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"even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games" That's a reach...technically they charged a license fee to use SXOS which all

"even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games" That's a reach...technically they charged a license fee to use SXOS which allowed homebrew. It can also be used for playing stolen games, but it is not marketed as such.

ReverseCold 6y ago
“ To support this illegal activity, Team Xecuter allegedly helped create and support online libraries of pirated videogames for its customers, and several of the enterprise’s devices came preloaded with numerous pirated videogames.” This is probably more of a smoking gun.
- Gamemaster1379 6y ago
  That sounds somewhat inaccurate. That seems to suggest they facilitated online marketplaces where these are sold -- and I don't believe they've ever sold pre-loaded games in these. At most they advertise possibility of using homebrew. If you can run unsigned code, you can write unsigned code to dump retail games. But Team Xecutor doesn't explicitly encourage those specific actions nor distribute them online (only to cover their asses, of course that's what people buying them buy them for)
stripline 6y ago
It's amazing to me how lawyers can spin the same set of facts in opposite ways, to tell any story they want without telling a lie. In college I dated a girl in her first year of law school. This technique was something they are taught as a 1L (first year). I remember she would have assignments to write the arguments for both sides using the same set of facts. Made me realize that a good lawyer can convince a jury of anything.
- umvi 6y ago
  The media can do the same - tell any story they want from the facts. And that's how you end up with headlines about "fiery but mostly peaceful protests"
  - jskdvsksnb 6y ago
    Or someone illegally transporting a gun across state lines and using it for "self-defense"
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Lawyers are trained to advocate for either side of a case. While they often develop a preference for staying on one side or the other, they should be able argue for either side. When I was an 1L, some classmates were very good at arguing one side (usually the good-guy side) and then they would fall to pieces if professors asked them to advocate for the other side. Even to the point of saying there was no feasible argument for the other side. Trial lawyers work with evidence and law. Deciding what the facts are is the business of judges or juries.
- vmception 6y ago
  I’m not a lawyer but understand now that I definitely could be. I pity people that can be so easily swayed towards binary perceptions. It is safe, I can tell you that much.
numpad0 6y ago
Wasn’t that “SXOS” a cracked Switch firmware/system image? I was astonished that they could charge for it without at least banned by payment processor.
marcan_42 6y ago
All these "not marketed as such" stories are thin veils. Those of us actually deep in the homebrew community know that these commercial devices always come with features explicitly and only useful for piracy. E.g. the original PSJailbreak claimed to be for homebrew, but then also "happened to" install a syscall patch that added a feature to redirect disc accesses to the HDD. Piracy tools were then just a UI for that. If you want legitimate console hacking software and tools not aimed at piracy, you'll find them in the open source space (part of it, as there is of course a subset of that community also just focused on piracy), not in larger commercial ventures, with extremely few exceptions. (This is one reason why I stopped hacking consoles; most of the userbase ends up being pirates and the most lauded and successful developers are those who cater to them and us who wanted to stay away from that instead got verbal abuse; meanwhile others were making money off the whole thing.)

ReverseCold 6y ago

“ To support this illegal activity, Team Xecuter allegedly helped create and support online libraries of pirated videogames for its customers, and several of the enterprise’s devices came preloaded with numerous pirated videogames.” This is probably more of a smoking gun.

Gamemaster1379 6y ago
That sounds somewhat inaccurate. That seems to suggest they facilitated online marketplaces where these are sold -- and I don't believe they've ever sold pre-loaded games in these. At most they advertise possibility of using homebrew. If you can run unsigned code, you can write unsigned code to dump retail games. But Team Xecutor doesn't explicitly encourage those specific actions nor distribute them online (only to cover their asses, of course that's what people buying them buy them for)

stripline 6y ago

It's amazing to me how lawyers can spin the same set of facts in opposite ways, to tell any story they want without telling a lie. In college I dated a girl in her first year of law school. This technique was something they are taught as a 1L (first year). I remember she would have assignments to write the arguments for both sides using the same set of facts. Made me realize that a good lawyer can convince a jury of anything.

umvi 6y ago
The media can do the same - tell any story they want from the facts. And that's how you end up with headlines about "fiery but mostly peaceful protests"
- jskdvsksnb 6y ago
  Or someone illegally transporting a gun across state lines and using it for "self-defense"
pnw_hazor 6y ago
Lawyers are trained to advocate for either side of a case. While they often develop a preference for staying on one side or the other, they should be able argue for either side. When I was an 1L, some classmates were very good at arguing one side (usually the good-guy side) and then they would fall to pieces if professors asked them to advocate for the other side. Even to the point of saying there was no feasible argument for the other side. Trial lawyers work with evidence and law. Deciding what the facts are is the business of judges or juries.
vmception 6y ago
I’m not a lawyer but understand now that I definitely could be. I pity people that can be so easily swayed towards binary perceptions. It is safe, I can tell you that much.

numpad0 6y ago

Wasn’t that “SXOS” a cracked Switch firmware/system image? I was astonished that they could charge for it without at least banned by payment processor.

marcan_42 6y ago

All these "not marketed as such" stories are thin veils. Those of us actually deep in the homebrew community know that these commercial devices always come with features explicitly and only useful for piracy. E.g. the original PSJailbreak claimed to be for homebrew, but then also "happened to" install a syscall patch that added a feature to redirect disc accesses to the HDD. Piracy tools were then just a UI for that. If you want legitimate console hacking software and tools not aimed at piracy, you'll find them in the open source space (part of it, as there is of course a subset of that community also just focused on piracy), not in larger commercial ventures, with extremely few exceptions. (This is one reason why I stopped hacking consoles; most of the userbase ends up being pirates and the most lauded and successful developers are those who cater to them and us who wanted to stay away from that instead got verbal abuse; meanwhile others were making money off the whole thing.)