Summary
- French site 1fichier.com has lost its appeal in a case surrounding pirated Nintendo games.
- Now, any French site hosting pirated games will have to remove them, or be held liable.
- Nintendo is pleased with the ruling, as it continues to go after the pirated games market.
A French storage website has lost its appeal in a case concerning Nintendo and game piracy. Now, the court has affirmed that such sites can be held liable for the pirated games that they store, forcing them to remove the files or pay damages to rights holders.
As reported by VGC, the site at the heart of this, 1fichier.com, was initially ordered to pay Nintendo almost €470,000 in compensation and legal fees back in 2023. It had appealed this ruling, but has now lost, with courts once again ruling that French storage sites cannot host pirated games without consequence.
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Dstorage SAS distributed the files through 1fichier.com. During the trial, TorrentFreak reported that Dstorage attempted to defend itself, claiming that takedown notices without a court order did not have to be upheld. The courts disagreed, asserting that a direct notice from Nintendo was valid, and Dstorage should have removed the files from 1fichier.com after this initial correspondence.
In a statement, Nintendo says it is “pleased” with this latest ruling. “It will prevent sharehosters like 1fichier.com from claiming like it did during the proceedings on the merits that a prior decision from a court is needed before pirated content must be taken down, and it confirms the rights that holders have to give notice of when claiming that notified content infringes copyright or trademark rights,” it reads.
This Is Not Nintendo’s First Win Against Piracy
One of the most high-profile cases of Nintendo game piracy centred around the group Team Xectuer, who sold modified hardware that allowed Switch users to play pirated games. This attracted wider attention when the only individual involved with the team that authorities were able to track down, Gary Bowser, was given a three-year prison sentence, and ordered to pay Nintendo $14.5 million. He started making these payments while serving his time, using the small amounts of money he made from prison jobs.
