Sounds like the EU will have to invite Nintendo to go fuck themselves for disabling resellable devices. The other thing they do that's pretty nasty is requiring their permission to buy a developer kit instead of something like wifi or a USB cable.
They're not disabling anything. They're banning consoles from online services after attempts to connect to those online services with a pirated game. The device itself is perfectly usable for single-player gaming. This is exactly like Sony and Microsoft have already done for years. If the EU goes after Nintendo here, why haven't they already gone after Sony and Microsoft for the same thing?
Do Microsoft and Sony ban the person or the actual console device? Nintendo are going for the account and the device for what amounts to unsanctioned-by-them use of software:
"permanently ban those consoles from Nintendo's network."
"a banned console will stay banned from the network"
I can say at least that the Xbox 360's standard ban for pirated games that failed verification checks was a console level ban, as in, you can take your hard drive and plug it into a new console and you're gaming again. There were also several times account bans were applied as well, like when Forza 3 dropped several weeks early and people tried playing online.
The devices aren't being disabled, they're just having their access to Nintendo's online services restricted. This practice isn't anything new, and has been around as long as internet-enabled consoles have.
We don't throw out (or ban from online) computers, telephones or tablets when they get a piece of malware installed instead we remove the malware or reset the devices.
They are not infringing on consumers rights to buy and sell the consoles, but the seller who knows that the console has been banned from online services is perpetrating a fraud upon the buyer. You can buy and sell consoles all day long, but transfer of ownership does not change the status of the console any more than selling a broken console (that is outside any hardware warrantee) obligates a manufacturer to make it work again.
It's more like the company is punishing the current and arbitrarily the future owners of a perfectly functional device because they have some project going to prevent copyright infringement within their company, and way above that is consumer protection laws that are just woefully slow to be applied forcefully.
It took many years but Steam changed their old refund policy after a judge in Australia noted how criminal the old one was where they gave themselves permission to steal indiscriminately from consumers seeking refunds and used their imaginary authority to steal from an estimated 20,000 Australians. They actually stole from people all over the world but seem to have gotten away with it everywhere else.
I think their idea is to punish the current owner; but if that is allowed, there also must be some kind of protection for the secondhand market.
If there was some form of serial #check system (like a car's VIN) for the consoles, then it would be harder to re-sell disabled consoles; still wouldn't prevent people from trying to re-sell them, but it would make it more firmly a case of fraud on the sellers' part if they lied about the serial#.
Why can't they just ban by account? Anyone circumventing bans is going to be committing identity fraud or other crimes so shouldn't they be passing it to law enforcement if they want to pursue it.
Switch hardware will likely be resold for decades so it's obviously going to be onerous for consumers that the devices may be invisibly crippled just because they want less copyright infringement.
They don't even need to ban accounts permanently, it's pretty disproportionate when you think in years and decades of a device's life.
