The story and work of Gary Bowser is pretty badass and would make for an interesting ama and event on lemmy. Here’s a recent article on Gary Bowser https://torrentfreak.com/gary-bowser-how-a-1980s-hacker-became-nintendos-nemesis-decades-later-230702/

130 points

Fuck Gary Bowser and Team Xecuter in general, he doesn’t deserve the punishment he got but I feel no sympathy for him.

Read up on how they stole GPL’d code from other Switch hackers for their closed source SX OS, and then had the fucking nerve to charge for it.

Piracy is one thing, but what they did hurt the Switch hacking scene, for their own profit.

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7 points

Agreed. SOG did a video on him a few months ago.

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4 points

I wouldn’t say no sympathy.

Gary suffers from Lymphedema in his left leg, starting just below the kneecap down to the ankle.

Lymphoedema is pretty awful, I feel bad for anyone living with it.

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2 points
*

I don’t know, if I put out GPL software, I wouldn’t give a fuck if it got used to fuck over Nintendo without following all the GPL nonsense. They took the legal risk of going up against Nintendo, I sure as hell didn’t take any risk writing code. Them profiting a bit isn’t the end of the world. No one was going to make any money staying within legal limits anyway, nothing was “stolen”.

Edit: Just to be clear, all I know about Bowser is based on the parent comment. Maybe he’s a bigger POS than the example given but, from that, doesn’t seem like a major villain.

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9 points

If that’s the case you probably wouldn’t release GPL software, you’d find a more permissive license, perhaps apache?

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6 points

SX OS has anti-piracy measures in place which literally brick your switch.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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44 points

Isn’t he basically screwed for the rest of his life though? Having to pay some of his wage to Nintendo

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52 points
*

Most of his wage. 14.5 million docked from his paychecks for the rest of his life. There’s not much more info in how much will be docked from his pay, as in a percentage or flat cost

Edit: I read more into it. It’s 25-30% of his paycheck goes to Nintendo.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/04/bowser-free-from-prison-still-owes-nintendo-14-5m-for-switch-hacking/ See at the bottom

He will die owing Nintendo tens of millions of dollars. Fuck Nintendo

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38 points

Honestly the fact the court allows that too…

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27 points

So glad people got rid of slavery, right? US is disgusting with the corporation bootlicking.

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24 points

Because Nintendo lawyers ran circles around the court

Some other guy said something about costing Nintendo 65 million. I don’t buy that claim. They were still profitable as a company during that time, so it’s just a show of force to scare other script kiddies from fucking with Nintendo. Fuck em, emulated breath of the wild is better than on console anyway

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31 points

Regardless of your opinion of the guy, feel like financially fucking him into the ground for life shouldn’t be a thing… Sure punishment is in order, but what he got is a financial life sentence - it doesn’t feel right.

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14 points

We bringing serfdom back, baby!

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11 points

No. It doesn’t. I don’t think he should have been charged regardless, but that’s just me lol

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2 points
*

Wouldn’t filing private bankruptcy solve this within 3 or 5 years?

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1 point

Pick your legal ass fucking: corporate or financial (bank)

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-26 points

I mean it sucks but whats the alternative? Life in jail? He did those things and did cost them 65 million, I’m never one to defend corporations but he is a criminal and deserves some kind of punishment.

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24 points

Money is made up, I doubt his actions actually cost them 65 million. If they did - so what? Taking that out his wages will never get them that amount of money back, ever. That is a ludicrously large amount that will never be reached, they just want to ruin a person’s life.

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23 points

Sir, this is a piracy instance. Know your place

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10 points

Maybe not ensure he’s fucked for the rest of his life?…

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8 points

He didn’t cost them 65 million. That’s a pretend number made up by soulless lawyers. If people could actually do that much “damage” to corporations, we wouldn’t be so beholden to their whims.

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3 points

You’re never one to defend corporations, except apparently when you do.

Ignoring the fact that not getting to make money Nintendo had wanted to make isn’t the same as losing money, how is this person ever supposed to pay that money back? They can’t reasonably expect to see that money ever. All they are doing here is literally financially ruin a man for the rest of his life, it is completely ridiculous such a sentence is even legally possible.

So they essentially won the right in court to keep a person poor for as long as they live. Because they lost out on projected income. Why can’t I sue the fuck out of someone because my projected income of a gorillion dollars isn’t actually coming in?

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0 points

For an example, I used an emulator to play try Pokémon Arseus (however that’s spelled). I had very little desire to play it in general, but I did want to see what they did with it. It was garbage. I never would have purchased it, especially since I would have had to purchase a Switch too. Did that “cost them money?” Absolutely not. They likely include that in the supposed cost though.

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5 points

Yeah. I wonder will it show up as Nintendo Tax on his payslip?

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25 points

Being his last name is Bowser i thought i had to be a joke. This is wild.

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5 points
*

And when the president of NOA’s last name is Bowser, too, all sorts of fanciful scenarios are just coming to mind.

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-1 points

It’s nominative determinism. It’s a real thing.

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22 points

They named their most iconic antagonist after him?

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37 points

The CEO of Nintendo of America is curiously also named Bowser. Seems they are going out of their way to find them.

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17 points

No, they named him after the current president of Nintendo of America – Doug Bowser.

This entire situation can be summed up as Bowser suing Bowser Jr. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Bowser

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17 points

So long Gary bowser

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