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Nintendo sues to shut down two big ROM sites

Jetboogieman

Jetboogieman

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Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the operator of two websites serving ROMs of old Nintendo console video games, calling them a “brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rites.” Already, one site, LoveRetro.co, has been taken offline.
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The lawsuit requests damages that could reach into the $100 million range if all of the titles were counted. More likely, the size of damages and the injunctions requested are meant to close down the sites rather than recover any damages. Nintendo further asked for an injunction handing it control over the domain names.
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https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist

Knew this day would eventually come, I've used ROMs in the past and I'm honestly shocked this didn't happen much, much sooner.

This is absolutely of course, within Nintendos rights and I mean, there literally can't be any way imaginable that they can defend ROM distribution so... Sad but also understandable.

I just wonder why it took them so long to do this.
 
Jetboogieman said:
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https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist

Knew this day would eventually come, I've used ROMs in the past and I'm honestly shocked this didn't happen much, much sooner.

This is absolutely of course, within Nintendos rights and I mean, there literally can't be any way imaginable that they can defend ROM distribution so... Sad but also understandable.

I just wonder why it took them so long to do this.
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It is strange that the big movie studios or gaming companies haven't figured this out yet. Nintendo could be the one who brings the pirate community down. From the looks of the lawsuit, they are either waiting for damages to go into the $100 Million range before caring, or they discovered some fanboys bragging about how easy it was to get the games.

Either way, it's interesting Nintendo hasn't done something like this before. This stuff has been going around for years. Are they that clueless? Or just willfully ignorant?
 
Jetboogieman said:
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https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist

Knew this day would eventually come, I've used ROMs in the past and I'm honestly shocked this didn't happen much, much sooner.

This is absolutely of course, within Nintendos rights and I mean, there literally can't be any way imaginable that they can defend ROM distribution so... Sad but also understandable.

I just wonder why it took them so long to do this.
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I always assumed the servers were either out of their legal reach, they had no interest is trying to sell retro games (because they are trying to focus on selling newer systems and games)or they figured there wasn't a decent market for retro game.

I do wonder how they figured out that 100 million dollar number. Because its not like any of the people down loading roms would have shelled out 20 to 50 bucks for a video game that is 20 plus years old unless its the original cartridge.
 
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I'm very torn. I mean, it's their IP so it's their right; however, ROMs are so useful in archiving old games and preserving the history of the medium.

Regardless, this won't stop ROMs from spreading and being out there.
 
jamesrage said:
I always assumed the servers were either out of their legal reach, they had no interest is trying to sell retro games (because they are trying to focus on selling newer systems and games)or they figured there wasn't a decent market for retro game.

I do wonder how they figured out that 100 million dollar number. Because its not like any of the people down loading roms would have shelled out 20 to 50 bucks for a video game that is 20 plus years old unless its the original cartridge.
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And if the games are games Nintendo doesn’t sell anymore then how can there be damages?
 
Jetboogieman said:
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https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist

Knew this day would eventually come, I've used ROMs in the past and I'm honestly shocked this didn't happen much, much sooner.

This is absolutely of course, within Nintendos rights and I mean, there literally can't be any way imaginable that they can defend ROM distribution so... Sad but also understandable.

I just wonder why it took them so long to do this.
Click to expand...

Well why Nintendo has not done this in the past is there isn’t any real money loss to Nintendo and it also keeps interest going in their old games. Nintendo has never been for ROMs but they haven’t tried to hard to get rid of them. All I can think of with this lawsuit is they are trying to clear the way for a retro streaming service or something similar

Of course Nintendo does routinely make horrible business decisions so it could just be one of those
 
Crovax said:
Well why Nintendo has not done this in the past is there isn’t any real money loss to Nintendo and it also keeps interest going in their old games. Nintendo has never been for ROMs but they haven’t tried to hard to get rid of them. All I can think of with this lawsuit is they are trying to clear the way for a retro streaming service or something similar

Of course Nintendo does routinely make horrible business decisions so it could just be one of those
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I was thinking something similar. If not, I'm not sure why they would make this rather poor PR move. Regardless of their right to do so.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
And if the games are games Nintendo doesn’t sell anymore then how can there be damages?
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I expect IP and copyright issues to prevent the items from becoming "public domain" in which people could then use some of the idea's characters in the games for a new version or to make movies etc without Nintendo getting royalties
 
In related kinda news: https://nintendosoup.com/fake-switch-piracy-tool-bricking-systems-worldwide/

Long story short: there was software that allowed you to pirate free Nintendo Switch games. Some people, not wanting to pay for software that let them not pay for games tried to pirate the software. They got the wrong software, and instead of getting free games, got an inoperable Nintendo Switch. Sometimes justice is good.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
I expect IP and copyright issues to prevent the items from becoming "public domain" in which people could then use some of the idea's characters in the games for a new version or to make movies etc without Nintendo getting royalties
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This could be part of it. You can lose a copyright if you don't work actively to defend your IP.
 
It's an issue of availability. Piracy of music went WAY down with increased availability via things like the iTunes store. The fact that retro gaming systems that only play a small cross segment of total games available for a system are flying off the shelf speaks volumes to demand. I have used ROMs and will continue to do so until there is a viable, commercial solution. My guess is they are going to be ramping up a virtual platform for the switch in the near future...a welcome addition in my opinion.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
And if the games are games Nintendo doesn’t sell anymore then how can there be damages?
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That argument would have made sense in a time when the Nintendo NES Classic wasn't a thing. Now that there is an established market for the NES Classic all those ROMs are suddenly a marketable commodity again.

Also, the Nintendo Virtual Console is also there is the Nintendo distributed emulator for the Wii (and later) that allows you to buy and play the old games... but I am guessing that is less profitable right now than the NES Classic.
 
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Not this has anything directly to do with ROM's, but is more of a historical note. Here is the paper (the original document in fact) of when the very first emulator (The 7074 emulator) was announced to the world at a tech conference. Stu Tucker was one of the people who worked for my father on creating the very first emulator.

emulator_Paper.jpg
 
Nintendo sues to shut down two big ROM sites
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man, that horse is so far out of the barn that its great great grandcolts are currently eating oats. i used to play a Sega Genesis Road Rash equivalent on my computer back in graduate school, and that was in the late nineties. i can only assume that those files will be available somewhere.
 
Jetboogieman said:
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https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist

Knew this day would eventually come, I've used ROMs in the past and I'm honestly shocked this didn't happen much, much sooner.

This is absolutely of course, within Nintendos rights and I mean, there literally can't be any way imaginable that they can defend ROM distribution so... Sad but also understandable.

I just wonder why it took them so long to do this.
Click to expand...

I suspected that this would happen when Nintendo started making those retro systems. Of course most of the people using roms probably wouldnt have bought anything from nintendo anyways. Or the fact that all out of all the roms that I have downloaded I wouldnt care at all if I had to delete them. The novelty wears off really fast. You play it then go 'oh yea I remember this' then you move to the next rom. When you are out of roms to try it all just sits there taking up a tiny bit of hard drive space.
 
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