Yesterday the Federal Court of Australia ordered a local R4 flash cartridge distributor to pay Nintendo more than $500,000 in fines.
The R4 distributor, RSJ. IT Solutions, was ordered to stop selling the cartridges immediately and relinquish all remaining stock.
Two affiliated respondents were also ordered to pay AUD$100,000 in penalties and identify their R4 flash cartridge suppliers.
The case set a new precedent, meaning that flash cards are now illegal within Australia.
This is Nintendo’s second crackdown on piracy this month.
Source: IT News
The thing I don’t get with these cases is how one dude, with one game (NSMB Wii) can be fined 1.6 million in damages, and yet a company selling a cartridge for profit with the potential of storing 1000s of DS games is ordered to pay $500,000?
More loss (over the time it was sold) would be incurred through the R4, surely?
Maybe because the company selling the carts is not actually pirating games. It leaves that up to its customers. R4s have legit uses but since nintendo had a b**** about “potential piracy”, a few fuckwits decided that the people of australia should not be allowed access to these perfectly legit features.
Maybe while we’re at it we should ban knives as well because of “potential homocide”.