Browser-Based Game Boy Advance Emulator Shut Down by Nintendo

Nintendo, in its on-going mission to ruin our fun, has forced a popular Java-based Game Boy Advance emulator offline. The emulator, which allowed users to play GBA games in-browser, has been taken off GitHub after Nintendo issued a takedown notice, citing copyright infringements for every game offered through the emulator, rather than the emulator itself. Nintendo complained that offering titles such as Advance Wars, Dragon Ball Z, Super Mario Advance, Pokemon Emerald, and The Sims 2 is an illegal use of the company’s intellectual property.

Nintendo’s takedown notice to GitHub reads:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

We represent Nintendo of America Inc. (“Nintendo”) in intellectual property matters. Certain material posted on the web site located at http://jsemu.github.io/gba/ infringes copyrights owned by Nintendo. This notice is provided pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC § 512 and GitHub, Inc.’s DMCA Takedown Policy.

Nintendo requests that GitHub, Inc., disable public access to the web site at http://jsemu.github.io/gba/. This web site provides access to unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyright-protected video games and videos making use of Nintendo’s copyrighted Pokémon characters and imagery in violation of Nintendo’s exclusive rights. The copyrighted works at issue include but are not limited to the following:

Shortly after receiving the takedown notice, GitHub shut down the emulator and suspended the users account, presumably to prevent any further infringement. However, since the code was open source and available for download, it is still floating about, even being hosted by different accounts on GitHub.

Thank you TorrentFreak for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia.