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from the How-did-they-get-all-that-money? dept.
Nintendo wins $12m lawsuit against ROM sites run by a married couple
Nintendo has won a legal battle against pirate ROM websites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co. The judgement from the Arizona court has resulted in the owners of the now-defunct sites having to pay the Japanese game developer $12.23 million in damages.
The ROM site owners are married couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, who registered the two sites under their company, Mathias Designs. Their legal troubles started this past summer when Nintendo filed a complaint with the federal court against them. In order to avoid a drawn-out legal battle the couple took down the two websites in July and put up a notice that said they were under maintenance.
As TorrentFreak notes, however, the couple soon owned up and admitted to both direct and indirect copyright as well as trademark infringement of Nintendo's games and other copyrighted content. The two ROM sites the Mathias couple ran offered pirated copies of Nintendo's retro games, including Super Mario World, Mario Kart 64, Super Mario All-Stars, and many more. People were able to download these pirate copies and play them on PC and other platforms they weren't intended for with an emulator, thereby bypassing Nintendo's hardware ecosystem entirely.
As the paperwork obtained by TorrentFreak shows, both parties – the Mathias couple and Nintendo – have now reached an agreement after the dispute was raised this summer.
Also at Motherboard.
Previously: Nintendo Sues ROM Sites
EmuParadise Removes ROMs After Nintendo Sued Other ROM Sites
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Wednesday November 14 2018, @06:30PM (2 children)
They agreed to pay $12m?
How much did they make from the ROM site? That is quite a bit of money. How do they have it from that site...
Ahh the TorrentFreak Link explains it...
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 15 2018, @04:09AM (1 child)
I've heard that there is often a big gap between winning a huge judgment and actually collecting. Defendants can appeal, and there is of course settling. If worst comes to worst they could probably declare bankruptcy, or even leave the country. If they actually have that much money, they could just pay the penalty, and it might even be a wrist slap, they might have a lot more money than that. Seems unlikely their wealth would be close to $12 million, it'll either be a lot less, or a lot, lot more.
One wrinkle I wonder about is who is liable. The company? Or are the owners personally liable? If the former, the company can be thrown to the wolves easily enough. If the latter, might not be the sort of precedent that big corporations want to set.
Anyway, yeah, the whole thing smells. "Further, they have to hand over all Nintendo games and emulators they have." That kind of order, what does it mean? They can't keep legitimately purchased cartridges that they happen to possess? They have to hand over all their hard drives and flash drives and the like that contain copies of the ROMs? Whatever, it seems totally based on the flawed notion that these things are material, and therefore scarce. What does it accomplish, when there are surely many other copies of everything, scattered all over the world? Seems like one of those obtusely spiteful acts that accomplishes nothing, much the same as burning books. The court aspires to being the firemen of Fahrenheit 451.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:31PM
I agree... It does seem odd to me as well.
But based on TF, it seems that they are willing to accept lets say $1m(completely random guess) of real money in the agreement for the privilege of saying that they got a lot more in court documents. I assume this is to scare future defendants with paying up big before trial by saying the last person we sued lost $12m in court.
Due to it being a settlement, I assume that Nintendo will be paid, or the agreement would be null and void, and back to court they go. (IANAL)
Taking the material goods stops the ROMs from being uploaded to other sites out of spite towards Nintendo. And if they become scarcer, it just increases demand for Nintendo's next Retro Arcade style release.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P