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Nintendo Joins 54 Companies in DS Piracy Battle
by Aaron Linde, Jul 29, 2008 9:36am PDTNintendo and 54 developers and publishers have filed suit in the Tokyo District Court to block the marketing, sales and importation of DS flash cart devices, which allow users to easily load pirated DS software onto flash media for play in Nintendo's handheld.
The devices—such as the R4 Revolution for DS and CycloDS Evolution, among others—are similar in form to standard Nintendo DS cartridges, while featuring a small slot for MicroSD cards which can be loaded with pirated DS games, homebrew software, utilities and other data.
In a statement reproduced by Kotaku, Nintendo said that the devices are "causing severe damage to our company and software makers, and this is something that we cannot possibly overlook."
The company added that the devices cause harm to the growth of the game industry as a whole, and that steps must be taken regarding the legality of flash cartridges. Other companies participating in the suit include Capcom, Square Enix, SNK, and Sega.
Though the suit carries legal weight only in Japan, it seems likely that Nintendo may eventually pursue a similar action in North America—such devices have proven quite popular in the territory, with the R4 and other devices for sale at numerous online retailers and in many independent game shops.
The UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association recently told MCV that it is considering legal action against merchants who sell the devices, stating that the R4 is an "infringement and an offense" against various copyright and patent acts.
Comments
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On a similar note, I finally modded my PSP. The true potential of that little device isn't fully unlocked until it's been modded.
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Today my exwife asked me for her friend's kid how to get one and set it up. She completely freaked out when I told her there was no way I was letting her friend touch it or copy my daughters games and movies off her R4.
WTF people...
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But I think Nintendo won a cartridge licensing case against Tengen (or something like that) two decades ago for the NES. There were third party carts with funny looking black cartridge cases as opposed to the standard Nintendo design, and they didn't pay the license fee. But I thought that revolved around finding evidence that interface software was created outside a legitimate reverse engineering project.
AFAIK, it is still usually legal to reverse engineer a product and interface with it. Maybe DMCA has changed that, but the problem is you don't necessarily have to read or accept a license agreement, even a shrink wrap license, to reverse engineer hardware.
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I'm pretty sure knowledge of this is helping them move handhelds, which wouldn't be moved anyway.
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I'm willing to bet any money lost to piracy, would be quadruped back in the form of hardware and accessory sales...
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were they laughing as they said this? The DS is THE biggest selling game platform in the world right now. Oh and good luck trying to block devices that will allow one to play downloaded games. That always works.
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