 Nintendo did it again. They went after another ROM site, won a massive lawsuit, and needless to say, some fans are upset at Nintendo while others are applauding them. Now look, whether you like it or not, uploading, hosting, downloading even ROMs are illegal. There are legal ways to make ROMs, you need to dump your own games to your own computer for the purposes of legal backup reasons. It's not illegal to have emulators or use emulators as long as the emulators aren't using original source code from the actual systems. So there's always been a little bit of legal gray area with emulators and ROMs in general, but there isn't gray area when it comes to uploading and downloading, those are illegal acts. Now, there have been many, many ways over the years to get around some of this stuff, typically through peer-to-peer networks, right? You guys don't know the line wires or the pirate bays or other places like that, where you can do peer-to-peer networking with other people on other computers, and it's mostly unmonitored because you're just connecting to each other's computers and exchanging files. It's a way of using the internet without having things go to a direct server because it being hosted by the server would be hosting illegal content. So yeah, it's not that hard to find ROMs. Most of the most popular ROM sites are peer-to-peer networks because they are basically unregulated and they're very, very hard to go after the site itself since it doesn't host anything directly. But there are, at times, websites that do. And it's true that it is more convenient for the average consumer for files to be locally hosted on a server or whether it's at your house or in a server farm and to be available for direct download. It's just quicker, you know, torrentine and all that stuff can take some time. You've got to have enough seeds to really, you know, get good download speeds and it can just take a while. So at the end, it's much more convenient. And what happened in this particular case is Nintendo went after a ROM site two years ago. We actually covered it right here on this channel. And there was a lot of people being like, oh, Nintendo, you guys are just evil corporate. You guys don't care about game preservation. It's all about attack, attack, attack. Well, today the court case has been settled and not only did the ROM site lose, how they lost is very indicative of why Nintendo targeted this exact person. So let's get into it. This article is on Kotaku. It was posted last night by Luke Plunkett. I'll put a link to it down in the description. It says Nintendo sues ROM site into oblivion. Back in 2019, they wrote about Nintendo's efforts to shut down the website ROM universe, which was hosting and even selling premium access to pirated copies of Nintendo games. That case is now over. The site is gone and Nintendo has been awarded $2.1 million in damages. As Torrent Freak reported, ROM universe's Matthew Storman actually decided to try and fight Nintendo in court. And what's more, to do so without an attorney because, you know, going up against corporate attorneys without your own attorney is going to end well for you. Mistake number one, that did not go well for Storman, where his defense based around disputing that he uploaded any files to subwebsite, so he's trying to dispute claims that he did an illegal act by uploading these files himself. I was civilly picked apart by Nintendo's actual lawyers who were able to point to Storman's own sworn deposition where he admitted to uploading ROMs to his site. Some mistake number two, his defense was built around disputing himself without a lawyer. Good luck trying to get your own testimony thrown out in court by yourself by claiming that you lied. That's a great way to get the judge on your side. All right. Next up, while Nintendo originally sought damages of $90,000 each for the 49 games discovered on the website, the judge awarded the company $35,000 for each, saying that since Storman had already shut down the website and was currently unemployed, that figure was sufficient. So the judge was trying to have mercy a little bit. Nintendo also awarded, was awarded a single sum of $400,000 for statutory trademark damages. It's important to know here that Storman wasn't simply hosting pirated copies of Nintendo games. He was also selling premium access to them where $30 could get users faster access to ROM files. During the last year of RomUnivers' operation, Storman says that he earned between $30,000 to $36,000 from these payments. That's mistake number three. And what do they say? Three strikes and you're out. It actually gets worse from that in the way the website worked. You could play many of these ROMs directly in the browser as well. So yeah, this was obviously just a slew of no, no, no across the board. He just committed illegal act after illegal act after illegal act. If you wonder why Nintendo goes after websites like this, it's because it's so easy to go after them because they are so blatantly breaking the law that if Nintendo doesn't do it, the government themselves might do it. That's what's crazy about this. I don't know what Storman was thinking. One, choosing to go up against Nintendo in court instead of accepting a settlement. And two, trying to represent himself and try to argue that he lied. And whatever reasons he gave in court for why he lied, I honestly, this is just baffling to me. And to not know the exact amount of money, Nintendo obviously didn't care that he made $30,000 to $36,000. They didn't want financial breakdowns and clarifications on how much money he actually earned because that was just from the subscription fees or ads as well. So you combine it all together and this is what the guy was doing for a living, currently unemployed at the time. This was back in 2019. So pre-pandemic, yeah, let's just say this was his job. This was how he made a living. And yeah, obviously that's a big, big no-no. You're profiting off of someone else's IP by offering it in illegal ways. That's just not a good setup for a long-haul business model. So on one hand, I could feel a little bit of sympathy towards the guy, but on the other hand, do I really? This guy did every wrong move in the book when it came to offering roms to people. Did everything wrong and as convenient as it might have been to some people using that website during the years that it was operating, still, it's just not how you do this. It's hard to really argue that Nintendo should not have gone after this website when someone was very clearly making a living and profiting off of their IP. That's a big, big no-no. Like yeah, there are ways you could profit off Nintendo's IP. You could be someone like me, talks about the news or does live streams. Nintendo now actually supports that. There was a time when Nintendo didn't support that, but they do now. But actually grabbing their games, putting them behind a paywall of sorts for a quicker access and thinking that that's going to be okay, man. And then obviously he admitted he was uploading a lot of these round files himself. He tried, I guess, in his defense to argue, I read a little bit further in this, he tried to argue that the user's uploaded the files. That is not the case. There was actually no user upload functionality on the website. So I don't know how that defense was going to work either. So yeah, this was just a hot mess. I don't know what this guy was thinking. Nintendo rightfully took him out and it is what it is. I don't feel any mercy for him. This guy just did the wrong thing every step of the way. And by the way, take this as a lesson, kiddos, when you're going to get sued by a massive corporation, be it Nintendo, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart, doesn't really matter, whatever massive corporation it is, don't represent yourself. These companies have billions and billions of dollars. They're going to have the best lawyers in the whole world on retainer, multiple law firms. You're not going to win a court case on your own unless you happen to also be a lawyer yourself, a board certified lawyer. Then maybe you could represent yourself in some capacity. But honestly, most people that are going to get sued by these corporations are not lawyers themselves. So good luck. He's lucky it's only 2.1 million. He should have hired a lawyer. Probably could have got a smaller settlement if he did. But it is what it is. That is what's going to happen. Now the guys probably not going to end up paying 2.1 million dollars will be a smaller amount because he probably won't even make 2.1 million in the rest of his life. So it'll probably be a smaller amount of money that he actually ends up paying towards Nintendo. Nintendo cares less about getting that 2.1 million as it does setting the precedent for other websites that try to do this in the future or are currently doing this that Nintendo's lawyers might already be looking into. Anyways, folks, I am Nathan Der Rubberjant from Nintendo Prime. I figure this was a great way to start our day today. We have plenty of news I'm sure coming later today. I say I'm sure because it's the start of the week. We just got done with the holiday. Today's the day. Man, we're 11 days away from E3. 11 days. Come on, Nintendo. Drop the E3 details. Please. It's June 1st. Let's go. I'll catch you guys in the next video.