Yeah but not “30% of his income for the rest of his life” evil, even more so since I think he wasn’t even a dev on the project but just a web master for their site.
One could also think of it as capital gains, since it grows in value when people “invest” in it. Nintendo’s lawyers may claim that because of that it should not be considered an income but an “asset” that they can take in its entirety to cover some of the debt.
Then again - if that GoFundMe can actually cover the entire fine, that could turn out to be a good thing. Yes, we’ll be giving money to Nintendo, but Nintendo does not really need that money. What they want is to ruin that man’s life in order to send a message. If the public can un-ruin that life, that would send an opposite message - and a signal backed by money, too.
I want to agree with this, but I don’t. It presupposes that piracy harms the publisher. If you go by the premise that free info sharing is ultimately good for the creator or publisher, then it’s arguably morally better for people to turn their backs on Nintendo all together and put their time and energy into makers who aren’t so hostile.
I pirate the absolute shit out of Nintendo games and everything else. My issue isn’t with the piracy, it’s with people profiting off of piracy. Those people can get fucked and I love to see it.
More like a strict belief that piracy should be free. In Gary’s case, charging money for sxos and adding DRM to it is what really bothers me though I will admit that I don’t like the precedence this case sets.
A friendly reminder: SxOS is a mostly ripped off version of the FOSS CFW, Atmosphere.
I don’t care that they sold hardware for a profit, but they can go fuck themselves for TIVOing open source software and pretending it was all their own original work.
I’ll take my lumps in this case. Gary Bowser is a piece of trash for a plethora of reasons. The precedence this case sets is honestly pretty terrible but the punishment couldnt have happened to a better person.
I would agree in the case of reselling pirated content, as a core piracy principle is that data itself has no value and can be given away for free. Once you start selling it, you’re just a thief.
But he was part of a modchip team selling physical hardware. They manufactured a real product that was not itself pirated, and users had the choice to use the devices for homebrew or even to not install them at all.
This case is literally like blaming a gun manufacturer for murder.
Well, no cost to replicate, anyways. I’m a strong believer that if you get value from something you should pay for it, but in my youth I did pirate a lot of games and media because I didn’t have the disposable income for it. No sales were lost.
I still do pirate games I own. My daughter pretty much has exclusive use of my Switch now so I play my Switch games on PC. Honestly I will buy games and then never play the official copy, and download the ROMs to run at 1440/120FPS on PC.
Ironic that Xecuter got busted for Switch modchips when emulators now do a better job than the Switch itself.
I also only pirate games I own, though for slightly different reasons. I don’t think you should pay for everything you get value from (I don’t [directly] pay people back for gifts, for example,) but I do think it’s theft to pirate a game you never bought. Plus, buying games is how you support the developers.
Kind of makes sense if you view the program as a service. Many programs could be interpreted as contained, executable, repeatable services. Either way they’re so abstract compared to lots of other goods and services that they’re gonna be their own niche kind of commodity anyway.
He was interviewed/was the topic of a Darknet Dairies Podcast. It’s his side of the story as well as some of the facts around the case. Don’t know how accurate it is, but it is interesting all the same.
He was part of a team that created devices allowing people to play what they wanted on switch, 3DS and some other consoles. He was convicted of fraud and imprisoned for two years before being released. He still has to pay off a fine of 10 million dollars so Nintendo is garnishing his wages for the rest of his life. Which pisses me off because he’s on Disability in Canada which is barely enough to live on (trust me…) and also taxpayer funds. Not to mention that there is no way in fucking hell that his part in all of this adds up to $10 million dollars in lost revenue for Nintendo which is exactly why that fine was applied.
Edit: Apparently disability can’t be garnished. Was a slight fuck up on my end. I had misremembered something and misread something which led to that. Nonetheless, situation still massively fucked for applying a $10 million (well, 14.5 million but 10 million of that is for Nintendo) fine for a dude who made $320,000 off of the hacks. However if he did make any money outside of Disability, they would immediately be entitled to 30% of it. Fucking insane.
I get that they have to protect their IP, but $14m is insane. Feels like the judge threw the book, switch, 3DS and every other console they could find at him. Does he have no right of appeal against the sentence?
When Bowser was first sentenced, Nintendo’s lawyer Ajay Singh said in a court transcript (via Axios) that the company wanted to “send a message” to other Switch hackers.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought sentencing was supposed to reflect the severity of the crime and make fair restitution? It sounds as if this sentence / restitution was massively inflated to create a deterrant, to benefit a private business. Huge fail from Nintendo imo that only makes me want to never buy one of their games or consoles again.
It was put through the American Legal system. There is absolutely zero reason to believe that the justice system of America actually contains any justice in the first place. Of course they sided with the international corporation to fuck over a disabled 50 year old.
That’s just a means to an end, convince a part of the working class they should fear the rest, let them fight it out, and continue capitalizing in peace.
I can’t speak for all PoC but I can speak for me. It’s been screamed for the ages. Maybe not all Dragons care about ideology, but it’s the goddamn minority.
The rule is you (the straw billionaire in this scenario) or your Robber Baron grandpappy were able to rise that way by seeing some as subhuman, and others as rubes. They still discuss phrenology and blood poisoning for fuck’s sake.
Stop assuming the bulk of The Capitalists don’t absolutely abhor the concept of other races sharing their resources. They’d happily make an all-white caste system.
whatever do you mean? are you suggesting that there are decades of evidence that the us justice system is a bad joke played on the minorities and/or disenfranchised, and then only functions to line/protect the pockets of the upper class and ultra-wealthy? preposterous!
That’s fair. In that case, with that reasoning, it seems less like you’re being pessimistic and more like you’re trying to be realistic. I would caution though, reality isn’t ALL negative, though the neutrality and negativity inside of it can always be improved. Heck, even most positives in reality can often be improved.
Personally, I think the Olympics game tends to start when focus becomes too great on one specific aspect, which leads to what is essentially a one upmanship of situational comparison, but that’s all I really wanted to poke at.
Thanks for the even response! Sometimes me phrasing stuff like that starts fights even though I only want to poke a little bit. In any case, I hope your day goes well!
Why is it weird to be mad at a multibillion dollar corporation for garnishing the wages of a disabled person’s disability benefits, simply because he was providing the means to do what you want with your device? I don’t care what the courts say. It should not be illegal to sell something that allows you to do what you want with your device. Even if that device facilitates piracy. IP isn’t real and shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Just to be clear, you’re ok with saddling a disabled person with $14m dollar fine to a multibillion dollar corporation, for the crime of making $300k on a device that allows you to do what you want with your device? It wasn’t specifically meant for piracy, there are several good and legitimate reasons to have full control of your device.
Canadians serving in US Prisons isn’t unheard of. We do have an extradition treaty to the US. Not one that I’m okay with as fuck being beholden to American laws while never stepping foot in the country. However he wasn’t even in Canada. He was in the Dominican Republic at the time that he was caught. He was extradited from there to the United States where he served 2 years before being released and repatriated back to Canada.
OP corrected me, and I edited my comment to reflect the correction. Still don’t see how it’s weird to be upset about a company fining the everliving fuck out of a private citizen because the company is anti-ownership.
Because this group actively endorsed and profited from piracy. They made it a job instead of a hobby. Don’t profit from it, that’s like the one thing you don’t do, and they did it.
Not really a private citizen anymore at that point if you’re making a business.
Ok, so Nintendo should sue the group/company he was a part of and not the individual. The device was for hacking/modding. The fact that pirates used it too is incidental. Nintendo ships games in which you can’t even play 4/5 of the game due to a game breaking bug. The only way to access the rest of the game is to mod your ds to get past the bug. There’s also software preservation aspects so we don’t lose our digital history.
Honestly, fuck Nintendo. You don’t own software even if you buy it, so I’d argue that it’s not theft to use software without paying. But I digress.
disability benefits can’t be garnished. i think it’s ok to be mad at people for spreading misinformation even if they themselves are fighting a just cause. lies like this help nobody.
IP isn’t real and shouldn’t exist in the first place.
This. They’ve made up a dubious analogy between owning physical items and knowledge, and make the “burn the witch” act when you point out that it’s unsatisfactory to make laws, and there are plenty of people running around who haven’t ever made anything in their lives which would be impeded by IP, so they just support it.
I know a few people who’ve made IP-worthy things, sometimes published (small-issue), the pattern is that they are against IP (while for them I’d understand having emotional reasons to support it).
It’s how court cases shake down, especially with plea deals. And what court documents for one thing? Nothing in your links show court documents, just a blurp that also agrees with what I stated.
If you think he made that little with the hack, I don’t know what to say. You also seem to think they can garnish disability benefits, you’re mad over nothing and the wrong things.
But of course you’ll be upvoted since yay piracy! Nothing to do with the actual issue.
So… again… you have no sources other than what you think? Either offer sources that back up your claims or stop making comments that are immediately proven false.
I also did believe that they could because I misread something. That’s on me and has been edited. Next time I would also recommend trying to correct someone by acting like an adult instead of whatever this behavior is. Sorry about the mistake but you really could have addressed that with a very different attitude.
Lastly, the actual issue is a misrepresentation on how much lost revenue Nintendo gained from this man. Piracy is a factor. It is not the driving force.
They profited heavily from and endorsed not just protective piracy, they aren’t innocent, far from it. What they did was actively harmful to the community as a whole as well.
Don’t make a career out of a hobby, that’s why they got burned so hard.
Could you elaborate on “harmful to the community” part? It was mentioned in another thread that they could brick the device, but I couldn’t find any details, for now at least
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