A lot of the posts in this thread confuse me. Nintendo isn't allowed to take down illegal uploads of their games? That's somehow "anti-consumer"? I don't get that at all. Looks like people have taken their two decades of emulation for granted, believing they have the "right" to download commercial games for free. Even "abandonware" is sketchy, and the second GOG picks up an abandonware game is the second people need to stop trying to pirate it. You have no "rights". You say "it was fun while it lasted" or try to keep it going in silence, you don't protest over breaking very clear and reasonable laws. Let me say it for myself: it was fun while it lasted.
Nintendo "doesn't make copies anymore" because people don't like physical copies anymore. They still make and sell digital copies of many of their games, and they're always for fractions of their original price. I do believe that if you actually own a game somehow, you are entitled to make a backup or download one, because that's actually reasonable. However, I find it very hard to believe that very many of the people crowding around a ROM site actually did buy a copy of the game anywhere, let alone multiple copies of the same game on multiple platforms. I'm sorry that situation exists, it does suck for those people who want all their purchases on one platform at a time. But the vast majority of people visiting ROM sites simply want paid games for free.
Nintendo has to do something about it. What kind of company just lets people pirate their stuff like that? They should have done it years ago, I guess they only just now realized that they actually could do something about it. And yes, the important thing for a company is to get the vast majority of people off of ROM sites. Going after the darknet is usually too much work for a company... but also for a would-be pirate, that's the key.
You'll notice they only took down their games. All third-party games are still available as of right now, and I'm not sure they can or even want to do anything about those themselves.
