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Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- polski-g 3y agoSo his best course of action is to move to Albania and never pay Nintendo a dime?
- petesergeant 3y agoDoesn’t he owe them a specific dollar amount, and the 25-30% is essentially a lien?
- rvense 3y agoI'm sure that difference is very important to him.
- bluefirebrand 3y agoIf he wins the lottery or raises a ton of money on GoFundMe or something, it may become relevant to him.
- petesergeant 3y agoI'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
- bhaney 3y agoYes. 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.
- echelon 3y agoThat's one way of putting "$14.5 million settlement".
- nhinck2 3y agoArguably it's a more realistic view of the punishment.
- Hamuko 3y agoYeah, is a 53-year-old convicted criminal going to make $48–58 million during the rest of his lifetime? I have my doubts.
- sam1r 3y agoHe could always do a startup and apply for yc, ofc.
- mnd999 3y agoI think unfortunately the ‘we’ll fund anything, no matter how stupid’ era of VC (not specifically YC) is over for the time being.
- anonzzzies 3y ago…Unless you create some trivial Python code that connects to a llm. Or related vaguely to anything AI.
- loeg 3y agoHe "only" has to make $14M.
- ohthehugemanate 3y agoAnyone 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.
- xh-dude 3y agoTwitter says he distributed pirate ROMs that would brick Switches unless he was paid a monthly ransom.
- drewcoo 3y agoI 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-selling-nintendo-hacks-arrested-charged-fraud https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499297/team-xecuter-sel...
- ohthehugemanate 3y agoWell 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?
- pfych 3y agoI 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-sx-os-has-functionality-to-brick-your-console/ https://wololo.net/2018/06/25/nintendo-switch-team-xecuters-...
- rektide 3y agoSad 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.
- ohthehugemanate 3y agoInteresting 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.
- gnicholas 3y agoInteresting 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).
- jhugo 3y ago> 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.
- gnicholas 3y agoI'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!
- gnicholas 3y agoJust 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.
- Haga 3y ago[dead]
- Paul-Craft 3y ago> 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.
- gnicholas 3y agoI meant from a legal perspective. What the headline suggests is not legal, whereas his repayment settlement is.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoThose seem to be the same thing.
- loeg 3y ago> 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.
- 0x69420 3y agofor 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
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Sakos 3y ago... 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?
- manuelmoreale 3y agoWhat 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?
- anonzzzies 3y agoThe 40 months behind bars was more than enough imho. It should’ve been just the fine though.
- manuelmoreale 3y agoJail 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.
- tjpnz 3y agoIs 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?
- em-bee 3y agoit 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.
- xyst 3y agoCopyright 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”
- neilv 3y agoI 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.
- Doxin 3y agoIt's still an absurd punishment for that crime.
- jimbob45 3y agoIf 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.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoPlenty of countries have 50+life currently and they don't respect the longer time in the US.
- bentley 3y agoFewer 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.
- animuchan 3y ago
- LastNevadan 3y agoThe 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.
- ghayes 3y agoI don’t believe criminal judgments ever are.
- filmgirlcw 3y agoCorrect. 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.
- gnicholas 3y agoThe article refers to gross monthly income, so it sounds like he has to pay a before-tax percentage with after-tax dollars. Ouch.
- psychphysic 3y agoAppalling 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
- nathias 3y agocan he declare bankrupcy or is debt slavery back on the table?
- ggambetta 3y agoBowser 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.
- napier 3y agoIt’s an open and shut case.
- sledgehammers 3y agoThis man is now a slave. What a world we live in.
- jones6ofMont 3y ago[dead]
- tb_technical 3y agoModern debt slavery. Such bullshit
- guilhas 3y agoNintendo producing more lawsuits than games nowadays
- daniel65464 3y agoI 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".