Nintendo loses case to jailbreaking Italians.

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Jakandsigz

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#1  Edited By Jakandsigz
Member since 2013 • 6341 Posts

http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/01/23/nintendo-powerless-europes-jailbreakers/

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has rejected an appeal by Nintendo to stop an Italian company from unlocking its consoles to offer extra features.

he court said that Nintendo cannot prevent the use of hacking equipment on its consoles except in case of illegally copied video games, Times Live reported.

Nintendo cannot allow jailbreaking of its portable DS and fixed Wii consoles and uses encryption software to prevent its devices.

Italian company PC Box sells Nintendo’s consoles with additional equipment allowing jailbreaking of the devices. According to Nintendo, PC Box bypass its anti-bootlegging measures by unlocking its devices.

PC Box argued that users should be allowed to access movies, videos and MP3 files from other providers when they do not breach Nintendo copyrights.

The ECJ said that Nintendo could only protect itself against “unauthorized acts of reproduction, communication, public offer or distribution” of copyrighted material.

“It could not prevent the use of hacking equipment on its consoles that has other “commercially significant” purposes,” the court ruled.

But like jailbreaking an Ipod, would that not potentially allow piracy? In theory, this could be bad for game sales and coule become a slightly different PSP.

Actually wait, it does say they broke through the "anti-bootlegging" so yes that is correct. Huh. That's not good.

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MonsieurX

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#2 MonsieurX
Member since 2008 • 39858 Posts

...DS and Wii?

Don't see how that's a big deal currently

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jer_1

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#4 jer_1
Member since 2003 • 7451 Posts

Awesome, glad to hear it. Screw corporations that think they can tell people how to use the equipment that they own, this does little but make it a far more desirable target for hackers/crackers. Nintendo gets what they deserve in this situation.

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Heil68

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#5  Edited By Heil68
Member since 2004 • 60681 Posts

Both those platforms have been jailbroken for years,

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FoxbatAlpha

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#6 FoxbatAlpha
Member since 2009 • 10669 Posts

@Heil68: Nintendo living the "WTF do we do now?" mantra.

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ReadingRainbow4

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#7  Edited By ReadingRainbow4
Member since 2012 • 18733 Posts

They'll just blame Sony again so it's ok.

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osan0

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#8 osan0
Member since 2004 • 17779 Posts

legally its a very murky area. i think a US court ruled in the opposite direction.

I agree with the italian court though.

first there are 2 seperate acts. the act of braking the protection so that you can load different software onto the system (like installing another OS on a PC). so it could add functionality like movie and music playback and so on. then there is the act of piracy...which is against the law. the first act may (and probably will) leave the console open to running pirated software. however the onus is still on the manufacturer/publisher to prove that someone has actually used that craked console to play pirated software. Note: thats just my opinion on the matter.

the question really boils down to who owns the hardware. if i buy a wii do i own the hardware or am i really just buying a licence to use the hardware? if the console in my house still the propery of the manufacturer? should they have the right to dictate how i use hardware that i bought?

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HarlockJC

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#9 HarlockJC
Member since 2006 • 25546 Posts

@Heil68 said:

Both those platforms have been jailbroken for years,

It takes that long to hear a case. This same ruling could be used for any system.