Nintendo Sues HackYourConsole.com

[Andy Chalk]

Nintendo Sues HackYourConsole.com

Nintendo is seeking millions of dollars in damages from the modding site HackYourConsole.com for infringing upon its copyrights and trademarks.

Nintendo has filed another lawsuit against a flashcart reseller, this one the Florida-based HackYourConsole.com, which it says not only offers hardware and instructions that enable console owners to play pirated games, but also uses Nintendo's registered trademarks to promote the business. "The logo for Defendant's online business prominently includes within it a copy of the famous 'Mario' character, in which Nintendo holds both federally-registered trademarks and copyrights," the suit states.

"Defendant, as a regular part of her business, reproduces and distributes unauthorized copies of hundreds of copyrighted videogames intended for play on Nintendo systems," it continues. "For example, as a supplement to her services of 'modding' Wii consoles, Defendant, through the websites, advertises that she will 'load hard drives with all the newest and most popular games'."

Nintendo included in its filing an image promising "hundreds of Wii games when modding today" that it said came from the site, although it doesn't appear to be there any longer. The site's logo has been changed as well to remove the image of Mario and his coins, although it remains otherwise virtually identical.

Nintendo is seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each copyright infringement and up to $2 million for each trademark infringement, plus other statutory damages, profits, legal fees and interest. It also wants an injunction against any further importation and/or sale of flashcarts, software and other related material, and full access to the site's financial records.

Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/197831/In_bid_to_fight_piracy_Nintendo_clamps_down_on_Wii_modding_site.php]


Permalink

 

[FYI I Am Some Guy]

I'm curious as to how much money will end up being taken if Nintendo does manage to get an injunction on flashcart sales.

 

[gigastar]

Well now, what took them so long?

 

[Arfreid]

I'm curious as to how much money will end up being taken if Nintendo does manage to get an injunction on flashcart sales.

It's not about the money, Nintendo has plenty, it's about sending a message

 

[Angelous Wang]

Whilst I agree the women should get all that's coming to her for her blatant stupidly, I seriously doubt she even has the 2 million to pay one trademark infringement, let alone multiple.

So Nintendo's not going to get anywhere near the amount they are demanding no matter the out come.

 

[Clovus]

I remember a few years ago MS went after someone for just the modding. I don't see much of a problem with Nintendo doing this though.

EDIT: That XBox case involved Matthew Crippen and the case was actually thrown out of court when it got to that point. It was actual a federal case too, not something brought by MS. Now I'm glad this Nintendo story came up, since I remember hearing about the XBox case, but not the resolution. So, it's pretty clear why Nintendo is approaching this on valid copyright terms.

2nd EDIT: The important part of the XBox case was the the government had no evidence that Crippen was modding the system for piracy. So, you can mod a system to circumvent a protection measure, as long as the circumvention is not for the purpose of making an unauthorized copy. Like, modding a system to play homebrew games is legal. Who's to say what the customer will do with the hacked system afterwards?

 

[CriticalMiss]

$150,000 per copyright infringement? I doubt she even made that much from ALL of her modding shenanigans let alone the millions they want for someone putting a picture of Mario in their logo. I know they are just looking to scare people in to not doing it in the future but they could at least demand a more reasonable amount.

It also nice to see that dirty crims can be girls too. Girl power WOO!

 

[Vivi22]

Their games are all they've got to succeed with, and piracy has a very real negative effect on that.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I remember a few years ago MS went after someone for just the modding. I don't see much of a problem with Nintendo doing this though.

EDIT: That XBox case involved Matthew Crippen and the case was actually thrown out of court when it got to that point. It was actual a federal case too, not something brought by MS. Now I'm glad this Nintendo story came up, since I remember hearing about the XBox case, but not the resolution. So, it's pretty clear why Nintendo is approaching this on valid copyright terms.

2nd EDIT: The important part of the XBox case was the the government had no evidence that Crippen was modding the system for piracy. So, you can mod a system to circumvent a protection measure, as long as the circumvention is not for the purpose of making an unauthorized copy. Like, modding a system to play homebrew games is legal. Who's to say what the customer will do with the hacked system afterwards?

Heck, I've /got/ a hacked wii, and I have never once used it to pirate a wii game. It's basically an inexpensive sling box that works with old SDTV sets. I use it as that so much more than I ever actually used it to play games. We're talking pretty much daily for several years vs. less than 20 hours total. Without the homebrew scene, the thing would just be sitting there, collecting dust.

 

[GAunderrated]

I remember a few years ago MS went after someone for just the modding. I don't see much of a problem with Nintendo doing this though.

EDIT: That XBox case involved Matthew Crippen and the case was actually thrown out of court when it got to that point. It was actual a federal case too, not something brought by MS. Now I'm glad this Nintendo story came up, since I remember hearing about the XBox case, but not the resolution. So, it's pretty clear why Nintendo is approaching this on valid copyright terms.

2nd EDIT: The important part of the XBox case was the the government had no evidence that Crippen was modding the system for piracy. So, you can mod a system to circumvent a protection measure, as long as the circumvention is not for the purpose of making an unauthorized copy. Like, modding a system to play homebrew games is legal. Who's to say what the customer will do with the hacked system afterwards?

Heck, I've /got/ a hacked wii, and I have never once used it to pirate a wii game. It's basically an inexpensive sling box that works with old SDTV sets. I use it as that so much more than I ever actually used it to play games. We're talking pretty much daily for several years vs. less than 20 hours total. Without the homebrew scene, the thing would just be sitting there, collecting dust.

Pretty much my situation as well. I use my Wii as a nice homebrew through the years and didn't pirate a single Wii game. Hey this isn't the first power play nintendo has done. If you look at the Youtube let's play attack from nintendo. Seems someone at their office is more interested in legal fighting than making good games. lol

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Nintendo doesn't get it, do they? The idea is to provide a better service, not fight the pirates. If they want to get it right, one idea they can try is to release an "all-in-one" console that plays all the previous games, carts, and discs from Nintendo, starting with the NES and ending with the Wii, built to support both NTSC and PAL versions of games. That's:
- NES/Famicom
- Game Boy
- FDS
- SNES/Super Famicom
- BS-X
- N64
- Game Boy Color
- 64DD
- Game Boy Advance
- Gamecube
- Wii
Note that while it might appear to be a lot of slots for these games, most of these can be merged into using the same one (i.e. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance can all use the same slot). A few peripherals should allow easy conversion of a few items, mostly for those who prefer an actual SNES or Gamecube controller over whatever it ships with, or to continue a save on a Gamecube memory card. They can even expand on the controller use/detection by detecting the expansion slot on a N64 controller.

That's the kind of thing that will reduce "problems" like these, not through legal action. Nintendo is only fragmenting a focus, as if Nintendo wins and HYC is shut down, the only result is that it the base will splinter, and it will only be harder to stop these people from continuing.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

For those interested, here's a link to the site before they removed the infringing material and the promises of piracy via wayback: [a]http://web.archive.org/web/20121221085256/http://www.hackyourconsole.com/[/a]

Nintendo's lawsuit seems legit, you can pretty clearly see them using Mario in their promotional images and they do promise you can get "100s of Wii games when modding". You can also see Nintendo's logos at the bottom of the page.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

I'd call myself a supporter of pretty much any homebrew community, seeing as that's how a lot of great devs got/get/will get their start. As such, I can't support things like Japan's flashcart ban (but then, you'd have a hard time getting me to agree with most any outright ban). Hell, I'll even admit that open file sharing has a number of good arguments in it's favor; but for-profit piracy like this is without merit & I have no sympathy for the woman on the receiving end of Nintendo's beat-stick

That said, $150,000.00 per infringement is ridiculous & an abuse of civil law. This is the same kind of boogeyman litigation that earned the MPAA it's glistening record (you know, those guys that publicly claimed that burning your own CD's to your own computer alone was piracy).

Add to this Nintendo's recent string of DMCA takedowns of Let's Play's & even a charity Smash Bros tournament stream. I'm waiting for them to pull an Apple & claim they own right of the letter "U". Maybe I'm just being paranoid here, just a funny feeling of deja vu

Their games are all they've got to succeed with, and piracy has a very real negative effect on that.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Objection sustained

Well played

 

[UltimatheChosen]

Their games are all they've got to succeed with, and piracy has a very real negative effect on that.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

This is not internet piracy, where people are getting games for free. Instead, they're still paying for them, clearly demonstrating that they are willing to pay.

You can argue that they wouldn't necessarily pay full price, and there's some validity to that, but the argument of "a pirate is not a customer" is clearly not true in every case.

 

[KDR_11k]

In business vs business lawsuits it's customary to demand the moon, they never get awarded those amounts anyway. Making money with piracy is a very scummy move anyway. It's one thing when people use filesharing, it's another thing when they charge money to supply others with illegal goods.

Soft-modding a Wii for imports and homebrew isn't difficult but I think you need to do a bit more to enable full piracy with installing games to a HDD and whatnot.

 

[RJ 17]

Nintendo doesn't get it, do they? The idea is to provide a better service, not fight the pirates. If they want to get it right, one idea they can try is to release an "all-in-one" console that plays all the previous games, carts, and discs from Nintendo, starting with the NES and ending with the Wii, built to support both NTSC and PAL versions of games. That's:
- NES/Famicom
- Game Boy
- FDS
- SNES/Super Famicom
- BS-X
- N64
- Game Boy Color
- 64DD
- Game Boy Advance
- Gamecube
- Wii
Note that while it might appear to be a lot of slots for these games, most of these can be merged into using the same one (i.e. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance can all use the same slot). A few peripherals should allow easy conversion of a few items, mostly for those who prefer an actual SNES or Gamecube controller over whatever it ships with, or to continue a save on a Gamecube memory card. They can even expand on the controller use/detection by detecting the expansion slot on a N64 controller.

That's the kind of thing that will reduce "problems" like these, not through legal action. Nintendo is only fragmenting a focus, as if Nintendo wins and HYC is shut down, the only result is that it the base will splinter, and it will only be harder to stop these people from continuing.

You know, I'd actually take that theoretical system over the new generation coming out. They'd have to start re-releasing all the old games for the systems, though. Still, I bet it'd definitely make some money.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

In business vs business lawsuits it's customary to demand the moon, they never get awarded those amounts anyway. Making money with piracy is a very scummy move anyway. It's one thing when people use filesharing, it's another thing when they charge money to supply others with illegal goods.

Soft-modding a Wii for imports and homebrew isn't difficult but I think you need to do a bit more to enable full piracy with installing games to a HDD and whatnot.

I've never actually looked into it, but I'd imagine it's just as simple as setting up any other homebrew app...[footnote]I mean the homebrew channel can use a USB hard drive right out of the box, it's no different from a thumb drive as far as the operating system is concerned. You'd just need something to load the disc images off of it.[/footnote] with the caveat that the main homebrew community /really/ hates the pirates and will not do /anything/ that makes knowledge of where to get those apps easier. I wasn't even aware of where specifically to go for that until reading this thread. I knew it was probably just a google search away, but there was no indication of it on any of the legit homebrew sites I visited, aside from the occasional warning that people asking about how to run warez will be banned.

Which kind of makes me wonder if this won't backfire by letting more people know this is possible. Getting the Wii initially set up to run unsigned code takes about 5 minutes and no skill, just access to an SD card and the internet. Now that more people know you can take that and turn it into a pirate friendly console...

 

[LordMonty]

R4 cards have been made iligal in the UK/Europe nintendo has always taken a strong footing aganist anyone screwing with them and making a profit off it, it was only a matter of time for these guys.