Nintendo wins court battle against filehosting service after it failed to remove pirated games

Nintendo has won a legal battle against sharehosting website operator Dstorage after it failed to remove its copywritten content from one of its sites that was found to be hosting pirated copies of its games.

The details:

• As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the Paris Court of Appeals sided with the Japanese gaming giant in an appeal from filehosting service operator Dstorage, which sought to overturn a 2021 ruling ordering the service to pay €935,500 in compensation after hosting pirated games. The website operator will now be required to pay Nintendo €442,750 in compensation, in addition to €25,000 in legal fees, though it has the option to appeal the decision again if it so desires.
• The dispute arose after Nintendo discovered that Dstorage's website, 1fichier.com, was hosting pirated copies of its games, prompting the company to order the service to remove or block access to the content. After the site failed to remove the content, Nintendo took legal action, and the Judicial Court of Paris later ruled in the company's favor, stating that Dstorage was still responsible for the content it was hosting on 1Fichier and should have blocked all of it following the numerous copyright notices.
• Following its victory in court, Nintendo issued a statement in which it stated that it is "pleased with the decision of the Paris Court of Appeals" and that it "again sends a clear message that in refusing to remove or withdraw access to unauthorized copies of video games despite prior notification, sharehosting services such as Dstorage (1fichier) are liable under French law and must remove or block access to such content and may be liable to pay compensation to those rights holders whose intellectual property rights have been infringed.” "The Court's finding of liability against Dstorage is significant not only for Nintendo but also for the entire games industry," the company concluded, adding that it will "prevent sharehosters like 1Fichier from claiming that a prior decision from a court will be needed before pirated content has to be taken down.”

More Nintendo legal news:

• Nintendo has applied for a subpoena to force Discord to provide the company with the personal information of the person responsible for leaking the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom art book a few months ago. In February 2023, the leaker shared images from the art book on Reddit and Discord before the posts and server were removed in response to DMCA takedown requests.
• The company has begun removing content related to modifications of its games from YouTube, including a total of 28 videos created by speedrunner PointCrow, some of which are unrelated to modding at all. PointCrow, who commissioned a multiplayer mod for Breath of the Wild that was released on April 6, has since released a video pleading with the company to retract the claims and discuss the issue privately. Nintendo has not responded, either publicly or privately, to the situation, and the claims against the videos have yet to be removed.