20 ms·

Nintendo's big piracy case is a sad story

312 points by danso 4y ago

saravana1234 4y ago
philips 4y ago
> I personally haven’t got the vaccine, and the reason, I am skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I haven’t been able to actually have proper medical treatment because I haven’t been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. When I first got arrested, I was 410 pounds. I had to use a wheelchair. The lack of proper healthcare for someone in custody is an embarrassment to the country.
- bena 4y ago
  First: He's probably been told that he can get the vaccine just fine which is why he puts the condition of having a "one-on-one" there. He was likely told based on a doctor reviewing his medical history and condition. However, healthcare for the incarcerated in general is pretty poor. In this regard, he's not really outside the norm.
  - philips 4y ago
    Yeah I agree we don’t know the full circumstances. But the data coming out of the pandemic in particular has been a mess. Like the stories of inmates having to improvise masks. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/jails-prisons-vaccine-priority/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/jails-prisons-vaccine-prio...
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    what hn imagines: a nurse or prison paramedic taking the concern seriously and relaying it to a doctor familiar with the patient's charts and medical history "I checked with your doctor and he said it's fine" reality: a prison guard with his own health problems from a TBI in iraq who did AED cert for the extra $.50/h just meeting this patient for the first time "I checked with your doctor and he said it's fine" Yeah I'm gonna trust the prisoner's estimation of how trustworthy the medical advice he's receiving is.
    - gowld 4y ago
      You are going to catch covid. I am going to catch covid. Everyone is going to catch covid. At 410 lbs, life is a death trap, prison doubly so, vaccine or not.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        You're right, there's no need for health care for the fat. They're going to die anyway. The sicker people are, the less we should take care of them.
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      Reality: a nurse relays the inmate's concerns to a doctor overwhelmed with patients who is not familiar with this particular inmate's medical background, unless that inmate is already a regular in the infirmary. Prison doctors are actually doctors. But like most doctors these days, they're usually too overwhelmed with patients and too underwhelmed with resources to do much more than triage.
    - bena 4y ago
      The vaccine is safe for almost everyone. There are incredibly few people who would have adverse reaction. You are way more likely to have a severe case of COVID if/when you catch it than you will have an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Those are simply the facts. Borne out by the billions of doses that have been given out so far. This is a man who has likely severely damaged his liver through his lifestyle. But, here, this is where he has "concerns". Fuck that noise.
ydnaclementine 4y ago
fxtentacle 4y ago
What a coincidence that the guy's last name is literally the name of a famous Nintendo antagonist. TLDR: Apparently he was involved with Xecutor selling modchips.
- mlyle 4y ago
  There's a lot of Bowsers that pop up in correlation with Nintendo. Doug Bowser is the president of Nintendo of America.
- owlninja 4y ago
  Somewhat related, the President of Nintendo of America is Doug Bowser.
- bitwize 4y ago
  NOA's current president has the same last name (but doesn't appear to be a relation). A fact which Nintendo played off of in Nintendo Directs: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfr0q1wSc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfr0q1wSc
- superdisk 4y ago
  How on earth is selling mod chips illegal?
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    He pled guilty to violating the DMCA.
  - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    In this case, advertising the ability to pirate games removed any plausible deniability
- permo-w 4y ago
  what are the odds that it's not a coincidence, and they made an example out of this guy because his name is bowser
if_by_whisky 4y ago
I used to work for an expert witness who testified on valuations in IP infringement cases. I really lost faith in the way the US handles IP infringement in that job. I know patents are contentious in tech, but sometimes I think copyright is just as bad. I know it's not a popular opinion, but seeing how things actually play out really made me feel for defendants in those cases. Regardless of what you think of the effectiveness of IP protection, the way damages are calculated (and ultimately determined by courts) is just awful. I haven't looked at the specifics of that $65M calculation, but if the real number were closer to $650k I wouldn't be surprised-- 2 orders of magnitude was a pretty typical spread between plaintiff and defendant expert witnesses' valuations in the IP cases I worked on.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  Well in this case, we're talking about a industry espionage and modchip crew that has been around since the first Xbox. I personally know people who used their products and (as the result) never ever purchased a game that they played. So my experience would suggest that Xecutor modchips were really popular. I'm pretty sure $65m is a rather conservative estimate of the lost sales that they caused.
  - shakes_mcjunkie 4y ago
    If the chips didn't exist though would they have actually bought every one of those games? Would they have bought the console? I doubt this is information that could actually be gathered and calculated accurately as damages.
    - deweywsu 4y ago
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      There's likely millions of people in a situation like me. If each of them only didn't buy one single $60 game because of the modchip, then that sums up to $60 mio. I agree that pirated copy != lost sale. But if you play 20+ games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure without modchip it would even out at maybe buy+play 5 games. Plus there's games like the Zelda series that every hardcore fan will play. So for those games, I think it is fair to assume 50% of piracy would have been a lost sale. And lastly, how do you know that people didn't "buy" their cracked games? When I was traveling Asia, you could buy a modchipped Switch and bootlegged games in the same store. So then you still pay $5 for a new Switch game, it's just that the money goes to some Chinese counterfeit group, not to Nintendo.
I_am_tiberius 4y ago
Nintendo should be ashamed.
- danuker 4y ago
  They probably lobbied for the law. I know I'm boycotting them.
- bogwog 4y ago
  Nintendo really is extra nasty with these types of things. Sometime last year they sent a 27 year old man to prison for trying to sell modified save files for Breath of the Wild. That is, a prison sentence for selling cheats for a single player video game.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    This sounded fishy to me, so I checked the articles written about it. A guy was arrested, but there is nothing to suggest he was ever sent to prison (the thing you specifically emphasised and repeated).
    - bombcar 4y ago
      People never bother fact checking internet rage, so thank you for that.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      If you’re arrested, you’re spending at least some time in prison, until bail can be arranged.
      - kelnos 4y ago
        No, you're spending time in jail, which is still not great, but is absolutely not the same thing. Prison means that you've been convicted of a crime and put away, which is a pretty important distinction. (This is a US-centric definition; apologies if this doesn't match your jurisdiction.)
rsync 4y ago
What is the crime here ? Is this a DMCA violation for using modchips to defeat an IP protection scheme ? I am not up to date on the current jurisprudence here - if I clean-sheet reverse engineer (Nintendo hardware) is it considered illegal to create and market modchips based on that ? Or did they have proprietary code/firmware/loaders copied into them ?
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  He pled guilty to the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA. Any attempt to bypass DRM is illegal, save for a number of exemptions listed by the Library of Congress every two years. So yes, your reverse engineering would be illegal.
  - izzydata 4y ago
    How can that be possible? What if I made the worlds worst DRM and then sued everyone who bypassed it? How can bypassing DRM even be illegal? If someone owns their hardware then you can do any hardware or software modifications you want to it.
    - Retr0id 4y ago
      I believe the wording used is "effective technological protection measure". So it's presumably up to the courts to decide whether the DRM was "effective" in the first place. (I am not a lawyer etc. etc.). I suspect it largely comes down to intent. To make an analogy, you'd still be on the hook for breaking-and-entering, even if your victim's front door was made of cardboard. > How can bypassing DRM even be illegal? Same way anything else can be illegal, they made a law saying so.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        The law includes a definition of that term >a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. So bypassing trivial DRM is still a crime.
aasasd 4y ago
Idk how I'm expected to read anything on that site when a lot of unrelated junk keeps occupying the screen instead.
xivzgrev 4y ago
I can’t believe this guy’s last name is Bowser. This is exactly something King Koopa would do.
- austinprete 4y ago
  Interestingly enough the president of Nintendo of America is Doug Bowser. So this case is basically Bowser v. Bowser
  - bobbyi 4y ago
    The lawyer who defended them in Universal City Studios v. Nintendo was John Kirby. Although that one's not a coincidence because they named the character after him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(attorney) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(attorney)
boomboomsubban 4y ago
The Axios piece linked gives an entirely different view of the case. Like the judge saying >“What do you think?” Lasnik asked Nintendo’s lawyer at one point. “What else can we do to convince people that there’s no glory in this hacking/piracy?” https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/nintendo-hacker-court-transcript https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/nintendo-hacker-court-trans... The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA is absurd.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I would prefer the opposite: what can we do to convince companies that this sort of thing is just a cost of doing business, and they should just put up with it and be happy with all the ridiculous profit they still make in spite of it? Of course, the answer to that is "nothing", because companies will always use every legal tool at their disposal to increase their revenue and profit, and shut down anyone who threatens that even a tiny bit. Well, I guess "nothing" isn't the answer, it's "enact drastic changes to copyright law", but I don't expect that to happen, either, so... "nothing" it is. > The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA is absurd. I mean, I get it. It's like going after the drug dealers rather than regular drug users. Except where it isn't, since building tools is inherently neutral (screw the idea of "must have significant non-infringing uses"), as it's up to people who use them to decide to use them for good or bad.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  And what would a judge who uses copyright monopolist terminology like "piracy" even know about hacking? > District Judge Robert Lasnik noted that TV and movies glorify hackers as “sticking it to the man,” suggesting that “big companies are reaping tremendous profits and it’s good for the little guy to have this.” > What else can we do to convince people that there’s no glory in this hacking/piracy? > There would be a large benefit to further education of the public This judge is actually asking the monopolists worth billions how he can help to indoctrinate the population into accepting their eternal rent seeking. Then he sends this guy to jail to send a message. Incredible...
  - Asooka 4y ago
racl101 4y ago
Of course Mario will stick it to a guy named Bowser.
rjh29 4y ago
Has anyone actually looked at the Switch piracy situation? There are dozens of people running pirate eshop clones run of Google Drive hosting all games and DLC, people just connect a client to it and download whatever they want. The domains are on bulletproof TLDs and the Google accounts rotate, often using free university accounts with terabytes of storage. I guess Nintendo don't care because the number of hacked Switch devices is pretty low, and targeting hardware modifications is easier than going after the elusive software end of things.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Believe it or not, that's actually legally very difficult to prosecute. NSP and XCI files are unusable without a signing key that attests the owner has purchased the game, which makes them a perfect candidate for the "backups and archives" clause of the DMCA act. On the other hand, what Bowser did was pretty much indefensibly a crime. He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to customers for a profit, something he knew was privileged IP, but he continued to sell them anyways.
  - Retr0id 4y ago
    > He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to customers No, he didn't.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      The TX mod was designed to use XCI files, which required a signing key to run right? Their firmware had no way to launch software without keys.
      - Retr0id 4y ago
        They patched out the signature checks from the firmware. Nintendo's private keys are stored in HSMs, theres very little chance of them getting stolen.
danuker 4y ago
Nintendo will never see my sponsorship ever again.
zzzeek 4y ago
is this everyone on HN's first time reading that prison is not very good for people? kids get longer sentences for stealing candy bars. the entire prison system is state organized torture and it basically shouldn't exist.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  We arrest criminals, throw them.in a torture chamber for years and then are surprised that they aren't rehabilitated. If harsher prison sentences "deter" people from crime, why does the US not have a lower crime rate than Europe or Japan? Clearly other factors are at play, including, I think, the high degree of alienation in our society. I think it's important that we think abour abolishing orisons and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the system.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    >I think it's important that we think abour abolishing orisons and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the system. OK, but what do you with, say, pedophiles that kidnap children and rape them at knifepoint? Fines? "Rehabilitation"?
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      Of course you’ve used “that guy” for your argument… The most extreme example of someone who might not be rehabilitated. Think, young people who sell drugs or steal property. Not every case is the same and nor is the punishment.
      - _gabe_ 4y ago
        > Not every case is the same and nor is the punishment. This is how the American justice system already works for the most part. I have several acquaintances from high school and college that got "arrested" for drug possession. But all that meant was they paid a fine, and at worst spent a night in jail. Jail, not prison. Edit: And I'll just add a bit of anecdata suggesting prison can rehabilitate people. My cousin went to prison for 2 years for being a drug dealer, and since being released he has turned his life around. There's way to many variables involved in this stuff to cast huge generalizations and then make a decision based on that huge generalization.
dubswithus 4y ago
> I personally haven’t got the vaccine, and the reason, I am skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I haven’t been able to actually have proper medical treatment because I haven’t been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. He talks as if he's one of the first obese persons to be eligible for the vaccine.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  It's not the just the obesity but the elephantiasis of his leg. It seems reasonable to want to consult with a doctor first.
mproud 4y ago
Thanks to Mr. Bowser, Nintendo was forced to release a new Nintendo Switch? Do they really mean chip or firmware modifications?
- lvass 4y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/nintendo-reportedly-rolling-out-new-more-hack-proof-switch-hardware/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/nintendo-reportedly-r...
johndhi 4y ago
I hate the stupid argument that "white collar crime" is just as bad. No, hurting a company's profits isn't as bad as stabbing someone. These are very different things.
- DoughnutHole 4y ago
  While "just as bad" is a useless statement (ethics can't be quantified like this) I'd argue that's it's a worthwhile sentiment. Not all white collar crime is stories of underdogs swindling faceless corporations. Some crimes destroy the life savings of thousands of people, ruin thousands of livelihoods. Mass incidences of fraud can bring down entire economies like in 2008 - it's not direct but it will certainly cause far more death and misery than any one stabbing.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Prachett has a good look at it in his book Going Postal - each “victimless crime” just has its victims spread over a large number of people. You’re slicing hours/days from people instead of lifetimes.
    - blobbers 4y ago
      So when windows blue screens 67,000 times and we have to wait 100s for a reboot (78 people years) is that the equivalent of an auto manufacturer killing someone? They didn’t do their job, and now the world is on hold for them. No, life goes on.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I think that's another reason why "white collar crime" is too broad a category. Some WCC has real regular-Joe victims that are hurt (think financial crimes like Ponzi schemes), and the people who perpetrate those sorts of crimes should have the book thrown at them. But other WCC is like what we're seeing here. The Switch is still ridiculously profitable for Nintendo despite copyright infringement. I'd prefer to live in a society where companies were forced to just accept small-scale (when compared to total revenue) infringement as a cost of doing business.
4oo4 4y ago
For those reading this on mobile, the following uBlock filter lets you actually read the article, instead of a garbage autoplay video taking up 30-40% of the screen and being impossible to dismiss: kokatu.com##div.autoplay I really hope at some point we have some way of challenging these arbitrary "lost sales" figures. Just because someone can't pirate something does not 100% guarantee that they'd buy a legit copy.
- zizee 4y ago
  firefox reader mode also works a treat (on mobile at least)
  - 4oo4 4y ago
    Forgot about that, sometimes I use that but its lack of dark mode hurts my vampire eyes :)
- kelnos 4y ago
  I was under the impression that there was hard data showing that most illegitimate copies would not be replaced with a legitimate sale if the illegitimate copy didn't exist. Is that not the case? I'm hoping this hasn't just been wishful thinking on my part... But of course it's up to judges and juries to be swayed by this data; clearly they haven't been, if it exists.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    I'm also under the impression that pirates tend to buy the most media by far, in general.
    - 4oo4 4y ago
      I think that's also been confirmed by studies? https://news.softpedia.com/news/Another-Study-Shows-that-Pirates-Buy-the-Most-Music-and-Movies-309221.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Another-Study-Shows-that-Pir... Most of them I'm seeing were from about 10 years ago, it'd be really interesting if the results are the same today, especially with the huge changes in TV/movie streaming options.
pilgrimfff 4y ago
Nintendo is horrific with how aggressively they pursue litigation for even the most tenuous of cases. I've been boycotting them for the last decade. Makes me appreciate patent trolls - at least they're just in it for the money and not the retribution.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  Defending your IP as the name implies would obviously consist of defensive moves, noticeably different than aggressive retaliation. You don't need to know much about copyrights or patents to instantly recognize when you see overagressive predatory enforcement, versus straightforward defense. For some people it's not enough to halt a violation, their team is truly motivated to fully inflict torture on the identified violator.
Cypher 4y ago
And piracy will continue... well done Nintendo.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  By that logic, we should not arrest arsonists because arson will continue.
  - sli 4y ago
    Arson has a measurable cost. Piracy's so-called costs are theoretical at best and often completely imaginary.
causality0 4y ago
Team Xecuter are heroes in my book. They risked and lost everything to fight for my right to do what I want with hardware I bought, and I don't really care if they made a couple bucks doing it. Their end also brought the end of the xecuter community, probably the friendliest and least hateful gaming community I've ever seen.
- Genwald 4y ago
  As someone who followed this scene pretty closely for a while, they absolutely are not seen as heroes by most. The primary controversies being their use of Atmosphere components and promotion of piracy. Atmosphere being a free open source gplv2 project that does much of the same thing as Team Xecuter's SXOS. They benefited greatly from this existing project while violating its license by keeping SXOS closed source and profiting off of it. Their main addition being tools to support piracy. Additionally, at one point SXOS contained anti reverse engineering code that attempted to brick or at least temporarily disable the console of those investigating their cfw. https://twitter.com/hexkyz/status/1012363017957380096 https://twitter.com/hexkyz/status/1012363017957380096 Definitely not a group to idolize imo.
- striking 4y ago
  Other people have been working to get homebrew running without charging for it or making it explicitly geared towards piracy. Let the homebrew community be your heroes, not these folks doing actual crime and making real money on it.
redleggedfrog 4y ago
We've all heard it before: if you don't want to do the time don't do the crime. It doesn't matter how stupid or inhumane the law might be - that's a different fight. Fight that fight if you like, but don't break the law in the meantime cause someone will want you in prison. 40 months? Seems like a lot. Probably wanted to think twice about what they were doing.
- kelnos 4y ago
  As a practical matter, you're correct. But I think it's important to consider that the consequences for breaking a law should not be to be held in jail pre-trial under inhumane, unhealthy conditions. (If you're not sympathetic toward people who eventually are convicted, at least consider that pre-trial detention shouldn't screw over people who eventually are acquitted.) And it's important to discuss what we think about the laws in question. And regardless, there's nothing wrong with showing some empathy for someone who ended up in this situation, even if it was through their own risky actions. If you don't feel that empathy, that's fine, but don't begrudge the rest of us our prerogative to feel that way.
  - throwaway61022 4y ago
    Inhumane conditions are horrid, period. I'm not even sure they are legal, if they are - we should change the law, if they aren't - the jailors should be held accountable.
Vladimof 4y ago
The piracy case as a whole is a sad story...
jmyeet 4y ago
I really like the Switch. I bought it solely to play Breath of the Wild and I regret nothing. Actually if I could play it on PC in 4K that would be nice but we live in the world we live in. But Nintendo has had some pretty despicable practices when it comes to so-called IP infringement and this is just one example of that. As i understand this case, the guy merely sold devices that would allow others to play pirated games. Is that correct? That's insane. He's not even selling thos pirated games (AFAIK). So called "unauthorized" use of a device you ostensibly own should never be a criminal offence. If Nintendo wanted to sue the guy in civil court to shut him down, that'd be one thing. But getting the criminal "justice" system to do their dirty work? Can you really look at that and not be convinced that the governments works for and on the behest of the capital-owning class? Really? Want another example? Steven Donziger [1] helped Ecuador win a $9.5B judgement against Chevron for their massive and egregious pollution in Ecuador to which a US Federal Court judge empowered a private oil law firm to criminally prosecute him in the US for fraud. He was held on $800,000 bail and was under home detention for years over "misdemeanour contempt of court* charges. But I digress... Another example of Nintendo's heavyhandedness: Nintendo used to copystrike streamers for streaming their games. I don't believe they do it anymore and I'm not sure when exactly they stopped. But that just goes to show just how insane this IP situation is. Most stremers are technically in violation of copyright law. It's just that the copyright holders aren't choosing to enforce those rights. Even if they don't, you can still get a strike for, say, music in the game (eg the GTA games suffer from this). [1]: https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-donziger-chevron-ecuador/ https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-don...
- emodendroket 4y ago
  > Actually if I could play it on PC in 4K that would be nice but we live in the world we live in. You can.
  - jmyeet 4y ago
    I know there are unofficial ways of doing this but the assets and even the engine aren't designed this high a resolution. Upsacle all you want. It's not the same thing.
kelnos 4y ago
I just can't really feel any animosity toward Gary Bowser (or his business partners) here. The amount that Nintendo "lost" is probably a couple orders of magnitude less than the damages that Nintendo claims. An illegally-obtained copy of something does not equal a lost sale! It's of course not surprising, but is ultimately gross, that rightsholders keep trying to claim that every unauthorized copy is one that the recipient would have paid for if it hadn't been available illegally, when we know at this point that's far far far from the truth. The vast majority of people who obtain illegal copies would never pay in the first place. I think it would suck if a small creator got screwed over to this degree by a group of infringers like this. But the true loss to Nintendo here is far less than it costs them to litigate, and is a rounding error when compared to their total revenue numbers over the years involved here. It's only profitable for them to litigate because they're able to obtain awards in such ridiculous excess of their actual damages. I don't think I'm really strictly in favor of this sort of organized copying, especially for profit. But I just can't get even a tiny bit riled up about it, either. I think, up to a certain point, companies should be forced to just accept this sort of thing as a cost of doing business. Sure, figuring out what that certain point is might be really difficult to agree on. But I think this particular case falls well below that point. Remember that copyright is a social and legal construct. It's up to the public to decide what rights it confers, and what remedies are available to rightsholders who feel harmed by infringers. There's nothing inherently "correct" about the rent-seeking behavior our current laws enable.
- WoahNoun 4y ago
  >An illegally-obtained copy of something does not equal a lost sale Not one to one, but easy availability of pirated content certainly results in a non-zero number of lost sales. So then the argument is about the size of the damages and not whether damages exist.
  - mojzu 4y ago
    There's also an argument to be made that piracy increases sales in some cases, most of my music/game/tv/film tastes as an adult can largely be traced back to content I pirated as a teenager who didn't have money to spend. Now most of my spending on entertainment either goes to artists/franchises that I was introduced to via piracy, or on services that are more convenient then piracy (Steam, Apple Music, Netflix, etc.)
quadrifoliate 4y ago
Sorry for the somewhat obvious reference, but I thought that The Right to Read by Richard Stallman [1] would probably have predicted something similar. Of course, it had: There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger. People may quibble about the specifics here "It's a game, not a book", but to me it honestly sounds like we are firmly on the trajectory to this horrific reality. No one should ever go to prison for a lot of things, but "allowing people to play computer games" sounds like it should be pretty high on those lists. I have never owned a Nintendo device, and will continue to avoid them now that I know about the terrible consequences of their profit-seeking. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  The Right to Read always hits me hard. This horrific reality is already here. A reality where hacking our own devices is a "terrible" crime.
  - mise_en_place 4y ago
    You will own nothing and be happy
brokenmachine 4y ago
"white-color crime", lol. Interesting Freudian slip.
snickerbockers 4y ago
I don't understand why any of this is even considered a crime. At worst it should be a civil liability for damages incurred. All they did was sell solutions that allow customers to overcome technical limitations of their own property that they legally own. We're supposed to be a capitalist society, why are we arresting somebody for selling a product that people want? Imagine if Ford was suing companies that make aftermarket parts. This is ridiculous.
saravana1234 4y ago
dschuetz 4y ago
I have always felt that Nintendo consoles and games were way too expensive compared to their quality, because of that I have never owned anything Nintendo. With this piracy case my feelings are justified: Nintendo just wants your money, no matter how. This makes me actually despise Nintendo and anything they stand for.
- ErneX 4y ago
  So you never owned anything by Nintendo but you “feel” it’s not good quality. They make some of the best games that exist.
  - dschuetz 4y ago
    Dude, you can borrow stuff from other people, you know? Like, gaming consoles I wouldn't ever buy myself? That concept completely unfamiliar to you?
RektBoy 4y ago
I'm supporting piracy, hacktivism and everything. But these guys motivation was purely greed, so good riddance. If you wanna RE and hack something, you can do it in a way that nobody will ever find you. Not if you're running freakin' eshop in your name, lol.
thisNeeds2BeSad 4y ago
throwaway61022 4y ago
Wait a second, what? With skills like these he could have landed a job _anywhere_. Even if he didn't have any hardware skills as the article says, he still is a top-notch salesman. Maybe he had a chance to land jobs at Nintendo hardware division for his entire team. Instead, he had chosen to do what exactly? Why? For cheap thrills? And I'm supposed to sympathize why? There's nothing sad in this story. The rules are simple (most of the time) and you either play by them or find out, and while most of us play by them, sometimes someone finds out.
Asooka 4y ago
I wish to thank team Xecuter and the whole hacking community working tirelessly under very real threat of physical harm to give us the freedom we deserve. If it weren't for you guys, my childhood would have been much blander and sadder. You are real heroes, thank you.

312 points by danso 4y ago

> I personally haven’t got the vaccine, and the reason, I am skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I haven’t been able to actually have proper medical treatment because I haven’t been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. When I first got arrested, I was 410 pounds. I had to use a wheelchair. The lack of proper healthcare for someone in custody is an embarrassment to the country.

bena 4y ago
First: He's probably been told that he can get the vaccine just fine which is why he puts the condition of having a "one-on-one" there. He was likely told based on a doctor reviewing his medical history and condition. However, healthcare for the incarcerated in general is pretty poor. In this regard, he's not really outside the norm.
- philips 4y ago
  Yeah I agree we don’t know the full circumstances. But the data coming out of the pandemic in particular has been a mess. Like the stories of inmates having to improvise masks. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/jails-prisons-vaccine-priority/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/jails-prisons-vaccine-prio...
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  what hn imagines: a nurse or prison paramedic taking the concern seriously and relaying it to a doctor familiar with the patient's charts and medical history "I checked with your doctor and he said it's fine" reality: a prison guard with his own health problems from a TBI in iraq who did AED cert for the extra $.50/h just meeting this patient for the first time "I checked with your doctor and he said it's fine" Yeah I'm gonna trust the prisoner's estimation of how trustworthy the medical advice he's receiving is.
  - gowld 4y ago
    You are going to catch covid. I am going to catch covid. Everyone is going to catch covid. At 410 lbs, life is a death trap, prison doubly so, vaccine or not.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      You're right, there's no need for health care for the fat. They're going to die anyway. The sicker people are, the less we should take care of them.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    Reality: a nurse relays the inmate's concerns to a doctor overwhelmed with patients who is not familiar with this particular inmate's medical background, unless that inmate is already a regular in the infirmary. Prison doctors are actually doctors. But like most doctors these days, they're usually too overwhelmed with patients and too underwhelmed with resources to do much more than triage.
  - bena 4y ago
    The vaccine is safe for almost everyone. There are incredibly few people who would have adverse reaction. You are way more likely to have a severe case of COVID if/when you catch it than you will have an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Those are simply the facts. Borne out by the billions of doses that have been given out so far. This is a man who has likely severely damaged his liver through his lifestyle. But, here, this is where he has "concerns". Fuck that noise.

ydnaclementine 4y ago

fxtentacle 4y ago

What a coincidence that the guy's last name is literally the name of a famous Nintendo antagonist. TLDR: Apparently he was involved with Xecutor selling modchips.

mlyle 4y ago
There's a lot of Bowsers that pop up in correlation with Nintendo. Doug Bowser is the president of Nintendo of America.
owlninja 4y ago
Somewhat related, the President of Nintendo of America is Doug Bowser.
bitwize 4y ago
NOA's current president has the same last name (but doesn't appear to be a relation). A fact which Nintendo played off of in Nintendo Directs: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfr0q1wSc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfr0q1wSc
superdisk 4y ago
How on earth is selling mod chips illegal?
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  He pled guilty to violating the DMCA.
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  In this case, advertising the ability to pirate games removed any plausible deniability
permo-w 4y ago
what are the odds that it's not a coincidence, and they made an example out of this guy because his name is bowser

if_by_whisky 4y ago

I used to work for an expert witness who testified on valuations in IP infringement cases. I really lost faith in the way the US handles IP infringement in that job. I know patents are contentious in tech, but sometimes I think copyright is just as bad. I know it's not a popular opinion, but seeing how things actually play out really made me feel for defendants in those cases. Regardless of what you think of the effectiveness of IP protection, the way damages are calculated (and ultimately determined by courts) is just awful. I haven't looked at the specifics of that $65M calculation, but if the real number were closer to $650k I wouldn't be surprised-- 2 orders of magnitude was a pretty typical spread between plaintiff and defendant expert witnesses' valuations in the IP cases I worked on.

fxtentacle 4y ago
Well in this case, we're talking about a industry espionage and modchip crew that has been around since the first Xbox. I personally know people who used their products and (as the result) never ever purchased a game that they played. So my experience would suggest that Xecutor modchips were really popular. I'm pretty sure $65m is a rather conservative estimate of the lost sales that they caused.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y ago
  If the chips didn't exist though would they have actually bought every one of those games? Would they have bought the console? I doubt this is information that could actually be gathered and calculated accurately as damages.
  - deweywsu 4y ago
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    There's likely millions of people in a situation like me. If each of them only didn't buy one single $60 game because of the modchip, then that sums up to $60 mio. I agree that pirated copy != lost sale. But if you play 20+ games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure without modchip it would even out at maybe buy+play 5 games. Plus there's games like the Zelda series that every hardcore fan will play. So for those games, I think it is fair to assume 50% of piracy would have been a lost sale. And lastly, how do you know that people didn't "buy" their cracked games? When I was traveling Asia, you could buy a modchipped Switch and bootlegged games in the same store. So then you still pay $5 for a new Switch game, it's just that the money goes to some Chinese counterfeit group, not to Nintendo.

I_am_tiberius 4y ago

Nintendo should be ashamed.

danuker 4y ago
They probably lobbied for the law. I know I'm boycotting them.
bogwog 4y ago
Nintendo really is extra nasty with these types of things. Sometime last year they sent a 27 year old man to prison for trying to sell modified save files for Breath of the Wild. That is, a prison sentence for selling cheats for a single player video game.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  This sounded fishy to me, so I checked the articles written about it. A guy was arrested, but there is nothing to suggest he was ever sent to prison (the thing you specifically emphasised and repeated).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    People never bother fact checking internet rage, so thank you for that.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    If you’re arrested, you’re spending at least some time in prison, until bail can be arranged.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      No, you're spending time in jail, which is still not great, but is absolutely not the same thing. Prison means that you've been convicted of a crime and put away, which is a pretty important distinction. (This is a US-centric definition; apologies if this doesn't match your jurisdiction.)

rsync 4y ago

What is the crime here ? Is this a DMCA violation for using modchips to defeat an IP protection scheme ? I am not up to date on the current jurisprudence here - if I clean-sheet reverse engineer (Nintendo hardware) is it considered illegal to create and market modchips based on that ? Or did they have proprietary code/firmware/loaders copied into them ?

boomboomsubban 4y ago
He pled guilty to the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA. Any attempt to bypass DRM is illegal, save for a number of exemptions listed by the Library of Congress every two years. So yes, your reverse engineering would be illegal.
- izzydata 4y ago
  How can that be possible? What if I made the worlds worst DRM and then sued everyone who bypassed it? How can bypassing DRM even be illegal? If someone owns their hardware then you can do any hardware or software modifications you want to it.
  - Retr0id 4y ago
    I believe the wording used is "effective technological protection measure". So it's presumably up to the courts to decide whether the DRM was "effective" in the first place. (I am not a lawyer etc. etc.). I suspect it largely comes down to intent. To make an analogy, you'd still be on the hook for breaking-and-entering, even if your victim's front door was made of cardboard. > How can bypassing DRM even be illegal? Same way anything else can be illegal, they made a law saying so.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      The law includes a definition of that term >a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. So bypassing trivial DRM is still a crime.

aasasd 4y ago

Idk how I'm expected to read anything on that site when a lot of unrelated junk keeps occupying the screen instead.

xivzgrev 4y ago

I can’t believe this guy’s last name is Bowser. This is exactly something King Koopa would do.

austinprete 4y ago
Interestingly enough the president of Nintendo of America is Doug Bowser. So this case is basically Bowser v. Bowser
- bobbyi 4y ago
  The lawyer who defended them in Universal City Studios v. Nintendo was John Kirby. Although that one's not a coincidence because they named the character after him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(attorney) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(attorney)

boomboomsubban 4y ago

The Axios piece linked gives an entirely different view of the case. Like the judge saying >“What do you think?” Lasnik asked Nintendo’s lawyer at one point. “What else can we do to convince people that there’s no glory in this hacking/piracy?” https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/nintendo-hacker-court-transcript https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/nintendo-hacker-court-trans... The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA is absurd.

kelnos 4y ago
I would prefer the opposite: what can we do to convince companies that this sort of thing is just a cost of doing business, and they should just put up with it and be happy with all the ridiculous profit they still make in spite of it? Of course, the answer to that is "nothing", because companies will always use every legal tool at their disposal to increase their revenue and profit, and shut down anyone who threatens that even a tiny bit. Well, I guess "nothing" isn't the answer, it's "enact drastic changes to copyright law", but I don't expect that to happen, either, so... "nothing" it is. > The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA is absurd. I mean, I get it. It's like going after the drug dealers rather than regular drug users. Except where it isn't, since building tools is inherently neutral (screw the idea of "must have significant non-infringing uses"), as it's up to people who use them to decide to use them for good or bad.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
And what would a judge who uses copyright monopolist terminology like "piracy" even know about hacking? > District Judge Robert Lasnik noted that TV and movies glorify hackers as “sticking it to the man,” suggesting that “big companies are reaping tremendous profits and it’s good for the little guy to have this.” > What else can we do to convince people that there’s no glory in this hacking/piracy? > There would be a large benefit to further education of the public This judge is actually asking the monopolists worth billions how he can help to indoctrinate the population into accepting their eternal rent seeking. Then he sends this guy to jail to send a message. Incredible...
- Asooka 4y ago

racl101 4y ago

Of course Mario will stick it to a guy named Bowser.

rjh29 4y ago

Has anyone actually looked at the Switch piracy situation? There are dozens of people running pirate eshop clones run of Google Drive hosting all games and DLC, people just connect a client to it and download whatever they want. The domains are on bulletproof TLDs and the Google accounts rotate, often using free university accounts with terabytes of storage. I guess Nintendo don't care because the number of hacked Switch devices is pretty low, and targeting hardware modifications is easier than going after the elusive software end of things.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smoldesu 4y ago
Believe it or not, that's actually legally very difficult to prosecute. NSP and XCI files are unusable without a signing key that attests the owner has purchased the game, which makes them a perfect candidate for the "backups and archives" clause of the DMCA act. On the other hand, what Bowser did was pretty much indefensibly a crime. He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to customers for a profit, something he knew was privileged IP, but he continued to sell them anyways.
- Retr0id 4y ago
  > He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to customers No, he didn't.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The TX mod was designed to use XCI files, which required a signing key to run right? Their firmware had no way to launch software without keys.
    - Retr0id 4y ago
      They patched out the signature checks from the firmware. Nintendo's private keys are stored in HSMs, theres very little chance of them getting stolen.

danuker 4y ago

Nintendo will never see my sponsorship ever again.

zzzeek 4y ago

is this everyone on HN's first time reading that prison is not very good for people? kids get longer sentences for stealing candy bars. the entire prison system is state organized torture and it basically shouldn't exist.

Synaesthesia 4y ago
We arrest criminals, throw them.in a torture chamber for years and then are surprised that they aren't rehabilitated. If harsher prison sentences "deter" people from crime, why does the US not have a lower crime rate than Europe or Japan? Clearly other factors are at play, including, I think, the high degree of alienation in our society. I think it's important that we think abour abolishing orisons and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the system.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  >I think it's important that we think abour abolishing orisons and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the system. OK, but what do you with, say, pedophiles that kidnap children and rape them at knifepoint? Fines? "Rehabilitation"?
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Of course you’ve used “that guy” for your argument… The most extreme example of someone who might not be rehabilitated. Think, young people who sell drugs or steal property. Not every case is the same and nor is the punishment.
    - _gabe_ 4y ago
      > Not every case is the same and nor is the punishment. This is how the American justice system already works for the most part. I have several acquaintances from high school and college that got "arrested" for drug possession. But all that meant was they paid a fine, and at worst spent a night in jail. Jail, not prison. Edit: And I'll just add a bit of anecdata suggesting prison can rehabilitate people. My cousin went to prison for 2 years for being a drug dealer, and since being released he has turned his life around. There's way to many variables involved in this stuff to cast huge generalizations and then make a decision based on that huge generalization.

dubswithus 4y ago

> I personally haven’t got the vaccine, and the reason, I am skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I haven’t been able to actually have proper medical treatment because I haven’t been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. He talks as if he's one of the first obese persons to be eligible for the vaccine.

shkkmo 4y ago
It's not the just the obesity but the elephantiasis of his leg. It seems reasonable to want to consult with a doctor first.

mproud 4y ago

Thanks to Mr. Bowser, Nintendo was forced to release a new Nintendo Switch? Do they really mean chip or firmware modifications?

lvass 4y ago
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/nintendo-reportedly-rolling-out-new-more-hack-proof-switch-hardware/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/nintendo-reportedly-r...

johndhi 4y ago

I hate the stupid argument that "white collar crime" is just as bad. No, hurting a company's profits isn't as bad as stabbing someone. These are very different things.

DoughnutHole 4y ago
While "just as bad" is a useless statement (ethics can't be quantified like this) I'd argue that's it's a worthwhile sentiment. Not all white collar crime is stories of underdogs swindling faceless corporations. Some crimes destroy the life savings of thousands of people, ruin thousands of livelihoods. Mass incidences of fraud can bring down entire economies like in 2008 - it's not direct but it will certainly cause far more death and misery than any one stabbing.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Prachett has a good look at it in his book Going Postal - each “victimless crime” just has its victims spread over a large number of people. You’re slicing hours/days from people instead of lifetimes.
  - blobbers 4y ago
    So when windows blue screens 67,000 times and we have to wait 100s for a reboot (78 people years) is that the equivalent of an auto manufacturer killing someone? They didn’t do their job, and now the world is on hold for them. No, life goes on.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I think that's another reason why "white collar crime" is too broad a category. Some WCC has real regular-Joe victims that are hurt (think financial crimes like Ponzi schemes), and the people who perpetrate those sorts of crimes should have the book thrown at them. But other WCC is like what we're seeing here. The Switch is still ridiculously profitable for Nintendo despite copyright infringement. I'd prefer to live in a society where companies were forced to just accept small-scale (when compared to total revenue) infringement as a cost of doing business.

4oo4 4y ago

For those reading this on mobile, the following uBlock filter lets you actually read the article, instead of a garbage autoplay video taking up 30-40% of the screen and being impossible to dismiss: kokatu.com##div.autoplay I really hope at some point we have some way of challenging these arbitrary "lost sales" figures. Just because someone can't pirate something does not 100% guarantee that they'd buy a legit copy.

zizee 4y ago
firefox reader mode also works a treat (on mobile at least)
- 4oo4 4y ago
  Forgot about that, sometimes I use that but its lack of dark mode hurts my vampire eyes :)
kelnos 4y ago
I was under the impression that there was hard data showing that most illegitimate copies would not be replaced with a legitimate sale if the illegitimate copy didn't exist. Is that not the case? I'm hoping this hasn't just been wishful thinking on my part... But of course it's up to judges and juries to be swayed by this data; clearly they haven't been, if it exists.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  I'm also under the impression that pirates tend to buy the most media by far, in general.
  - 4oo4 4y ago
    I think that's also been confirmed by studies? https://news.softpedia.com/news/Another-Study-Shows-that-Pirates-Buy-the-Most-Music-and-Movies-309221.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Another-Study-Shows-that-Pir... Most of them I'm seeing were from about 10 years ago, it'd be really interesting if the results are the same today, especially with the huge changes in TV/movie streaming options.

pilgrimfff 4y ago

Nintendo is horrific with how aggressively they pursue litigation for even the most tenuous of cases. I've been boycotting them for the last decade. Makes me appreciate patent trolls - at least they're just in it for the money and not the retribution.

fuzzfactor 4y ago
Defending your IP as the name implies would obviously consist of defensive moves, noticeably different than aggressive retaliation. You don't need to know much about copyrights or patents to instantly recognize when you see overagressive predatory enforcement, versus straightforward defense. For some people it's not enough to halt a violation, their team is truly motivated to fully inflict torture on the identified violator.

Cypher 4y ago

And piracy will continue... well done Nintendo.

AussieWog93 4y ago
By that logic, we should not arrest arsonists because arson will continue.
- sli 4y ago
  Arson has a measurable cost. Piracy's so-called costs are theoretical at best and often completely imaginary.

causality0 4y ago

Team Xecuter are heroes in my book. They risked and lost everything to fight for my right to do what I want with hardware I bought, and I don't really care if they made a couple bucks doing it. Their end also brought the end of the xecuter community, probably the friendliest and least hateful gaming community I've ever seen.

Genwald 4y ago
As someone who followed this scene pretty closely for a while, they absolutely are not seen as heroes by most. The primary controversies being their use of Atmosphere components and promotion of piracy. Atmosphere being a free open source gplv2 project that does much of the same thing as Team Xecuter's SXOS. They benefited greatly from this existing project while violating its license by keeping SXOS closed source and profiting off of it. Their main addition being tools to support piracy. Additionally, at one point SXOS contained anti reverse engineering code that attempted to brick or at least temporarily disable the console of those investigating their cfw. https://twitter.com/hexkyz/status/1012363017957380096 https://twitter.com/hexkyz/status/1012363017957380096 Definitely not a group to idolize imo.
striking 4y ago
Other people have been working to get homebrew running without charging for it or making it explicitly geared towards piracy. Let the homebrew community be your heroes, not these folks doing actual crime and making real money on it.

redleggedfrog 4y ago

We've all heard it before: if you don't want to do the time don't do the crime. It doesn't matter how stupid or inhumane the law might be - that's a different fight. Fight that fight if you like, but don't break the law in the meantime cause someone will want you in prison. 40 months? Seems like a lot. Probably wanted to think twice about what they were doing.

kelnos 4y ago
As a practical matter, you're correct. But I think it's important to consider that the consequences for breaking a law should not be to be held in jail pre-trial under inhumane, unhealthy conditions. (If you're not sympathetic toward people who eventually are convicted, at least consider that pre-trial detention shouldn't screw over people who eventually are acquitted.) And it's important to discuss what we think about the laws in question. And regardless, there's nothing wrong with showing some empathy for someone who ended up in this situation, even if it was through their own risky actions. If you don't feel that empathy, that's fine, but don't begrudge the rest of us our prerogative to feel that way.
- throwaway61022 4y ago
  Inhumane conditions are horrid, period. I'm not even sure they are legal, if they are - we should change the law, if they aren't - the jailors should be held accountable.

Vladimof 4y ago

The piracy case as a whole is a sad story...

jmyeet 4y ago

I really like the Switch. I bought it solely to play Breath of the Wild and I regret nothing. Actually if I could play it on PC in 4K that would be nice but we live in the world we live in. But Nintendo has had some pretty despicable practices when it comes to so-called IP infringement and this is just one example of that. As i understand this case, the guy merely sold devices that would allow others to play pirated games. Is that correct? That's insane. He's not even selling thos pirated games (AFAIK). So called "unauthorized" use of a device you ostensibly own should never be a criminal offence. If Nintendo wanted to sue the guy in civil court to shut him down, that'd be one thing. But getting the criminal "justice" system to do their dirty work? Can you really look at that and not be convinced that the governments works for and on the behest of the capital-owning class? Really? Want another example? Steven Donziger [1] helped Ecuador win a $9.5B judgement against Chevron for their massive and egregious pollution in Ecuador to which a US Federal Court judge empowered a private oil law firm to criminally prosecute him in the US for fraud. He was held on $800,000 bail and was under home detention for years over "misdemeanour contempt of court* charges. But I digress... Another example of Nintendo's heavyhandedness: Nintendo used to copystrike streamers for streaming their games. I don't believe they do it anymore and I'm not sure when exactly they stopped. But that just goes to show just how insane this IP situation is. Most stremers are technically in violation of copyright law. It's just that the copyright holders aren't choosing to enforce those rights. Even if they don't, you can still get a strike for, say, music in the game (eg the GTA games suffer from this). [1]: https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-donziger-chevron-ecuador/ https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-don...

emodendroket 4y ago
> Actually if I could play it on PC in 4K that would be nice but we live in the world we live in. You can.
- jmyeet 4y ago
  I know there are unofficial ways of doing this but the assets and even the engine aren't designed this high a resolution. Upsacle all you want. It's not the same thing.

kelnos 4y ago

I just can't really feel any animosity toward Gary Bowser (or his business partners) here. The amount that Nintendo "lost" is probably a couple orders of magnitude less than the damages that Nintendo claims. An illegally-obtained copy of something does not equal a lost sale! It's of course not surprising, but is ultimately gross, that rightsholders keep trying to claim that every unauthorized copy is one that the recipient would have paid for if it hadn't been available illegally, when we know at this point that's far far far from the truth. The vast majority of people who obtain illegal copies would never pay in the first place. I think it would suck if a small creator got screwed over to this degree by a group of infringers like this. But the true loss to Nintendo here is far less than it costs them to litigate, and is a rounding error when compared to their total revenue numbers over the years involved here. It's only profitable for them to litigate because they're able to obtain awards in such ridiculous excess of their actual damages. I don't think I'm really strictly in favor of this sort of organized copying, especially for profit. But I just can't get even a tiny bit riled up about it, either. I think, up to a certain point, companies should be forced to just accept this sort of thing as a cost of doing business. Sure, figuring out what that certain point is might be really difficult to agree on. But I think this particular case falls well below that point. Remember that copyright is a social and legal construct. It's up to the public to decide what rights it confers, and what remedies are available to rightsholders who feel harmed by infringers. There's nothing inherently "correct" about the rent-seeking behavior our current laws enable.

WoahNoun 4y ago
>An illegally-obtained copy of something does not equal a lost sale Not one to one, but easy availability of pirated content certainly results in a non-zero number of lost sales. So then the argument is about the size of the damages and not whether damages exist.
- mojzu 4y ago
  There's also an argument to be made that piracy increases sales in some cases, most of my music/game/tv/film tastes as an adult can largely be traced back to content I pirated as a teenager who didn't have money to spend. Now most of my spending on entertainment either goes to artists/franchises that I was introduced to via piracy, or on services that are more convenient then piracy (Steam, Apple Music, Netflix, etc.)

quadrifoliate 4y ago

Sorry for the somewhat obvious reference, but I thought that The Right to Read by Richard Stallman [1] would probably have predicted something similar. Of course, it had: There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger. People may quibble about the specifics here "It's a game, not a book", but to me it honestly sounds like we are firmly on the trajectory to this horrific reality. No one should ever go to prison for a lot of things, but "allowing people to play computer games" sounds like it should be pretty high on those lists. I have never owned a Nintendo device, and will continue to avoid them now that I know about the terrible consequences of their profit-seeking. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

matheusmoreira 4y ago
The Right to Read always hits me hard. This horrific reality is already here. A reality where hacking our own devices is a "terrible" crime.
- mise_en_place 4y ago
  You will own nothing and be happy

brokenmachine 4y ago

"white-color crime", lol. Interesting Freudian slip.

snickerbockers 4y ago

I don't understand why any of this is even considered a crime. At worst it should be a civil liability for damages incurred. All they did was sell solutions that allow customers to overcome technical limitations of their own property that they legally own. We're supposed to be a capitalist society, why are we arresting somebody for selling a product that people want? Imagine if Ford was suing companies that make aftermarket parts. This is ridiculous.

saravana1234 4y ago

dschuetz 4y ago

I have always felt that Nintendo consoles and games were way too expensive compared to their quality, because of that I have never owned anything Nintendo. With this piracy case my feelings are justified: Nintendo just wants your money, no matter how. This makes me actually despise Nintendo and anything they stand for.

ErneX 4y ago
So you never owned anything by Nintendo but you “feel” it’s not good quality. They make some of the best games that exist.
- dschuetz 4y ago
  Dude, you can borrow stuff from other people, you know? Like, gaming consoles I wouldn't ever buy myself? That concept completely unfamiliar to you?

RektBoy 4y ago

I'm supporting piracy, hacktivism and everything. But these guys motivation was purely greed, so good riddance. If you wanna RE and hack something, you can do it in a way that nobody will ever find you. Not if you're running freakin' eshop in your name, lol.

thisNeeds2BeSad 4y ago

throwaway61022 4y ago

Wait a second, what? With skills like these he could have landed a job _anywhere_. Even if he didn't have any hardware skills as the article says, he still is a top-notch salesman. Maybe he had a chance to land jobs at Nintendo hardware division for his entire team. Instead, he had chosen to do what exactly? Why? For cheap thrills? And I'm supposed to sympathize why? There's nothing sad in this story. The rules are simple (most of the time) and you either play by them or find out, and while most of us play by them, sometimes someone finds out.

Asooka 4y ago

I wish to thank team Xecuter and the whole hacking community working tirelessly under very real threat of physical harm to give us the freedom we deserve. If it weren't for you guys, my childhood would have been much blander and sadder. You are real heroes, thank you.