5 ms·

What's bizarre is that this guy says that tracking down this kid (who btw didn't try to hide at all) made him a "legend" at Pokemon. Quote from the article: "W

What's bizarre is that this guy says that tracking down this kid (who btw didn't try to hide at all) made him a "legend" at Pokemon. Quote from the article: "Which was fantastic. Absolutely baked my legend in at Pokémon for like five years." Don McGowan is a legend though, a legendary asshole for being proud of bullying a curious kid that was poking around in legally obtained game-files.

anal_reactor 2y ago
That's a product of our culture where we're encouraged to put our corporate job before everything else.
ginko 2y ago
Kind of weird that the interviewer didn't push back on that story.
KeplerBoy 2y ago
Chances are the guy was just horrible at reading the room and people made fun of him for like five years.
- stef25 2y ago
  Like that cop in The Wire who was so proud he "caught the Unabomber" and McNulty goes "didn't his brother turn him in?"
chx 2y ago
What's even worse that this asshole was legally correct, of course he was, one of the bad laws is the passage of DMCA which bans circumventing digital protections. That's how you get bullshit like DVD Jon who was accused of trespassing on his own computer.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  What digital protections did the kid circumvent? As far as I can tell he just dumped the game's graphics and found a previously unknown creature among the results. No circumvention of anything whatsoever, just direct access to the data. If the corporations don't want stuff like this to be found, they should try not putting it into the game in the first place. I guess copyright monopolists who are delusional enough to believe they can publish information world wide and control what happens to it do not have this sort of common sense. For the record, there's an entire website full of people dedicated to doing what that child did: https://tcrf.net/ https://tcrf.net/
  - fragmede 2y ago
    it was protected by rot26 encryption!
  - mrandish 2y ago
    > What digital protections did the kid circumvent? This was my first thought too. While the entire DMCA is misguided draconian bullshit, I'm having trouble figuring out by what tortured logic dumping an image from a game file would trigger it.
    - gorlilla 2y ago
      It's not like he used inspect element and 'broke' the md5/sha-1 hash.. err I mean "encryption". [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726866/missouri-governor-department-elementary-secondary-education-ssn-vulnerability-disclosure https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726866/missouri-govern...
- roastedpeacock 2y ago
  a) DMCA does not apply the same to all countries b) With the way politics is going in USA I am not optimistic about DMCA reform until the heat-death of the universe.
  - chx 2y ago
    I named the DMCA because that was likely to be most recognizable by our most esteemed readers but fine I will elaborate how this shit is everywhere. In December 1996, the World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the WIPO Copyright Treaty which is principally aimed at adapting the legal paradigm of copyrights to new technology. Article 11 of the WCT obligates “contracting parties to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.”
    - roastedpeacock 2y ago
      > I named the DMCA because that was likely to be most recognizable by our most esteemed readers but fine I will elaborate how this shit is everywhere. Yes. But not all countries interpret the restrictions on fair-use as aggressively as DMCA/1201 does.
ThePhysicist 2y ago
I also found that paragraph super weird. Kid played around with the software and found out a new Pokemon was in there but not released, lawyer guy gets his personal information, calls their house and threatens them with computer hacking charges, which seems bullshit as that was reverse engineering, so in many legislations it's not illegal.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  dmca is federal. it's worded in a way that you can be trialed for anything at all if there's a will on the software author side.
Nexxxeh 2y ago
I dunno. I usually read HN comments before the article, so I know what to look out for when reading it. But that's not the tone I'm getting here. >So I called his mom and said, ‘Listen, I wanted to tell you some things that Andrew is doing on the computer.’ She says, ‘So you’re saying he hacked your game.’ And I hear in the background: ‘I didn’t hack anything!’ I start describing it more technically. She says, ‘Is this a problem?’ I say, ‘Hacking software, that’s a federal crime, but I don’t want that to be the conversation. Why don’t we make it a conversation about the good and bad things he can do with a computer?’ >The kid was live-tweeting it. The tweets were this: >1.Pokémon just called my house. >2.What the hell is a general counsel? >3.I now know what I did was wrong, and I’ll never do it again. >Which was fantastic. Absolutely baked my legend in at Pokémon for like five years. Yeah, the DMCA is bullshittery, but it's a legal weapon that the GC is expect to wield for his company. He did his job, in a way that had no legal consequences for the kid, and still got the result his company needed. That seems like the correct way of handling it. Is it ideal from a societal perspective? No, the DMCA should be gutted. But from a practical perspective, this was a win all around. And the kid was hopefully pushed away from trouble, at least until they were old enough to cover their tracks better.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thrance 2y ago
  I mean, you are right but it still feels wrong to see a lawyer bragging on the internet about shutting down a kid that basically just peeked in a toy his parents brought him.
  - gorlilla 2y ago
    He's not right. The lawyer likely didn't have a legal leg to stand on, but may have caused a paradigm shift in this kid's life. Why do you assume there weren't knock-on effects/consequences to his actions? Or that they were positive (set him on the right track) vs deleterious?
- matheusmoreira 2y ago

anal_reactor 2y ago

That's a product of our culture where we're encouraged to put our corporate job before everything else.

ginko 2y ago

Kind of weird that the interviewer didn't push back on that story.

KeplerBoy 2y ago

Chances are the guy was just horrible at reading the room and people made fun of him for like five years.

stef25 2y ago
Like that cop in The Wire who was so proud he "caught the Unabomber" and McNulty goes "didn't his brother turn him in?"

chx 2y ago

What's even worse that this asshole was legally correct, of course he was, one of the bad laws is the passage of DMCA which bans circumventing digital protections. That's how you get bullshit like DVD Jon who was accused of trespassing on his own computer.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
What digital protections did the kid circumvent? As far as I can tell he just dumped the game's graphics and found a previously unknown creature among the results. No circumvention of anything whatsoever, just direct access to the data. If the corporations don't want stuff like this to be found, they should try not putting it into the game in the first place. I guess copyright monopolists who are delusional enough to believe they can publish information world wide and control what happens to it do not have this sort of common sense. For the record, there's an entire website full of people dedicated to doing what that child did: https://tcrf.net/ https://tcrf.net/
- fragmede 2y ago
  it was protected by rot26 encryption!
- mrandish 2y ago
  > What digital protections did the kid circumvent? This was my first thought too. While the entire DMCA is misguided draconian bullshit, I'm having trouble figuring out by what tortured logic dumping an image from a game file would trigger it.
  - gorlilla 2y ago
    It's not like he used inspect element and 'broke' the md5/sha-1 hash.. err I mean "encryption". [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726866/missouri-governor-department-elementary-secondary-education-ssn-vulnerability-disclosure https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726866/missouri-govern...
roastedpeacock 2y ago
a) DMCA does not apply the same to all countries b) With the way politics is going in USA I am not optimistic about DMCA reform until the heat-death of the universe.
- chx 2y ago
  I named the DMCA because that was likely to be most recognizable by our most esteemed readers but fine I will elaborate how this shit is everywhere. In December 1996, the World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the WIPO Copyright Treaty which is principally aimed at adapting the legal paradigm of copyrights to new technology. Article 11 of the WCT obligates “contracting parties to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.”
  - roastedpeacock 2y ago
    > I named the DMCA because that was likely to be most recognizable by our most esteemed readers but fine I will elaborate how this shit is everywhere. Yes. But not all countries interpret the restrictions on fair-use as aggressively as DMCA/1201 does.

ThePhysicist 2y ago

I also found that paragraph super weird. Kid played around with the software and found out a new Pokemon was in there but not released, lawyer guy gets his personal information, calls their house and threatens them with computer hacking charges, which seems bullshit as that was reverse engineering, so in many legislations it's not illegal.

1oooqooq 2y ago
dmca is federal. it's worded in a way that you can be trialed for anything at all if there's a will on the software author side.

Nexxxeh 2y ago

I dunno. I usually read HN comments before the article, so I know what to look out for when reading it. But that's not the tone I'm getting here. >So I called his mom and said, ‘Listen, I wanted to tell you some things that Andrew is doing on the computer.’ She says, ‘So you’re saying he hacked your game.’ And I hear in the background: ‘I didn’t hack anything!’ I start describing it more technically. She says, ‘Is this a problem?’ I say, ‘Hacking software, that’s a federal crime, but I don’t want that to be the conversation. Why don’t we make it a conversation about the good and bad things he can do with a computer?’ >The kid was live-tweeting it. The tweets were this: >1.Pokémon just called my house. >2.What the hell is a general counsel? >3.I now know what I did was wrong, and I’ll never do it again. >Which was fantastic. Absolutely baked my legend in at Pokémon for like five years. Yeah, the DMCA is bullshittery, but it's a legal weapon that the GC is expect to wield for his company. He did his job, in a way that had no legal consequences for the kid, and still got the result his company needed. That seems like the correct way of handling it. Is it ideal from a societal perspective? No, the DMCA should be gutted. But from a practical perspective, this was a win all around. And the kid was hopefully pushed away from trouble, at least until they were old enough to cover their tracks better.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thrance 2y ago
I mean, you are right but it still feels wrong to see a lawyer bragging on the internet about shutting down a kid that basically just peeked in a toy his parents brought him.
- gorlilla 2y ago
  He's not right. The lawyer likely didn't have a legal leg to stand on, but may have caused a paradigm shift in this kid's life. Why do you assume there weren't knock-on effects/consequences to his actions? Or that they were positive (set him on the right track) vs deleterious?
matheusmoreira 2y ago