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

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41–50 of 91 posts

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

#41
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…

>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.)

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

#42
post #38
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?

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?

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

#45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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?

The 40 months behind bars was more than enough imho. It should’ve been just the fine though.

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

#46

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.

I meant from a legal perspective. What the headline suggests is not legal, whereas his repayment settlement is.

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

#47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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?

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.

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

#48
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.
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