Oh, Nintendo doesn't like them and has done everything in their power to stop them (although it's been circumvented, which is decidedly more fuzzy in legality), but there is nothing that is actually illegal about the readers unless the card firmware itself uses copyrighted code.

Do you have a link to some official statement by Nintendo that they consider these legal? Not that I don't believe you, it's just a bit of a shocker and I'd gladly read this information myself. I heard they were actually quite tough on flash device manufacturers. It's a bit off topic, but that's really surprising and unlike Nintendo. KuroShiro wrote:(.) Nintendo has stated that flashcart readers for the DS are technically legal, and are still legal if you are playing backups of games you own yourself, but NOT to play any sort of game you haven't personally made a backup of. But cracking, copying and spreading software of which you haven't the right to use is illegal, of course. The right of having a safety copy weighs higher than the companies' right to have their data carriers to be copy protected. Some companies consider that being illegal because their program is altered but I think that altering legally obtained programs for accomodating to own needs is just right. I personnally use NO DVD cracks on software that I own to first protect the original DVD from being scrtched and second to be freed from the requirement of a DVD being inserted all the time. Well, and in other countries, copy protection mechanisms that prevent people making their safety copies are illegal, which I consider to be a good law.

Nintendo has stated that flashcart readers for the DS are technically legal, and are still legal if you are playing backups of games you own yourself, but NOT to play any sort of game you haven't personally made a backup of. KuroShiro wrote:Well, the laws vary a bit from country to country, but in the US and Japan at least it is only legal to make and run a *backup copy* of software you already own, and that you've made yourself.

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