FSF anti Nintendo site
By Sandhya

The Free Software Foundation has launched an anti Nintendo campaign to force its senior management to have more gamer friendly policies.  Free Software Foundation has set up a website Defective by Design where supporters can logon and pay $10 for a brick to be sent to Nintendo's President and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime. This sending of bricks is a form of protest to Nintendo which has the ability to turn your gaming system into a brick by disabling it.  People have already paid for 150 bricks to be sent to Nintendo. The campaign closes on May 18, 2011.

Not many Nintendo users are full aware that the Nintendo 3DS comes with Terms of Service (TOS) that Nintendo will brick your device if you use your 3DS in a way that they do not approve. First, they state that Nintendo "may update or change the Nintendo 3DS System or the Nintendo 3DS Service in whole or in part, without notice to you; and then later they state that after the 3DS has been updated… “

Other points highlighted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) are:

- Nintendo reserves the right to connect to your device and do a firmware update without notifying you. Further, Nintendo has confirmed that such a firmware update could be used to brick the device (i.e,. render it unplayable); and their TOS stipulates that if you use the device with any unauthorized modifications, accessories, or software, that such a firmware update will brick the device.

- If a person takes photos or videos with the 3DS, Nintendo claims a copyright license to those pictures or videos.

- All activities done on the device, including cartridges used, games played, programs run, wireless beacons connected to, etc. are tracked and stored on the device. This is very similar to the recent iPhone location-tracking scandal.

- By default, your 3DS will always be trying to connect to a wifi connection (even in sleep mode), and upon connection it will upload all tracked data, including the "user content" (such as the videos and photos taken; messages created by the person; etc) to Nintendo servers.