Two years ago, Nintendo began a court battle against the warez-hosting website RomUniverse, suing its owner, Mathew Storman for damages. Storman defended himself on his own, without a lawyer, and attempted to dismiss the charges by claiming that he himself did not upload any ROMs to RomUniverse, therefore he was innocent. Now the verdict is in, with both Nintendo's lawyers and the presiding judge disagreeing, finding that Storman was responsible for the distribution of the illegal and infringing games on his site. Nintendo sought $15 million dollars in damages and legal fees, however, the US District Court Judge found this to be too harsh, instead fining Storman $35,000 per illegal ROM hosted on RomUniverse.

This added up to be $1.7 million. On top of that, Storman was hit with a charge of $400,000 in statutory damages, making the total amount a whopping $2.1 million. Nintendo also sought permanent injunction, though the Judge denied this, stating that Nintendo couldn't prove it had been irreparably damaged by the existence of RomUniverse, and that the company was not at risk, given the fact that the site has been permanently taken down.

The Court Grants Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment as to Plaintiff’s copyright infringement, unfair competition and Lanham Act claims, and awards Plaintiff $1,715,000 in statutory damages under the Copyright Act and $400,000 in statutory damages under the Lanham Act for a total of $2,115,000 in statutory damages.

Source: Courtesy of TorrentFreak

 

[baxzxd]

Get rekt pirate scum

Looks like he'll be Storman off to prison

(for real tho what a moron...not even getting a lawyer lmfao)

like the dude would be able to defend himself anyway

 

[Ottoclav]

Oh, the sacrifices I make for the good of this realm...
-Frederick (FE13)

I don't know about you, but here in Indonesia, there is no governing authority to stop the flow of pirated games and movies but piracy itself is illegal, and by such, on online shopping sites in Indonesia, you can find PS2 discs for Rp. 7000,- (around 0.5¢). That's why Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are reluctant to give development permits to Indonesian game companies such as Agate Studios Inc.

I don't really know where the wealth is held in Indonesia, but I'm assuming that most of it is in the 1% Elites' hands, not unlike here in the US. But my guess is that Ninty is going to sue where money is more easily earned. Even if this guy is paying a token payment each month, it's more money than someone in Indonesia is probably going to be able to pay each month. IMO.

 

[I_AM_L_FORCE]

"Storman defended himself on his own, without a lawyer..."

That's what happens when you play a lot of Phoenix Wright pirated roms.
Also 2mn probably isn't enough to cover the legal expenses spent by Ninty so the goal is to deter people from creating these kind of websites...

In what world would a claimant spend 2million on a single civil court case, that to my knowledge has no appeals

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>Indonesia

This guy will dissapear somewhere into Asia and will never be heard of again.

 

[HideoKojima]

In what world would a claimant spend 2million on a single civil court case, that to my knowledge has no appeals

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>Indonesia

This guy will dissapear somewhere into Asia and will never be heard of again.

This is not a person suing another person we are talking about a corporation here, you need to get familiar of legal expenses of such cases.

www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2020/annual2003e.pdf

 

[notimp]

Good luck collecting on that Nintendo, dude's probably broke as a joke and gonna declare bankruptcy now.

Media story is the important part. 2.1 milion I said.

 

[BitMasterPlus]

As much as I support uploading games online, what this guy did, at literally every turn, was wrong and stupid. Like, it's no surprise he got his ass destroyed in court, he couldn't have made it easier to Nintendo to wreck him.

 

[Ariff Tsukasa]

Nintendo, please sue cdromance next.

 

[weatMod]

I doubt a lawyer would have helped much they never do in piracy cases

they never do in most cases the FEDS have something like 98 % conviction rate, the whole system is a rigged scam
but i am assuming this was a civil case
at any rate a lawyer would have been a waste of money cause it's all rigged

 

[realtimesave]

Can't this guy claim bankruptcy and have all this erased? Isn't that how it works in the US? Anyone know? It's hard as hell to make 1.7mil in this country.

 

[Jacobh]

Can't this guy claim bankruptcy and have all this erased? Isn't that how it works in the US? Anyone know? It's hard as hell to make 1.7mil in this country.

It depends, but probably not in this case. Not all debt is eliminated by bankruptcy.

 

[realtimesave]

It depends, but probably not in this case. Not all debt is eliminated by bankruptcy.

Sucks for this guy though. And as far as hosting a large/popular website with pirated material and/or selling pirated stuff that's pretty much a no brainer you'd have to be an idiot to do that and think you'll get away with it forever. I used to have a roms site on geocities though but it was pretty much only known to a small crowd on irc. Glad I didn't continue with it.

 

[Jack_Ishmael]

Get rekt pirate scum

Looks like he'll be Storman off to prison

(for real tho what a moron...not even getting a lawyer lmfao)

A lawyer would have made a difference

 

[ruffo]

Mr. Storman this very moment:

 

[Vila_]

Legally I guess N is in the right but from a preservationist perspective Nintendo can get fucked. Games are an important part of our culture, they're works of art, and it should be ensured that future generations have some means to play them. It is unrealistic to expect the kids of today, future game developers who should be drawing from the past for inspiration to have the hardware and technical skills to dump a copy of a game that went out of production decades before they were born. Websites like this need to exist for the future of the gaming industry.

Nintendo used a scene dump of Mario Bros for the Wii's virtual console for god sake, even their own developers rely on these resources. But nah fuck em, they're distributing data that's prohibitively expensive to obtain today so sue them in to the ground.

archive.org
(edit, the site nintendo took down limited it's users on the ammount of roms you could get at a time and you had to pay to download more, they also had other scummy practices like that, so I'm glad they are taking awful sites like these instead of honest 100% free rom sites)

 

[wolf-snake]

This bruh probably tried to defend himself using the "Its norally legat to pirate Nintendo games because they enable scalpers" as a legit defense.

 

[Plazorn]

Nintendo doesn’t do lawsuits because of the games, they just want money. Kinda sad that a lot of video game companies are going in that direction now

 

[Shadow_The_Hedgehog82]

they never do in most cases the FEDS have something like 98 % conviction rate, the whole system is a rigged scam
but i am assuming this was a civil case
at any rate a lawyer would have been a waste of money cause it's all rigged

Doubt that means its rigged
I doubt anything goes to court without good evidence or it'd be a waste of the governments money

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Nintendo doesn’t do lawsuits because of the games, they just want money. Kinda sad that a lot of video game companies are going in that direction now

I don't think its for money because people normally declare bankruptcy for stuff like this and don't pay. its just because they don't like people sharing roms. I wish there were some legal protections for sharing games you cant buy anymore though its not like theyre losing money from people pirating old games

 

[th3joker]

My friend has a sealed copy with the autograph of the voice actor for mario. Wonder if it is worth similar?

 

[Plazorn]

Why does Nintendo go after small rom sites instead of big ones like cdromance and wowroms?

 

[chrisrlink]

well good thing archive is protected under the dmca if worse comes to worse