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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: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 14 2018, @07:32PM (4 children)
I'm a bit torn on this.
If Nintendo have allowed these games to die, and they are not available anywhere else, then I think ROM sites are completely justified in offering them. However I am led to believe Nintendo is actually selling these games again, so at least people can enjoy them.
As is often the case the pirates will probably offer a much better product, but that will be because Nintendo (like most huge companies) does not understand or care about it's customers. There is not much to be done about that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @07:40PM (1 child)
Yeah, they re-release them on their newest systems, charge WAY too much, and offer no portability. All the software exists, big companies could patch them up and sell old games for $1 and make a killing!
But nooooo. Can't have an old gaming ecosystem compete with their new stuff so they have to price it in the collector's price range. No one will shell out $10 for lots of old games, just the few they really want to play again.
We have a wealth of culture and entertainment that most humans will never have access to and it is sad. Collecting dust and doing no one any good, WOOOOO!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @09:56PM
"Collecting dust and doing no one any good"
Welcome to the jewish world-view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @07:45PM
It doesn't matter if what they did was right or wrong, what matters is that they intentionally made themselves hugely vulnerable without good reason. They should have done it anonymously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @11:38PM
If Nintendo was going to take action, they should have done so years earlier. It's not like these sites were hidden somewhere that isn't easily accessible via a quick web search.
An organization the size of Nintendo could easily afford to have somebody checking this out on a regular basis.