Nintendo sues alleged Switch pirate pair for serious coin Mario has tossed blue shells at what Nintendo alleges are two figures deeply involved in the piracy and circumvention of the Switch console ecosystem. The Japanese video game mainstay's American operation fired off two lawsuits at the end of June targeting James Williams [PDF] of Surprise, Arizona, who allegedly goes by " …
> Nintendo goes on to allege that once it sent a cease-and-desist letter in March, Williams "acknowledged" violating the company's intellectual property rights, but "refused to agree in writing to cease his unlawful activities." It claims he then "apparently attempted to cover his tracks by systematically destroying the documentary evidence of his misconduct, including but not limited to deleting his Discord social media account as well as his GitHub account."
It will never cease to amaze me just how stupid otherwise smart people can manage to be.
If you're not going to comply, don't acknowledge. If you're not going to comply, whether or not you've been seen to acknowledge, don't be seen to be trying to delete evidence.
If he lets this get to court, it's not going to go well.
I have a switch lite and last year the thumb sticks started to have dead zones. I would love to have a legal way to play my games on my steam deck. As it is, making do with an 8bitdo ultimate and a stand. Won't be buying a switch two unless they've got hall effect controllers. Nintendo's response to their chronic hardware problems has been pathetic.
I'm not sure how these guys could have run such operations without knowing that Nintendo are well know for going after people who pirate their games or try to get past their DRM. If they were lucky enough to have only got a cease and desist letter, and were not on the hook for any money at that point, how stupid to just carry on anyway and hope it won't come to bite you in the arse later.
Yes piracy is illegal, and should not be happening.
But on the other hand, Nintendo are massively anti homebrew, absolutely zero to do with anything illegal. It is private hardware owners modifying their own devices with full knowledge that it may not work with official software any more if at all.
That is not on at all. Nintendo want to police coding and learning. They are so overzealous in their demand that anything that anyone does with any of their hardware is illegal, when it is absolutely not and actually protected in many places as a form of open source development with zero aim for committing piracy.
Imagine if Microsoft tried to tell people exactly which software you can run on the machine you own and anything else will result in court and millions in fines.
I hate nintendo, and more so anyone that contributes to their ability to destroy learning, research and innovation. Nintendo are a dangerous scum on the gaming world.
This all without mentioning that the NES Classic, an official piece of nintendo emulation hardware, uses downloaded pirated copies of Super Mario Bros. with the signature of the cracker still in the file. They pirated and distributed pirated software for no good reason. The hypocrisy almost hurts.
Maybe they should sue everyone who bought a NES Classic for piracy...
That argument would work better if they had made a homebrew modification that made piracy possible, but that was an unintended side-effect and they did it for completely legitimate purposes. It would have worked better if, even though they intended to use it for piracy, they said it was an unintended side-effect, etc. They chose neither of those options, meaning that your defense of them is falling a lot more flat than you probably intended.
The rest of your defense isn't helping either. Your characterization of their antipiracy measures, which I wouldn't be happy with if I owned their hardware, as trying to "police coding and learning" when we both know that's not what they're doing, does not help your point. Nintendo is not locking down their hardware because they want me to be unable to learn how to code. They are doing it because they want to charge lots of money and make it difficult or impossible for people to play the games without paying them lots of money, and that's something they have the right to do. For those two reasons and many others, I do not have Nintendo hardware. Incidentally, their use of a pirated copy of an emulated game, while humorous, is not itself piracy because they own the copyright to the thing.
Well they are policing learning a bit. Their latest thing (apart from what's reported in this story) is going after sheet music and having it taken down. Even correctly licenced sheet music.
Why bother? Do they think it's going to take away sales from dirge like Wii Music?
"Why bother? Do they think it's going to take away sales from dirge like Wii Music?"
Well, I mean...it isn't necessarily about what they think it'll do to sales of their games or hardware. Nintendo isn't just a game and hardware maker; they're also an art, fiction, music, and character production house, and if they believe music they've written and hold copyright to is being infringed, they may well feel compelled to address the infringement no matter what it will or won't do to sales of their other products on the other side of the wall.
Now, I will admit I've only done a cursory examination of the sheet-music thing, but I found something interesting in the article you link to about licensed sheet music: the statement "the original artists were receiving royalties for sheet music sales."
The original artists aren't necessarily the holders of copyright. It may be possible (and note I'm not saying that it is, only that this is possible) that Sheet Music Boss might sincerely believe they have a legitimate license with the artists to produce sheet music for the songs, and Nintendo might legitimately believe that the artists don't own the copyright, it does, and it didn't sign any license.
Again, not saying this is what happened, just using this as an example that sometimes IP licensing can get really complicated really fast, and it's possible for the two opposing sides of a copyright spat to both go into the courthouse in full good faith, each with a sincere and compelling reason to believe it is in the right.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be interpreted to assume that I am "on Nintendo's side" (nor, for that matter, on the side of the pirates or the publishers of Nintendo sheet music, though as far as the pirates are concerned, let me just say it kinda almost looks like they were BEGGING to be sued, with the bowl out and the puppy-dog eyes of that one boy in Oliver Twist).
I understand the probelsm with the argument, but frankly want it comes down to is Nintendo well never be happy with anything but total and complete control I've all digital assets, and the right to search and destroy any they deem theirs.
You could write a hypothetic firmware patcher that could save a bricked device and they would still come after you. Further still you could hypothetically have an patcher that might allow older systems to take advatage of "new exclusive" features of newer hardware revisions.
Bearing in mind that while that may not have happened Nintendo specifically, I just not know either way, it has happened for plenty of hardware, gaming, and general over the years. Under a precedent Nintendo are aiming to set, the vast majority of what we enjoy as a "computer hobby" in general would never have existed.
That to me is a little much.
"You could write a hypothetic firmware patcher that could save a bricked device and they would still come after you."
And if you hypothetically did that, I would have a lot more sympathy and, if you were in the United States, you would be able to argue that you were operating under the exceptions to the DMCA and had the right to do that. They did not do that, and defending them with the vehemence that we would legitimate actions will only weaken our ability to make the case that there are legitimate purposes, strengthening Nintendo or anyone else if they try to remove the exception.
> They did not do that, and defending them
Again: there are more in the homebrew world than these particular Switch pirates and there is more Nintendo hardware than just the Switch (including old systems that Nintendo have abandoned).
>> You could write a hypothetic firmware patcher that could save a bricked device and they would still come after you
Which is very much Nintendo's attitude to anyone trying to revive systems they want forgotten.
> That argument would work better if they had made a homebrew modification that made piracy possible, but that was an unintended side-effect and they did it for completely legitimate purposes
Are you saying that Wii homebrew was only started to allow piracy - or are you mistaking the rant against Nintendo for being anti-homebrew in *all* its products as some form of defense of these specific Switch "pirates"?
> The rest of your defense isn't helping either.
Are, yes, you *are*.
> Nintendo is not locking down their hardware because they want me to be unable to learn how to code. They are doing it because they want to charge lots of money and make it difficult or impossible for people to play the games without paying them lots of money
Again, you define all "homebrew" as "trying to pirate games". Look at what is on Wii homebrew - what was there even when Nintendo did still support the hardware - not a lot there that directly competed against Nintendo's own fare (well, ok, Nintendo could have released a Duck Hunt).
"are you mistaking the rant against Nintendo for being anti-homebrew in *all* its products as some form of defense of these specific Switch "pirates"?"
I'm not sure, but I'm definitely doing one of the following two things:
1. mistaking the rant against Nintendo as some form of defense of these specific Switch pirates, or
2. correctly interpreting the rant against Nintendo as some form of defense of these specific Switch pirates.
If it's not trying to defend them, then I've got it wrong, but I submit that it could have been made clearer, perhaps by actually stating that because we were discussing these particular people. Then again, I'm trying to figure out what you meant to communicate by putting "pirates" in scare quotes when referring to the people the article was about, and I'm not sure I have correctly interpreted that either. To avoid your ire, I will not state my assumption and you can specify it if you feel like doing so.
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