Current Events > Nintendo Can't Even Get $50 A Month From Sued Rom Site

(+) Yeah! (+)

You can't use bankruptcy to get out of punitive damages.

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Its dumb cause Nintendo isnt making any money off their old out of print games anymore so hosting them on a site to preserve them really shouldnt be an issue. If Nintendo wants to make a quick buck and release them on their e-shop or in a collection it wont hurt their sales at all.

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ExtremeLuchador posted...

You can't use bankruptcy to get out of punitive damages.

That depends entirely on whether it was deemed to be both willful and malicious

https://www.vondranlegal.com/adversary-proceeding-lawyers-for-willful-copyright-infringement-bankruptcy-discharge

Unless somethings changed since 2015

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archedsoul posted...

He wasn't selling roms. He was selling unlimited download accees. Otherwise it was free but capped/limited.

Oh.

Still stupid. Pretty sure torrents of entire console libraries are out there.

VayneSolo posted...

Like making downloads free but with worms and Trojans (or worse) from third parties in them?

...No. Come on, you're acting like there's absolutely zero job opportunities out there.

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Are these things usually income based. If he earns more, does he have to pay more?

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Gwynevere posted...

We already went through this with the RIAA and file sharing services. When the RIAA sued people for insane amounts, they just filed for bankruptcy and called it a day

What ultimately cut down on piracy big time wasnt legal action, it was streaming services. We're probably gonna see a similar thing with Game Pass, so unless Nintendo enjoys just wasting their time in court, it'd be smart to have a subscription service like Game Pass but for their classic collection

Nintendo would rather make you pay to download each classic game on their current console, shut down the service, then make you pay to download their classic games on their next console.

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Error1355 posted...

A $50 a month payment plan for a $2.1M settlement is pretty generous, tbh.

Jeeze, I wish I could get that good of a deal on a mortgage

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kingdrake2 posted...

copyright protection for japan is 70 years from publication of games.

which is absolutely ridiculous. By the time your able to enjoy a game not ported by Nintendo to newer systems you'll either be in a home or dead.

Unless im mistaken, it would take 3500 months to pay 2.1 million dollars with $50 monthly payments. 3500 months is 291.66 years. What a stupid sentence.

Pepys Monster posted...

Nintendo would rather make you pay to download each classic game on their current console, shut down the service, then make you pay to download their classic games on their next console.

I guess they're gonna spend the rest of their existence fighting legal battles where no ones gonna pay any of the damages anyway

No skin off my ass though. Piracy always wins the legal war eventually

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fair, next

let him open the romsite back up and get yo dollars that way, Nintendo; since you dont want to release the ancient doodoo on your current hardware.

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Thompson posted...

Just a reminder, this idiot was charging a fee for downloading roms.

Yeah, zero sympathy.

Collat posted...

I gotta ask who actually pays for roms though? At that point, you may as well hunt down the real games.

serious response: what's the difference anymore?

didn't you see how well the NES and SNES classic sold?


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kirbymuncher posted...

serious response: what's the difference anymore?

didn't you see how well the NES and SNES classic sold?

which a lot of people just bought for the shell of the system, and either replaced the onboard games, or stuck a raspberry pi into it to have the full library instead of the 20-30 that came with it. I love Nintendo, but their version of emulation isn't exactly the best.

Godnorgosh posted...

Nintendo's learning the hard way that all this stunt really did was damage their reputation. They're not getting millions from some rando pirate.

He wasnt just some random pirate and most people are on Nintendos side on this one.

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This whole thing is made me hate Nintendo and I will never buy another single product from them

nah fuck Nintendo tbh

why are they such assholes about 20+ year old games you can't even buy anymore? and they do this type of thing all the time, even going after people who just make mods. like that one dude who made a cool Metroid mod and got slammed by them for it.

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Theres preservation and there's using that as an excuse to charge people for roms.

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$50 a month is so generous

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Nintendo should lose that IP immediately unless they're going to commit to selling copies of those games again.

Otherwise should be public domain. Especially after like 5-10 years.

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pure_temper posted...

Nintendo should lose that IP immediately unless they're going to commit to selling copies of those games again.

Otherwise should be public domain. Especially after like 5-10 years.

Lol what IP are you referring to?

When you go on these ROM sites and look at most downloaded it's primarily games they do still sell.

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Darmik posted...

Lol what IP are you referring to?

When you go on these ROM sites and look at most downloaded it's primarily games they do still sell.

i didn't go the site so idk what exactly he had for download

but anything not for sale anymore in a reasonable fashion should become public

if he was hosting stuff that was still available for purchase from them then I stand corrected and yeah he shouldn't have done that, because not fair

but Nintendo generally is a piece of shit on this which is why I gave him the benefit of the doubt this way

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So they made the dude sign up for a lifetime subscription to Nintendo for 50 bucks.

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Sheiky-Baby posted...

So they made the dude sign up for a lifetime subscription to Nintendo for 50 bucks.

Now there's a real punishment

For real though Nintendo is a joke for this shit

Godnorgosh posted...

Digital game preservation ultimately will win this battle.

This has nothing to do with Digital game preservation.

This has to do with a guy making money off another companies IP, and ignoring cease and desist orders.
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pure_temper posted...

i didn't go the site so idk what exactly he had for download

but anything not for sale anymore in a reasonable fashion should become public

if he was hosting stuff that was still available for purchase from them then I stand corrected and yeah he shouldn't have done that, because not fair

but Nintendo generally is a piece of shit on this which is why I gave him the benefit of the doubt this way

You're arguing against something else here. I'm not aware of any ROM site that only hosts stuff that isn't available for sale on modern platforms.

Even then this guy had a ROM site with Nintendo games that he charged money for. So he opens the chance to be sued into oblivion.

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pure_temper posted...

Nintendo should lose that IP immediately unless they're going to commit to selling copies of those games again.

Otherwise should be public domain. Especially after like 5-10 years.

Agreed

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VayneSolo posted...

I believe Nintendo isn't expecting much money (if they expect money at all). They want to punish people and set an example to others.

Broke people with nothing to lose or pay have nothing to fear. These are the kinds of people Nintendo are wasting loads of money and time on.

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spikethedevil posted...

His entire business model was making money off of other peoples IPs so fuck him.

How is that different from what youtubers or streamers do?

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Dude needs to get a freaking lawyer. 50 bucks a month from someone with with no known income is insane. They should atleast allow him to only start paying once he has some sort of secured employment unless he has over 50 to 75 k in the bank.

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ExtremeLuchador posted...

This is why a bunch of places took down Nintendo-console games or got rid of all games entirely a few years ago. Plus the passage of FOSTA in 2018.

This. My favorite ROM site from the early 2000s removed everything besides the emulators a few years ago. They had ROMS/ISO's for basically every console.

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Godnorgosh posted...

harley2280 posted...

This has nothing to do with Digital game preservation.

This has to do with a guy making money off another companies IP, and ignoring cease and desist orders.

This isn't really an isolated case, but part of a larger effort:

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Legal-information/Nintendo-s-Anti-Piracy-Programme/Nintendo-s-Anti-Piracy-Programme-732261.html

So what other rom sites has Nintendo sued for millions?
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The only daft thing about this is Nintendo sees as much money from piracy as it does from used games and yet they're not going after used game stores; who are far more likely to be able to pay them. If they need money that desperately, why the hell are they going after the people who have none?

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BarbaricAvatar posted...

The only daft thing about this is Nintendo sees as much money from piracy as it does from used games and yet they're not going after used game stores; who are far more likely to be able to pay them. If they need money that desperately, why the hell are they going after the people who have none?

There's nothing illegal about used game stores. There's nothing for them to go after. Even then the game industry does plenty to try and devalue used games.

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spikethedevil posted...

Its not the wild west of the internet days where you were taking a dice roll when downloading anything.

Lmao, I saw an article the other day that said tons of pirated copies of games are used as vectors for bitcoin mining worms

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I dont have any sympathy for him but theres no way he caused any damage to Nintendo at all

Godnorgosh posted...

What I said was that it's part of a larger effort to curb piracy, which would include availability of their games in digital form.

You said it wasn't isolated the action of them sueing like that is.
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Jabodie posted...

Good thing I had amassed a set of legal digital backups for my physical copies years prior.

Theyre illegal backups.

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If he was charging money for ROMs then he's a dumbass and he deserves this. Still, Nintendo sucks for suing ROM sites.

Lairen posted...

Theyre illegal backups.

No they aren't. You're allowed to do that.

Godnorgosh posted...

harley2280 posted...

You said it wasn't isolated the action of them sueing like that is.

The action insofar as it's part of a larger anti-piracy effort isn't isolated. I didn't say anything specifically about suing other people for x amount of money. That came from you.

The fact that this was different because they sued was my entire point.

Then you started replying to me saying it's not an isolated incident. Did you quote the wrong post?
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Godnorgosh posted...

harley2280 posted...

The fact that this was different because they sued was my entire point.

Then you started replying to me saying it's not an isolated incident. Did you quote the wrong post?

No, I quoted the right post. What I've been saying is that we shouldn't consider this case in isolation from Nintendo's larger overall anti-piracy effort. Yeah, this guy was stupid to charge money for ROMs and he shouldn't have done so. I don't have any sympathy for him. But I'm not any more sympathetic toward Nintendo when for many of their older games the only legal method to play them is to purchase a ludicrously expensive physical copy of the game from a retailer, at which point Nintendo wouldn't benefit at all anyway. And they've had every opportunity to make these games available legally and make money from them.

Digital preservation of games is the way to go and Nintendo's larger project here is moving in the wrong direction. I can't believe I'm agreeing with Proudclad on something, but every Nintendo game which is no longer a source of revenue for them should be included in the public domain, unless they provide a legal digital alternative to play them.

This case is isolated by the very fact that Nintendo sued.

This isn't about preservation. It's about infringement and profiting on someone else's IP.
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