Nintendo Copyright Infringement Threats Shut Down Switch Payload Injector (torrentfreak.com) 40
Nintendo has targeted the developer of an open-source Switch payload injector with a cease and desist notice (PDF). Faced with copyright infringement threats, the DragonInjector developer decided to shut the project down. While he doesn't agree with the allegations, an expensive legal battle is not an option. TorrentFreak reports: DragonInjector is a small piece of hardware that fits in the Switch game card slot. It allows users to install and load custom firmware on their console. While it's not advertised as a pirate tool, with third-party code it can be used to play pirated games on older Switch models. A few days ago, DragonInjector's developer formally announced the end of the project. In a message on Discord, a Nintendo cease-and-desist order is cited as the main reason. MatinatorX doesn't agree with the gaming company's copyright infringement claims but he doesn't want to fight them either.
"While I don't believe the project was or is unlawful in any way, I do not have the resources to go to court to prove that for a hobby, especially considering the project netted a loss of a few thousand dollars overall," he writes. The cease-and-desist notice was sent by Nintendo's Canadian lawyers a few weeks ago. It accuses the developer of copyright infringement by advertising and selling the DragonInjector. According to the notice, this breaks the Switch's technical protection measures. "Your unlawful manufacture, advertisement, distribution, offering for sale and sale of the DragonInjector via the Dragon Injector Website infringes our client's rights," the lawyers write.
The developer was urged to immediately stop any infringing activities. If not, Nintendo reserves the right to take further action, the notice warns, adding that the company previously won $12 million CAD in damages in a 'similar' case. The threat comes with a list of additional requests. Among other things, MatinatorX must hand over all related accounting, including the number of devices sold as well as any profits that were made. The report notes that while Dragoninjector.com is gone, the developer registered Draconicmods.com to sell a custom Switch kickstand and other legitimate accessories.
"While I don't believe the project was or is unlawful in any way, I do not have the resources to go to court to prove that for a hobby, especially considering the project netted a loss of a few thousand dollars overall," he writes. The cease-and-desist notice was sent by Nintendo's Canadian lawyers a few weeks ago. It accuses the developer of copyright infringement by advertising and selling the DragonInjector. According to the notice, this breaks the Switch's technical protection measures. "Your unlawful manufacture, advertisement, distribution, offering for sale and sale of the DragonInjector via the Dragon Injector Website infringes our client's rights," the lawyers write.
The developer was urged to immediately stop any infringing activities. If not, Nintendo reserves the right to take further action, the notice warns, adding that the company previously won $12 million CAD in damages in a 'similar' case. The threat comes with a list of additional requests. Among other things, MatinatorX must hand over all related accounting, including the number of devices sold as well as any profits that were made. The report notes that while Dragoninjector.com is gone, the developer registered Draconicmods.com to sell a custom Switch kickstand and other legitimate accessories.
How DARE you! (Score:3)
How DARE you do something creative!!
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"Creative" yeah. That's a great euphemism. At least PS3s were actually used for Science with the other OS feature. How "creative" are you getting on a completely under-powered devices suitable for nothing other than playing simple games? Unless you're talking about how creative you can be at thwarting anti-piracy measures.
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Well if you want to be pedantic, nearly every console has a home brew community spring up shortly after the security is compromised. I don't expect switch would be any different.
Not that I believe this was a primary motivator, but it would be a valid creative use of hardware you "should" own.
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So....what's your point?
Unless you're talking about how creative you can be at thwarting anti-piracy measures.
Frankly, I think that's a great way for someone to exercise their creativity.
It takes a lot of work to figure out all the little bits that keep stuff like this locked up and I applaud those who have the patience and interest in this sort of thing to do it. So yeah, it's actually an excellent measure of creativity.
Cant' the design just be published? (Score:2)
I mean, really, are they suggesting that telling someone how to do something where they *COULD* break the law with that knowledge illegal?
If so, why is it legal to teach computer science past about 2nd year?
More proof (Score:3)
That first sale doctrine is dead, "because computers".
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"If governments ignore us when we ask them to make laws on our behalf, then we'll just enforce it on our own." - every game, music, media company.
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Do you know enough citizens or politicians that give a shit about this?
The IQ of the average American in 2020 is roughly 98. Critical/abstract becomes apparent around 110, a full standard deviation higher. People who care about things like this, I don’t know, but if I had to guess, maybe 115-120? Definitely not in the lower populations.
All votes count the same, be they IQ 80 or IQ 150. There’s way more of the former than the latter, though. Who’s vote wins?
Big corporations love democ
Re:More proof (Score:5, Interesting)
That first sale doctrine is dead, "because computers".
It’s dead because the courts accepted that the key parts of consumer hardware are not sold, they are ‘licensed”. It doesn’t matter what it is ... toaster, refrigerator, tractor, game system, programmable dildo, you pay for it and take it home, but it’s not your personal property. It remains the manufacturer’s property. And they can do what they want with it, including rendering it inoperable.
If the device breaks, at that point it’s yours, at least until you fix or replace it, and then they’ll regain control over it. You may have a warranty, but the 27 -pages of legalese you clicked though in 3 seconds because the order would have time out otherwise, says that we may not honor it.
Oh, and you can’t go to court or join a class action.
Wanna know the kicker?
If a bunch of you consumers file a bunch of individual lawsuits instead of a class action, the court will just consolidate the cases. Basically, we get the convenience of a class action for us, but deny that benefit to you. It’s right there on page 63. You “agreed” to it when you used the thing you bought from us. If you didn’t agree, you should, have thrown it away and eaten the loss. Kind of like iOS tells you to do when they include new ‘terms’ on your phone but only show them to you after the OS update. Agree and use your phone, or enjoy your $1,200 paperweight,
Oh, and if you don’t want this scenario, it’s too bad because you can not replace the code. In other areas of the economy, this type of tying is illegal. You’re welcome to not have a refrigerator, tractor, etc. You can live off the land, in the woods and avoid these type of arrangements altogether.
If you make the CHOICE to live indoors, retain your children, have a job, eat, etc, then you agree to this stuff. The 80% of consumers who could not give one and a half shits have spoken, and they say they don’t care. So you shouldn’t either.
Don’t worry, though. You’ll like the new economy where ownership comes with strings attached by the companies who sell you stuff. After all, the strings are there for your own good, and definitely NOT to continue to siphon money from you outside of the free market system. You know the system many in the USA claim to love, but spend their lives trying trying to subvert.
Well, “licensing” is the perfect means to impose prior restraint. And while courts strike this stuff down as unconscionable and reprehensible from time to time, the Supreme Court ... the court that said slavery was constitutional ... the court which ruled that the government could take your home and give it to a wealthier person ... the court which is a-ok with civil asset forfeiture .... the court which concedes that road checkpoints violate the 4th amendment, but “allow” it because the government says we really, really need checkpoints to generate revenue ... oh, and to make the streets safer .... this very court ... says “sure, big business, it may look like a sale, walk like a sale, and quack like a sale ... it may turn a hundred years of contract law on its head by offering no consideration whatsoever to the customer in return for no longer owning what the buy, but we hear you saying that the law against prior constraint is inconvenient ... so tell you what, go ahead put these barbed wire condoms on, and while you’re making sure they fit properly, we’ll get the people bent over and ready for you.
And so they have.
Don’t worry, though, page 54, clause 3 of the TOS you clearly signed by failing to unclick the 8 boxes on that page. The one next to the paragraph that says we delighted you.
Enjoy the t
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In this case it seems to be because of anti-DRM circumvention laws. If circumventing DRM simply because it annoys you was legal this would be.
erm (Score:3)
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More accurately "...that is probably actually wrong effectively....". I can't tell from the story whether there actually are wrong or not, even in my opinion. And I can't tell whether they're acting maliciously (I.e., not only wrong, but knowingly wrong).
Any decision I made about the motives behind Nintendo's actions, or the propriety of them, from the summary would be based on bias. I *am* biased against extended use of copyrights, and I know it, so I tend to think Nintendo is behaving inappropriately.
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There is virtually no doubt in my understanding that Nintendo is wrong.
This company was not infringing on Nintendo's copyright. They did not copy anything that Nintendo copyrighted, nor are they distributing anything that Nintendo copyrighted. The argument that they "enable" copyright is feeble, because the same argument could be made for just having an internet connection. They no more "enable" copyright infringement than any other technology which might also be abused to break the law "enables" that
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Unfortunately, you are probably wrong,
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/200... [michaelgeist.ca]
We don't express as much outrage about it now that it has been existence for 20 years, but the DMCA still exists and still has a number of ridiculous provisions in it related to circumvention of copyright protections. And it has expanded beyond the US. Canada has their own version of the DMCA that is even worse is some areas.
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I am not sure about the US DMCA, but the Canadian equivalent has a really nice exception that would fit here: computer interoperability. This enables things like emulators to be legal, so while it might still be illegal to download or distribute software that can run on the emulator which was copyrighted by someone else, an emulator itself is not illegal, and it would be entirely legal to write your own software to work with it (and by extension on the original device).
Of course, an emulator that conta
Torrent? Magnet link? (Score:3)
Who's got the sauce?
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Nintendo aren't going after people who are making exploits for their older platforms.
What do those in charge consider an "older" platform? Does the same 20 year rule as patent law apply?
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... and this is how copyright bullying works (Score:3)
the cost of the suit exceeds the value of the sales.
Which also says something about the volume of the purported infringement.
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Which also says something about the volume of the purported infringement.
If you stand on a train track and a train is coming towards you, do you also not make the decision to get off on the basis that you haven't been hit yet and as such the "volume" of damages on you is low to date?
the cost of the suit exceeds the value of the sales.
If he cared for a battle he'd start a go-fund me page. The reality is he likely knows what he did would get him slapped hard in court (because that's the way that copyright law works and Nintendo do win their cases since they aren't frivolous).
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Consider an integrated trinket M0. Many microcontroller based injectors that are fully internalizable exist. the GBA forums kids developed a SLEW of them before china's modchip cloning factories spun up.
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If I were him, I would have my server / filestore with the technical data "accidentally hacked" by a Chinese IP address.
After using a secure connection to sell the exploit to the Chinese hack cart manufacturing companies that are still going for DS / 3DS.
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The issue is that the hole the device uses to get in, was patched many years ago. You need an early production run switch to use the injector. (It's actually a hole in the Tegra firmware that handles the recovery mode; specifically a buffer overflow in the USB stack baked into the recovery mode. By sending a very large USB setup packet to the device, it overflows, execution jumps, and then suddenly it's running unsigned code before the OS can load. Full compromise of system security,)
In later releases, thi
I did my part.. (Score:2)
My last Nintendo anything was a N64.
Havent given them a penny since.
But humans dont care about anything else than personal and immediate satisfaction and screw the greater good.
Good Luck people who bought one (Score:1)
And as soon as he hands over who bought one, Nintendo will file suit against them. I know how this goes from experience.
Thanks for killing Physical Copies (Score:2)
Giving them an excuse to get rid of the physical media slot in a future console is a bad idea.
Contact the EFF? (Score:1)
Just curious if the EFF or somebody similar could help out? This (on the surface) appears to be a clear case of a corporation bullying somebody. I don't even know how they can claim copyright violations if he isn't using any of their brand-names on his products.
The irony of Nintendo, of all companies, doing such a thing as this is kindof thick, considering Nintento was about tanked in the USA because Paramount pictures sued them over Donky Kong infringing on their "King Kong" copyright.
Nintendo had $$ tho