Nintendo wins legal case over ROM site, site owner ordered to pay $12 million in damages

Kioku · Nov 13, 2018

Euphonique said:
12 Million Dollars?! Are you serious?!
I loved Nintendo because they were not such dumbass, greedy bastards like Sony.. But now..? I think this will be the last console from them.
You can‘t even buy most of their old nostalgic games.. You have to pirate, if you want to play them.
And yes.. It was illegal to distribute them. But I can‘t help.. 12 million is really cruel and I feel sorry for him and his wife. They destroyed their life.

Kind of their fault. You play with fire, you're going to get burned.

ghjfdtg · Nov 13, 2018

Something which doesn't make sense for me is why he had to hand over the domains? Or did he do it on his own? The domains themself infringe no copyright laws. Forcing him to shut down the sites is enough.

Euphonique · Nov 13, 2018

DinohScene said:
LOL @ everybody crying "fuck you nintendo"
It's their IP, they got the right to take action against those that infringe it.

Piracy is bad n what not.
Site owner knew this.

Yeah, maybe the law is right, but the judgement is out of bounds here.

smf · Nov 13, 2018

Euphonique said:
Yeah, maybe the law is right, but the judgement is out of bounds here.

The court didn't calculate damages, it was decided between Jacob and Nintendo. If he can't afford to pay it then he may as well have not bothered offering it.

Kioku · Nov 13, 2018

ghjfdtg said:
Something which doesn't make sense for me is why he had to hand over the domains? Or did he do it on his own? The domains themself infringe no copyright laws. Forcing him to shut down the sites is enough.

The association the domains brought.

the_randomizer · Nov 13, 2018

Memoir said:
Kind of their fault. You play with fire, you're going to get burned.

A very valid point, yes, it was very much illegal to distribute pirated goods, however, the way Nintendo is sitting on a potential goldmine, and not providing more digital goods is damning at best. They could
be more than trickle three damn games per month, more than NES games, but of course they decide to hoard the IP, which I remind people, most of the games they're not even profiting from. ROMs can be seen as a way to preserve, but this is just bullshit.

smf · Nov 13, 2018

Memoir said:
The association the domains brought.

Right, even if the sites were turned into something legal then the returning 17 million people a month would have made it valuable.

The damages are to nullify any gains he made, if he's still got something valuable at the end of it then it hasn't achieved justice.

As you get older you change from the "it's not fair, everything should be available to everyone" to "it's not fair that I sold my golden nintendo cartridge twenty years ago for $10, I could buy a car with the proceeds now".

Kioku · Nov 13, 2018

the_randomizer said:
A very valid point, yes, it was very much illegal to distribute pirated goods, however, the way Nintendo is sitting on a potential goldmine, and not providing more digital goods is damning at best. They could
be more than trickle three damn games per month, more than NES games, but of course they decide to hoard the IP, which I remind people, most of the games they're not even profiting from. ROMs can be seen as a way to preserve, but this is just bullshit.

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

smf · Nov 13, 2018

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

And an even bigger difference between illegally distributing them for cost or at a loss and running a business that makes a profit from illegally distributing them.

I'm surprised that CEmu has survived for so long with it's patreon.

blawar · Nov 13, 2018

I don't know if this has been stated yet, but don't feel too bad for the rom site owners. They will promptly file for bankruptcy, and deal with bad credit for 7-10 years.

yanhaot · Nov 13, 2018

Wow this thread is so... idk what to say. When a person infringes on copyright and illegally distribute roms, of course he's gonna get hit hard.

It doesn't matter whether the old games get forgotten or not, it's nintendo's property and they get to decide what to do with it, not some 'public preservation of art for the education of future generation'.

Xzi · Nov 13, 2018

smf said:
And an even bigger difference between illegally distributing them for cost or at a loss and running a business that makes a profit from illegally distributing them.

I'm surprised that CEmu has survived for so long with it's patreon.

That's because CEMU asks for donations for the devs to continue working, they don't profit from or host the ROMs/WiiU system files.

Jayro · Nov 13, 2018

I sure am glad "no-inrto ROM sets" exist, because damn... It's hard downloading ROMs anymore these days.

Rabbid4240 · Nov 13, 2018

Where do we go now?

Owenge · Nov 13, 2018

This is sickening.... I think they should pay a fee but not this much

Illuminaticy · Nov 13, 2018

SexySpai said:
Where do we go now?

Can't tell if you're serious or not

Deleted User · Nov 13, 2018

Xzi said:
That's because CEMU asks for donations for the devs to continue working, they don't profit from or host the ROMs/WiiU system files.

If they were to take action against anyone I am sure they will now be directing their attention to the Yuzu developers as it can now play a handful of retail games from start to finish (albeit buggy and slow). Since these emulators have been built from scratch they are (currently) legally fair game but considering how scummy Nintendo has become lately, who knows they might try and do?

XDel · Nov 13, 2018

smf said:
They obviously can't prove every single case. They therefore have to take a view.

It would certainly not achieve justice if the court said "because you can't prove every case, we'll assume none of these are lost sales."

You also can't prove in a murder case that the person wouldn't have died spontaneously at the exact same moment if you hadn't shot them.

What sort of argument are you trying to make here and to what end exactly?

Jimbo_Slim · Nov 13, 2018

Pirating *old* games wouldn't be a problem if Nintendo would just sell all of 'em for like $0.05 or somewhere around that range. Who the hell these days pays $8 for a game on the SNES that came out on launch. Ninty Online only offers the NES stuff, a console that's very dated due to the fact that there's no saving and most of the games are short and simple. We need stuff like Gamecube and N64 to be sold (Yes, I know N64 was on Wii U but still limited). If they won't do that, make a mega collection like SEGA or start making old consoles again (Minis feel too digital).

CoolStarDood · Nov 13, 2018

I understand Nintendo wants to set a standard, (even though roms of older games hardly (if at all) effect a company like Nintendo) but this was just a dick move, a (slightly) more reasonable approach would have been to take a % of his earnings, as this guy is probably gonna have to take out a loan that he will never be able to pay back.

Or maybe he could go to gofundme or something.

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