Nintendo 'Hacker' Gary Bowser Released From Federal Prison (torrentfreak.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last year, a U.S. federal court handed a 40-month prison sentence to Gary Bowser. The Canadian pleaded guilty to being part of the Nintendo hacking group "Team Xecuter" and has now served his time. In part due to his good behavior, Bowser got an early release from federal prison. [...] In a recent video interview with Nick Moses, Bowser explains that he was released from federal prison on March 28th. He is currently in processing at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, to prepare for his return to Canada.
What his life will look like in Canada remains uncertain. However, in federal prison, Bowser has shown that he doesn't shy away from putting in work and helping other people in need. Aside from his prison job, he spent several nightly hours on suicide watch. The prison job brought in some meager income, a large part of which went to pay for the outstanding restitution he has to pay, which is $14.5 million in total. Thus far, less than $200 has been paid off. "I've been making payments of $25 per month, which they've been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175," Bowser tells Nick Moses.
If Bowser manages to find a stable source of income in Canada, Nintendo will get a chunk of that as well. As part of a consent judgment, he agreed to pay $10 million to Nintendo, which is the main restitution priority. "The agreement with them is that the maximum they can take is 25 to 30 percent of your gross monthly income. And I have up to six months before I have to start making payments," Bowser notes. At that rate, it is unlikely that Nintendo will ever see the full amount. Or put differently, Bowser will carry the financial consequences of his Team-Xecuter involvement for the rest of his life.
What his life will look like in Canada remains uncertain. However, in federal prison, Bowser has shown that he doesn't shy away from putting in work and helping other people in need. Aside from his prison job, he spent several nightly hours on suicide watch. The prison job brought in some meager income, a large part of which went to pay for the outstanding restitution he has to pay, which is $14.5 million in total. Thus far, less than $200 has been paid off. "I've been making payments of $25 per month, which they've been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175," Bowser tells Nick Moses.
If Bowser manages to find a stable source of income in Canada, Nintendo will get a chunk of that as well. As part of a consent judgment, he agreed to pay $10 million to Nintendo, which is the main restitution priority. "The agreement with them is that the maximum they can take is 25 to 30 percent of your gross monthly income. And I have up to six months before I have to start making payments," Bowser notes. At that rate, it is unlikely that Nintendo will ever see the full amount. Or put differently, Bowser will carry the financial consequences of his Team-Xecuter involvement for the rest of his life.
Justice (Score:2)
Yep. Sounds like justice to me.
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It's not his fault (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, his family name is "Bowser" - what choice did he have? This is the best evidence for predestination that I've ever seen...
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I mean, his family name is "Bowser" - what choice did he have? This is the best evidence for predestination that I've ever seen...
nomen est omen are the words you're looking for.
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I mean, his family name is "Bowser" - what choice did he have? This is the best evidence for predestination that I've ever seen...
nomen est omen are the words you're looking for.
Nominative determinism FTW
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Thanks for making me discover this sentence.
It takes a huge dimension for myself as a nickname I have been using for years starts with... "omen".
Re:It's not his fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: It's not his fault (Score:3, Informative)
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That joke doesn't work as well when Bowser is also the family name of the president of Nintendo of America.
HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS??
"Doug Spencer Bowser is an American businessman, currently serving as the president of Nintendo of America. He succeeded Reggie Fils-Aimé as president in 2019, having previously worked for Procter & Gamble and Electronic Arts."
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Goodnight sweetheart... (Score:1)
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So long... (Score:2)
I hope his prison pals gave him the correct farewell message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
he didn't do anything wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
" conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, and trafficking in circumvention devices".
Everyone involved in his arrest and conviction should be tried and executed for human rights violations.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Sentenced to underthetable jobs (Score:2)
So you think he will be a prostitute?
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So you think he will be a prostitute?
Worse. I hear he is planning on going into politics.
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10 million? Not happening. (Score:2)
He will just end up declaring bankruptcy to get out of this. That's what people who were sued for downloading from Napster ended up doing when told to pay up millions in damages each.
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If this reference is right, bankruptcy won't help. https://www.spivacklaw.com/blo... [spivacklaw.com].
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From the article you linked to:
The Bankruptcy Code lists 19 types of debts that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy for public policy reasons. According to 11 U.S. Code 523(a)(7), a debt will escape the bankruptcy discharge if it is: ... ...
- Punitive, rather than compensatory;
And from the summary:
If Bowser manages to find a stable source of income in Canada, Nintendo will get a chunk of that as well. As part of a consent judgment, he agreed to pay $10 million to Nintendo, which is the main restitution priority.
If he owes that money to Nintendo as restitution for damages caused, then it looks like bankruptcy could make it go away (though the international nature of this will undoubtedly complicate the process). If that $10M debt were punitive, however, then it sounds like bankruptcy won't make it go away.
Disclaimer: IANAL
Fantastic dump though (Score:2)
Totally worth is this was a fantastic dump of unreleased ROMs.
Re: 10 million? Not happening. (Score:2)
Punishment vs Restitution (Score:1)
This problem comes up a lot in white collar crime: the act itself is a relatively minor offense, but the effect is great. This guy claims that he made only $320k from his piracy business, but the prosecution claimed that the damage to gaming companies (not just Nintendo) was $65 million... I'm reminded of people who break into a building and tear up all of the wiring and pl
Re:Punishment vs Restitution (Score:5, Insightful)
he's not being punished, that's over
Um. No.
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Part of the punishment is the fine. I agree that it's unfair, but his punishment isn't over - nor will it ever be unless he comes across a huge sum of money.
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That's not what it says. But you have to realise and understand that "intellectual property" is a legal fiction to make it easier for "creators" to be remunerated for their work. To turn that into "fuck the bourgeoisie" you have to conflate a few things. The means of production in this case is the creator, since the work is "intellectual"; it's his brain, his je ne sais quoi that makes his art "go".
The creation was paid for most like as a salary. The means of production is not the ideas but the disks.
I agree that selling modchips should be no more illegal than selling anything else that can be used for illegal purposes. I think the tough sell here is that he didn't come up with a legal alternative use for the modchips so he could say he has no control if users use it to hack their systems.
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But who really are these "others" and what is the "producing"? If we're talking made-to-contract games, the developers got their salaries and that's it. The publisher just prints more cartridges, but doesn't "produce" much of anything.
The mechanism is broken, for no more money ends up with the actual creators, as the "rights holders" made themselves gatekeepers.
You have identified the workers, who are the developers, and the bourgeoisie, who are the publishers who also hold the rights. And you're pretty clearly against the rights holders here. i.e.: fuck the bourgeoisie. It was a perfectly fine comment, and your argument at least made sense even if I didn't wholly agree with it.
Now you're doing some kinda backflips that don't make sense to me. I never suggested that you had anything against capital, nor would I suggest that about Marx. And of course th
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So you have two arguments: the prosecution's damage estimate was too high, and... the second one seems to be a Marxist argument - the damage was really only to the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, and not to the workers. So that's no real damage done, because fuck the bourgeoisie.
There's nothing inherently Marxist about having a problem with copyright. All copyright is is an artificial construct created by government so while a Marxist might have an issue with government laws designed to enriched the merchant class a capitalist might also object as copyright is just government telling people what they can or cant do and what they can or cant make money off of.
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If we're talking made-to-contract games, the developers got their salaries and that's it. The publisher just prints more cartridges, but doesn't "produce" much of anything.
Then why don't those developers under contract go into publishing if it is so easy, lucrative and they don't have to "produce" much of anything?
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It's a short sided argument that can be made for anything. Writers create a book and publishers just distribute it - no need to keep paying publishers since the creator of the idea got their money.
But then, publishers quit the business, authors no longer get paid, and everyone is out new stories.
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He sold mod chips that allowed for unlimited copyright infringement and in some cases both multiplayer access and cheating. The mod chip and installation was obviously significantly less than buying the games would be. As for the last part, blame Disney. IMO Copyright should go back to 2 14 year periods with an additional 3rd 60 year period for the sales but not distribution* rights of the 80%+ original work.
*Selling access to distribution would also fall under sales, so subscription sites would still be fo
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How about you "Scrape together two neurons and get it through your thick skull" that what people are having a problem with is the notion that a 10 million dollar fine is just "restitution". They fully understand that restitution != punishment, you are just disagreeing over which category this belongs in.
I am somewhat skeptical that he caused Nintendo that much in losses by selling mod chips. This smells like a case of plea-bargaining inflation. I mean, it also might NOT be, but there's enough reason to doub
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So this guy's punishment is over, and now he just needs to repair the damage that he caused.
Except he didn't actually do any damage, we know that downloaders buy more media across all categories, the downloads serve as advertising. Therefore this judgement was punitive.
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So to go through both of those conclusions: even if pirates buy more media than non-pirates, that does not mean that they wouldn't buy even more media than th
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The $4.5 million of the criminal judgement may be classified as restitution (I haven't read the decision), but I don't think you can say the same for the $10 million civil settlement. In that case Nintendo was asking for actual, statutory, and punitive damages, and the actual damages were significantly smaller that the other two. Since this settlement is an agreement to cover all of the claims of the lawsuit, it is fair to say that most of the amount is punishment not restitution.
He should have been a murderer or a politician (Score:3, Insightful)
He would have gotten off a lot more lightly.
Re: He should have been a murderer or a politician (Score:2)
Unless you murder a politician, then you never leave jail.
Something about the government not appreciating competition.
NYC Violence Hearing (Score:2)
In the congressional hearing about violence in NYC, a mother was complaining about a gang of people who murdered her son. The attacker who held her son down while he was stabbed to death by the others got one year in jail. So, you can be an accessory to murder and get off with a lighter sentence.
This is an utter obscenity (Score:2)
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Accounts receivable are valuable assets. Even if Nintendo went bankrupt, somebody could buy the debt and continue to collect on it.
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He could arrange to buy his debt at a hefty discount. It's not worth much, probably.
His next job (Score:3)
Re:His next job (Score:4, Insightful)
No reputable company wants to hire a tech guy with a criminal record due to public relations nightmare. If the guy could hack Nintendo, he has some marketable hacking skills. Guess who could use such skills and might not care about his criminal record, or even about garnishing his paycheck to pay Nintendo.
Spook agencies, mostly. The only question is which country.
Clearance (Score:1)
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Just try getting one with a felony. It actually requires a specific dispensation from the Secretary of Defense or one of the armed services. Literally had one of my guys go through a court case that covered this in the middle 00's. Dude had pled guilty to some financial crime in the early 90s working at AIG - he didn't benefit financially but they threatened his house and his wife's living situation so he took the plea due to lack of $$$. The two guys that did profit (insurance agents) both died of AIDS before the feds got to them, something about keeping a premium payment themselves rather than forwarding it on. Not that I blame them, given the death sentence they were operating under at the time. The guy I knew was the underwriter at the home office. Anyway the judge was sympathetic but there was not a thing he could do, statute law says what it says.
Of course, the person in question is Canadian, so one can assume it wouldn't be a U.S. spy agency anyway. The choices would likely be between Canada and some random foreign power.
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Re: His next job (Score:2)
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Dude these high profile hackers always get jobs. Freaking Sabu, Manning, and Lamo all got various gigs out of their lame hacking.
He should attack Nintendo in a destructive way (Score:2, Funny)
Re:He should attack Nintendo in a destructive way (Score:5, Funny)
Ok and now we’ve heard Microsoft’s take.
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If so, then I would be in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Microsoft.
This is like getting a $10M judgement for selling slim jims, which you can buy all over the internets. An example was made. That's not justice.
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I can see the attraction for this. If you're going to be crucified you might as well make it worth your while and get some satisfaction for it.
So Long Ga(r)y Bowser! (Score:1)