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.

Comments

Re:It's a bit unfortunate...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yup, I'm pretty sure we do. Regardless of one's feelings about piracy, positive or negative, it is an uncomfortable fact that any combination of law and technology sufficient to stamp out, or even seriously inconvenience, piracy will necessarily be downright authoritarian in power and scope, corrosive to privacy, and almost perfectly suited to the suppression of any other flavor of information, art, culture, speech, etc.

These are just architectural necessities of any anti-piracy system that isn't going to be a penny-ante joke. Whatever you think about piracy, they are quite arguably too high a price to pay.

To play the devil's advocate

[Vahokif]

You'd have a point if 99% of people used knives to murder and 1% used them to cook.

Re:Apply logic to other things...

[dgatwood]

Given how much graffiti I see around here, I'd imagine that a sizable percentage of spray paint is used to commit vandalism. Yet I can still buy spray paint. Most cigarette papers in many places are used for pot, but those are still sold legally. Radar detectors are primarily used to evade prosecution for infractions, yet are legal in most of the U.S. And 100% of all VCRs and DVRs are used for copyright violations, which although exempted from prosecution by judicial rulings in the Betamax case, are still technically violations of the law, just (barely) protected violations. And so on. That argument doesn't hold water.

At least in the U.S., it has nothing to do with the percentage of people who use something for illegal activity and everything to do with a giant pro-copyright lobbying effort by major corporations that also happen to heavily fund the political campaigns of both major parties. I'd imagine that either the same is true in the U.K. or it's caused by the U.S. throwing its weight around. It's also probably safe to say that Nintendo shopped around for the right legislative district to file a suit in so that they would get the most bang for their buck.

It's not the first time Nintendo has been abusively anti-consumer rights, either. Remember Galoob v. Nintendo? They have a long history of abusing copyright to suit their ends. This is just another example.