Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Comments

Pro-piracy

[sopssa]

I often see many pro-piracy comments on slashdot on these things (probably also because pirates are more interested on the matter). But many times these are actual damages caused to companies. Putting out that game a week before surely counted a lot of illegal downloading and people not buying the game. Sure it's bad to for him, but those are the lost money for Nintendo. What's so wrong about them suing him?

Re:Pro-piracy

[anss123]

What's so wrong about them suing him?

There's nothing wrong with them suing him.

The Pro-piracy comments you've seen is (probably) more directed towards "freedom" as the technologies/laws that limits piracy also limits that much valued freedom.

Ergo pro freedom = there will be piracy

Re:Pro-piracy

[Feef Lovecraft]

Having RTFA I'd be more intrested in how he obtained this advanced copy of the game for distribution, was it as simple as importating it from another region where it had been released or was it a lapse in security that enabled him to get hold of this game?

Re:Pro-piracy

[marcansoft]

And yet they still don't give a damn about piracy, technologically speaking, or at least they care about it a lot less than they care to annoy homebrewers and importers.

Proof: the last three iterations of Wii System Updates closed exploits used to run homebrew, but an ancient exploit that is still being used for piracy has remained untouched for that long (and counting). More proof: it would be trivial for them to detect and block modchips at the system update level, but so far they haven't even tried. Even more proof: NIntendo seems to be happy deliberately bricking your Wii if you have imported it, but it certainly hasn't even crossed their mind to do that for people who pirate. Yes, System Update 4.2 deliberately bricked all Korean Wiis that had been switched to the USA or EUR region. And by this I mean an explicit if(korean_detected()) { show_error_code_on_boot(003); }.

Re:Pro-piracy

[Alphathon]

Exactly. I don't think I've seen that many people on here advocate piracy, it's usually anti-anti-piracy laws, such as the proposed UK law where suspected filesharers can be cut off without trial, disproportionate fines (especially from the RIAA) or the treating of bittorrent as illigal regardless of what's being shared (open source software etc). This can't really be treated as any of those. It would seem that the fine is roughly equivalent to 15000 copies of the game. That's assuming none is added for the crime, so it seems like a fairly reasonable fine. The only possible problem I can see is that he had to give over access to social networking sites etc. as that has little to do with the crime.

Re:Pro-piracy

[marcansoft]

95% of the modchips out there are trivial to detect. They'll have stupid stuff like custom commands that can be used to identify them, and broken or flat out incorrect implementations of standard commands. Seriously. They aren't even trying. This isn't even remotely in the same league as Xbox 360 hacks and the like, which have evolved to be quite a bit stealthier due to Microsoft's detection efforts.

As for the exploit, it's the downgrade hole originally used by Comex's DVDX34 installer (which was quickly abused for other means) and more recently still used by Trucha Bug Restorer. We refuse to use this for homebrew because it involves altering (downgrading) system software, which we consider harmful, but it's there and it acts as a convenient fast-track for piracy (downgrade system software to vulnerable version, use that to install your favorite warez-pack). The exploit itself is rather silly: start installing something, which causes the system to copy the signed metadata to a temporary location. The FS permissions are set wrong, so you can delete it, write your own version with an artificially low version number, and finish the install. Then the system thinks you have an older version and will let you install any random ancient vulnerable version, as they only check signatures initially, not once things are installed.

Re:Pro-piracy

[Thansal]

I was going to write a post about that as well, and wondering why it would matter for an AUS release, as they actually have laws (or had, I assume they still exist) making region locking illegal, and thus importing media from else where a trivial matter.

However, I then looked up the release dates of the game. Australia got it on Nov 12th, NA got it on the 15th, EU got it on the 20th, and JP got it on Dec 3rd.

So, however he got it, he released it prior to ANYONE getting it, and probably in a region free version as well (though, I think Nintendo doesn't actually region lock their games, but I wouldn't swear to it).

Re:Pro-piracy

[RockinRobStar]

He was a manager at a computer games store. I would imagine they sent copies early to his store so they had stock to sell on release day. (From what I understand it was a world first release date).

Re:Pro-piracy

[davetv]

Reading the story on this link : http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/09/2814726.htm

It contains - "The matter was settled between Mr Burt and Nintendo last month."

I assume some sort of settlement has been agreed upon.

Re:Pro-piracy

[jamesh]

Seriously. They aren't even trying. This isn't even remotely in the same league as Xbox 360 hacks and the like, which have evolved to be quite a bit stealthier due to Microsoft's detection efforts.

So the choices are...

1. don't try, and people will copy your stuff
2. try, and people will defeat it and copy your stuff.

I wonder which of the above two options is cheaper?

Re:Pro-piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, that's a bit silly. First of all, nobody, or at least not I, have argued that he should go completely free, and secondly;Do you seriously think he'd be more or less of a deterrent if he had been hit with a $100 000 stick instead?

The difference is that there would have been some hope to actually pay that amount and move on with his life, rather than being stuck in eternal poverty with nothing left to lose really. By this decision justice has not been done, and nobody got deterred that wouldn't have been from a significantly lower sum. All that happened is that another economical desperado who can scoff any law which carries monetary punishments has been created.

Re:Pro-piracy

[paeanblack]

There's nothing wrong with them suing him.

He should go to jail. He used the special access his job gave him to steal from Nintendo. Yes, I used the s-word. Redistributing unpublished content is theft...he stole something valuable and monetizable from Nintendo (the right of first publication), and they don't have it anymore.

What he did was deliberate and premeditated. He abused a position of trust. There is no "Haha, just kidding" defense or excuse for this crap. This kind of shit severely weakens the man-years of effort expended towards fixing broken copyright laws.

He's not cute. He's not funny. He's a criminal.

Re:Pro-piracy

[rhsanborn]

Unfortunately, most of the comments I see tend to be freeloaders hiding behind a banner of freedom so they can feel all warm and fuzzy inside when they blindly download dozens of games without paying for them.

Re:Pro-piracy

[xtracto]

Hey marcan, first let me tip my hat for your work.

Second, I use some of those "oh noes piratz" enhancing mechanisms to copy my legally purchased games to a USB hard disk and play them. Note that I bought my Wii console while living in Britain, I have bought games in Mexico (where I am from) and USA (cheaper to ask a relative to get them from there) AND Germany (where I am currently living and playing games).

When I moved to Germany, I refused to take all my CDs/DVDs with me [Laugagge handlers at Lufthansa are a bunch of monkeys.. you should see the state of my bags when they arrived to Germany], therefore I put all the content (serveral music CDs, some DVD movies and several Wii games) into magnetic media and took them with me.

Having said that, I really applaud Nintendo for doing this specific move, and I completely believe that this is the *right* move to combat piracy.

It is not illegal to modify hardware you buy, it is not illegal to play a copy of your purchased media, however, IT IS illegal to distribute such media without copyright permit; and that is what Nintendo prosecuted with this guy.

Re:Pro-piracy

[DeKO]

The funny thing is the homebrew community does much more to fight piracy than Nintendo. They ban any app that even remotely might be used to facilitate piracy. And still Nintendo goes after the homebrew.

Re:Pro-piracy

[steelfood]

No, that's still not stealing. It's still copyright infringement. If he say, stole the disc from his company and kept it in a vault, then that would constitute theft. Otherwise, it's still copyright infringement.

Re:Pro-piracy

[Rasperin]

Actually, A/C has a valid point here. On the one hand some people download and never buy, on the other hand you have people who buy and only download so they have a digital back up.

In most realities people both buy and download, they buy the games, music, movies that are worth re-playing/listening/watching. And discard those which are utter crap, believe it or not pirating is capitalism at work. It forces companies to manufacture goods on a competitive level that needs to actually be better for the consumer, instead of the consumer blindly trusting the company made a good product. I literally put the right to pirate with the right for free speech; a company shouldn't censor reviews of it's product nor should it stop people from demoing it with the right to return. The biggest problem is you can't just buy a game anymore, install it, play it for a week and return it as most retailers will not allow you to return it.

Besides reviewing a game/album/movie there is also the entirely financial side to the fact. Put bluntly, I can't afford as much entertainment I consume, even with a 6figure income. This is where one might construe it as theft; I like to call it the ideals of communism; but in actuality it assists our economy further by making a more even distribution of wealth across the companies. Each generation has had a "thing" up to only 5-10 years ago. They were either Music (70's/80's) Movies (80's/90's) Games (90's/00's) where a market was fully owned by a genre but what you are seeing now is that people buy only what they want of each and pirate the rest that isn't important. Again, with my previous point, and so they're is more need to innovate a broader spectrum of things (eBooks, PC's/Laptops, Phones, Music, Movies, Games) without a particular class of that owning the market. Basically, the more we pirate the more we win as a consumer.

Just some food for thought. This guy was only enabling what our market is changing into and I support his actions.*Pirate Hat and Eye Patch* arghhhhhh.

Re:Pro-piracy

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention most of us are for fair copyright terms but fair was about 20 miles back and we have gotten into so disgustingly greedy it is ridiculous. I can point out what is wrong with this picture in a single sentence....Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been dead for nearly a half a century, yet one of his FIRST works, made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, is STILL under copyright.

There is a big fucking difference between fairly compensating the author so he/she can produce more art (which was the whole point of copyright, to enable those that create art incentive to create new works, which would then become ours through public domain) to allowing multinational corporations to pervert our system with treasonous bribery to create a license to steal. So while I am not a pirate, those that are? Really don't care. They robbed US FIRST, by stealing our public domain away from us, our kids, our grandkids, etc, and by locking our entire culture up behind a paywall. Copyrights were a contract, and the contract has been broken. "Forever minus a single day" is NOT limited copyrights, and until it changes and We, The People, get a spot at the negotiating table I can understand why folks wouldn't care about copyrights. After all, all they are doing is stealing from thieves.

Re:Pro-piracy

[rhsanborn]

I believe that if you consume more entertainment than you can afford, then you need to learn to do without some entertainment. Just because you can't afford as much as you'd like to have, doesn't entitle you to still have it without paying it. We aren't a communist society, and we don't exort communist ideals. If you can't afford it, learn to live without it.

Re:Pro-piracy

[qubezz]

More chilling - a corporation with suspicion of someone not 'busted' can get a court to confiscate every computer and device someone owns, and force them to turn over every password to every account they have so the company can root around for evidence for a civil matter (copyright infringement).

Maybe when the MafIAA alleges an IP address that might have been assigned to you at some point was infringing, and gets the thugs to toss your place and take anything they want and look at all your emails, texts, and friends online you might then want to complain, but you won't own anything electronic anymore to complain with.

Re:Pro-piracy

[Dhalka226]

Let me preface by saying that this case was actually a settlement and not a judgment, so my comments don't necessarily apply directly to this one case.

What's so wrong about suing? Nothing. The problem most people have is how bogus and utterly life-ruining the amounts are. Most people won't be able to pay something like $1.5MM. Ever. Whether an individual cares about piracy or not, right there we have to stop and question whether or not literally ruining a person's life is justice being served. Just because somebody did something wrong does not mean they don't deserve justice to be on their side, it must remain a two-way street.

Second, they just invent numbers. $1.5MM at, say, $50 retail, they're saying 30,000 people downloaded it in a week. Possible? Yes. Likely? I don't know. Accurate? Definitely not. The number was just pulled out of thin air, and even if the person admitted to what they did they can't defend against a fabricated number. Any defense that "well yes I did exactly what they're accusing me of, but I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY THAT MUCH!" is going to be ill-received. A person essentially has to defend themselves against evidence that doesn't actually exist.

Third, even if we had exact numbers of people who pirated a given piece of software, the damages are still unknown. This case is actually a perfect example of this. This is not a PC game, where you pirate it, press install and laugh as you saved yourself retail price. This is a Wii game. The only people who can pirate it are those with emulators or some modern-day equivalent of mod chips (are they outdated these days?). Let's say that 30,000 people is exactly correct for how many people downloaded it. You're talking 30,000 people all of whom belong to an audience who has to go well out of their way to pirate this game, not somebody who merely presses download. How many of these people do you honestly believe would have bought this game? These are people who literally are invested in their pirating setup, whether through the time (software download/setup) or actual expenses (potentially software, mod chips, etc). I guarantee the answer isn't 30,000. Beyond that, nobody knows. We can make an educated guess that it is much closer to 0 than 30,000 given our circumstances, but that's about it. Obviously not all cases present a scenario this extreme, but the question of what damages ACTUALLY are remain in every single one of these cases.

Fourth, a lot of us are uncomfortable or outright angry about the disproportionate resources at play. It's certainly not Nintendo's fault or problem that they're a relatively rich corporation and their lawsuit targets are almost always average joes, but it makes it almost impossible for somebody who didn't do what they're being accused of to defend themselves. It makes the lawsuits seem almost extortionate. The RIAA is a great example of this, as they basically send you settlement terms at the same moment they serve you and the settlements are always vastly under the amount they claim they're going to sue you for. It's a legally-permissible threat. "Pay us $X or we'll bring our hordes of lawyers to crush you for fifty times more." Even if you're innocent, you're going to pause and think long and hard about whether or not it's worth the fight. For that matter, even if you win your lawsuit (or they drop it--tack that on to the list of things that piss people off about lawsuits like this) you may ruin yourself financially. The costs to you will almost certainly be more than the settlement would have cost, and the odds of you recouping that money as part of a judgment have been slim thus far.

And fifth, if you're looking for explanations you can throw in the oft-heard differences between physical and digital goods, and mesh in the disproportionate punishments. You're almost better off actually stealing a physical good these days; the punishments are probably going to be less severe.

Put it all together and even people who might agree that p

Re:Pro-piracy

[himitsu]

Then we end up in this same situation.

Lately Nintendo, and Microsoft weirdly, have been more receptive to releasing Japan-only games in the US. I just bought Tatsunoko vs Capcom for the Wii which has a bunch of characters I have never heard of from 1970's anime. Microsoft is dipping their toe in the water on this as well by releasing Mushihimesama for the 360 without the usual region protections; the damn thing costs $75 to import from Japan but it will play on a stock US 360. It looks like they are recognizing that there is a global market for "niche" games.

Re:Pro-piracy

[ottothecow]

You seem to be missing the point.

This is not some guy who shared a wii game. He stole (and yes, in this context that is the correct term) an unreleased game from his employer and released it to the world. This is the same action that just landed that chinese guy a 15 year jail term--taking your employer's proprietary information is straight up illegal. We call it espionage when you take it to benefit a competing company/government...we call it leaking when you take it to spread around...but either way you commit a crime and become a criminal.

This has nothing to do with sharing a CD or something amongst your friends (or even your closest thousand torrent "friends")...that activity all occurred *after* this crime had been committed.

Re:Pro-piracy

[Cimexus]

It's true - region locking isn't permitted here. The most obvious manifestation of this is the fact that any DVD player you buy in Australia can play any region disc with no issues. Really pissed me off when I moved to the US for a few years and found I couldn't play any of my DVDs with a US DVD player except for the couple I had that were region 1 (I have an assortment of region 1, 2 and 4 DVDs, depending on which ones I could find cheapest on Ebay usually).

Secondly we don't exactly have "laws against violent videogames". We just don't have a classification above MA15+ for video games, so they get refused classification. Without a valid classification, they aren't allowed to be sold on retail shelves. So the effect is sorta the same, but there's a big difference between a law actively against something or banning something, and there just not being an appropriate legal category in which to place certain games. That's why this doesn't really conflict with the 'no region locking' laws ... I have plenty of RC (refused classification) games in Australia - I just bought them overseas or online (i.e. from a different region).

Slashdot tends to indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole when reporting situations in other countries than the US, particularly surrounding censorship issues - always keep that in mind.

Re:Pro-piracy

[AK Marc]

Gee, and I thought that he physically took an unreleased game disk without permission. I guess the Chinese spy didn't steal any secrets, he just committed minor infringement, and he should be released to China so as not to clog up our jails, courts, and prisons.

Re:Pro-piracy

[BikeHelmet]

Exactly. I don't think I've seen that many people on here advocate piracy, it's usually anti-anti-piracy laws, such as the proposed UK law where suspected filesharers can be cut off without trial, disproportionate fines (especially from the RIAA) or the treating of bittorrent as illigal regardless of what's being shared (open source software etc). This can't really be treated as any of those. It would seem that the fine is roughly equivalent to 15000 copies of the game. That's assuming none is added for the crime, so it seems like a fairly reasonable fine. The only possible problem I can see is that he had to give over access to social networking sites etc. as that has little to do with the crime.

Plus, most people here would only advocate it when it's obvious there's no losses.

Like TV shows. Many people here torrent TV shows. When's the last time you let an ad influence your purchasing decisions? A lot of us won't, so why cost the companies money, while also annoying yourself with ads? Plus, after watching a good TV show, many people talk about it. The overall net result is more viewers, even if the pirates provide no direct financial gain, and even if you feel they shouldn't have access to that content for "free".

But this is totally different. Many companies have gone under from stuff like this. Iron Lore Entertainment (the makers of Titan Quest) had their game released weeks early - but the crack was bug filled and crashed on almost all computers, part-way through the game. The result was horrible reviews lamenting its crash-prone buggy state. Abysmal game sales followed (not a problem for Nintendo), and they basically broke even after a few years, then closed up shop. Iron Lore would've been way better off having no copy protection. At least they wouldn't have had to fight with all the negative reviews. Demigod had a similar thing happen, but the pirated copies were only usable after the official release. Demigod had great sales. And unlike Titan Quest, even if a pirate copy crashed(I don't believe they did), people could verify the purchased ones didn't. It's the early release that can severely hurt the game, and is what should be punished.

I have a similar stance for movies released weeks before they officially air. It may build hype, or it may cause unimaginable damage. It really shouldn't be allowed. Can't we all just wait until after the release date?

P.S. I pirate games. (In the eyes of the law, and from the viewpoint of most publishers, I'm a law-breaking pirate scumbag.)

I hate DRM. I try to support content creators, but if you sell me a paperweight, I'm going to download a non-paperweight and play that. You already took away the option of getting a refund.

What I don't get is why companies have the right to cause direct financial harm. People don't, so companies shouldn't - and yet that's exactly what that Starforce/Securom combo did, burning out actual DVD drives - and SonyBMG, with their costly to remove rootkits. I think a lot of people support "piracy" because a lot of the time the companies are worse. They actually damage our stuff, and wield expensive lawyers to keep us in check. This leaked mario game is not one of those situations, so you'll find most of slashdot supporting Nintendo. But it's hard not to become a supporter of piracy when Sony or some other company kills your $100 DVD drive, and you need to reformat - possibly paying someone to do the job. (Keep in mind DVD drive prices from years back.)

There's a leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick, we need a plumber.

Re:There's a leak?

[anss123]

Quick, we need a plumber.

It has always amused me that the most popular video game character by far is a "fat Italian plumber" instead of mister "awesome cool superdude".

Re:There's a leak?

[Ivan Stepaniuk]

Recentrly, Spain's Plumbers association honored Mario "For 28 Years Of Plumbing Accomplishments"

Re:There's a leak?

[RavenofNi]

Duke, for all his shining attributes, was not perfect; even he ran out of gum.

Re:There's a leak?

[Totenglocke]

One of the recent big ones was a cynical doctor with a lame leg and drug addiction.

I think you meant "One of the recent big ones was a completely honest doctor with a lame leg and takes prescription pain killers for the pain his lame leg causes him".

Sorry, but it really irks me when people call House a drug addict when it's been clearly shown that he's not (when his leg was temporarily better from the end of season 2 through early season 3, he didn't take any Vicodin - if he was addicted, he'd have continued to take Vicodin even after the pain was gone). Also, it bugs me that people call being honest about shitty things "cynical", but that's a lesser annoyance.

Proportionality.

[headkase]

There should be some kind of proportion to the damages, seriously that amount ruins an ordinary person for the rest of their life. Did the court deliberately set out to give him a life sentence of sorts? And if the amounts are to be set at company rates for individuals he should have his own choice just to do some time for it. Seriously, go on a walk for 3 years and move on in your life instead of being sentenced to financial death for the rest of your natural time.

Re:Proportionality.

[Grantbridge]

That's why bankruptcy laws were introduced!

Re:Proportionality.

[Anonymous Coward]

In most countries bankruptcy does not delete money owed in judgements. I don't know how that works in Australia though.

Re:Proportionality.

[twoshortplanks]

Break this down on a personal level - if someone takes a mallet to my car, I'm going to sue them for the value of the damage to the car, i.e. what it costs to compensate me for the damage they caused. If someone burns down my house, I should be able to sue them for the value of the house. The loss they have caused is not mitigated by the ability they have to pay for it.

Now, if you're going down these lines you need to separate out the punitive damages from the actual damages. The former should be taken in context of the ability for the person to pay (i.e. if you're suing a multinational, you expect punitive damages significant enough for them to sit up and take notice.) The later should probably not be.

Re:Proportionality.

[GF678]

You have a point. BUT... the guy didn't just trip over and somehow end up leaking the game by accident. He made a conscious decision to do what he did, knowing full well it could land him in hot water. It was an easily avoidable situation which he chose to place himself into, and paid the price. A very high price, and probably an immoral price, but he made his choice.

Re:Proportionality.

[Blue23]

here should be some kind of proportion to the damages, seriously that amount ruins an ordinary person for the rest of their life. Did the court deliberately set out to give him a life sentence of sorts? And if the amounts are to be set at company rates for individuals he should have his own choice just to do some time for it. Seriously, go on a walk for 3 years and move on in your life instead of being sentenced to financial death for the rest of your natural time.

Your suggestion seems to be setting the amount as punishment, not as restitution for lost sales. Now, I think the $1.5 million in lost sales is highly debatable, but I would think that whatever amount is awarded should be to recover the amount of lost sales, not a punitive amount as punishment that's scaled to what the person makes.

To flip this around, if someone committed a premeditated violent crime that they are sentenced to jail for 20 years, I wouldn't expect them to reduce the sentence for a 70 year old because "20 years might be all he's got left, it's a life sentence" vs. the 25 year old who committed the same crime.

Re:Proportionality.

[Anonymous Coward]

In AU, there is the very rare "Part X" bankruptcy, which does wipe all debts completely after a decade or so. It's mostly intended for people who somehow owe so much money that they will never pay it off (happens a lot more that you would think, since eg. banks force people such as directors to be jointly and severally responsible personally for company debts even when acting with due diligence, and so on).

It does have serious downsides (something pretty close to "no more credit, ever", plus an awful lot of disqualifications from holding office in a corporation, and so on), so no lawyer or financial adviser will ever suggest it. Other types of individual bankruptcy are usually recommended instead; no other alternative ever voids or reduces (court-registered) debts.

Basically, if you owe less than a few million dollars, bankruptcy won't get you out of paying it eventually.

On the other hand, in this case, his choices are essentially:
1) Do prison time for copyright infringement. Have the stigma of being a criminal for years (or sometimes forever). Maybe get slapped with a civil judgment also, see (2)
2) Declare Part X bankruptcy. Have the stigma of being a bankruptee years (or sometimes forever).
3) Agree to pay millions in damages, probably over several decades.

I imagine his counsel recommended (3) as the best option, and he is very probably correct in the general case.

Re:Proportionality.

[jimicus]

I read TFA (I know, I know).

He hasn't actually been fined a single cent. The $1.5 million is an out of court settlement.

From what I understand (I don't know how true this is, IANAL), when settlements of this nature are made it's not uncommon for the company getting the settlement to make no real effort to actually get the money. They just wanted a big news headline saying "Man has been stung for $1.5 million for pirating our product".

Though if it's an out of court settlement, I daresay bankruptcy would probably make it go away altogether.

Re:Proportionality.

[whatajoke]

To flip this around, if someone committed a premeditated violent crime that they are sentenced to jail for 20 years, I wouldn't expect them to reduce the sentence for a 70 year old because "20 years might be all he's got left, it's a life sentence" vs. the 25 year old who committed the same crime.

Old age is considered all the time in parole hearings. Also, if you think $1.5x10^6 is an appropriate fine for a middle class fellow, why is that the upper class never gets fined for robbing the middle class of money to the tune of 10^12? If you are fine with that double standard, then you can blow me.

Re:Indecent Proposal

[hanako]

Ignoring your rude suggestions (Slashdotters don't like women? What a surprise!) the exact money figure is mostly a distraction from the issue. If he's done something *actually wrong*, then the fact that he can't pay the fine shouldn't mean that he gets off scot free. If he's done something that ISN'T wrong, then the fine being a thousand instead of a million makes little difference.

Re:Satoru Iwata, wtf?

[KDR_11k]

Meh, teaches him consequences. Do bad things, get punished. Maybe his parents should've taught him that lesson before he learned it the hard way.

Re:Indecent Proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

What a heap of ill thought-out bullshit.

The defendant not having enough money isn't a valid reason for giving him a fine that, to him, is an economical death-sentence. "Scot free" doesn't even enter it. Why should a multimilionaire get a slap on the wrist if even that, and a poor guy get the economical death-sentence for the same crime? And is this a "crime" that really should carry the economical deathpenalty? Should any offence? Is it even consistent with human rights and the constitution of the United States?

(Yes, I know this wasn't a criminal case, but we're discussing principles here.)

Re:Instead of homebrew, get an Aspire Revo

[marcansoft]

Both the Xbox1 and the Wii can run Linux. On the Wii nowadays this means using BootMii + Mini, which is a completely new framework that has no relation to any Nintendo code (though strictly speaking it isn't cleanroom, as we didn't go through the cleanroom process which involves having separate teams write a spec and implement the software to it). This is a completely legal setup as far as we know.

"Native" Xbox1 homebrew (running on the Microsoft kernel) uses the Microsoft SDK, which makes binaries illegal to distribute. Most "Native" Wii homebrew (using Nintendo's IOS) uses a "homebrew" library (libogc) that is derived from a decompiled version of the Nintendo Gamecube SDK (exceptions: exploit stuff which is based on segher's Twilight Hack codebase, TinyLoad which also is, little else), so effectively most Wii homebrew binaries are also illegal. However, the author of this decompilation pretend the code was an original work of his for a long time, and by the time we found out just how ripped it was everyone and their mom was using this library, so the net result is that most know that the resulting Wii binaries are about as illegal as the Xbox1 ones, but everyone pretends they aren't and they are happily distributed through "official" channels.

No, I don't approve of the latter.

Re:Curious...

[Farmer Tim]

Australian game releases typically lag behind other regions.

Australia: kicked from the world for unacceptable latency.

New Super Mario Bros Highest sold Wii game?

[adosch]

Nintendo is going to do what any other software mongrel in the free world is going to do when their production is illegally propagated to the masses. However, let's not overshadow the fact that the New Super Mario Bros Wii game did sell over 10 million copies as pointed out a little over 2 weeks ago.

Just for fun, I'd like to see what Nintendo's exterior argument was from 'loosing sales' because, clearly, they capitalized on the sales aspect and in any retail store I've been in recently in my area, even a month or better past the holiday season, has the game completely sold out.

Furthermore, pirating a game like New Super Mario Bros Wii, to me, seems quite contradictory. It's $50 in the store, but it's not like you don't get the gameplay you desire out of it. My wife and I have had this game since late Decemeber 2009 and we've played it daily ever since. With 8 regular levels and 8 unlockable coin levels to conquer, all the easter eggs to discover and the nostaliga of getting to play a killer 2-D game again on a modern-day gaming console, if you don't think that's worth your $50, I pitty you.

Re:New Super Mario Bros Highest sold Wii game?

[nedlohs]

I remember people who pirated Quake 2 and then played it for 2 hours a day for the next 3 years - I don't think value for money enters the equation.

There's also the "getting the game before the release" aspect that people seem to like.

Re:New Super Mario Bros Highest sold Wii game?

[kramerd]

The number of copies actually sold is irrelevant. The damages from releasing without having the right to release is the problem.

First of all, nintendo hires good lawyers, who would spell check their complaint, and would complain about losing sales, not "loosing" them (I don't care what part of englandindiaturkmenistan you come from, how the hell do people keep making this error that first graders who are still learning the alphabet wouldn't?). Furthermore, the claim that releasing a game without permission to the general public causes lost sales is about as valid as a claim gets. The fact that none of these sales generated money for nintendo is legally irrelevant; its about the ability to control intangible assets of a corporation. Nintendo's case, to put it in football terms, isn't just a blowout, its GT vs Cumberland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Cumberland_vs._Georgia_Tech_football_game).

Re:Instead of homebrew, get an Aspire Revo

[marcansoft]

It's mostly IRC logs, but I can put up a more detailed report if you're interested.

The gist is that libogc can be mostly broken down like this:

• "Imported" libraries like lwip, lwbt, wiiuse, etc. that were developed separately and then merged into the tree. These should be OK
• LWP threading system. I think a bit of this might have some remnants of the Nintendo stuff (maybe in exception handlers or the like), but most of it is shagkur's original work. As a threading system it totally sucks, but that's better than being illegal.
• New Wii stuff to interface with IOS. This can be broken down into basically stuff shagkur (the "author" of libogc) "wrote" by decompiling the Wii SDK, and stuff that everyone else wrote. Thankfully the former isn't too much and could be replaced given some effort.
• The old Gamecube drivers. This is where the huge problem lies. Stuff like handling of pads, memory cards, EXI/SPI devices (RTC, ROM, etc.), audio, DSP, video, graphics, and even the matrix math library. These are all inherited in Wii mode and required. The problems range from identical APIs but different code (not too common), through mostly manually decompiled code with the same APIs (most of it), to straight ripped assembly code (matrix math library and a few system tidbits) and at least one binary blob ripped verbatim from Nintendo (the DSP program to perform memory card unlocking).

The big fat problem is the GX driver (graphics). Everything else could be replaced with little to average effort, and the hardware is documented enough to get it to work.

Personally, though, once the large obstacle that is legal GX is overcome, I'd advocate developing an entirely new system from scratch, based on Linux or eCos or some other embedded OS, working on top of mini and ditching Nintendo's IOS. I've tried to get people interested in such a project for quite a while but haven't really found any significant support, and by now I've mostly move away from the Wii and on to other systems.

Re:Wii homebrew legal status

[marcansoft]

I'll see what I can do about the report.

Linux has some extra overheads, which is why I suggested eCos, althought the kernel does boot in a of couple seconds and the userspace framework could be very thin. USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi are already supported by Linux (they're standard chips/interfaces). Mini doesn't have to support anything, as it can just enable direct access by the PPC by flipping some bits in a register (this is how Linux works), and the advantage of offloading driver support to the Starlet CPU isn't much (the main purpose of Starlet in the Wii architecture is security separation and WC24 mode, not offloading drivers). I have a feeling eCos should be able to support USB, Bluetooth, and SD with ease. Wi-Fi would need some porting of the Linux b43 driver.

It's worth noting that not running under IOS gains you 11MB of RAM. Linux already takes advantage of this when running under mini, not to mention that hardware support is a lot better, faster, and more featureful than when running legacy Linux under IOS. For example, Linux under mini has proper Wi-Fi support and the SD/USB transfer rates are much faster than under IOS.

NAND filesystem is pretty much useless and discouraged; it's a lot safer to live our homebrew lives inside an SD card or other external storage, unless you want to dedicate a Wii to Linux use or something like that (but in that case you might as well use JFFS2).

Re:Curious...

[Hatta]

I'm more curious as to how they caught him. Are pre-release copies of the game watermarked? Or did he just have a big mouth?