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Nintendo Wins Lawsuit Over R4 Mod Chip Piracy
schliz writes "The Federal Court has ordered an Australian distributor to pay Nintendo over half a million dollars for selling the R4 mod chip, which allows users to circumvent technology protection measures in Nintendo's DS consoles. The distributor, RSJ IT Solutions, has been ordered to cease selling the chip through its gadgetgear.com.au site and any other sites it controls, as well as paying Nintendo $520,000 in damages."
This article seems rather flawed. R4 is a cartridge that takes micro-SDHC cards that could use homebrew applications on your DS. The DS is not region-locked whatsoever. They're evidently attempting to apply previous understanding of consoles to this one and falling rather short.
:)
This is also not the only homebrew cartridge available for the DS, and by far not the best, but probably the most well known. I bought one so I could use emulators and DSLinux
Disagree != mod troll.
I'd like it if anyone could find "technical protection measure" actually defined within any Australian law.
Copyright Act, here and here.
Blank until
That said don't misconstrue this as to have any actual sympathy for people selling devices to get around copyright protection. I understand that these devices can be used for homebrewing. And I'll support the first to support any company that actually tries to make a business out of homebrewing for the Nintendo DS. But first that company will have to do a pretty damn good job convincing me they really are trying to make a business out of homebrewing and aren't using it as a legal pretext to allow people to pirate DS games.
There is no business in homebrewing on the DS. But as someone who's spent a substantial amount of time in tinkering with the DS, let me reassure you that it's a lot of FUN! (Warning: your definition of FUN may vary). By todays standards you've got a very limited amount of room to do your work in and you have to make the most out of it, and most of the code you write is going to be really close to the hardware. If you're remotely interested in this sort of thing (even if you're not going to write a game), the DS is a pretty cheap ARM platform for all the hardware that's in it:
The DSi even has two cameras onboard, but I don't think they're supported by libnds yet.
Oh, and of course, very interesting is that a lot of people have made the source code for their homebrew games available. Sometimes you'll just go and have a peek at how someone else did something, and discover something really ingenious, often optimized to give the best performance given the limited hardware available.
But let's face the fact, without Nintendos official seal of approval (read: a wheelbarrow of cash and a reputable game-company backing it) there will never be any real money in whatever you're going to code. If you want to do something commercially, you'll have to buy Nintendos tools, etc. If tinkering with a piece of hardware you buy is going to make you a criminal, I fear for the next generation of geeks.
I think the gun comparison is interesting. You can legally buy a gun, but you're not allowed to shoot people with it (usually). Likewise, it should be okay to buy an R4, and illegal to use it for piracy. And there actually are valid reasons for owning an R4.
I wrote a fairly popular DS app a few years ago, but I saw the writing on the wall for this platform. Between Nintendo making it harder to get these chips, and cell phones becoming more open, I don't see much point in writing for the DS. It's a shame: I think Nintendo could be where Apple is today with the iPhone, had they opened the DS. It had so much potential. Now, it is simply out of date.