Nintendo secures RCM loader ban in the U.S.

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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?

:arrow: Source (courtesy of TorrentFreak)
 

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thesjaakspoiler

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Let's be real here, you put cfw on your console for piracy
Actually I put CFW on my console to also be able to use it as a portable videoplayer for my kids.
But putting the CFW on it also caused it to get banned.
And that was stupid of Nintendo because even if I wanted to buy some games online, they just prevent me from doing so.
 
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It's not only that.. Also it's about showing that they are defending their IPs. if there is not enough "Defense" it can actually cause issues down the line when other people attempt to use them.

That's why a lot of fan games and such that are kept low key have no real problem, it can be argued that they didn't know it existed adn all that.

But once it's getting huge attention, the company can no longer claim ignorance of it. *hence why Blizzard went after the huge Free servers that advertised everywhere, while ignoring the smaller servers that didn't.*
Pretty sure that's trademark law. With copyright, you could wait 30 years to sue somebody and still win. K
 

SkittleDash

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I bet even their lawyers are getting tired of the lawsuits. Next thing in the morning, they're going to have a request asking them to fight for the ban of 3D printers.
 
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VashTS

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guess they have to ban Android phones next, since they do the SAME EXACT THING.

this precedent is garbage. its not what you do with the RCM loader, they should be judging how it functions - by itself, it cannot cause piracy or circumvent any copy protections.

an RCM loader plugged in a switch does absolutely nothing to it. i had 2 of these, i should've held onto them lol
 

Goku1992A

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Actually I put CFW on my console to also be able to use it as a portable videoplayer for my kids.
But putting the CFW on it also caused it to get banned.
And that was stupid of Nintendo because even if I wanted to buy some games online, they just prevent me from doing so.

More than likely your switch wasn't dual booted if it was you wouldn't have gotten banned.

For me personally I have bought games and I do pirate games. Some games I purchased was because the games I pirated and I really enjoyed it so I had bought a physical copy to support the DEVS. I think the main problem with this is the price point if the games were a little cheaper some people wouldn't be inclined to pirate. All my PS4/XB1 games I own the prices for those games are dirt cheap but ironally Nintendo games are super expensive and they hardly/never go on sale.

I still prefer the RCM loader over the android the box is more efficient it's a good thing that I bought 2 because I knew something like this was going to happen!
 

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Spider_Man

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Nintendo should focus more on making better/new games.

All this money and effort to stop people pirating old shit ports, when its dead cheap to buy on the original console.

Bet any money we will hear the same bullshit lie when it comes to the next console.... we promise to improve our games and better support.
 

RednaxelaNnamtra

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There may be a select few who may just use it for themes and other things yet that is something that is againts the ToS of the Nintendo Switch.

Look at the new topics of commenters here when a new firmware gets released, people wondering if Atmosphere or SX OS still works.

Nintendo has all the right to defend their console, same thing what Sony and Microsoft are doing.
In many countries the tos is not really that importent, exept for using the online service, since you don't need to agree to the tos to buy the switch.
I also don't think its just "a few selected modders", I helped mutliple friends to mod their consoles, and most of them did it for things like save game backups, custom themes, overclocking or streaming, those are just some nice features, nintendo doesn't deliver.
Another thing is, that people modding their console to pirate most of the time just don't earn the money to buy games regurlarly, so its not even really a lost sale.
I don't think its good that hardware that just allows custom firmware gets banned, when its not actively promoted to be used for piracy like sxos was, but thats atleast just the us in this case.

Also to the people saying paperclips and smartphones will be next, and don't say it as a joke, the difference is, that this rcm loader is specifically designed for switch modding, while smartphones being able to inject payloads is just a byproduct of its feature set.
 
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TomSwitch

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Will buy one just in case

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


They can fill a case against paper clips makers too
Paper clips makers can't be sued successfully otherwise there will be no guns in USA for the crazy. If you can remove paper clips for this reason you can remove anything.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Can't wait for Nintendo to ban Phones because it can inject payloads...
Phone is a serious threat to Nintendo. I used to laugh at Steve Job when he said iphone will be the gaming platform of choice. I think it is now.

By the way I think people jailbreak their iPhone for many reasons just like people who inject payload into their switch for many reasons.
 
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