Another ROM website hit
In the latest news of crackdowns against websites offering Nintendo ROMs, the popular website Vimm’s Lair has received a follow-up notice from Nintendo on May 31st, correcting the wording of their previous request and affirming the removal of 717 games and their associated images that were being hosted on the website.
Addendum: In another update from Vimm’s Lair on June 6th, it has been reported by Vimm that the website has been asked to remove additional games and content from several other companies after first receiving the request from Nintendo. In compliance with the request, the additional ROMs have been removed from the website.
Concerns Over False DMCA Notices
On May 14th, the owner of Vimm’s Lair made a short post on the website informing everyone that Nintendo of America had sent the website a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request for the removal of 717 games from the website. Initially, the DMCA request was met with skepticism from many users. False takedowns and other questionable DMCA requests from people posing as Nintendo employees have reportedly been occurring for years now from users and websites online, attempting to take down fan made games, pictures, and other assets uploaded by fans.
With the DMCA request being sent from the mm-nintendo.com domain name email address, the same one involved in a controversial takedown request towards the sandbox game Garry’s Mod for the removal of workshop content featuring Nintendo IPs, many believed this may have been another example of online trolls sending false requests to take down content.
In a follow-up post from Vimm on May 24th, Vimm provided an update covering some of the points made by users suggesting that the request was fake. Pointing to information found by others during the Garry’s Mod takedown incident, fans of the game had discovered that the mm-nintendo.com domain name was registered by MarkMonitor, a brand protection company known for working with Nintendo. In the case of Garry’s Mod, the owner of the game reported that after investigation, they were able to verify that the takedown request from the email did belong to Nintendo. As a result, the demand sent to Vimm’s Lair appeared to be real.
While Vimm makes further note that some of the claims in the request sent to the website appear to be invalid, they have decided to comply with the request and taken down the listed downloads, images, and other offending material.
AI Reporting Concerns
Interestingly, Vimm makes a note of pointing to mm-nintendo.com using a website known as opsecsecurity.com for their email. One of OpSec Security’s services appears to be brand protection and infringement identification through the usage of visual artificial intelligence to find infringements by scanning images. While only speculation, it raises the question if this service may have scanned and flagged websites such as Vimm’s Lair, or the Steam Workshop for Garry’s Mod through image identification from box art and thumbnails, and if other websites hosting Nintendo ROMs could be targeted next.
Regardless of how or why this has happened now, this leads us to the seemingly final update from Vimm, that they had received an updated notice correcting earlier spelling mistakes, and that the referenced content would be permanently removed from the website.
