Nintendo has suffered a rare courtroom reverse in its efforts to discourage rampant piracy on its Nintendo DS system, with courts telling it that flash cartridges “add functionality,” even if they admit most of this functionality is intended to enable copyright infringement.
Spanish courts ruled that though these cartridges are used in piracy (in this case in a product sold by Movilquick, which Nintendo wanted to see the end of), they also have other uses and thus Spanish copyright laws against “anti-circumvention devices” do not apply:
[The device] may be used by acquirers for both pirating games and for adding legitimate functions, including use of legitimate games from other countries, backing up original games, or various other functions such as managing photos, music or operation of free software.
Ultimately what occurs is the manipulation of hardware to extend its functionality, allowing use for both legitimate and illegitimate ends, but not only illegitimate ones.
No honest observer could deny that such devices are overwhelmingly manufactured and marketed based on their use in enabling piracy, with “backups” and “homebrew” merely used as a euphemism and legal pretext to allow the industry to survive.
However, the insistence of content providers on attempting to geographically restrict distribution of their products in a crude attempt at price discrimination certainly does supply a compelling legal use for these devices – for region locks to provide a legal justification for piracy devices is an irony indeed.
Of course, it must also be noted that Spain has no significant domestic gaming industry to speak of, a situation perhaps likely to persist…
Price discrimination isn’t a bad thing, what if you’re selling to a country that can’t afford an equivalent North American price? You price down for the market there, everybody can afford it. Being a pirate myself, I declare this a court fail though. If the judges are pirates that would be win.
like to see you say that after living in Ireland. I’d love games at US prices.
ha…. Irland?
come to Norway, 70£ for buggy, DLC microtransaction filled PS4 games of the shelfs…
Xenoblade Chronicles for New3DS is still whooping 55£.
thank god for ebay
Viva la liberty!
Shinobu. :O
Actually some hacks associated with piracy do add functionality such as backingup games,homebrew,or installing linux on SD.
It would be nice to have a non crippled browser and a media player for Nintendo hardware.
It’s good that not every country has as retarded IP laws as the US.
Which are so bad I recommended every other country ignore them and pressure the laws to be changed as the US people complaining are not enough to end the faggotry or the media conglomerates who bribed and tea-bagged to make asinine laws like DMCA go bankrupt.
Homebrew heheheh yeah right.
If I want to listen to music, I'll use something that does it much better than my DS ever will. And watching a video on a DS? I have good vision, but they're not that strong. I'd rather carry a portable dvd player and watch an 8 inch screen that runs off of actual dvds.
Nope, the fact is 90% of DS games were not worth stealing let alone paying 35 bucks for (if not more).
It's not like they can protect them though. I happen to know, there isn't a single game I have ever been able to think up I can't get a download copy of, not one.
Now you occasionally need legit for online usage. That's hard to beat.
But flashcarts are like blank media. When is Nintendo going to expect a ban on dvds? I mean what do they think we're burning Wii games onto?
I've never needed a back up copy for safety reasons though. A Nintendo game cart is likely the most survivable game media on the market. Even my son has failed to render any of his unplayable (and his room likely looks as bad as yours does kiddo).