Nintendo Attack Fansites

[wraggster]

Nintendo using their muscle to get rid of fan sites now:

As some of you have noticed, FC has gone down several times recently. You were told that it was due to the site being backed up. This was also what the admins THOUGHT was the cause. However, it was due to something completely different. It turns out that Corey had received several emails from NOA (Nintendo of America). In short, the email asked that we close down friendcodes.com due to copyright infringement, because Nintendo owns the phrases: friendcode, friendcodes, friend code, and friend codes. Since Corey has been inactive, he obviously hasn't checked up on his emails and such until recently. Him and Robert talked about it, then Robert told the rest of us.

Basically Nintendo is "asking" us to remove the site files that are infringing the copyright (such as the logo, which contains the word "friendcodes"), and to drop the domain name for the same reason. Corey just responded to the emails tonight, and is going to talk to a NOA rep. (hopefully) Monday over the phone. But honestly, it looks bad. They've been sending the emails for almost a month now with no response, so they're very serious about it right now. We're still talking about what to do, but it looks like we will have to shut down the site temporarily, until it all gets worked out. Of course, if it works out Nintendo's way, we'll be closed down permanently. Naturally, we're going to try and keep that from happening, but like I said, it doesn't look good.

We're going to have to let the members know as well, just in case the site goes down during this whole event, they'll know what happened. Hopefully if Nintendo sees how many of their customers use this site, they'll let us off the hook. We're considering starting a "Keep FC.com Online" petition. This is probably the worst thing that's happened to FC. Including the crash.

I have nothing else to say, except that this makes me a bit sad and ••••ed. Yeah, this nullifies all the staff changes we've made recently, but this is news even to the admin team. I don't see why Nintendo has such as big issue about this. I don't see how it affects them unless they just want the domain for their own use. Anyway, we decided the staff needed to know what was going on ASAP. We'll tell the members soon, but the staff needed to know first.

Stay tuned.

B.

http://www.friendcodes.com/forums/sa...tml#post733966

[sabernet]

Dear Nintendo,

The Internet is not some malevolent being from the nether dimensions out to eat children.

Get this through your thick frikkin' skulls before your fad success with your stick waggling machine fades.

April fools or not, the point still stands:P

[SSUK]

Shock, horror. April fools.

When you've been on the internet long enough, you'll eventually see ALL websites be 'shut down' on April 1st, with FBI pages, "Hacked" pages and redirections to some website who supposedly shut them down.
This April Fools was poorly conducted and to a fanbase who have the collective mental age of 8 years old. I'm so surprised it got out of hand.

[Hypershell]

Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo tried this for real, due to the fact that they forbid Friend Code exchange on their own forums (it's a liability issue, of course; which the news media insists on falsely justifying through stories of PictoChat axe murderers and whatever).

However, this was an April Fool's joke. Check the link. But stuff like this does happen, if a corporation wants the domain name you have, or they just feel like being complete jackasses. It's not unheard of for a company to cry copyright infringement over the most trivial matters with ulterior motives. And Nintendo is known to be exceptionally stingy in these matters, so I'm not sure what was so "obviously flawed" about the story.

[Markzilla]

This joke fails because you can't own the phrase "friend code".

[Cid2Mizard]

Hahaha I folded in four

[R4mbo]

You shocked me... This would be worse than the stuff $ony (yeah, I still hate them because of LikSang) did. I would blow up my Wii if that would happen.

[wiggy fuzz]

i've now decided i hate april fools day, now.

[ExcruciationX]

That joke sucked...

[cal360]

Well I always stay away from the internet on April fools as you can't believe any site on the web and quite a few close with supposed *hacks*. DCemu is usually the only site I still go on but I don't believe anything that's posted or released that day. Was it last year we had the supposed fullspeed NDS emulator for the PSP that you had to destroy your PSP's pixels to use?