[HN Gopher] Nintendo's big piracy case is a sad story ___________________________________________________________________ Nintendo's big piracy case is a sad story Author : danso Score : 119 points Date : 2022-06-08 11:46 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (kotaku.com) (TXT) w3m dump (kotaku.com) | rjh29 wrote: | Has anyone actually looked at the Switch piracy situation? There | are dozens of people running pirate eshop clones run of Google | Drive hosting all games and DLC, people just connect a client to | it and download whatever they want. The domains are on | bulletproof TLDs and the Google accounts rotate, often using free | university accounts with terabytes of storage. | | I guess Nintendo don't care because the number of hacked Switch | devices is pretty low, and targeting hardware modifications is | easier than going after the elusive software end of things. | [deleted] | smoldesu wrote: | Believe it or not, that's actually legally very difficult to | prosecute. NSP and XCI files are unusable without a signing key | that attests the owner has purchased the game, which makes them | a perfect candidate for the "backups and archives" clause of | the DMCA act. | | On the other hand, what Bowser did was pretty much indefensibly | a crime. He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to | customers for a profit, something he knew was privileged IP, | but he continued to sell them anyways. | Retr0id wrote: | > He distributed Nintendo's private signing keys to customers | | No, he didn't. | smoldesu wrote: | The TX mod was designed to use XCI files, which required a | signing key to run right? Their firmware had no way to | launch software without keys. | Retr0id wrote: | They patched out the signature checks from the firmware. | | Nintendo's private keys are stored in HSMs, theres very | little chance of them getting stolen. | danuker wrote: | Nintendo will never see my sponsorship ever again. | mproud wrote: | Thanks to Mr. Bowser, Nintendo was forced to release a new | Nintendo Switch? Do they really mean chip or firmware | modifications? | aasasd wrote: | Idk how I'm expected to read anything on that site when a lot of | unrelated junk keeps occupying the screen instead. | xivzgrev wrote: | I can't believe this guy's last name is Bowser. This is exactly | something King Koopa would do. | austinprete wrote: | Interestingly enough the president of Nintendo of America is | Doug Bowser. So this case is basically Bowser v. Bowser | bobbyi wrote: | The lawyer who defend them in Universal City Studios v. | Nintendo was John Kirby. | | Although that one's not a coincidence because they named the | character after him | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(attorney) | zzzeek wrote: | is this everyone on HN's first time reading that prison is not | very good for people? kids get longer sentences for stealing | candy bars. the entire prison system is state organized torture | and it basically shouldn't exist. | aaron695 wrote: | Synaesthesia wrote: | We arrest criminals, throw them.in a torture chamber for years | and then are surprised that they aren't rehabilitated. | | If harsher prison sentences "deter" people from crime, why does | the US not have a lower crime rate than Europe or Japan? | Clearly other factors are at play, including, I think, the high | degree of alienation in our society. | | I think it's important that we think abour abolishing orisons | and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the system. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | > I think it's important that we think abour abolishing | orisons and looking at the brutality ans arbitrariness of the | system. | | I'm all for doing _something_ , but what do you use to | replace the prison system? Just don't arrest people? | stefantalpalaru wrote: | boomboomsubban wrote: | The Axios piece linked gives an entirely different view of the | case. Like the judge saying | | >"What do you think?" Lasnik asked Nintendo's lawyer at one | point. "What else can we do to convince people that there's no | glory in this hacking/piracy?" | | https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/nintendo-hacker-court-trans... | | The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA is absurd. | fxtentacle wrote: | What a coincidence that the guy's last name is literally the name | of a famous Nintendo antagonist. | | TLDR: Apparently he was involved with Xecutor selling modchips. | superdisk wrote: | How on earth is selling mod chips illegal? | TAForObvReasons wrote: | In this case, advertising the ability to pirate games removed | any plausible deniability | boomboomsubban wrote: | He pled guilty to violating the DMCA. | mlyle wrote: | There's a lot of Bowsers that pop up in correlation with | Nintendo. Doug Bowser is the president of Nintendo of America. | owlninja wrote: | Somewhat related, the President of Nintendo of America is Doug | Bowser. | bitwize wrote: | NOA's current president has the same last name (but doesn't | appear to be a relation). A fact which Nintendo played off of | in Nintendo Directs: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfr0q1wSc | philips wrote: | > I personally haven't got the vaccine, and the reason, I am | skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I | haven't been able to actually have proper medical treatment | because I haven't been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to | see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. | When I first got arrested, I was 410 pounds. I had to use a | wheelchair. | | The lack of proper healthcare for someone in custody is an | embarrassment to the country. | bena wrote: | First: He's probably been told that he can get the vaccine just | fine which is why he puts the condition of having a "one-on- | one" there. He was likely told based on a doctor reviewing his | medical history and condition. | | However, healthcare for the incarcerated in general is pretty | poor. In this regard, he's not really outside the norm. | giraffe_lady wrote: | what hn imagines: a nurse or prison paramedic taking the | concern seriously and relaying it to a doctor familiar with | the patient's charts and medical history "I checked with your | doctor and he said it's fine" | | reality: a prison guard with his own health problems from a | TBI in iraq who did AED cert for the extra $.50/h just | meeting this patient for the first time "I checked with your | doctor and he said it's fine" | | Yeah I'm gonna trust the prisoner's estimation of how | trustworthy the medical advice he's receiving is. | gamblor956 wrote: | Reality: a nurse relays the inmate's concerns to a doctor | overwhelmed with patients who is not familiar with this | particular inmate's medical background, unless that inmate | is already a regular in the infirmary. | | Prison doctors are actually doctors. But like most doctors | these days, they're usually too overwhelmed with patients | and too underwhelmed with resources to do much more than | triage. | gowld wrote: | You are going to catch covid. I am going to catch covid. | Everyone is going to catch covid. At 410 lbs, life is a | death trap, prison doubly so, vaccine or not. | pessimizer wrote: | You're right, there's no need for health care for the | fat. They're going to die anyway. The sicker people are, | the less we should take care of them. | philips wrote: | Yeah I agree we don't know the full circumstances. But the | data coming out of the pandemic in particular has been a | mess. Like the stories of inmates having to improvise masks. | | https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/jails-prisons-vaccine- | prio... | if_by_whisky wrote: | I used to work for an expert witness who testified on valuations | in IP infringement cases. I really lost faith in the way the US | handles IP infringement in that job. I know patents are | contentious in tech, but sometimes I think copyright is just as | bad. I know it's not a popular opinion, but seeing how things | actually play out really made me feel for defendants in those | cases. | | Regardless of what you think of the effectiveness of IP | protection, the way damages are calculated (and ultimately | determined by courts) is just awful. I haven't looked at the | specifics of that $65M calculation, but if the real number were | closer to $650k I wouldn't be surprised-- 2 orders of magnitude | was a pretty typical spread between plaintiff and defendant | expert witnesses' valuations in the IP cases I worked on. | efitz wrote: | There is a very real cost to society to provide patent and | copyright. We have to have additional law enforcement, court, | and prison capacity. It's not clear at all to me that society | is getting its money worth in defending essentially rent | seeking behavior from big business. It's also not clear that | either patent or copyright in their current form actually | "promote progress in the useful arts". | | I hate the terms "intellectual property" and "piracy" because | patent and copyright are not much like property at all, and | because actual piracy is a crime of violence and nothing like | infringement. And it's not clear to me that the punishments | inflicted are reasonable given the impact of the "crime". | | Given that, I believe that we would be better off without | patent or copyright, or with only a very modest time period of | a couple years. | ChadNauseam wrote: | How would you fund things like the discovery of new drugs, or | the creation of big-budget movies, without parents and | copyright respectively? | willcipriano wrote: | It isn't 1900 anymore. With things with additive | manufacturing and other innovations you can go from prototype | to product faster than ever. A few year head start should be | sufficient reward for most innovations. Perhaps you could | handle the special cases (ie. somebody spends a billion | dollars to invent a engine that runs on water) as one offs. | | Same with movies, television shows and music. They just don't | have the impact they used to. You can do special effects for | a few grand that cost a million dollars a few decades ago. As | it is faster and easier than ever to make a movie, we don't | need to offer such a long period of time for exclusivity. | fxtentacle wrote: | Well in this case, we're talking about a industry espionage and | modchip crew that has been around since the first Xbox. I | personally know people who used their products and (as the | result) never ever purchased a game that they played. So my | experience would suggest that Xecutor modchips were really | popular. I'm pretty sure $65m is a rather conservative estimate | of the lost sales that they caused. | shakes_mcjunkie wrote: | If the chips didn't exist though would they have actually | bought every one of those games? Would they have bought the | console? I doubt this is information that could actually be | gathered and calculated accurately as damages. | fxtentacle wrote: | There's likely millions of people in a situation like me. | If each of them only didn't buy one single $60 game because | of the modchip, then that sums up to $60 mio. | | I agree that pirated copy != lost sale. But if you play 20+ | games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure without modchip it would | even out at maybe buy+play 5 games. Plus there's games like | the Zelda series that every hardcore fan will play. So for | those games, I think it is fair to assume 50% of piracy | would have been a lost sale. | | And lastly, how do you know that people didn't "buy" their | cracked games? When I was traveling Asia, you could buy a | modchipped Switch and bootlegged games in the same store. | So then you still pay $5 for a new Switch game, it's just | that the money goes to some Chinese counterfeit group, not | to Nintendo. | gowld wrote: | > But if you play 20+ games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure | without modchip it would even out at maybe buy+play 5 | games. | | This is absolutely absurd. | | Look at the modern internet. "Free" is consumed at rates | far more than 4x of "paid equivalents that existed before | the free option". | BiteCode_dev wrote: | > There's likely millions of people in a situation like | me | | Unlikely. Most console users don't even know what modding | mean, and among the few that do, fewer even make the step | to do it. It's not trivial. | | It's very niche, at least in the occidental markets. | deweywsu wrote: | p1necone wrote: | There have been periods of my life where I pirated almost | every game I played. If it wasn't for piracy... I wouldn't | have bought any games, because I didn't have any money to | spend on them. | | Then Steam and Actually Having a Job happened and I didn't do | that any more. | | I still pirate games, but it's only ones that aren't being | sold any more, so I don't see who's missing out there. | shakes_mcjunkie wrote: | Isn't it also just generally impossible to say if a sale was | lost because of piracy? A pirated copy may never have actually | been a sale and how would anyone know? | jonny_eh wrote: | You could say the same of a stolen DVD. Would the thief have | otherwise paid for the DVD? At least in the case of a | physical good, you could argue that the item being stolen | "may" have prevented someone else from buying it, but even | then there's no guarantee. | entropicdrifter wrote: | And in the case of the stolen DVD, the DVD is physically | gone from where it was. In the case of digital copies, | nothing is lost besides the _potential_ for one particular | sale. | tshaddox wrote: | That's a totally different, much simpler question. A stolen | DVD is very clearly a reduction in the number of DVDs the | seller can possibly sell. | jraph wrote: | Devil's advocate, it's not that simple. Producing a DVD | is cheap, the seller can produce them for almost nothing | per unit (not zero though). | | It could be that this stolen DVD allows N people to | discover its content and buy the DVD. The seller wins | from this stealing even for a small N. N could be bigger | than when downloading the movie instead, because the DVD | can be seen in a shelf for example. | | Is it fundamentally different? (it's a genuine question, | I have not studied anything on the matter). | | The only difference I see is that almost nothing = zero | when downloading the DVD's content instead of stealing | the physical object. | | edit: I actually see a difference, there's no guarantee | that a stolen DVD does produce any sale, and so there is | a loss even if it is small, but I think the question is | still not simple to answer. | tshaddox wrote: | > Producing a DVD is cheap, the seller can produce them | for almost nothing per unit (not zero though). | | That's true, although I was thinking more about retailers | who presumably pay much more than the marginal cost | (though still much less than the retail price). It's also | probably true that copyright laws are responsible for the | vast majority of the commercial value of physical copies | of digital media. Perhaps an easier way to see the | fundamental difference is that when you're downloading a | copy of a movie from BitTorrent, all the parties actively | involved are willing participants. | | > It could be that this stolen DVD allows N people to | discover its content and buy the DVD. | | This is also a real possibility, and is a strong argument | for copyright holders to rethink their business models | (and, in my view, for societies to rethink copyright | laws). But I don't think it's a strong argument for | treating the theft of a physical DVD and someone | torrenting a movie as being remotely comparable. | [deleted] | thaumasiotes wrote: | > A stolen DVD is very clearly a reduction in the number | of DVDs the seller can possibly sell. | | But that's not true; you would have to assume that the | number of DVDs the vendor orders is independent of the | number of DVDs the vendor loses to all forces including | both sales and theft. That assumption is obviously false. | If you run a store, you're not limited to ordering a | single shipment of whatever DVD; if it sells well, you | can order additional shipments. | fcsp wrote: | Not if it's stolen from a person who bought it, instead | of a warehouse | duped wrote: | If the DVD was taking up shelf space and no one was buying | it the thief might actually be saving them money | jonny_eh wrote: | > If the DVD was taking up shelf space | | I think in 2022, that's true of most DVDs. | lmm wrote: | The damages are at least the wholesale price of the DVD | (probably half the consumer price) in that case. With | piracy that becomes harder because the marginal cost is | zero. | midasuni wrote: | In many cases copyright infringement doesn't result in a lost | sale. If the copyright holder refuses to sell the product, | then surely the damages are zero. | | The majority of copyrighted material is not available for | purchase | vanderZwan wrote: | A lot of early studies on piracy suggested that it actually | promotes sales more than it removes them. It's just that this | is mainly on the side of the less famous musicians, artists, | etc, because it gives them more reach (in the case of music | people were less likely to try out their stuff if they only | had a limited budget to buy records and little opportunity to | listen to albums beforehand). It's mainly the biggest | mainstream acts that see reduced sales. | | Personally I don't have much of an issue with that. Of | course, this was before streaming was a thing so who knows if | the effects of piracy on sales have shifted again as a result | of that. | | And then there is of course the angle that we're artificially | limiting supply of digital goods anyway, but that's an | entirely different can of worms. | dubswithus wrote: | > I personally haven't got the vaccine, and the reason, I am | skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I | haven't been able to actually have proper medical treatment | because I haven't been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to | see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. | | He talks as if he's one of the first obese persons to be eligible | for the vaccine. | racl101 wrote: | Of course Mario will stick it to a guy named Bowser. | I_am_tiberius wrote: | Nintendo should be ashamed. | danuker wrote: | They probably lobbied for the law. I know I'm boycotting them. | ydnaclementine wrote: | rsync wrote: | What is the crime here ? | | Is this a DMCA violation for using modchips to defeat an IP | protection scheme ? | | I am not up to date on the current jurisprudence here - if I | clean-sheet reverse engineer (Nintendo hardware) is it considered | illegal to create and market modchips based on that ? | | Or did they have proprietary code/firmware/loaders copied into | them ? | rhexs wrote: | I believe they were selling software packages that ran due to | the modchips that were advertised to enable piracy. | | Had they not shipped code-signing patches and advertised this | as a way to private games, I'm curious if the defense would | have been easier. What'd they get him on -- the DMCA? | | "Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic | in Circumvention Devices" | boomboomsubban wrote: | He pled guilty to the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA. Any | attempt to bypass DRM is illegal, save for a number of | exemptions listed by the Library of Congress every two years. | So yes, your reverse engineering would be illegal. | izzydata wrote: | How can that be possible? What if I made the worlds worst DRM | and then sued everyone who bypassed it? How can bypassing DRM | even be illegal? If someone owns their hardware then you can | do any hardware or software modifications you want to it. | Retr0id wrote: | I believe the wording used is "effective technological | protection measure". So it's presumably up to the courts to | decide whether the DRM was "effective" in the first place. | (I am not a lawyer etc. etc.). I suspect it largely comes | down to intent. To make an analogy, you'd still be on the | hook for breaking-and-entering, even if your victim's front | door was made of cardboard. | | > How can bypassing DRM even be illegal? | | Same way anything else can be illegal, they made a law | saying so. | boomboomsubban wrote: | The law includes a definition of that term | | >a technological measure "effectively controls access to | a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its | operation, requires the application of information, or a | process or a treatment, with the authority of the | copyright owner, to gain access to the work. | | So bypassing trivial DRM is still a crime. | d_meeze wrote: | You may want to support the EFF in their challenge to this | law: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-appeals- | court-ru... | [deleted] | smoldesu wrote: | It's an interesting story, I used to be part of the modding | community so I can lend some insight here. | | In the early days of Switch hacking, there were mostly people | just poking and prodding at different parts of the console to | see if it would spit out interesting stuff. Fairly rudimentary | stuff, like checking for secret Amiibo with custom NFC tags, | hacking together Joycon drivers and even opening the device to | play with the exposed hardware: all of it perfectly legal. | Eventually though, someone found the secret switch on the | bookshelf (shorting out one of the physical controller | connector pins if you're curious), and the community was off to | the races to design a custom bootloader/firmware like they did | on the 3DS and Wii. | | This is where the problems start, as I'm sure most people here | would know. Messing with software is a dangerous thing (legally | speaking), and so effectively 2 camps were formed: | | - Team Xecuter, a close-knit circle of devs who intended to | hack the Switch come Hell or hard-modding. They had no | stipulations against using leaked code, directly profiting off | their customerbase or inflaming their community, when it came | down to it. | | - Team Atmosphere, an open-source project that went with the | "slow and steady" approach, attempting to find an ethical | softmodding solution that could easily be applied to any Switch | without fear of legal repercussion. | | Both of these teams would fight each other viciously over the | course of 2 or 3 years. Team Xecuter was first to figure out | game piracy, but Atmosphere had a working warmboot before | Xecuter did. Atmosphere was able to install games locally | before Xecuter could, but Xecuter figured out booting from | attached storage before Atmosphere did. The groups traded blows | like this continually until, like Napoleon looking out on the | Mediterranean, there were no more features to conquer. Xecuter | had an easy-to-install commercial hardmod that was almost | exclusively designed for piracy, while Atmosphere had polished | off a more difficult but rewarding softmod, with emulation and | homebrew capabilities (and eventually piracy, too). | | So, what was Team Xecuter's crime? Putting the signing keys in | the hardmods they sent out. With every successive Switch | firmware update, Nintendo would issue a new list of attestation | keys that came with each game purchase. To allow unsigned games | to be booted, TX packed in these keys (and offered them on a | monthly basis afterwards to hardmod owners), which really sent | Nintendo off, leading to arrests like the one mentioned here. | Atmosphere remains thankfully untouched today, and even though | the odds looked stacked against them, they have delivered the | most polished Nintendo Switch modding experience you could ask | for. It's quite wonderful stuff, especially if you've ever | wondered "how would this Python script run on Switch...?" | | ...oh, and the Switch modding community was absolutely _insane_ | for those few competitive years. There were a few other | noteworthy community villains like Blawar, but that 's a story | for a different time. | roastedpeacock wrote: | I said in a previous discussion | | > Nintendo have had a conflicted stance about community | projects over the years. From threatening UltraHLE (early | Nintendo 64 emulator) developers back in the late 90s to | largely ignoring the Wii exploits and homebrew scene in the | mid-to-late 2000s to attempting to hire private investigators | to identify and implicate 3DS homebrew developers in | 'illegal' activities. | | Ultimately I think if Xecuter did not have their product so | closely intertwined with enablement of piracy and | distribution of copyrighted content it would leave Nintendo | less legal ammo to use against them and potentially make it | not worth pursuing. | | Important to note the RCM exploit only works for the first | revision of Switch units. This does not justify other | potential crimes Xecuter may have done but certain previous | mod-chips for certain previous consoles have been open-source | in a clean-room design not including copyrighted content by | the original vendors thus potentially removing issues of | copyright infringement. Sad the Switch scene could not be the | same. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-09 23:00 UTC)