Poll of the Day > US Gov't wants Nintendo Modder to serve 5 Years...

(+) Yeah! (+)

I disagree because once you buy something, it's yours whether anyone agrees or not. I remember when people began jailbreaking the PS3 and Sony wanted to send people to jail for that.

Some people who play video games like to use cheat devices or I guess they're called saved editors now i.e. game genie, action replay etc and some people like modded systems to play imports etc.

If you buy a car and mod it and sell it, is that illegal?

Nintendo made their money when he purchased the switches.

The seller of anything is not responsible for how the buyer uses said anything.

If you buy a car and mod it and sell it, is that illegal?

what is the definition of modding?

is drawing on a paper also modding? is cutting log into plywood modding? is cutting wood into furniture modding?

If you buy a car and mod it and sell it, is that illegal?

there are some that would probably view it as so

tesla being one of them

generally speaking the concept of "modification" keeps the base product and its functions intact and just augments or changes them in some way.

then entire industries based on "modding". mechanics, used cars, used books, computer PCs.

Some really stupid takes in this topic, yeesh.

No, it's not. And thus neither should this. And don't give me any of that apples and oranges bullshit. This is literally the same thing in both scenarios. Modding a car is the same as modding a console. The seller of anything is not responsible for how the buyer uses said anything. Or else we would have to arrest the heads of Toyota, Honda and such because illegal street races happen with cars they sold.

Edit: This is especially true since the government isn't going after the people that bought the modded switches. They so rarely go after the NRA and gun sellers after all with so much murder going on with said guns.

Which ones?

• Post 3 speaks in terms of hardware instead of software, and also doesn't realize ownership isn't permission to make and especially profit from illegal variations.
• Post 5 (hi Rev) for a laughably low figure, likely just meant to undermine the situation.
• Post 6 thinks the crime here is simple resale.
• Post 11's strawman doesn't realize illegal car mods exist.
• Post 12 building off post 11 and somehow trying to pin it on Nintendo for making the console in the first place instead of the modder for intentional misuse and profiting from that misuse.
• Post 14 is just dumb as bricks with the false equivalencies, and doesn't think laws should have nuance for the nature or intent of actions.
• Post 19 for being Lokarin.

Post 19 for being Lokarin.

* Post 3 speaks in terms of hardware instead of software, and also doesn't realize ownership isn't permission to make and especially profit from illegal variations.
* Post 5 (hi Rev) for a laughably low figure, likely just meant to undermine the situation.
* Post 6 thinks the crime here is simple resale.
* Post 11's strawman doesn't realize illegal car mods exist.
* Post 12 building off post 11 and somehow trying to pin it on Nintendo for making the console in the first place instead of the modder for intentional misuse and profiting from that misuse.
* Post 14 is just dumb as bricks with the false equivalencies, and doesn't think laws should have nuance for the nature or intent of actions.
* Post 19 for being Lokarin.

* Post 3 speaks in terms of hardware instead of software, and also doesn't realize ownership isn't permission to make and especially profit from illegal variations.
* Post 5 (hi Rev) for a laughably low figure, likely just meant to undermine the situation.
* Post 6 thinks the crime here is simple resale.
* Post 11's strawman doesn't realize illegal car mods exist.
* Post 12 building off post 11 and somehow trying to pin it on Nintendo for making the console in the first place instead of the modder for intentional misuse and profiting from that misuse.
* Post 14 is just dumb as bricks with the false equivalencies, and doesn't think laws should have nuance for the nature or intent of actions.
* Post 19 for being Lokarin.

Nintendo also makes money on game sales (in fact, I'm pretty sure they sell the systems themselves at a loss and recover that through game sales, so they didn't make money when he purchased them), which he was deliberately subverting. That $65 million figure is likely nonsense, based on the thoroughly fallacious belief that every act of piracy would otherwise have been a sale, but his actions absolutely did interfere with their ability to make money.

No judge in the world would believe that he sold these expecting customers not to use them to play pirated games, given that he specifically modded them for that purpose. These were very clearly sold for illegal purposes.

Depends how you mod it. Mod it with go-faster stripes and a spoiler? That's fine. Mod it with a hood-mounted minigun? Decidedly less so.

Edit: This is especially true since the government isn't going after the people that bought the modded switches. They so rarely go after the NRA and gun sellers after all with so much murder going on with said guns.

Nothing wrong with my post. They severely inflate lost sales from piracy.

I consider this guy less horrible than any scalper selling PS5s for thousands of dollars. At least this guy added stuff to his Switches to make the extra cost worth it. 5 years is way too much.

And again, if he gets 5 years for this, PS5 scalpers should get more.

If the judge really believed that every single person that buys a modded product intends to use it nefarious purposes then he needs to be removed from the bench because he is delusional at best and really just unfit to perform his duties.

That's not remotely what I said. He modded these consoles to be used to play pirated games. That's the specific charge, and there's zero room for him to claim enough ignorance of that use as to not be responsible for it.

I don't know why so many people insist on interpreting this as "they want to make modding illegal!", but that's not at all what's going on here. Modding is legal. It's piracy that's not. He's in trouble for modding the consoles for piracy's sake, not for modding in general.

That is indeed relevant. There's a very easy case to be made for piracy for obsolete systems, where buying games officially is difficult or outright impossible (and therefore piracy is the only option, as opposed to being an alternative to paying for it properly), but when it's a current system, anyone enabling piracy is presenting an alternative to the legitimate demand that companies depend on to function. That's a problem, even if the "1 pirated copy=1 lost sale" equivalency has little basis in reality ("1 pirated copy=0 lost sales" is similarly fallacious).

Except 1 pirated copy = 0 lost sales is very based in reality because there is no proof that the person was ever considering buying the game and only wanted to try it out.

Except 1 pirated copy = 0 lost sales is very based in reality

He modded them period. What the buyer does is their business.

Except 1 pirated copy = 0 lost sales is very based in reality because there is no proof that the person was ever considering buying the game and only wanted to try it out.

Again, nobody is clueless enough to believe that he genuinely didn't know they were going to be used for piracy. Any way you try to spin it, he has profited from being a willing accessory to piracy, even if there are other potential applications for the mods he installed and sold.

To say that "1 pirated copy=0 lost sales," you are making the claim that absolutely nobody that has ever pirated a game would have paid for it if the option were available. The reverse is not true (which is the claim you're actually trying to make), but neither is that claim. Quite obviously so. The reality is considerably more nuanced and complicated than that.

First of all, how the f*** do you know what someone else is going to do with something you sell them?

Second of all, again how the f*** do you know that every pirate WAS going to buy a copy but decided to pirate instead?

Edit: You also didn't refute my evidence against your bulls*** of modding for homebrew.

adjl posted... Do you honestly believe he sold these without expecting people to use them to play pirated games?

Please quote the passage where I said that every pirated copy is a lost sale.

What evidence?

* Post 3 speaks in terms of hardware instead of software, and also doesn't realize ownership isn't permission to make and especially profit from illegal variations.
* Post 5 (hi Rev) for a laughably low figure, likely just meant to undermine the situation.
* Post 6 thinks the crime here is simple resale.
* Post 11's strawman doesn't realize illegal car mods exist.
* Post 12 building off post 11 and somehow trying to pin it on Nintendo for making the console in the first place instead of the modder for intentional misuse and profiting from that misuse.
* Post 14 is just dumb as bricks with the false equivalencies, and doesn't think laws should have nuance for the nature or intent of actions.
* Post 19 for being Lokarin.