UK Rules R4 Cards Illegal

A UK court has ruled that R4 cards, commonly used to allow users to play pirated games on the Nintendo DS, are illegal in the UK.

Although defendants Wai Dat Chan and Playables Limited argued that the cards had a non-infringing purpose (to allow players to play homemade games on the handheld system), the London High Court held that because the cards must circumvent Nintendo's security systems in order to work, they are illegal. According to the ruling by Justice Floyd, "the mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence."

However, as the coverage at MCV points out (and as we blogged about here), the UK ruling is an interesting one in light of a recent decision by the Librarian of Congress to allow an exemption under the DMCA for the "jailbreaking" of smartphones.