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UK Courts Rule Nintendo DS R4 Cards Illegal
CheShACat writes "A UK high court ruled today that R4 cards for the Nintendo DS are illegal, finding two vendors guilty of selling 'game copiers.' The ruling by Justice Floyd is quoted as saying, 'The economic effect on Nintendo of the trade in these devices is substantial as each accused device can store and play copies of many Nintendo DS games [...] The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence.' No word in the article as to what law in particular they were found to have broken, nor of the penalty the vendors are facing, but this looks like bad news for all kinds of hardware mod, on any platform, that would enable homebrew users to bypass vendor locks."
Nintendo won a related lawsuit in the Netherlands recently, in addition to the one in Australia earlier this year.
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1932.html
The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence
Right in the summary. They know, they just don't care.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Those of you silly enough to argue that living is infringement failed to read further into the article that says that bypassing a copy protection device is illegal. Even if the bypassing device has legitimate uses.
Sound familiar? It's like the DMCA, though the DMCA was updated earlier this week with a ruling that said that no longer applied for fair use (which still blocks space shifting, but allows the formerly illegal mashups from DVDs and Blu-Rays, short clips etc.).
So jailbreaking is still illegal in the UK, you cannot pick DRM locks, and you cannot bypass copy protections that may be present for whatever reason.
Well, modern copy machines won't scan modern money, or anything with the EURion constellation, but I haven't heard of one that would stop working afterwards. That pattern of circles can come in handy if you want to make a convention badge or some such that can't be photocopied.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The DSi Flash Carts contain an actual poriton of a copyrighted rom that contains an exploit.
How legit is that?
music lover since 1969
The judge goes into a nuanced consideration of the law as it stands, the snippet that’s being quoted is a taken out of context and ignores that huge modifier at the end there. The section in question states:
The judge then goes on to establish the multi-stepped test required for a finding
Hardly the kind of extremist reasoning thats being suggested.
They won't ban BitTorrent for the same reason. The BBC article linked is particularly unhelpful as it takes that quote out of context. The full quote is "The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence, provided one of the conditions in section 296ZD(1)(b) (considered below) is satisfied."
This is a very specific case to a very specific piece of law (Section 296ZD of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) that covers dealings with some sort of product whose main purpose is to circumvent DRM. This is not directly copyright related. This is only about circumventing DRM.
BitTorrent does not circumvent DRM and so would not fall under this law. It might fall under the Digital Economy Act (Section 17) though, if that ever gets implemented.
I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to know what actually happened read through the judgment, already available online here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1932.html