oh really? Name two.
Hah! Well played, trying to get Rom website names here. But seriously, if I Google for example gba Roms I find the page I used for YEARS on first position. That one has like every system up to 64bit completely. Always found everything there, never needed anything else.
 

Pluupy

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I feel zero remorse pirating Nintendo stuff. In fact, it helps me sleep at night knowing that I steal from them.

Nintendo deserves people stealing their stuff. Between them, Sony and Microsoft, they are by far the greediest company.
Alright, I know Reddit and 4chan people exaggerate the stupidity of gbatemp members, but this is by far the dumbest thing I have ever read on this site and you should feel bad.

Dude. You embarass me.
 
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Alex4nder001

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Hah! Well played, trying to get Rom website names here. But seriously, if I Google for example gba Roms I find the page I used for YEARS on first position. That one has like every system up to 64bit completely. Always found everything there, never needed anything else.
Trust me, Loveroms was perfect for GC and PSX/PS2 isos. Everywhere else they’re either split into pieces or in some weird format. Emuparadise being one of them. Sure, I used to use it a lot, but when I discovered loveroms I realised that was so much better.
 
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Ryccardo

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Trust me, Loveroms was perfect for GC and PSX/PS2 isos. Everywhere else they’re either split into pieces or in some weird format. Emuparadise being one of them. Sure, I used to use it a lot, but when I discovered loveroms I realised that was so much better.
Check out that hustler site, while they are one of the first to honor dmca claims (or "esa protected" as they say), they also have some hacks/translations in the main download, and it's even lower bullshit than the paradise site
 

SirNapkin1334

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Which sites was it? That paradise site? The ISO site? Fill us in!
Edit: nvm I found it, maybe I should have looked at the article. It was the Love site.
 
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