Nintendo has ran to the censorship authorities to get hundreds of links removed from the public search engine known as Google. The Big ‘N’ utilized Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices to have Google pull the links of various modding sites from the search engine under the claim that they violated the circumvention measure in the act.
Reclaim The Net picked up the news from TorrentFreak who reported that sites like team-xecuter.com, usachips.com, g2a.com, and even newegg.ca were all affected by the DMCAs.
The reports note that some of these sites have had their entire homepage removed from Google’s search engine, and it’s true.
If you search up “Team-Xecuter” on Google, the homepage for the website no longer appears, only links to their forum board, Reddit entries, and Facebook.
The reason for the removal of these sites was outlined in the DMCA notices on the Lumen Database, which reads…
“The URLs in this notice offer for sale and distribute circumvention devices and components that bypass technological protection measures in the Nintendo Switch video game system. The circumvention devices and components offered at these URLs is the SX Pro, SX OS, RCM Loader One and AceNS Dongle among others. circumvention mechanism: Nintendo’s technological protection measures (“TPMs”) ensure that only official copies of its game software can be played on Nintendo’s video game systems. The circumvention devices, products or components offered at the reported links bypass Nintendo’s TPMs so that users can play unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s game files that are offered unlawfully via the Internet.”
So basically, Nintendo is waging war on the homebrew modding scene.
Hardware modifications, circumvention software, and chips to bypass their anti-tamper measures are all being targeted by Nintendo and scrubbed from the net.
As noted by Torrent Freak, sites affected by the takedown notices have little in the way of recourse…
“Whether the site operators agree with the takedowns or not, they are generally irreversible. Google says that unlike regular DMCA copyright takedowns, there is no counternotice process. The DMCA doesn’t prescribe a takedown and counter-notification scheme for DRM circumvention.
“While Google has voluntarily chosen to take the URLs offline, it is not required to offer a counter-notice option. This puts targeted sites at a severe disadvantage.”
We saw a similar tactic used by a mysterious claimant against a number of hentai sites during the summer, resulting in them being removed from Google’s search engine as well. They didn’t just sit by idly, though. The hentai sites retorted with pursuing legal action.
It would be a little difficult for some ROM and mod sites to argue their cases in court, though, because different regions have different laws, and not all of the sites affected by Nintendo’s takedown notices are located in the U.S. That’s not to mention that any of those sites selling ROMs or similar software would also have a difficult time arguing their case in court, too, due to copyright laws. It’s typically how Nintendo manages to bully and muscle their way through most cases, like what they did with RomUniverse and LoveROMS.
However, if the mod sites don’t do anything to get their homepages or product pages back onto Google, they could end shutting down due to a loss of traffic. So it will be interesting to see if they take any measures to protect their business against Nintendo.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)
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