Another country deems the DS storage devices illegal to sell.
The popular R4 cards, which are widely used to play retail DS games illegitimately, are now illegal to be imported, sold, or advertised all throughout the UK, according to a recent ruling by a British high court judge.
The official decision is that the card is illegal because it thwarts Nintendo's security to play content. R4 and similar cards are used to play downloaded retail DS games as well as for homebrew purposes, the latter of which has been the main argument for their sale by supporters since homebrew software by itself doesn't involve piracy. The judge ruled that "the mere fact that the device can be used for a
non-infringing purpose is not a defence."
"Nintendo initiates these actions not only on its own behalf, but also on behalf of over 1,400 video game-development companies that depend on legitimate sales of games for their survival," the company said in a statement. HMRC and Trading Standards have seized more than 165,000 copying devices in the UK since 2009.
While the court ruled against the defendant, Playables, Justice Flood dismissed two other complaints by Nintendo. Nintendo
had argued that the shape of the cartridge itself was a copy protection
mechanism and that the use of a digital version of their logo, which
must be present for a game to boot, also constituted copyright infringement.
This case follows one in the Netherlands where 11 online retailers were sued for IP infringement, and is also part of a large-scale attack on piracy that Nintendo has been fighting for most of the life of the DS. The decision contrasts with recent rules set forth by the US Library of Congress, which explicitly allow users to bypass technical measures put in place by cell phone manufacturers in order to run unlicensed software.