To Protect Itself and Its Young Audience, Nintendo Has 6 Internet Providers Block Switch Pirates
Nintendo has always been fierce in looking out for itself. This has varied from everything from not having mods for Smash Brothers Brawl tournaments, to ensuring that there was more opportunity for growth in their workforce. In the United Kingdom, currently, this is more looking out for themselves and the ongoing war against Switch Piracy.
This development comes from winning a High Court Injunction. Now the UK-based internet providers- specifically BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media- must now block all ROM portals for the next two years. This means for those using those internet services will not be able to find read-only memory files, which is the basis of a downloadable game (in sort, ROM).
Specifically, Nintendo has asked the following sites to be blocked for people in the UK: nsw2u.xyz, nsw2u.org, nsw2u.com, nsw2u.net, and nswrom.com. These, Nintendo cited, are commercial sites, as they make money due to advertising that’s used on the site’s pages, including pop-up ads. Moreover, the advertisements that popped up while during the downloading process seemed to be, in their words, filled with explicit adult content. And that’s no good, considering how Nintendo Switch is mostly centered towards an audience filled with minors.
Nintendo, it seemed, did not want to get to this point though. According to their lawyers, they tried numerous times to get a response, trying to make a settlement out of court. They also claimed that they believe these pirate sites are all owned by the same entity (possibly one person or one group), though reasoning as to that was not given.
Justice Joanna Smith (which makes her a judge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom), agreed to this Injunction, as a lot of its traffic was taking place in the UK, and it was in violation of the 1994 copyright law. At this time, as there is no other “realistic” way to curtail the ROM sites, Smith believed that awarding an injunction on the basis that it would be a “fair balance” between protecting Nintendo’s rights and those of the public – as well as allowing ISPs to continue trading fairly.
“Any interference with the rights of the public and the ISPs is justified by the legitimate aim of preventing such infringement. No complaints were made under the previous Nintendo v Sky order and there have been no reports of over-blocking or other difficulties. For these reasons, the injunction is proportionate,” wrote Justice Smith.
Currently, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are undertaking similar blocking practices, with the US considering something similar to deal with the “‘Notorious Markets”. Whether this will become a global possibility is still unclear.