from the 'Should I Hack My Wii' thread that was recently deleted:

Wait, what? Unless there's an announcement post I missed (and if I did, I apologize in advance), the forum rules state this under the unacceptable content section: Any illegal activity, including any talk of modchips, piracy, warez, unofficial emulators & ROMs. Hacking alone does not fall under any of that, nor is it in and of itself illegal, and if people would educate themselves and not just kneejerk about bricked Wiis, modchips, emulation, and piracy every time The Homebrew Channel comes up by itself in a topic, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place. :/

There was nothing wrong with the initial question in that thread (we've all seen dumber 'should I or shouldn't I' threads survive here), it was the assumptions and misinformation of other posters in there that started it down the trail of assuming the OP would end up screwing up their system or doing something illegal after installing THbC, which is unfair to the OP. As I said in that thread, contrary to popular belief, it is totally possible to install The Homebrew Channel and use it for cheating in local games (not over wi-fi), playing legally-bought games from other regions that will never be released in the owner's region, playing DVDs or digital media, running Linux (why? because they can, lol) and other things that have nothing to do with piracy or harshing anyone else's good time.

If the mods/site owners would like to stop future discussion about THbC and hacking on these forums completely (which would be a shame IMO, but i don't own the place, so whatev') I would like to see those points added to the official community rules and not to see them brought up out of what seems to be thin air. The last thing I want to do is tread all over the wrong people's toes by continuing a discussion that I thought was okay under the rules of this community, but apparently isn't.

I'm trying to warn people before it got out of hand and the mods started banning people. You can take the warning or not. It's no skin off my teeth either way.

We have a good working relationship with Nintendo and in order to keep that we have to discourage the use of non-official use of the Wii or DS. That includes "homebrew" and hacking the console. I'm not saying you'll be banned for talking about homebrew, but when hacking is mentioned, that normally gets mod notices sent to the admins and that's when people start getting clipped.

i would certainly hope the mods would step in and clarify that point in the rules or with an announcement before blindly swinging their banhammers :/

I think the little snippet you took from the forum rules can be a bit vague, but as I added in above, we try to discourage the use of anything that's not an official part of the Wii or DS systems. While some things slip through, I was merely trying to warn anyone who was considering posting anything that violated the rules before it happened.

Personally, I think it goes without saying that we should not talk about this AT ALL. There are plenty of places out there to talk about ILLEGAL modifications, I don't think Nintendo Life should be one of them, and would like to see the admin team take a no-tolerance stance against those who do. Nintendo recently held out a hand to Nintendo Life, what if they decide not do so again, due to questionable content on the site that we all know they dislike.

I can't stand the hacking/modding community and I don't care what reasons they give for doing so. I've heard all the excuses people give as to why they do, but out of principle I would NEVER even consider it, and don't want to read about it here or have references made to it. Thanks.

I agree with Machu I do not agree with illegal modifications. But if a person does it then so be it at their own risk and that persons privacy.

No one had any problems talking about it in the 4.2 update thread... Although I suppose it's matter of HOW you talk about it. That discussion was largely conceptional.

@Machu:
Can't seem to remember you having any problems discussing this topic in that other ehh... topic... I mean, you made no secret about you siding with the "wholesome" camp but you seemed to have no problems discussing it in general. Why the sudden 180?

I suppose so. I do not even know how to install. I have no desire to because it just does not interest me. Bottom line out there is people are doing it and its none of my business if they do. Its their Wii so ya know. It is kind of crazy though how you can do all of this stuff on consoles nowadays. I remember when it was just pop a cartridge in and you were ready to go. How times have changed. At least I still got Star Trek TNG and that will never change !

@Djungelurban: Check the post dates, my 'reaction' in this thread was posted a month before the update. Yourself and clickety have brought me to a point where I can't agree with what I said up there. So it is a 180, but not the way you think. I still hate the illegal reasons for modding but have softened to those who use mods innocently.

Some poeple here seem to confuse the terms illegal and unofficial.

The most things you can do with hombrew are unofficial and Nintendo don't wants you to do that. But that does not mean it's illegal. Modding the Wii (and any other console/device) is legal as long as you do not download ROMs or ISOs and as long as you do it for private use and don't give your programs and modifications away or sell them to others.

But when the NintendoLife Team doesn't not even want talk about unofficial things (no matter if illegal or not) then we have to accept it. I have no problem with it since there are other sites which are discussing these topics with much more depth.

Would fan translations fall under this? Pretty sure we've had a retro review of a game that was only available in English via fan translation, which is not technically legal, in addition to news articles on fan translations. I talk about Mother 3 pretty often, but my only knowledge of it comes through the hacked version, of course. Provided I'm not linking to the rom, I assumed it was okay, but I'll go by whatever you guys say, of course.

Also, last night, I had a dream that someone I know from another forum pointed me out to this homebrew program for DSi that makes little pizzas which come out the game slot. I'm serious, I don't know what I ate that I had this ridiculous dream, but I did. I remember bringing it to this council in some poor country, too, and they were all excited until someone asked me: but how does it work if you don't have any ingredients to put in? I then tried it and it wouldn't work. I was very sad, and they were very angry because they'd already spent their money buying DSi's. Sorry, dreamcouncilmen, I guess I should have tested it out myself first!

@Adam

That's unfortunate, they should have invested in Bagel Bites and small microwaves instead.

lol that is an odd dream Adam. (and you wonder why the weird-adam thing came from lol) I just wanted to ask though
Is connecting a wiimote to your computer via bluetooth and writing your own programs for it (for example I have a sweet itunes remote now) considered hacking?

Ah, noticed that now. Well, now I feel stupid... Didn't realize the degree necromancing that was conducted by Devil.

Personally I'd say no cause it seems you're actually not modifying the Wiimote in any way, just telling your computer how to interpret the signals from the Wiimote.

I have heard of people turning some PC games into running off of motion controls with the Wii Mote. Now that would take a technological genius.

@Adam: The english version of Mother 3 for the GBA is unofficial. Like you have already mentioned, it is officially only available in japanese language and as far as I understand what Corbie said, the talk about unofficial modded games should be avoided on NintendoLife to not jeopardize the good relationship to Nintendo.

By the way: Is there a retro review of Mother 3 on NintendoLife? I haven't found it.

@jangonov: No, I would not say that connecting a Wiimote to your PC can be considered 'hacking' because bluetooth is an open protocol for exchanging data. And it can in no way be considered illegal to use it to your liking. But that does not mean that NintendoLife wants talk about it in the forums. That depends on the opinions of the website owners.

About the Mother 3 review....
No, there isn't, though there has been talk of the possibility, I believe. I know they recently mentioned a fan translation of a Wii game in a news post, and Star Ocean (SNES) was reviewed with mention of the fan hack. Seems odd to have multiple mentions of hacks in the main site but not be allowed to mention them in the forums. I think there is a misunderstanding here, somewhere.

I'm confused too. I'd rather not see any of it tbh, as it can end up educating those who know nothing about it and would probably never have known. The 4.2 thread was a example of the need for such a discussion, but it ended up 'advertising' homebrew far too much.

Myself, being opposed to homebrew (on a moral level, not a legal one) was extremely surprised to see how some homebrewers reacted to me, acting like they had the high-ground, when of course that couldn't be further from the truth.

I would love to know where Nintendo Life stand on this one, just so we are all clear.

Just so everyone knows, until I'm told otherwise, I'm only editing out references as to where to find homebrew apps on the internet. I did ask before posting to the main 4.2 update thread (where I said there was already a workaround for homebrew, lol), and Corbie said that was OK, so I assumed that mentioning homebrew exists is OK, but explicit directions on where to find it are not cool.

Also, @Machu -- I must admit I was very confused by the 4.2 thread in general. Back when I originally started this thread, I had pretty much taken clickety's position in a couple of homebrew/hacking for personal use threads, and I kinda got my hands slapped for it, but last i checked (which was days ago) no one had stepped into that thread to tell anyone to stop talking about it... i don't know if it's because it was such a major part of the System Update that the argument/discussion was allowed to slide, or what. :3

Hhhhhm.