14 ms·

Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

83 points by rtpg 10y ago

rawnlq 10y ago
If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble? When exactly does "hacking" a game become illegal? What about people doing it for research like the machine learning mario guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44. Or tool-assisted speedruns? Or the starcraft broodwar ai? Is it only when you breach the TOS or copyrights? Just curious since it never even occurred to me that such things are punishable.
- Aelius 10y ago
  At least in the US, I don't believe there is any precedent that establishes it is illegal to alter a product. There is always push back by companies, but it seems that the general trend is always in favor of the consumer (see, rooting your phone is found legal, this video concerning the legality of modifying cars and tractors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nps24EqiZjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nps24EqiZjY )
- 6nf 10y ago
  It might fall under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? The DMCA criminalises the act of circumventing an access control mechanism.
- AntiRush 10y ago
  There are multiple cases in the United States regarding game hacks. Some of the more famous involve Blizzard, with the biggest example being a suit against the creators of WowGlider, a bot for World of Warcraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar...)
  - jessespears 10y ago
    Fascinating: The Court of Appeals ruled that for a software licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the license condition and the licensor’s exclusive rights of copyright. However ... that a finding of circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require a nexus between circumvention and actual copyright infringement. The DMCA's anti-circumvention section appears to be the only thing that preserved parts of the original finding. Perhaps the next time this law is up for review, some less onerous terms can be placed for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  > If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble? No, not really.* > What about people doing it for research § 1201 has lots of exceptions including "Nonprofit library, archive and educational institution exception (section 1201(d))." * Yes, technically the laws here in the US are broad enough that if you did something that the US DOJ or local LE became very concerned about, they could at the very least arrest, detain, and charge you with a crime if not convict you of it.
Illniyar 10y ago
How is this defined as breaking copyright law? Did the cheat contain code from the original game?
- Aelius 10y ago
  It probably has something to do with the tampering of copy protection, which companies would very much like to be illegal. An arrest does not equate to a conviction; there's a chance the charges may not stick, but I don't know Japanese law.
  - glandium 10y ago
    While an arrest doesn't equate to prosecution, in Japan, prosecution almost equates conviction (somewhere around 99.9%).
    - visarga 10y ago
      DA's have a reputation to keep.
      - nness 10y ago
        District Attorneys?
    - labster 10y ago
      Well, closer to 99.7%[1]. But many less charges are filed, per capita, than the United States. This is partially due to things like honor and culture, but more to do with the fact that Japanese prosecutors have double the caseload of their American counterparts. And perhaps even more to do with the use of judges to decide verdicts.
      - pessimizer 10y ago
        It's also a false contrast. 97% of prosecutions in the US are resolved by plea bargain.
wingerlang 10y ago
Slight NSFW warning on the ads, despite using adBlock.
- milcron 10y ago
  It's due to d1rk0nonkgiwed.cloudfront.net
- namelezz 10y ago
  This will boot up the number of curious minds.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Is this a single-player game, or multiplayer? (Also, I was sure I remembered a game by the same name from the '90s, which I thought was a trivia quiz game with a D&D-ish theme. A brief search hasn't turned up any evidence, though. Anyone else remember that?)
- plorkyeran 10y ago
  Until about a year ago it was single-player with a tacked-on social component, but there's now co-op and a competitive ranking mode with prizes for the top 1% of players (and mostly irrelevant prizes for lower buckets). If you stay out of the ranking dungeons it's hard to argue that a hack negatively impacts other players, but making the game easier does means you're less likely to pay them money to progress faster.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    Imo this is what they should have expected by having game state on the client side.
- PudgePacket 10y ago
  Single player, although it probably leaderboards. More importantly it has pay-to-progress options, which these cheats would make redundant (which is probably what the company is angry about).
- chipsy 10y ago
  The 90's game was Quiz and Dragons by Capcom and it was arcade only.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    That's what I was thinking of. Thanks!
fenomas 10y ago
After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (for some value of "encrypted"). But according to the app's instructions it works on non-jailbroken iOS, so it's not like it's defeating OS protections - it's just getting files from storage and overwriting them. I don't grasp all the details but it seems pretty chilling.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  If you were to share a bunch of copyrighted material in the States, the MPAA/RIAA et. al. would come and threaten you with a law suit (and you'd settle out of court). In Japan, if you do the exact same thing, you will be arrested [1]. It's a difference in "what is normal". [1] http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-illegal-uploads-of-anime-and-dramas-this-past-week/16790/ http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-ille...
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    Unless it has changed recently (which is very possible) I believe Japan still only has criminal charges for "commercial" copyright infringement. In other words you need to make money off if it. I'm not familiar with the incident you linked to, so take my comment with a grain of salt. Edit: I am indeed wrong. The criminal penalties are spelled out here: http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html I don't have time to see when it changed, but this is a pretty big modification from the last time I looked. Sigh...
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      I definitely recall 3 people being arrested back in 2012'ish for sharing a very large number of Nintendo 3DS ROMs on one of the Winny/Share/Perfect Dark platforms, so the change must have preceded this.
beedogs 10y ago
How on earth is this a criminal offense? Copyright law should never, ever be that powerful.
- Fej 10y ago
  Japanese copyright laws are backwards, even more so than in the US.
- Zelmor 10y ago
  In japan they are. People have gone to jail for double digit years and have been ordered to pay millions of yens in damages for file sharing. From wikipedia straight: >Unlike most other countries, filesharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one, with penalties of up to ten years for uploading and penalties of up to two years for downloading. I've done my fair share of trying to get vintage animation via Winny some 10-12 years ago. At one time a Galaxy Express 999 uploader just disappeared. Later on there were reports of his trial, sentenced to jail for uploading videos of cartoons that aired between 1978-81. That is, 25 years ago at the time of the events. Also see Nintendo's case against M2 and R3 card manufacturers that are now basically illegal in the country. You could be stopped by police on the street and retained if they saw you with a Nintendo DS and a non-standard game cartridge.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    How long has it been crazy like this?
    - Zelmor 10y ago
      About 20 years, as far as I can tell. There is also a high level of Internet service provider cooperation. http://www.zdnet.com/article/japans-isps-agree-to-ban-p2p-pirates/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/japans-isps-agree-to-ban-p2p-pi...
- okoksowhatis 10y ago
  Things are far too out of hand, my friend.
level3 10y ago
For those wondering what the offense is, the news reports specifically indicate public distribution of a program to circumvent copyright protection. Japanese copyright law does make circumvention itself illegal, but in general you won't be bothered until you try to make your tools widely available.
Princeofpersia 10y ago
Hahahaha.... Pretty fun doing :)
okoksowhatis 10y ago
Anyone should be able to code any piece of software, any time, and offer it free for download, without it being illegal.
michaelbuddy 10y ago
I remember when I thought crime was about bad guys actually hurting people. The more frivolous the world and its economy gets, the more frivolous the reasons for taking away somebody's freedom.
alttab 10y ago
Puzzles and Dragons makes money from monster eggs and other power ups. If you can supe up your monsters, you have no need to pay them. It's copyright because they see the ability to update monster stats as proprietary technology. Only they can do that and users of this software are stealing from the developers and ruining the game for themselves. At least, that seems to be what's going on.

83 points by rtpg 10y ago

If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble? When exactly does "hacking" a game become illegal? What about people doing it for research like the machine learning mario guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44. Or tool-assisted speedruns? Or the starcraft broodwar ai? Is it only when you breach the TOS or copyrights? Just curious since it never even occurred to me that such things are punishable.

Aelius 10y ago
At least in the US, I don't believe there is any precedent that establishes it is illegal to alter a product. There is always push back by companies, but it seems that the general trend is always in favor of the consumer (see, rooting your phone is found legal, this video concerning the legality of modifying cars and tractors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nps24EqiZjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nps24EqiZjY )
6nf 10y ago
It might fall under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? The DMCA criminalises the act of circumventing an access control mechanism.
AntiRush 10y ago
There are multiple cases in the United States regarding game hacks. Some of the more famous involve Blizzard, with the biggest example being a suit against the creators of WowGlider, a bot for World of Warcraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar...)
- jessespears 10y ago
  Fascinating: The Court of Appeals ruled that for a software licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the license condition and the licensor’s exclusive rights of copyright. However ... that a finding of circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require a nexus between circumvention and actual copyright infringement. The DMCA's anti-circumvention section appears to be the only thing that preserved parts of the original finding. Perhaps the next time this law is up for review, some less onerous terms can be placed for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability.
wyldfire 10y ago
> If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble? No, not really.* > What about people doing it for research § 1201 has lots of exceptions including "Nonprofit library, archive and educational institution exception (section 1201(d))." * Yes, technically the laws here in the US are broad enough that if you did something that the US DOJ or local LE became very concerned about, they could at the very least arrest, detain, and charge you with a crime if not convict you of it.

Illniyar 10y ago

How is this defined as breaking copyright law? Did the cheat contain code from the original game?

Aelius 10y ago
It probably has something to do with the tampering of copy protection, which companies would very much like to be illegal. An arrest does not equate to a conviction; there's a chance the charges may not stick, but I don't know Japanese law.
- glandium 10y ago
  While an arrest doesn't equate to prosecution, in Japan, prosecution almost equates conviction (somewhere around 99.9%).
  - visarga 10y ago
    DA's have a reputation to keep.
    - nness 10y ago
      District Attorneys?
  - labster 10y ago
    Well, closer to 99.7%[1]. But many less charges are filed, per capita, than the United States. This is partially due to things like honor and culture, but more to do with the fact that Japanese prosecutors have double the caseload of their American counterparts. And perhaps even more to do with the use of judges to decide verdicts.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      It's also a false contrast. 97% of prosecutions in the US are resolved by plea bargain.

wingerlang 10y ago

Slight NSFW warning on the ads, despite using adBlock.

milcron 10y ago
It's due to d1rk0nonkgiwed.cloudfront.net
namelezz 10y ago
This will boot up the number of curious minds.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

Is this a single-player game, or multiplayer? (Also, I was sure I remembered a game by the same name from the '90s, which I thought was a trivia quiz game with a D&D-ish theme. A brief search hasn't turned up any evidence, though. Anyone else remember that?)

plorkyeran 10y ago
Until about a year ago it was single-player with a tacked-on social component, but there's now co-op and a competitive ranking mode with prizes for the top 1% of players (and mostly irrelevant prizes for lower buckets). If you stay out of the ranking dungeons it's hard to argue that a hack negatively impacts other players, but making the game easier does means you're less likely to pay them money to progress faster.
- chillacy 10y ago
  Imo this is what they should have expected by having game state on the client side.
PudgePacket 10y ago
Single player, although it probably leaderboards. More importantly it has pay-to-progress options, which these cheats would make redundant (which is probably what the company is angry about).
chipsy 10y ago
The 90's game was Quiz and Dragons by Capcom and it was arcade only.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  That's what I was thinking of. Thanks!

fenomas 10y ago

After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (for some value of "encrypted"). But according to the app's instructions it works on non-jailbroken iOS, so it's not like it's defeating OS protections - it's just getting files from storage and overwriting them. I don't grasp all the details but it seems pretty chilling.

hkmurakami 10y ago
If you were to share a bunch of copyrighted material in the States, the MPAA/RIAA et. al. would come and threaten you with a law suit (and you'd settle out of court). In Japan, if you do the exact same thing, you will be arrested [1]. It's a difference in "what is normal". [1] http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-illegal-uploads-of-anime-and-dramas-this-past-week/16790/ http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-ille...
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Unless it has changed recently (which is very possible) I believe Japan still only has criminal charges for "commercial" copyright infringement. In other words you need to make money off if it. I'm not familiar with the incident you linked to, so take my comment with a grain of salt. Edit: I am indeed wrong. The criminal penalties are spelled out here: http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html I don't have time to see when it changed, but this is a pretty big modification from the last time I looked. Sigh...
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    I definitely recall 3 people being arrested back in 2012'ish for sharing a very large number of Nintendo 3DS ROMs on one of the Winny/Share/Perfect Dark platforms, so the change must have preceded this.

beedogs 10y ago

How on earth is this a criminal offense? Copyright law should never, ever be that powerful.

Fej 10y ago
Japanese copyright laws are backwards, even more so than in the US.
Zelmor 10y ago
In japan they are. People have gone to jail for double digit years and have been ordered to pay millions of yens in damages for file sharing. From wikipedia straight: >Unlike most other countries, filesharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one, with penalties of up to ten years for uploading and penalties of up to two years for downloading. I've done my fair share of trying to get vintage animation via Winny some 10-12 years ago. At one time a Galaxy Express 999 uploader just disappeared. Later on there were reports of his trial, sentenced to jail for uploading videos of cartoons that aired between 1978-81. That is, 25 years ago at the time of the events. Also see Nintendo's case against M2 and R3 card manufacturers that are now basically illegal in the country. You could be stopped by police on the street and retained if they saw you with a Nintendo DS and a non-standard game cartridge.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  How long has it been crazy like this?
  - Zelmor 10y ago
    About 20 years, as far as I can tell. There is also a high level of Internet service provider cooperation. http://www.zdnet.com/article/japans-isps-agree-to-ban-p2p-pirates/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/japans-isps-agree-to-ban-p2p-pi...
okoksowhatis 10y ago
Things are far too out of hand, my friend.

level3 10y ago

For those wondering what the offense is, the news reports specifically indicate public distribution of a program to circumvent copyright protection. Japanese copyright law does make circumvention itself illegal, but in general you won't be bothered until you try to make your tools widely available.

Princeofpersia 10y ago

Hahahaha.... Pretty fun doing :)

okoksowhatis 10y ago

Anyone should be able to code any piece of software, any time, and offer it free for download, without it being illegal.

michaelbuddy 10y ago

I remember when I thought crime was about bad guys actually hurting people. The more frivolous the world and its economy gets, the more frivolous the reasons for taking away somebody's freedom.

alttab 10y ago

Puzzles and Dragons makes money from monster eggs and other power ups. If you can supe up your monsters, you have no need to pay them. It's copyright because they see the ability to update monster stats as proprietary technology. Only they can do that and users of this software are stealing from the developers and ruining the game for themselves. At least, that seems to be what's going on.