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Nintendo ‘hacker’ out from prison early due to good behavior, has to pay 10 million

Alebrije

Member
He has two options..be Nintendo's slave for ever or fly to Venezuela or Nicaragua and dissapear from Nintendo's ninjas...
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Isn't this like super speculation? People begin to act against Nintendo before they have even madr the first step. Some just love to lighten up their torches.
A good point. The guy has just been court ordered to pay Nintendo. As it stands right now, that whole $10 million is immediately payable. But, seeing as the guy (probably) doesn't have $10 million lying around, his next step will be to come to a payment agreement with Nintendo's legal or finance team. If, for whatever reason, they're not able to come to a mutual payment agreement, then Nintendo has the right to file a wage garnishment with the courts. Once they take that step, then yeah he'll automatically have 25-30% of his take home pay from his job given to Nintendo to go towards the outstanding balance until it's paid off (never).

I've seen people get hit with giant fines like this, and the company agrees to some crazy low payment plan like $100 a month. Other times, I've seen people pay nothing and the company doesn't bother proceeding with filing the wage garnishment paperwork.

The ball is fully in Nintendo's court at this point to be as ruthless of benevolent as they want.
 
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reinking

Gold Member
This might be the kind of thing that would push me to be one of those street beggars I see when I am driving around town. Unreported income? 🖕 Nintendo.
 

Nydius

Member
Maybe don’t do the crime in the first place?

The bro pleaded guilty, so it’s hard for me to feel bad for the criminal.
Criminal level copyright infringement shouldn’t result in potential lifetime destitution. The damage done to Nintendo, while quantifiable, is negligible in terms of their total value and profitability. Meanwhile, this guy will go to his grave owing Nintendo money and his criminal record will limit employment options.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Criminal level copyright infringement shouldn’t result in potential lifetime destitution. The damage done to Nintendo, while quantifiable, is negligible in terms of their total value and profitability. Meanwhile, this guy will go to his grave owing Nintendo money and his criminal record will limit employment options.
But again. Don’t be a criminal, and you don’t have to be treated like one the rest of your life.
 

Skifi28

Member
Maybe don’t do the crime in the first place?

The bro pleaded guilty, so it’s hard for me to feel bad for the criminal.
Being guilty and being made an example of for the rest fo your life is quite different. We might as well start executing everybody, they did commit the crime after all.

And what about that 10 million sum? How did they reach that amount? It's a silly estimate very unlikely to be realistic, it's a corporation stomping on an individual because they can. Yeah, they did commit a crime, but two wrongs don't make a right.
 
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angrod14

Member
This doesn't make much sense. Can't he just resort to bankrupcy and come clear over a period of time? Because obviously his debt far exceeds his assets and ability to pay.
 

Fbh

Member
This is an excellent point.

tHx9Gqr.jpg

Basically
That's not to say I'm against the idea of a fine but it should be proportional to the earnings and net worth of the one getting fined.

Making someone who isn't a millionaire pay $10 million is ridiculous, he'll never be able to make that type of money.
Meanwhile companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft can screw over millions of customers and they get fined at most a single digit percentage of their yearly income


But again. Don’t be a criminal, and you don’t have to be treated like one the rest of your life.

So you think Sony should have been fined $500 billion and all their Australian executives sent to jail for breaking the law, right?
All they had to do was not act as criminals
 
Damn, he only made 320k over 7 years being part of this hacker group? Well, he got really fucked by Nintendo and the US Justice Department.


Oh well sucks for him, but I just don't really care about people who is part of a criminal scheme that profits from pirated material.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Being guilty and being made an example of for the rest fo your life is quite different. We might as well start executing everybody, they did commit the crime after all.

And what about that 10 million sum? How did they reach that amount? It's a silly estimate very unlikely to be realistic, it's a corporation stomping on an individual because they can. Yeah, they did commit a crime, but two wrongs don't make a right.
The person did the crime is not some toddler, if you try to screw with big multi billion company, they will come after you with full force, he should have known this might happen.

Is what Nintendo is doing fair? Absolulty not, but big companies are not your buddy, they have no problem fuck you over if you cross them.
 

PSYGN

Member
Damn, he only made 320k over 7 years being part of this hacker group? Well, he got really fucked by Nintendo and the US Justice Department.


Oh well sucks for him, but I just don't really care about people who is part of a criminal scheme that profits from pirated material.

That's what I was thinking. Dividing that up is like $45k a year, he must've made more money on some other side hustles or maybe he just genuinely loved doing what he did at that time and didn't mind getting paid so low.
 
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"don't do the crime if you can't do the time" and he did what? 65 million in damages? If that's the case, he got off easy with Nintendo settling for a 55 million dollar loss. At least they can make up some of that by using this guy as an example.
 

Skifi28

Member
The person did the crime is not some toddler, if you try to screw with big multi billion company, they will come after you with full force, he should have known this might happen.

Is what Nintendo is doing fair? Absolulty not, but big companies are not your buddy, they have no problem fuck you over if you cross them.
The problem in this case is that regardless of what one did, should a corporation and their army of lawyers have free reign to exact unjust punishment as they see fit? They' re not the law, shouldn't the actual law protect individuals from situations like this?

65 million in damages? If that's the case, he got off easy with Nintendo settling for a 55 million dollar loss
It's easy to come up with some insane estimate with no basis on reality when it comes to piracy. How can you ruin a person's life based on damages you can't really prove?
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
The problem in this case is that regardless of what one did, should a corporation and their army of lawyers have free reign to exact unjust punishment as they see fit? They' re not the law, shouldn't the actual law protect individuals from situations like this?
No but they will because they can but thats reality with big companies, it like messing with wild animal and not expecting to get hurt, just dont do the fucking crime.
 
It's easy to come up with some insane estimate with no basis on reality when it comes to piracy. How can you ruin a person's life based on damages you can't really prove?
He made his own life choices, so why should we care? If this was done to someone innocent, then yeah it would be worrisome.
 
That's what I was thinking. Dividing that up is like $45k a year, he must've made more money on some other side hustles or maybe he just genuinely loved doing what he did at that time and didn't mind getting paid so low.

Yeah, 45k a year isn't a lot of money, even pre-covid for that kind of risk.

From what I've read Homeland Security and the FBI was investigating him. 45k a year to have the US federal government on your ass, and then after that Nintendo filed some civil suit for monetary damages. All that for 45k.

Sheesh!
 

Koppelthorn

Banned
And everyone here would do the same as Nintendo. Everyone takes what they can in court. Everyone would do the same, including everyone on here. We are all inherently cruel under the right circumstances.
You are barbaric if you would actually essentially financially imprison someone for a lifetime for something as meaningless and incorporeal as "perceived" lost profits, the jail time is enough as it is

6XrWofa.png
 

ssringo

Member
He made his own life choices, so why should we care? If this was done to someone innocent, then yeah it would be worrisome.
You shouldn't care about him individually. I don't. He has to deal with the consequences.

What you should care about is what I mentioned previously: recidivism. If you punish a criminal so harshly or in such a way that they can't properly rejoin society then you just push them back into illegal activities just to get by. Then they wind up causing more harm to more people.

That's not to say criminals shouldn't be punished. They should but it needs to be balanced and I think most people's issue here is that the fine is excessive. Though as someone else mentioned what he winds up paying might not be that high.
 

calistan

Member
"don't do the crime if you can't do the time" and he did what? 65 million in damages? If that's the case, he got off easy with Nintendo settling for a 55 million dollar loss. At least they can make up some of that by using this guy as an example.
The amount is complete bullshit. It’s like when there was a spate of people getting busted for hosting music on filesharing services, and the record companies claimed their losses equated to the retail price of each album multiplied by the number of downloads.

Of course, when streaming services replaced Napster and Limewire, those same companies had no problem with paying the artists a few pennies per million streams. Bunch of scumbags.
 
You shouldn't care about him individually. I don't. He has to deal with the consequences.

What you should care about is what I mentioned previously: recidivism. If you punish a criminal so harshly or in such a way that they can't properly rejoin society then you just push them back into illegal activities just to get by. Then they wind up causing more harm to more people.

That's not to say criminals shouldn't be punished. They should but it needs to be balanced and I think most people's issue here is that the fine is excessive. Though as someone else mentioned what he winds up paying might not be that high.
As others have said, they're using him as an example. I doubt they ever even try to collect anywhere near that amount. It's scare tactics 101.
 

Fess

Member
This is dark. How is this even legal? Guy is going to kill himself or something. Nintendo already have enough money in their warchest to like cure cancer if they would actually use it, instead they decide to ruin someone’s life.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
I hate to be the one saying this, but recompense isn't about what the victim has, but what was lost.

If you do something that cost someone over$60M in losses, even if they are worth $6B, when caught, you owe them $60M.

And while hating big corpo may seem woke or whatever, I can never advocate for piracy like this.
 

Chastten

Banned
Can't believe so many people are defending the guy.

This isn't your neighbor that downloaded the latest Game of Thrones episode, this is a guy that ran an illegal business making tons of money from it. He should've thought about the consequences.
 

Bragr

Banned
You are barbaric if you would actually essentially financially imprison someone for a lifetime for something as meaningless and incorporeal as "perceived" lost profits, the jail time is enough as it is

6XrWofa.png
Depends on what he did, I don't know enough about this case. But the idea that lawyers would hold back when someone sold their products for millions, well, that's not realistic. Not saying it's the right thing to do.
 
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calistan

Member
I hate to be the one saying this, but recompense isn't about what the victim has, but what was lost.

If you do something that cost someone over$60M in losses, even if they are worth $6B, when caught, you owe them $60M.

And while hating big corpo may seem woke or whatever, I can never advocate for piracy like this.
In this case the amount was plucked from thin air, by Nintendo, and not questioned at all by the court.
 

Hugare

Member
Regardless of what he did, I'm not a supporter of corporations ruining people's entire lives financially for what is pennies to them. He's basically being made an example of, is this the middle ages?
Thats the point

You bet that there would be many more hackers like him if he had onlt received a pat on the back

Brutal, tho
 

Fess

Member
Can't believe so many people are defending the guy.

This isn't your neighbor that downloaded the latest Game of Thrones episode, this is a guy that ran an illegal business making tons of money from it. He should've thought about the consequences.
The article said he earned $300k over 7 years, and Nintendo want him to sit in jail and pay $10 million. The punishment is kinda extreme.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Is he excited for the new Zelda, does he have a switch.

President and CEO Bowser should send his fellow Bowser a switch.
 
Agreed. Our legal system is sick. It promotes the idea of making an example out of people which is not remotely just. All he did was try to monetize a hack that was available for free elsewhere, but now he has to pay back 30x what he made or 25% of his life's earnings. It is crappy, but it is not as if he made Switch Piracy possible. FFS people are pirating Switch games via emulation on PC. I'm sure Nintendo wishes that emulator makers charged money so they could bake lawsuit income into their business plans.
Emulation is not piracy.

Don't say dumb shit.
 
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