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Impressive whitewashing of Gary Bowser's reputation rears its head once more. Gary Bowser really isn't the saint articles like to depict him as. His old compute

Impressive whitewashing of Gary Bowser's reputation rears its head once more. Gary Bowser really isn't the saint articles like to depict him as. His old computer repair shop, OPA (his online nickname comes from this shop) had a bad reputation among computer enthusiasts in the 80s for not shipping parts for whatever reason[0]. Relatedly, the reason he left Canada (something conveniently glossed over) is not because he got in trouble with the housing crisis (which he has stated in other interviews) but rather because he got arrested peddling fake DVDs through his PC repair shop[1]. More recently, he got caught being involved with the new Switch flashcard; a reverse DNS lookup (that is, running the IP through a database of known web addresses and seeing what else is hosted there) revealed that the site is hosted on the same IP as his personal blog. (Bowser blamed a DNS poisoning attack, which strikes me as unlikely from what I know about DNS poisoning - that's basically alledging a conspiracy.) He's likely just a patsy/fall guy though - the big cheese here is Max Louarn (also Canadian), who last I heard is hiding out in France (he has a French girlfriend) after he managed to slip out of the arrest made by the Dominican Republics authorities. I get life sucks for him (and I do hope it gets better for him eventually). Just don't fall for the "innocent small criminal being preyed on by the big evil company" - Gary Bowser had a key part in an international piracy hardware manufacturing operation. [0]: https://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/MICROPENDIUM/mp9501.max.pdf https://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/MICROPENDIUM/mp9501.max.pdf [1]: https://www.toronto.com/life/pair-charged-over-counterfeit-dvds/article_9c111566-719f-563a-95eb-fef63bfcc57c.html?ref=dtf.ru https://www.toronto.com/life/pair-charged-over-counterfeit-d...

chislobog 3y ago
The way you describe him sounds like you come from someplace where regulatory capture is a good thing.
- noirscape 3y ago
  No, more just ~10+ years of familiarity with Gary's bullshit from the homebrew scene. Unless you like piracy, there's very little to like about anything made by Xecuter or their previous name, GATEWAY. They just are the piracy option; anything they say about homebrew is just lip service to not get banned from the relevant internet forums. All their modchips have always as their main focus had piracy. That recent flashcard that debranded TX has made literally can only be used for piracy, not homebrew. Hell, these are the guys that DRMed their piracy software to password lock the Switch NAND if you tried to reverse engineer it (twice! They did the same thing on 3DS.)
  - sgift 3y ago
    > No, more just ~10+ years of familiarity with Gary's bullshit from the homebrew scene. Ah, so because you have a grudge you think corporate servitude is good and showing people the story that lead to it (which could lead to them drawing different conclusions) is "whitewashing".
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      > Hell, these are the guys that DRMed their piracy software to password lock the Switch NAND if you tried to reverse engineer it (twice! They did the same thing on 3DS.) Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. There's no reason to think the guy who's calling out this person's shenanigans is in favor of corporate servitude. Probably they just don't like how the article frames this guy as an agreeable martyr; it seems more nuanced than that.
      - noirscape 3y ago
        Yeah - just so we're clear on this: I have problems with how Gary gets lionized by a lot of people but I don't think he should be in corporate servitude - he should just've been able to file for bankruptcy after he served his jailtime and that should've been it. Ideally it'd scare him straight and he could pick up his life again afterwards - maybe build up something to have a bit of a retirement again.
        cbozeman 3y ago
        > he should just've been able to file for bankruptcy after he served his jailtime and that should've been it. The purpose of criminal restitution is to punish you. You shouldn't be able to discharge a punishment.
        SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        I am sure a lot of people in this thread would agree with this statement taken with no extra context. The problem that a lot of people have about this specific situation is that this should never have been a criminal punishment or restitution in the first place.
15457345234 3y ago
> Gary Bowser had a key part in an international piracy hardware manufacturing operation Are you gonna cite this part or just the no-big-deal-really parts?
- nerdponx 3y ago
  It seems like the subject of the article, no? What's not clear is that it's really such a bad thing. Sure, maybe it should be illegal and he should get some kind of fined for what he did, but 40 months and garnishing his wages for the rest of his life seems out of balance compared to the actual harm that was done.
- noirscape 3y ago
  Sorry - thought the article would be sufficient on that on its own. Xecuter was the international piracy operation. They moved millions in terms of sold products over the years and had deals with Chinese factories to make that stuff "at scale" and had exchanges on how to get their devices past border controls; all this stuff is in the legal complaint he got jailed for.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    I don't believe they were selling copies of any games? Modchip operation.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      Xecuter for some reason decided to also sell access to game dumps instead of just modchips/flash carts. IIRC it was never proven that Bowser was specifically involved in that part, but the group did it for sure.
    - noirscape 3y ago
      The software their modchips used (called SX OS) took a lazy shortcut that also effectively means it embedded chunks of the Horizon operating system that the Switch uses (the filesystem module to be exact), combined with embedding gamecard headers in the software to trick the gamecard firmware. It also embedded a massive chunk of the free CFW Atmosphere (which is GPL2.0-Only, with some modifications), and they obviously never open sourced it. So yes, they were effectively selling their customers (modified) copies of Nintendo's software.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> international piracy hardware manufacturing operation > peddling fake DVDs > caught being involved with the new Switch flashcard I'm OK with this. Literal non-crimes as far as I'm concerned. Literally nothing. > His old computer repair shop had a bad reputation among computer enthusiasts in the 80s for not shipping parts So he's guilty of running a shitty store.
- billy99k 3y ago
  Would you consider wage theft of an employee by an employer a non-crime? After all, it's just their time and no physical goods are stolen.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Of course. It's not about tangible or intangible goods. It's about scarcity and whether it's artificial or real. Time is the most scarce resource there is. You can't copy time the way you can trivially copy bits.
    - billy99k 3y ago
      "You can't copy time the way you can trivially copy bits." It took time to arrange the bits in such a way that you desired to copy them. Copying bits is not stealing. It's worse than stealing, it's counterfeiting. When you steal a car, the car manufacturer can still sell cars at that value. When you counterfeit software (or anything digital), the original work is devalued over time, because as the counterfeit becomes more widespread, the value approaches $0.
      - trealira 3y ago
        That's a good point. By the same logic, actually, counterfeiting currency wouldn't be a crime either, as the scarcity is artificially sustained by the government, but the consequence of everyone being able to print their own currency is that cash would become worthless.
nativeit 3y ago
What is this comment trying to prove? Having read the article, I don’t see anything in your comment that makes “small criminal being preyed on by the big evil company” any less accurate. It certainly doesn’t flatter Bowser or present him as an antihero, it’s just a sad tale of how cruel and unbalanced “justice” can be in these cases.
- noirscape 3y ago
  Gary profited considerably from his shenanigans - by his own admission in interviews shortly after release, he made ~300k USD a year from this operation. The point is mostly that he's always been a sleazy car salesman kinda guy instead of some small hero standing up for the masses.
  - close04 3y ago
    So he was asked to pay the equivalent of ~50 years' worth of illegal income? How many companies get the same treatment? Break the law, pay 50 times the amount? How many companies are asked to pay without any harm ever being proven? How many executives go to prison after a company is found guilty of anything? "Sleazy car salesman" is not an indictment worthy of 1-3 years in prison and 50 years' worth of the profits. Not unless we apply the same for any sleazy company. Are we? Then what is the case you're trying to make?
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >How many executives go to prison after a company is found guilty of anything? There's a huge difference between sending an executive to jail for actions of subordinates (which is ludicrous, in my opinion), versus jailing the subordinates for the actual crimes, which apparently happens more than you know.
      - Jotra7 3y ago
        [dead]
      - 3y ago
the_only_law 3y ago
[flagged]
myrmidon 3y ago
To quote H.L. Mencken: "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
"Gary Bowser had a key part in an international piracy hardware manufacturing operation." So what? Why should that get him a $14 million fine? There's nothing morally wrong with what he did and it should not be illegal.
mplewis 3y ago
“He was no angel. That’s why corporate servitude should be legal.”
skeaker 3y ago
Also omitted from this story is the fact that he repeatedly violated FOSS licenses by outright stealing from the Atmosphere project so he could turn around and resell the work of the community (who just wants to run their own code on their own devices) at a great personal profit. What tweaks he did make he ensured could not be reverse engineered by the FOSS community by making it brick devices running competing free software. Copyright sucks but this guy was a piece of work.
dartharva 3y ago
Bowser was literally just a site admin. He was not involved in the creation or supply of those mods in any way. The way you have typed your rant makes it seem you only want to throw a contrarian comment at the expense of a ruined life, which is pathetic.

chislobog 3y ago

The way you describe him sounds like you come from someplace where regulatory capture is a good thing.

noirscape 3y ago
No, more just ~10+ years of familiarity with Gary's bullshit from the homebrew scene. Unless you like piracy, there's very little to like about anything made by Xecuter or their previous name, GATEWAY. They just are the piracy option; anything they say about homebrew is just lip service to not get banned from the relevant internet forums. All their modchips have always as their main focus had piracy. That recent flashcard that debranded TX has made literally can only be used for piracy, not homebrew. Hell, these are the guys that DRMed their piracy software to password lock the Switch NAND if you tried to reverse engineer it (twice! They did the same thing on 3DS.)
- sgift 3y ago
  > No, more just ~10+ years of familiarity with Gary's bullshit from the homebrew scene. Ah, so because you have a grudge you think corporate servitude is good and showing people the story that lead to it (which could lead to them drawing different conclusions) is "whitewashing".
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > Hell, these are the guys that DRMed their piracy software to password lock the Switch NAND if you tried to reverse engineer it (twice! They did the same thing on 3DS.) Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. There's no reason to think the guy who's calling out this person's shenanigans is in favor of corporate servitude. Probably they just don't like how the article frames this guy as an agreeable martyr; it seems more nuanced than that.
    - noirscape 3y ago
      Yeah - just so we're clear on this: I have problems with how Gary gets lionized by a lot of people but I don't think he should be in corporate servitude - he should just've been able to file for bankruptcy after he served his jailtime and that should've been it. Ideally it'd scare him straight and he could pick up his life again afterwards - maybe build up something to have a bit of a retirement again.
      - cbozeman 3y ago
        > he should just've been able to file for bankruptcy after he served his jailtime and that should've been it. The purpose of criminal restitution is to punish you. You shouldn't be able to discharge a punishment.
        SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        I am sure a lot of people in this thread would agree with this statement taken with no extra context. The problem that a lot of people have about this specific situation is that this should never have been a criminal punishment or restitution in the first place.

15457345234 3y ago

> Gary Bowser had a key part in an international piracy hardware manufacturing operation Are you gonna cite this part or just the no-big-deal-really parts?

nerdponx 3y ago
It seems like the subject of the article, no? What's not clear is that it's really such a bad thing. Sure, maybe it should be illegal and he should get some kind of fined for what he did, but 40 months and garnishing his wages for the rest of his life seems out of balance compared to the actual harm that was done.
noirscape 3y ago
Sorry - thought the article would be sufficient on that on its own. Xecuter was the international piracy operation. They moved millions in terms of sold products over the years and had deals with Chinese factories to make that stuff "at scale" and had exchanges on how to get their devices past border controls; all this stuff is in the legal complaint he got jailed for.
- crtasm 3y ago
  I don't believe they were selling copies of any games? Modchip operation.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    Xecuter for some reason decided to also sell access to game dumps instead of just modchips/flash carts. IIRC it was never proven that Bowser was specifically involved in that part, but the group did it for sure.
  - noirscape 3y ago
    The software their modchips used (called SX OS) took a lazy shortcut that also effectively means it embedded chunks of the Horizon operating system that the Switch uses (the filesystem module to be exact), combined with embedding gamecard headers in the software to trick the gamecard firmware. It also embedded a massive chunk of the free CFW Atmosphere (which is GPL2.0-Only, with some modifications), and they obviously never open sourced it. So yes, they were effectively selling their customers (modified) copies of Nintendo's software.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> international piracy hardware manufacturing operation > peddling fake DVDs > caught being involved with the new Switch flashcard I'm OK with this. Literal non-crimes as far as I'm concerned. Literally nothing. > His old computer repair shop had a bad reputation among computer enthusiasts in the 80s for not shipping parts So he's guilty of running a shitty store.

billy99k 3y ago
Would you consider wage theft of an employee by an employer a non-crime? After all, it's just their time and no physical goods are stolen.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Of course. It's not about tangible or intangible goods. It's about scarcity and whether it's artificial or real. Time is the most scarce resource there is. You can't copy time the way you can trivially copy bits.
  - billy99k 3y ago
    "You can't copy time the way you can trivially copy bits." It took time to arrange the bits in such a way that you desired to copy them. Copying bits is not stealing. It's worse than stealing, it's counterfeiting. When you steal a car, the car manufacturer can still sell cars at that value. When you counterfeit software (or anything digital), the original work is devalued over time, because as the counterfeit becomes more widespread, the value approaches $0.
    - trealira 3y ago
      That's a good point. By the same logic, actually, counterfeiting currency wouldn't be a crime either, as the scarcity is artificially sustained by the government, but the consequence of everyone being able to print their own currency is that cash would become worthless.

nativeit 3y ago

What is this comment trying to prove? Having read the article, I don’t see anything in your comment that makes “small criminal being preyed on by the big evil company” any less accurate. It certainly doesn’t flatter Bowser or present him as an antihero, it’s just a sad tale of how cruel and unbalanced “justice” can be in these cases.

noirscape 3y ago
Gary profited considerably from his shenanigans - by his own admission in interviews shortly after release, he made ~300k USD a year from this operation. The point is mostly that he's always been a sleazy car salesman kinda guy instead of some small hero standing up for the masses.
- close04 3y ago
  So he was asked to pay the equivalent of ~50 years' worth of illegal income? How many companies get the same treatment? Break the law, pay 50 times the amount? How many companies are asked to pay without any harm ever being proven? How many executives go to prison after a company is found guilty of anything? "Sleazy car salesman" is not an indictment worthy of 1-3 years in prison and 50 years' worth of the profits. Not unless we apply the same for any sleazy company. Are we? Then what is the case you're trying to make?
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >How many executives go to prison after a company is found guilty of anything? There's a huge difference between sending an executive to jail for actions of subordinates (which is ludicrous, in my opinion), versus jailing the subordinates for the actual crimes, which apparently happens more than you know.
    - Jotra7 3y ago
      [dead]
    - 3y ago

the_only_law 3y ago

[flagged]

myrmidon 3y ago

To quote H.L. Mencken: "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

"Gary Bowser had a key part in an international piracy hardware manufacturing operation." So what? Why should that get him a $14 million fine? There's nothing morally wrong with what he did and it should not be illegal.

mplewis 3y ago

“He was no angel. That’s why corporate servitude should be legal.”

skeaker 3y ago

Also omitted from this story is the fact that he repeatedly violated FOSS licenses by outright stealing from the Atmosphere project so he could turn around and resell the work of the community (who just wants to run their own code on their own devices) at a great personal profit. What tweaks he did make he ensured could not be reverse engineered by the FOSS community by making it brick devices running competing free software. Copyright sucks but this guy was a piece of work.

dartharva 3y ago

Bowser was literally just a site admin. He was not involved in the creation or supply of those mods in any way. The way you have typed your rant makes it seem you only want to throw a contrarian comment at the expense of a ruined life, which is pathetic.