ROM Site Owner Made $30,000 a Year -- Now Owes Nintendo $2.1 Million

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The now-unemployed owner of a shuttered ROM distribution site has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after trying and failing to defend himself in the case. In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman over his operation of RomUniverse.com, which offered prominent downloads of 'Nintendo Switch Scene Roms' and other copyrighted game files. At the time, Nintendo said that the site had been 'among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games' for 'over a decade.'

In providing summary judgment for Nintendo (as noted by Torrent Freak), the judge suggested that this was a clear case of infringement, one in which 'there is no genuine issue of material fact that Plaintiff owns the copyrighted works and Defendant copied the works.' While Nintendo sought $4.41 million in copyright damages -- or $90,000 each for 49 games -- the judge lowered the amount to $1.715 million ($35,000 per work). That amount should be sufficient to 'compensate Plaintiff for its lost revenue and deter Defendant who is currently unemployed and has already shut down the website,' the judge wrote. The judge also awarded an additional $400,000 for RomUniverse's use of Nintendo's trademarked box art, down from a massive $11.2 million ask. But Storman avoided a permanent injunction on 'future infringement,' with the judge suggesting that there was no 'irreparable harm' given the monetary damages and the fact that the site had already been shuttered. Storman invoked the 'safe harbor' protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but Nintendo got him to admit that he had uploaded Nintendo's copyrighted ROM files himself. 'Another attempted Storman defense based on the 'first sale doctrine' also failed to go anywhere, since the site was distributing copies rather than Storman's personal property,' adds Ars.

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