Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

dexerto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#31

Post by georgeplusplus »

rektide wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#32

Post by gnicholas »

jhugo wrote: post #27
gnicholas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

> 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!

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#33

Post by pfych »

xh-dude wrote: post #11
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #5

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-...

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#35

Post by alwayslikethis »

jimbob45 wrote: post #30
xyst wrote: post #17

Copyright 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.

Plenty of countries have 50+life currently and they don't respect the longer time in the US.

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#36

Post by animuchan »

jimbob45 wrote: post #30
xyst wrote: post #17

Copyright 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.

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#37

Post by Paul-Craft »

gnicholas wrote: post #9

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 e…

> 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.

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#38

Post by Sakos »

0x69420 wrote: post #15

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 brick…

... 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?

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#39

Post by mnd999 »

sam1r wrote: post #23
Hamuko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life

#40

Post by filmgirlcw »

ghayes wrote: post #24
LastNevadan wrote: post #18

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.

Post reply on HN