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Couple Who Ran ROM Site To Pay Nintendo $12 Million (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Nintendo has won a lawsuit seeking to take two large retro-game ROM sites offline, on charges of copyright infringement. The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo's favor and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay a total settlement of $12 million to Nintendo. The complaint was originally filed by the company in an Arizona federal court in July, and has since lead to a swift purge of self-censorship by popular retro and emulator ROM sites, who have feared they may be sued by Nintendo as well.
LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.
LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.
You've obviously never browsed the Nintendo online store - lots of ancient games back up for sale, prewrapped in crappy emulators that lack any of the impressive features of your typical 20-year-old PC-based emulator.
Let's hear it for perpetual copyrights! Hip hip...*crickets chirping*.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
GP was agreeing with you by saying that the whole purpose of extending those copyrights is to let people continue to squeeze out the last drops of value to the detriment of the public.
"basic concept of ownership"
That's when you have something that if someone takes from you, you are deprived of possessing or using. That's the "basic concept".
If someone uses your brain-fart it doesn't deprive
you from usage.
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It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. They really can't be more different.
If it was stealing they would have been charged in a criminal court and imprisoned. This was a civil suit, where they were charged an amount to compensate for the losses claimed by Nintendo.