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Retro game repository EmuParadise says it's finished distributing ROMs
Nintendo has had enough of pirates and the websites that enable them, like EmuParadise. After shutting down a handful of sites and a Game Boy Advance emulator on GitHub in July, the publisher has seemingly done the work to convince EmuParadise to shut down. This massive online library of downloadable old games started 18 years ago, and up until this moment it hosted nearly complete libraries of games for various consoles that you could download and play on emulators.
Playing ROMs, as these game files are often referred to as, on an emulator exists in a legal gray area, but distributing these copyrighted works for download on the internet is obviously and clearly illegal. But Nintendo and other publishers have mostly avoided investing resources in tracking down and enforcing its legal right in many of these cases over the last couple of decades. For Nintendo, however, something has changed, and it is cracking down. And EmuParadise has confirmed that it is going to do what it must to avoid facing legal action.
"We will continue to be passionate retro gamers and will keep doing cool stuff around retro games, but you won't be able to get your games from here for now," reads an EmuParadise blog post. "Where we go with this is up to us and up to you."
Also at Kotaku and TechCrunch.
Previously: Nintendo Sues ROM Sites
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 09 2018, @09:13PM
You've got a point. The way I read it is that Nintendo was issuing threats and takedown orders. Those developers they are threatening (or their project/webhosts) are either voluntarily taking them down or voluntarily complying instead of facing an actual lawsuit. The most recent Nintendo takedown notice I read stated that the emulator site was hosting ROM copies, not just an emulator. And EmuParadise did host ROM images, not just provide emulation software.
As to being second or third parties... that would be a ground for refutation of the DMCA claims if Nintendo did not possess the legal authority to claim copyright on the titles being infringed. (Or did you mean that the 3rd party developed tools didn't belong to Nintendo? Or that the ROM codes being offered did not in fact originate from Nintendo-copyright-controlled media? Cleanroom development is not grounds for DMCA/Copyright, but Trademark infringement. Somehow I doubt that most ROM distributors are actually parallel developing their code.
Busting someone because they wrote an emulator.... a grey area, likely. And I don't think anybody really wants to press the button to see what the US Supreme Court (or most anyone else) would rule. But that also means the emulator writers don't want to fight it either (or at least anybody with enough money to fight the battle).
This sig for rent.