This past year has seen Nintendo step up their efforts to protect their intellectual property, targeting those that dare to infringe on the company’s copyrights.
Their latest crusade has been against freeShop, which had allowed those that have chosen to hack their Nintendo 3DS to run such homebrew software to still access the Nintendo eShop.
This was positioned as a tool that wanted to allow users to have the chance to download games that they already own, but it has become known as a method to obtain games without paying.
Those that visit Github’s freeShop page are now met with a dead end after it had been served a DMCA takedown notice, much to creator Thomas “Cruel” Edvalson’s discontent.
The DMCA takedown notice that Github received, reads:
The freeShop application provided at https://github.com/Cruel/freeShop/releases infringes Nintendo’s copyrights, because the application circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Nintendo encrypts the game files available from its eShop servers to prevent users from accessing those files without paying for them. Nintendo believes the freeShop application circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures by decrypting the game files accessible from its eShop servers, allowing freeShop users to access and play Nintendo’s eShop games for free.
The freeShop application also contains unauthorized copies of the Nintendo 3DS Logo Data file, covered by U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001781880, which further infringes Nintendo’s rights.
In addition, the files located at the links below violate the GitHub Terms of Service by facilitating the theft of Nintendo’s games from its eShop servers, and the use of these files with a Nintendo 3DS device violates the user’s obligations under Nintendo’s end-user license agreement.
