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Switch hack seller Gary Bowser inprisoned for 40 months and fined 10 million dollars

Doom85

Member
Clearly this is setting up a story arc where Gary breaks out of prison, then Doug gets a letter from Reggie revealing that Doug and Gary are actually brothers separated when they were still infants, and now Doug has to hunt his fugitive brother down and bring him to justice.
 
"Corporations are people" as legal identities go. If this is true corporations are feudal lords and consumers are peasants. He is lucky he wasn't executed for hurting Nintendo's bottom line.
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
It literally says in the article:

“According to Bowser himself, he was paid $1,000 a month to market and distribute the hacking devices to retailers. Additionally, he managed Team Xecuter’s websites and created “online libraries of pirated videogames for its customers.

Well there it is. Hope it was worth it.
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
Well there it is. Hope it was worth it.

Originally I thought he was arrested for making mod chips, and I have no idea how that's illegal. But then I saw that he was literally giving/selling pirated games, and now I don't feel bad for him. He should have known his business would be under scrutiny just for mod chips alone.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
Originally I thought he was arrested for making mod chips, and I have no idea how that's illegal. But then I saw that he was literally giving/selling pirated games, and now I don't feel bad for him. He should have known his business would be under scrutiny just for mod chips alone.

Yeah. I dont feel sorry for stupid/greedy people. Especially when I work hard earning my money legally.
 
Such a ridiculous waste to put someone in prison over this.
Unless he was selling ROMs it shouldn't matter let people do what they want with the shit they buy.
Creating software for the purpose of stealing should probably result in jail time. I mean people are being thrown in jail for honking their horns.
 
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ahtlas7

Member
Don’t forget your Switch, Garry!


Angry Man GIF by VPRO



What? Too soon?
 
Prison is still ridiculous especially for piracy.
Of course it is. Unfortunately, we live in a world where prison is seen as a punishment, instead of a way of putting dangerous people away so they can't harm others, as it was intended.

For the record, I am also opposed to putting corrupt politicians in jail. All it does is take more of the tax-payers' money than said politician already did.
 

Tschumi

Member
That his name earns mention in a game forum is testament to his idiotic indiscretion.

Sucks to be him though, ofc
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
Creating software for the purpose of stealing should probably result in jail time.

If that's the purpose, sure. But just because you can use software for stealing doesn't mean it was created to be used for stealing. I have a modded Switch so I can rip my games onto a 4TB external drive, and then I can back them up onto my 100TB NAS. I'm not giving those games to anyone.

The rub is that it's hard to prove intent for something that can be used for multiple purposes unless the person admits their intent.
 
I'm not gonna feel bad for a guy who literally sold pirated product, but yeah, that sentence is clearly the "Nintendo strongarm" effect there. I sure as heck wish I could sue someone for $10 million just to "make a statement" without a court demanding my price justified by a paper trail documenting every penny transaction.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The custodial sentence is a bit of a strange move given that by handing that out they've pretty much guaranteed that the other two defendents will never get extradited to face charges.
I can only assume the thinking was that they'll never get to prosecute a Chinese or French national, so they decided to absolutely throw the book at the one guy they had in order to make a statement.
 

plip.plop

Member
If I remember correctly, this was the guy behind the Team Executor / SX modchip for the Switch. So he was manufacturing modchips and selling them to distributors worldwide. I believe he was also caught distributing ROM files. So, kind of a double-whammy no-no when it comes to piracy.
Half Baked Reaction GIF
boo booing GIF
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
The message is very clear:
THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM WILL DO EVERYTHING IN ITS POWER TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF CORPORATE COMPANIES. DO NOT FUCK WITH THEM!

This is the world we live in.
We’ll done everyone. #SlowHandClap
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
Yeah, at first blush this looks really bad. However when you dig into the story a bit more ("Me go past headline, unpossible!") you see the extent of the copyright infringement. Is copyright law in generally kind of scummy, you can argue that. However the way the government release is worded, this was a full blown copyright infringement operation using game dumps (which I don't think are in and of themselves illegal) to promote interest in their product (a device to allow people to play these dumps).

. . .hard lesson for the 50-year old to learn (though I doubt he was ignorant really of how much fire he was playing with), but at least he's not going to be spending that prison time in the pen. He'll get a nice dorm room in a low-security prison.
 
Pretty ridiculous.

Sounds to me like a $65 bil company made a hackable console and made someone pay $10mil and 40 months of their life for hacking it.

Meanwhile, gambling infects every corner of gaming - no repercussions.

Games are released totally broken day one by supposed AAA companies - no repercussions.

Nintendo sells 15 mil copies of pokemon in one week, because the franchise "took a (teeny-tiny) step forward", while be aggressively uglier and empirically waaaay below current-gen standards - no repercussions.

But don't worry guys, they caught the real person ruining gaming and made them pay the price!! How dare impact these multi-billion dollar companies; HE HAD TO BE STOPPED!!!
 
Why are people surprised? Governments shape policy around corporations and their lobbying. Sentencing is no different, especially in America where it seems like judges don’t use logic in sentencing.

As for those commenting on child molesters to be killed. They actually can’t help it. It’s in their brain chemistry. Best solution is castration
 
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