I got a Cease & Desist letter from Nintendo

Tagged: copywrite, Lawsuit, Nintendo

This topic has 5 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 3 months ago by Salvince.

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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June 21, 2023 at 11:30 pm #301944
GiggaVega
Hey guys, I don’t know if you guys ever went through this, but I got an email from my ISP telling me they got a warning from Nintendo for a Cease & Desist request.
Originally I thought it was a spam email, but it was legit. Nintendo even went so far as to tell my ISP the Name of the game tied to my IP & the service I used to get the game.
A few weeks ago I downloaded Mario Bros Wii U, as a back up so I can emulate it. I figured it would have been easier & faster than ripping the game & dumping the file to create a playable version of the game. In Canada, the copywrite laws were very lose. You could kind of download whatever as long as it was for personal use & not for distribution. Also we were allowed to download digital copies of movies & whatever we owned. That stuff changed apparently & I was not aware.
Seeing the amount of the potential fine of 30-50k$ per week distributed was crazy.
Nintendo very much shocked me, not just because of this personal experience but I have been hearing more & more about them going after individuals now as well. Why are they so litigious all of a sudden. I understand the legal reasoning behind it, but I was only going to use it for personal use, game play. I wasn’t selling it but the thing with torrents, you are distributing the product, small portions of it, but it is being distributed by you.
I subsequently deleted everything from my torrent library & uninstalled the program. Thank you Canadian Government & Greedy Corporations lol. Hey, I don’t ever recall Playstation or Xbox doing this. Don’t Mess with Nintendo lol
Hopefully nothing comes of this & I still plan on buying a Nintendo Switch & Wii-U.
Has anybody else met with this before?
June 22, 2023 at 4:15 am #301949
Maverick
They wouldn’t consider it a backup if it wasn’t paid for in the first place which would be a major red flag. And depending on where you downloaded it from it could be tied to someone else’s legitimate purchase.

Running it from an emulator instead of a console would also raise suspicions as well.

They’re just probably trying to nip these sorts of activities in the bud before things get out of hand. They could lose a lot of sales otherwise.
June 22, 2023 at 5:40 am #301952
Vknid
Moderator
@GiggaVega

Actually the whole thing is probably automated. You downloaded a torrent and made the mistake of seeding it after you downloaded it. This happens by default with most torrent clients where anything you download is automatically seeded. Once you seed a file others can see that publicly and they are probably constantly scanning for seeds for popular files. But initially all they know is it’s your IP. But based on that they know which ISP it is, probably ask them to reveal whom you are or just ask them your ISP to send you the letter. They do that same thing here in the US.

In summary, don’t seed anything like that unless you intend to.
June 22, 2023 at 8:10 pm #302015
Wisdom
Did you use torrent? That will get you caught. Only download from oneclick hosters like mega or rapidgator etc

The problem isn’t so much that you downloaded, but rather that you uploaded, thereby distributed without a license. Downloading itself is basically just stealing. No one cares about it…. except in the US. That’s the one country where you don’t want to get caught downloading even.

As for your best course of action: deny, deny deny.
July 13, 2023 at 1:42 pm #303025
Strider
I guess I’m too late for this but if you still need advice I could tell about a personal experience.
August 28, 2023 at 7:00 pm #305586
Salvince
I never received one when I downloaded. Probably due to the fact that I never seeded my content.

Ultimately, I get why Nintendo does this because they’ve been going after hackers since the 80s when Nintendo became a home name.

Nintendo has been protecting their content since day one, but now that we see them doing this more because we see all the lawsuits being reported more openly on the Internet now.

I’m more shocked they went after you and not the person who posted the downloading in the first place.
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