Nintendo Hacker Freed, Now Owes Them 25-30% of Salary for Life
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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”
I’m all for copyright reform though. 70 + life is absurd. Even worse, you penalize people for dying early like MLK.
how do you know it's early?
I don't see why. Why should other countries laws apply in my country?
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.
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
People pay for digital content because it is consistently updated and has quality standards that piracy sometimes does not.
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.
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.
Don't do that to yourself. You should know better than to present false dichotomies.
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
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?
Because I agree with you i principle but details are complicated in these situations.
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.
(And no, let's not bring up something like educational debt. That's something that's taken on by choice.)
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.
for instance, it is possible to simultaneously think “draconian copyright legislation is bad” and “this particular guy was a crook”
Murderers and corrupt crooks that have destroyed entire communities have received less than this.
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.)
Roaming the oceans freely, how nice - but the rest is indeed bloody murder and theft, which copying is not.
You might as well just say "acht-oo-ally, a geek bites the heads off chickens."
> 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.
> [...]
> 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.
A distinction without a difference, it seems. Very few people will earn $14 million over their lifetimes.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499297/team-xecuter-sel...
[1]: https://wololo.net/2018/06/25/nintendo-switch-team-xecuters-...
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 tax perspective is completely irrelevant here. Gifted money would absolutely be considered by the court to be available to repay the debt.
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!
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.
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…
If only there was a magical benevolent government that always does the right thing and is ready to welcome do-gooder patriots.
My question would be is that 30% before or after taxes.
Hopefully that garnish can be reduced or removed entirely going forwards especially if he has family he needs to support