NULL mag Issue 02 07 Nintendo does it again...

Published in

· 26 Dec 2020

  

original post from :  
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/ 
nintendo-to-rom-sites-forget-cease-and-desist-now-were-suing/ 

 
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Nintendo's attitude toward ROM releases—either original games' files or  
fan-made edits—has often erred on the side of litigiousness. But in most cases, 
the game producer has settled on cease-and-desist orders or DMCA claims to 
protect its IP. 

This week saw the company grow bolder with its legal action, as Nintendo of 
America filed a lawsuit (PDF) on Thursday seeking millions in damages over 
classic games' files being served via websites. 

The Arizona suit, as reported by TorrentFreak, alleges "brazen and mass-scale 
infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights" by the sites LoveROMs 
and LoveRetro. These sites combine ROM downloads and in-browser emulators to 
deliver one-stop gaming access, and the lawsuit includes screenshots and 
interface explanations to demonstrate exactly how the sites' users can gain 
access to "thousands of [Nintendo] video games, related copyrighted works, 
and images." 

Enlarge / Nintendo's lawsuit includes this image of LoveROMs' "most popular 
games," which all happened to come from Nintendo consoles. (The lawsuit also 
mentions the sites' constant use of official box art as a basis of 
infringement.) 

Nintendo is seeking serious money as relief for alleged damages, with the 
biggest number coming from "$150,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo 
copyrighted work and up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo 
trademark." (Multiply that first figure by "thousands" of copyrighted works, 
and, well, that's a lot of zeroes.) Additionally, Nintendo has requested full 
disclosure of the operators' "receipts and disbursements, profit and loss 
statements, advertising revenue, donations and cryptocurrency revenue, and 
other financial materials," which relates to the suit's demand for a "reward" 
to Nintendo for whatever profit the sites made. 

The lawsuit makes a point of describing the named defendants as "not casual 
gamers," but "sophisticated parties with extensive knowledge of Nintendo’s 
intellectual property and the video game industry more generally." It is 
possible that the suit uses this language to explain why some ROM sites' 
operators may not draw the same legal fire. (Additional, alleged paths to 
revenue may not help matters for the named defendants, as Nintendo alleges 
that the operators "enrich themselves through, among other things, donation 
requests and the sale of advertising space.") 

After the suit was filed, LoveROMs was updated to remove all 
Nintendo-affiliated links, including ROMs and emulators, and the site 
announced on its social media channels that "all Nintendo titles have been 
removed from our site." LoveRetro.co now redirects to a single, text-only page 
that reads, "Loveretro has effectively been shut down until further notice."