Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life
dexerto.comCopyright law is so archaic.
Going to jail for “pirating games” is just absurd to me. Nintendo and backers of copyright law clearly using this guy as an example to not fuck with our wares or else we will send our multimillion dollar legal team at you.
Copyright and patent law is holding the west back. Can’t create a product without stepping on some patent trolls alleged “IP”
If you were to go about changing copyright law, I have to imagine you’d only be able to change it for your nation’s works while still respecting the duration from other countries. In that case, copyright reform wouldn’t have helped this guy.
I’m all for copyright reform though. 70 + life is absurd. Even worse, you penalize people for dying early like MLK.
This is an interesting perspective! So in the long run, it might be economical to hire a hitman and coerce the artist into dying early, saving potentially tens of years worth of royalties.
> coerce the artist into dying early
how do you know it's early?
>still respecting the duration from other countries
I don't see why. Why should other countries laws apply in my country?
Plenty of countries have 50+life currently and they don't respect the longer time in the US.
Fewer and fewer. Canada, for example, changed this year from life + 50 to life + 70. No copyrights will expire in Canada for the next 20 years.
I think that argument about patent law is weakened by juxtaposing it with a complaint that someone who made a business of video game piracy got smacked for it.
It's still an absurd punishment for that crime.
So videogame piracy should be allowed? This might act as a slight disincentive to making new games.
Except it won't, because copyright infringement will never replace enough purchases to actually matter.
I don't think most people would say we should abolish copyright completely, but the current situation is just dumb. The copyright term is way too long. And having governments enforce a company's business model at the end of a gun is gross.
At most, there should be financial penalties for violations. Depriving someone of their freedom for making/selling tools that enable copyright infringement is messed up. As is making someone pay a quarter of their income in restitution for the rest of their life.
If left unchecked, copyright infringement without compete most digital goods and most markets. It has lower costs and less transaction friction. Why buy a Nintendo game if there was a ubiquitous platform offering free games for everything in the catalog.
Who would pay for a streaming service when you can get all content from all platforms for free.
Most people simply pay for their digital content now because it's easier. The only reason it's easier is because of enforcement actions against infringement
You can already get both for free openly now. It's not hard, you can just Google search it. It's vastly easier and safer now to torrent or pirate than it ever has been, due to proliferation of information on safe sites, and also due to trust systems that have sealed out people who'd spread malware in the past.
People pay for digital content because it is consistently updated and has quality standards that piracy sometimes does not.
You're a contradicting yourself. It is not currently as easy to get high quality trustworthy pirated content as it is to log into Disney Plus or Netflix. If you take away copyright protections, you would quickly see the rise of high trust high quality sources for pirated material. Someone could simply make a trustworthy streaming service that offered the catalogs of both companies and others in full quality and offer it for a fraction of the price because they don't have to pay to license or produce content. They could advertise on billboards and everywhere they want.
Yes, video game piracy should be allowed. Copying is not theft.
I mean, that you can be criminally prosecuted for ripping DVDs and Blurays you own to a digital format is insanity.
If you own a nintendo game and a cartridge, make a rom of it, and then play that rom on a more lifestyle compatible system then it shouldn't be a big deal.
I think the copyright on video games should end at 7 years, maybe 10 at the worst. You have a decade from the date of publication to make your money on that version of the game. What percentage of games are profitable 10 years after publication? I know there are a few, minecraft, WOW, Skyrim, COD, but even if there are 500 games on the 10+ list, that pales in comparison to the number of games that come out every year.
I bet most 7-10 year old games are lost to history, if you include ALL video games and not just the breakout hits and AAA best sellers.
> you own a nintendo game and a cartridge, make a rom of it, and then play that rom on a more lifestyle compatible system then it shouldn't be a big deal
Especially considering I had a switch cartridge fail after the warranty period recently. They wanted $40 or something to fix it. I had to "speak to the supervisor" to haggle a better rate.
There's a vast middle ground between anarchy on one hand and incarceration and lifetime wage garnishment on the other.
Don't do that to yourself. You should know better than to present false dichotomies.
for what it's worth, this is the guy who took the open source efforts of the homebrew community, who try their absolute hardest to avoid association with piracy (and by extension nintendo's hammer), and sold modchips to enable the use of an os based on aforementioned open source efforts, for the unambiguous purpose of piracy, and to top it off those modchips were designed with an intentional tamper trigger that bricks users' consoles
we should bring back the militant anti-copyright culture that made “RIAA” and “MPAA” bad words, but this guy really doesn't deserve your tears
... so what? How does any of that justify such a severe punishment? It's insanity. Who actually was hurt by the piracy? Nintendo is still printing money. They're not bankrupt, they're not measurably worse off. None of their employees were hurt. How can what he did possibly justify having to pay a significant part of his income for the rest of his life?
What do you think is an appropriate punishment in this case? I see your point about nintendo still printing money but unfortunatelly that's the reality of our society.
Apparently Nintendo made some 15B in revenue last year. Would that punishment be ok if they made 5B? Or 500M? At what point does the punishment become acceptable?
> Apparently Nintendo made some 15B in revenue last year. Would that punishment be ok if they made 5B? Or 500M? At what point does the punishment become acceptable?
Honestly, I don't see how this form of punishment would ever be acceptable. This is a life-long debt we're talking about. This is the kind of punishment I might imagine in "you destroyed a town's water supply and all the newborns died" territory.
Companies do significantly worse things that affect millions of lives. They walk away with a slap on the wrist. Destroy lives? Insignificant fine or they settle with some people and they keep doing bad things. Companies can literally steal money from its employees and nothing will happen to them. Somebody "steals" money from a company? Destroy his life. Make an example of him.
When are we going to make an example of companies? Never? Okay, then I'm on the pirate's side with zero hesitation.
Well, you raise a good point but I think we should correct in the opposite direction. Companies should be held accountable, I 100% agree with you. That is definitely a problem.
The 40 months behind bars was more than enough imho. It should’ve been just the fine though.
Jail time for this kind of crimes is pretty useless imo. As for the fine and the size of it, that is hard to judge. Not sure how they determined those 15 millions but I’d have set the size of time fine to be identical to the revenues earned from the illegal activity. That would be fair imo.
It's irrelevant how much Nintendo made. Sentencing someone to debt for the rest of their life is a cruel and unusual punishment.
(And no, let's not bring up something like educational debt. That's something that's taken on by choice.)
I agree it’s irrelevant. I only mentioned revenues because the parent comment mentioned Nintendo still making ton of money.
And so I was wondering at what point does that becomes relevant.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with you on the cruel and unusual punishment though.
I have a relative who’s in a similar situation because of some unpaid taxes. A fifth of her paycheck goes to the state automatically for example.
The 40 months in prison?
I personally don’t believe he should have done jail time at all.
Appropriate punishment depends on what kind of life the man has and what kind of life does the society want him to have. Apparently debt slavery is fair in a situation where no real damage was done to anyone.
If it depends on what kind of life the man has and what kind of life does the society want him to have, since you are part of society, what is in your opinion an appropriate punishment?
Because I agree with you i principle but details are complicated in these situations.
in the absence of serious conditions such as borderline personality disorder, it is actually possible to have thoughts that differ in connotation, implied tribal signals, or whether they intuitively paint some given thing as “good” or “bad”
for instance, it is possible to simultaneously think “draconian copyright legislation is bad” and “this particular guy was a crook”
It’s also simultaneously possible to think that his punishment is draconian.
Murderers and corrupt crooks that have destroyed entire communities have received less than this.
>for the unambiguous purpose of piracy
That would mean he did it for the purpose of sailing the high seas, entering and robbing mercantile ships. In actual fact, he did it for the purpose of enabling users to run software not authorized by the manufacturer on physical devices they own.
(All of which is just to say: the association between "intellectual property" infringement and much severer violent crimes is itself a big ruse. Just like the use of the term "property" by the way.)
I think the comparison with piracy is stupid as well, but the warez scene themself like to embrace that romantic pirate image very much.
Roaming the oceans freely, how nice - but the rest is indeed bloody murder and theft, which copying is not.
Piracy has been used to describe mass copyright violation for profit since about 1603, for a breach of a Royal Charter granting monopoly of publication to the Stationer's Company.
You might as well just say "acht-oo-ally, a geek bites the heads off chickens."
I still think this is insanely overkill for someone who already spent years in prison and paid fines for it.
Just to be clear, this is not indentured servitude. If he somehow manages to pay back the multimillion dollar damages award that he owes them, he would be free and clear. This is more like a cap on how much of his salary will go toward paying off this debt.
> With $14.5 million dollars in damages to his name, Bowser may have been released from prison, but the looming specter on Nintendo still stands tall. As Bowser explains in the above video, he will have to pay the company back on a monthly basis, sending “25-30%” of his gross monthly income to Nintendo.
Since this is gross pay, he's not getting credit for taxes owing on the amount that he sends to Nintendo. It isn't clear how interest is calculated. Even a generously small interest rate would make it pretty hard to pay this back 3% would be over $400k per year, just for the interest.
> this is not indentured servitude.
> [...]
> goes on to say how this guy is probably never going to pay the amount back
I don't get what you're saying here. This sure sounds like indentured servitude to me.
I meant from a legal perspective. What the headline suggests is not legal, whereas his repayment settlement is.
Those seem to be the same thing.
If he moved to another country (could be difficult with the criminal record, but some countries won’t care, especially since it was a non-violent crime), the legal system in some countries would refuse to enforce this, either explicitly (their courts will rule the debt is invalid) or implicitly (he doesn’t pay and the authorities refuse to do anything about it)
> Just to be clear, this is not indentured servitude. If he somehow manages to pay back the multimillion dollar damages award that he owes them, he would be free and clear. This is more like a cap on how much of his salary will go toward paying off this debt.
A distinction without a difference, it seems. Very few people will earn $14 million over their lifetimes.
Anyone have more detail about the case against Bowser? Was it purely a DMCA copyright circumvention case? Did he sell pirated material? On the face of it the damages awarded is ridiculous for a private middle class individual. Reminds me of the old RIAA downloading lawsuits, where they requested outrageous damages in an effort to scare defendants and hopefully set precedent.
Twitter says he distributed pirate ROMs that would brick Switches unless he was paid a monthly ransom.
I can only find one source on this that isn't extremely recent[1]. It seems like it would only brick the device if you pirated and used an illegitimate copy of the custom firmware.
[1]: https://wololo.net/2018/06/25/nintendo-switch-team-xecuters-...
Well that definitely makes him an asshole, but not a prison-and-then-life-of-crushing-debt asshole. Is copyright law really this fucked, that someone was extradited and made an example for selling a ransomware chip?
I didn't see mention of bricking here. It sounded more like everyone (Nintendo & DoJ) was upset about piracy.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499297/team-xecuter-sel...
Bowser antagonizing the House of Mario has to be one of the best examples of nominative determinism I've seen lately :) Unless it's a nickname of some sort, but I can't find any evidence of that.
It’s an open and shut case.
Sad there are so few patrons and nations willing to be like, you did good, fuck this jackal ass corporation and vile legal system, come hang out & chill in our nice non extradition territory where we'll support you, good person.
Interesting idea. A fund like the EFF , to take care of the targets of weaponized corporate copyright law? A safe place for the Aaron Schwartzes of the world, even if it's alongside the Bowsers. I'd pitch in.
>> jackal ass corporation
I’m pretty sure the history of Nintendo is tied in with brothels, gambling, & mild organized crime…
Their current C-suite carrying on with power hungry practices & greed is not particularly surprising.
Sort of like the fact that despite Disney being “The Happiest Place On Earth”, Walt Disney was not known to be a particularly good person…
Because those said countries that would welcome such a person have their own jackals that dont want to get mixed up with someone elses shit and potentially have their own dirty laundry get aired.
If only there was a magical benevolent government that always does the right thing and is ready to welcome do-gooder patriots.
Interesting point. The headline refers to "salary" but the article refers to "income". The former is narrower than the latter, but both would exclude gifts, which are not considered income from a tax perspective.
I wonder what would happen if someone set up a GoFundMe that people could donate to. Gift tax wouldn't be implicated (that only applies when a single donor gives more than $16k to a single donee), and the transfer would not be income (at least so far as the tax code definition is concerned).
> The former is narrower than the latter, but both would exclude gifts, which are not considered income from a tax perspective.
The tax perspective is completely irrelevant here. Gifted money would absolutely be considered by the court to be available to repay the debt.
I'm curious where your certainty comes from. I happen to be a (former) lawyer, and my perspective is that it's quite possible that there are loopholes here. If there is a settlement agreement that refers to "income" then it would likely be defined in terms of taxable income, which is a generally agreed upon standard.
You refer to a court considering gifted money to be available to repay the debt. But do we know if there was a private settlement, or something that is being administered by a court? If it's a private settlement, then the court would not be able to step outside the agreement and loop in other property. They would say that Nintendo is a sophisticated party and it should have negotiated a more airtight agreement. But like I said, I don't know if this is a private settlement or something that a court is administering.
If you have access to other facts, or more nuanced reasoning, please do share!
Bowser was ordered by a court to pay $4.5m restitution to Nintendo after pleading guilty to two criminal charges (the specific charges he pled guilty to are unclear, but he was charged with fraud, DMCA circumvention, conspiracy and others). Separately, Nintendo brought a civil suit against him, and the court entered a judgement in favour of Nintendo (following a consent agreement) for $10m.
These are debts that Bowser owes, and whether certain of his income is taxable or not is not relevant to whether it is available to pay those debts. A "private settlement" would still be very unlikely to contain some specific list of sources of income that were affected by the debt.
Should he decide to adopt your (very strange, especially for a former lawyer) stance in your grandparent comment that non-taxable income would somehow be, by virtue of its tax treatment, shielded from these debts, he would simply find himself back in court for failing to pay.
The question I had as I read this was, "Why can't he discharge this judgement in bankruptcy?" The article doesn't even touch on the topic.
I don’t believe criminal judgments ever are.
Correct. If that were possible, everyone who is fined by the court in a criminal or civil proceeding would just file bankruptcy to expunge the debt.
My question would be is that 30% before or after taxes.
The article refers to gross monthly income, so it sounds like he has to pay a before-tax percentage with after-tax dollars. Ouch.
Is there a ceiling to how much the US legal system can award in cases involving individuals? At what point does it become manifestly unjust - or are they not even required to consider that?
it becomes unjust at the point where it doesn't leave a person enough money to live. but the courts don't seem to stop there. see child support payments that can ruin someones life.
Appalling that he went to prison for this.
Hopefully that garnish can be reduced or removed entirely going forwards especially if he has family he needs to support
Nintendo producing more lawsuits than games nowadays
I read elsewhere that it could be possible that Nintendo gave him an NDA that said something like "you only need to pay us back what you took (~300k) and if you break this NDA we will come for the full $14 million".
That's one way of putting "$14.5 million settlement".
Arguably it's a more realistic view of the punishment.
Yeah, is a 53-year-old convicted criminal going to make $48–58 million during the rest of his lifetime? I have my doubts.
He could always do a startup and apply for yc, ofc.
I think unfortunately the ‘we’ll fund anything, no matter how stupid’ era of VC (not specifically YC) is over for the time being.
…Unless you create some trivial Python code that connects to a llm. Or related vaguely to anything AI.
He "only" has to make $14M.
So his best course of action is to move to Albania and never pay Nintendo a dime?
Doesn’t he owe them a specific dollar amount, and the 25-30% is essentially a lien?
I'm sure that difference is very important to him.
If he wins the lottery or raises a ton of money on GoFundMe or something, it may become relevant to him.
I've no idea if it is, but there's a big difference between a bounded amount of money and a potentially infinite amount of money earned. If he has a startup that goes somewhere, or he wins the lottery, potentially he can be out from under this in one situation, or not in the other
$14M might as well be infinite for the vast majority of people.
Quick calculation says it'd take me and my wife about 100 years to pay it off if we don't spend money on anything else.
Yes. He owes a specific amount, and the "25-30%" showing up in articles comes from a quote of Bowser himself, where he's referring to wage garnishment.
This man is now a slave. What a world we live in.
Modern debt slavery. Such bullshit
can he declare bankrupcy or is debt slavery back on the table?