Nintendo wins case against French filesharing service hosting pirated games
Dstorage was appealing a 2021 decision.
A French court has sided with Nintendo in an appeal launched by filehosting website operator Dstorarge, which was previously ordered to pay €935,500 (around £826k) after it refused to withdraw access to pirated Nintendo games.
Nintendo initially took legal action against Dstorarge after it ignored copyright notifications demanding it remove illegal copies of Nintendo games hosted on its 1fichier service. The Judicial Court of Paris ultimately ruled in Nintendo's favour, saying filehosting services such as 1fichier were responsible for blocking access to pirated content and ordering Dstorage pay the Mario maker €935,500 in damages.
Dstorage, in turn, launched an appeal against the ruling, and, two years on, that appeal has now failed. The Paris Court of Appeals has once again sided with Nintendo, ordering Dstorage to pay the company €442,750 (£391k) in compensation, plus €25,000 (£22k) to cover legal fees.
"Nintendo is pleased with the decision of the Paris Court of Appeals," the company wrote in a statement following the court's decision (thanks GI.biz), "as it again sends a clear message that in refusing to remove or withdraw access to unauthorised 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," it continued, "but also for the entire games industry. 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, and additionally the Court decision confirms what rights holders have to give notice of when claiming that notified content infringes copyright or trademark rights."
Today's ruling comes during an eventful few weeks for Nintendo's legal team, which has been busy earning its keep by demanding Discord divulges details of a Zelda art book leaker, spamming a Breath of the Wild multiplayer modder with copyright claims on YouTube, and reportedly pressuring GameStop into firing an employee who leaked word of a Zelda Switch.