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Nintendo Piracy The Courts Technology

Nintendo Wins High Court Injunction to Block Access to Pirated Switch ROMs (torrentfreak.com) 14

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an effort to restrict access to pirated ROMs illegally made available for its Switch console, Nintendo has obtained a UK High Court injunction against six internet service providers. Targeted against ROM portals with NSW2U and NSWROM branding, the two-year blocking order requires BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and others to block the sites after they failed to respond to infringement complaints.
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Nintendo Wins High Court Injunction to Block Access to Pirated Switch ROMs

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  • Meh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Monday December 27, 2021 @03:09PM (#62120067) Homepage

    Meh. There'll be ten more tomorrow.

    The Pirate Bay is still up, too.

    • Yep. People that pirate use VPNs anyway, so who cares what Nintendo does?
    • I'm sure all six gamers in England will manage to find an IRC channel where they share ROMs. And if not... I guess they can just wait 2 years until the order expires?

  • Thanks Nintendo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by blowdog ( 993153 )

    Now I know what sites to go to.

  • I don't have a Switch, but I went to the site to see what was going on. The ROMs aren't hosted there; they have links to download them elsewhere.
    Why not go after the site that's hosting the ROMs?

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Monday December 27, 2021 @03:45PM (#62120159) Homepage

      Possibly because the sites that actually host the files don't last long, are impractical to chase in terms of the responsible person behind those sites (because of anonymity or pseudonymity), and both the users and operators of these sites know the index sites are the ones that are essential for connecting the distributors with consumers of the illegally copied files.

      Legally speaking, the operators of these sites commit contributory copyright infringement, which is why Nintendo (or other rights holders) have a statutory basis to sue them or get injunctions against them.

      • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tomz16 ( 992375 ) on Monday December 27, 2021 @05:40PM (#62120427)

        commit contributory copyright infringement

        Which is kind of a weird concept when you take a step back. Like saying the card catalog in the library contributed to copyright infringement if someone subsequently copied something out of the book it helped them find. Or a phonebook / street sign / etc. helped someone commit homicide because it helped them find a gun store, etc. But wait, there's more. We're not even saying it's the "card catalog" but rather the author / maintainer of that card catalog who holds the liability for enforcing / not-enforcing someone else's copyrights.

        Look, i totally get why the copyright holders are arguing this way (it centralizes + makes their enforcement job much easier), but even once you account for intent (i.e. maybe we can convince ourselves that a search engine of just pirated content is bad, but is a search engine of ALL torrents legal + illegal ok, how about just a search engine of all "stuff" on the internet, like google, which did not voluntarily comply with DMCA requests?), it's still a completely bizzaro concept, IMHO.

        "Contributory copyright infringement" is like there's now a completely new nebulous category of information which cannot legally be communicated between two individuals. And it's not the copyrighted information itself (which is the thing actually protected under copyright law). It's any information which may somehow lead someone to a copyrighted materials which they may then potentially copy unlawfully.

        • by Entrope ( 68843 )

          No, a contributory infringer is one who "knowingly induces, causes or materially contributes to copyright infringement, by another but who has not committed or participated in the infringing acts him or herself". Both knowledge and material contributions (or inducement or causation) are missing from your other examples.

    • 1) They're probably not even hosted in England.
      2) The sites listing the links can just change to different links

      It won't be effective, but it is more effective to target the messenger than the host.

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