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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.
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.
You'd have a point if 99% of people used knives to murder and 1% used them to cook.
Just because my Logitech 5-button optical mouse (black) can be used as a controller for the cursor on my personal computer does not mean it cannot also be used to crush the ants that have invaded my bedroom because of all the Cheetos crumbs I dropped during last night's marathon session of Starcraft 2: Liberty (the RELOADED release*).
Thus, it must be regulated as an insecticide.
[*please note this post is for entertainment purposes only and should not be misconstrued as a description of reality, since I'd never play a pirated game since that would be wrong (SEED, YOU BASTARDS!)
You are welcome on my lawn.
meat is murder!
fish is rape!
bread is assault!
veggies are petty theft!
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.