"What Do I Care?" - Nintendo Hacking Mastermind Defiant As Colleague Bowser Is Jailed

Although he comes across as quite abrasive he isn't wrong. Imprisoning people over this is quite ridiculous. Nintendo, being charitable, are protective of their products but this is just cruel.

I will probably always love Nintendo the developer, or more accurately the creative staff they attract but the business is increasingly foul.

"but that there was a way to make a lot of money"

And there goes the "piracy is not stealing"-argument.
It IS stealing, only the effect is a bit different.

@mr_somewhere Nintendo aren't the ones who put them in jail. It's the government that does so, because they break the law. They are criminals, nothing more, nothing less.

I don't cry over lost profits or giant corporations having their copyrights infringed, so I don't care one way or the other beyond my own choice to emulate or not emulate. That said this guy is making himself out to be a freedom fighter defending personal liberty when it amounts to personal greed. You're not stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

I'm not exacly in support of Nintendo stance on piracy and I think they should make older titles easily avaliable to combat it. I would support this man more... if he didn't enrich himself with piracy. He himself said that is the case and that he did it for that purpose.

The fact that he labled himself as a "freedom fighter" makes me laugh. Were did all the money he gain for piracy went to?

Glad to see he has been given five years, but to be honest I hope he only does four, the judge must have been an ex Nintendo employer.

What a scum bag, hope he ends up in jail.

I have no respect for those who pirate games for current-gen systems.

Louarn seemed relatively unconcerned with Nintendo's eagerness to end his exploits:
"They hate me. I bet that in Tokyo, they posted my picture in an office.“

After making a living from pirating their products for 30 years, you’d think he might know that Nintendo HQ is in Kyoto 🤔

The sad part is people actually fall for this pirate's rhetoric. He's no hero.

Quite presumptuous to say that they'd put up a picture of yourself in an office. Something with a big ego, strikes me

Pretty poor headline, implies that he doesn't care about the guy in jail, while it's more of a "I don't care about a billion-dollar company"-statement.

It's the sentences that boggle my mind, Bowser is looking at 3 years inside, this guy had 5, what do people get for, you know, actually serious crimes?

Mind you, i don't think either of them is some martyr for a good cause, they were in it for the money, that much is obvious, but years in prison (And a fine he can never, ever, pay) for this sort of thing seems quite ridiculous to me.

Even though I think the punishment was a bit harsh, Bowser was in the wrong.
This guy comes off as arrogant and self-righteous so I can't wait for his turn.

Prison is extreme yes but he should still be punished heavily, this isn't just dumping roms of old games for free on the net its outright stealing and making money from it.

Well, by the time he gets arrested he can at least sell his story to Hollywood.

I’ve never supported prison time for non violent crimes and I’m not going to start now. This guy is clearly a jerk and certainly no Robin Hood, but like Gary Bowser, he can be dealt with using economic punishments; fines, sanctions, community service, etc. Part of the reason our societies are so sick is because we’re so profoundly uncreative in solving problems using anything that’s not physical coercion.

"Stealing from companies that make billions"

Intellectual property is still made by humans, not by companies. I'm sure this guy wouldn't be happy if some other hacker stole his means of generating income.

Gotta love how he enriched himself off of the backs of his own people and left them out as a sacrifices to the courts. Freedom fighter? Yeah, I’m sure you tell yourself that when you’re pressing your ill-gotten money to your face. What a loser.

...is he playing the victim card?

I hope Nintendo nails this smug jerk to a cross

"Pro-liberty" does not equate to stealing. Stealing is stealing, regardless of the victim's wealth. He's rationalizing stealing and then, in the next breath, saying he has to take care of his daughter. This person is expendable.

@BoilerBroJoe
Prison has to be a form of punishment for non-violent offenders because that are given multiple warnings to stop their illegal ways and they thumb their nose at companies like Nintendo. If we don't punish them then no IP is safe and if becomes chaotic

Some one is a little to into there role lol.

This guy thinks he's Robin Hood, but he's just a narcissistic crook.

People need to stop worshiping corporations, they owe you nothing.

@Rayquaza2510 I never said hacking is stealing. Honestly, I am a white hat hacker / programmer.

But exactly BECAUSE of that I am so much against piracy. Because in most people minds "hacking = piracy" which isn't true.

Wow Max sure is an ass, no empathy for him.

I have an extremely difficult time feeling bad when someone steals from these massive corporations, but trying to make yourself out to be some kind of hero for doing it is disingenuous at best.

@mikegamer
No one is worshipping any corporation but I like you live by a set of laws and morals. Stealing IPs, and other content is illegal and immoral

@steventonysmith That's not going to stop people from doing it.

@sanderev

It is a illegal Process but still not Stealing.
Stealing is taking something away that you can't have back, it is gone.
Hacking and copying Stuff without a Licence is something Different, it makes a possible Damage (that is hard to impossible to calculate).

The Way they did, a very commercial, was obviously with the Mindset of doing Damage to a Company and making a Profit by themself.

Thats why many Countries differ between being someone that loaded a illegal Copy or being the Distributor.

In the Past two Sites with Roms were taken down, why?
Because they did it in a commercial Way, even having a founded Company lol

Thats a whole different Level of Piracy.

@sanderev pretty much sums it up. And I'm pretty sure he's the kind of guy that would deliver anyone else to escape and avoid jail.

I’d love to go for beer with this guy, so that I could steal his pint and then ask for money to give it back.

@mikegamer
So because criminals will be criminals we shouldn't prosecute anyone?

@L_Bosch Exactly. I think I heard Xecutor put code in to prevent itself from being pirated. (Something common among bootlegs, I mean, when you're not developing the IP or anything, you have time to do that. ) That surely fits that "to do what we want with the machines and for everyone to have access to them" philosophy, Max!

@steventonysmith Not my problem

To the "No Jail for these types of crimes" people, what's stopping criminals from doing this over and over and over again if the punishment isn't tough? If I could hack and generate millions, taking money from me via fines or forcing me to do community service would not deter me from hacking again. Jail on the other hand, would. What this person is doing is stealing. The victim shouldn't matter, whether its a regular person like most of us or a billion dollar valued company.

Dude your no Robin Hood. You saw a chance to get rich and you took it. Now you will have to deal with the consequences.

@MysticX
Considering he has been stealing consistently since the switch launched, the jail time can be justified.

@mikegamer I don't think he was referring to games. I think he's talking about his criminal exploits.

Why should he care? There are already several supporters of him here and on other sites

Does anyone have any actual reason to oppose this other than “stealing” = illegal = immoral. It’s such a poor argument. The opposition seems to be against the arbitrary “illegal-ness” of the act more-so than the act itself.

It’s the only possible way I could see make someone sympathize with a billion dollar company with a long list of anti-consumer policies.

The question, then, is why would anyone want to do that?

Whether he's defiant or not, actions have consequences.

@Pillowpants I want said picture so I can plink at it with my Sig: MPX...

Good for Lou! I agree with him, who cares. Piracy is nothing new. It will ALWAYS be a thing. But these companies, continue to make crazy amounts of money. How many stories have we heard, like this, over the years? Hasn’t stopped the money train. Hasn’t even slowed it down. The majority of consumers will buy the real products.

hope karma finds this arrogant clown.

@mikegamer I never said it was to do with games, Michael. It’s the guy’s attitude and his inflated ego that I took umbrage with. A photo of him in Nintendo’s office aye? The guy’s a moron.
@dkxcalibur gets it.

🤔Something tells me that even if said Games were available to buy, he STILL steal them...

The headline is misleading. Your heavily disparaging Louarn implying that the line “why do i care” is about Bowser going to jail when it was about costing a business that makes billions a few thousand. He was obviously saying that in those contexts yet the headline implies that its a heartless comment about Bowser going to jail

Claiming to be “pro liberty” while exclaiming how little you give a crap and displaying an egregious lack of empathy is an interesting take. Not defending Nintendo, but I have little sympathy for this kind of attitude.

@Savage_Joe Spottify and other services like it also made incalculable damage to the music industry. Basically cutting their profits in half while the companies of those services are basically the ones making any money and putting artists in an even worse place than before.

I don't know if that example is the best one... It literally says to companies that if they make everything avaliable in a cheap service that englobes the majority of the market, they'd make less money.

@Yorumi I mean... I'm usually fine with piracy with outdated platforms (1 or 2 generations back). But pirating current gen hardware is a bit more... nuanced.

I take care of my father. I have a 16-year-old daughter, and soon a second child."

What does he want, sympathy?
He broke the law, make an example of him and widely publisize his actions and sentence.

Maybe it will finally dissuade people who say "piracy is justified because Nintendo (or whomever) is a multi-billion dollar company."

Stealing is stealing and piracy is illegal. Buy your games or I hope those of you who pirate get what's coming to you. I am in favour when Nintendo (or whomever) take action against these people because I respect games and developers and they deserve money for making awesome games.

Those people just try to justify something for nothing, plain and simple. It's not "morally correct" it's not "righteous" it's not "providing a service", it's stealing, don't pretend otherwise.

@outsider83 So you support people that steel from others and not companies that sell products and services.

How come we haven't seen this level of enforcement and punishment for those preloaded emulator handhelds? Or is this, that?

@PhhhCough That's because those are made by Chinese companies. And China doesn't really enforce anti-piracy.

Ow the edge, notting personnel kid

I really do hope he evades “justice.” When Bowser was sentenced to prison for a non violent crime, the quite vindictive judge was pretty clear that if it was Louarn’s sentencing, it would be for over a decade of imprisonment.

They never endangered, assaulted, or killed anyone, and yet this guy will almost certainly be sentenced to a decade of imprisonment if captured.

That hardly seems fair considering how actual dangerous or violent acts are often treated in the “justice” system.

My response to his line about his father and daughter “What Do I Care?” Good riddance, I hope you get captured.

This is a case where I don't really feel sympathy for both sides if I'm being honest.

But I'll just say that jailing for pirating video games, or distributing them for profit will never not be funny to me. Along with the people being on board with it and putting it on the level of actually serious crimes lol.

lol, "pro-liberty", make money on other peoples work. I hope justice will catch up to this guy as well. You don't have to think of Nintendo as company of the year to realize how damaging these kinds of criminals are to the business. And yes, I think even non-violent criminals should go to jail if their crimes are seriouse. If someone broke into my home or stole my car, I would think it would be right to send them to jail as well.

And it's a big difference between a 15yo kid who download games illegally and a grown man who makes profits out of enabling piracy.

@Yorumi piracy in the music industry did not dissappear once iTunes was released. Where did you get that idea from. If that was a true statement there would have been no need for streaming via Spotify, deezer etc etc.

The music industry had no choice but to pivot to streaming as nobody was buying music anymore and lowering the price of albums wouldn't have changed much as the availability to get it free was so ridiculously easy. Also lowering the price even more does nothing for the artists who were already making pathetic money like for every $10 album sold the aritist makes $1. How low should artists have to accept?

@GADG3Tx87 piracy is justified against a company trying to axe game ownership. It's not about the funds, it's about the intentions.

Sony and Microsoft are a lot richer than Nintendo and piracy isn't justified against them. They aren't trying to get rid of game ownership and make good faith efforts to sell their legacy games where they can for a fair price.

@ThomastheTankEngine Hear, hear!!

NINJA APPROVED

@BloodNinja yay I'm ninja approved!

Thanks man!

@Waka_the_Prophet this exactly. Nintendo is nothing more than a tyrant bullying others.

They have their underlings in the thread stating "tHaT''s HoW tHe LaW wOrKs!" as if morality and legality aren't two separate entities.

And we all know if Nintendo were to break the law and do illegal things those same law and order simps would handwave that away because Nintendo.

As expected, these kind of criminals have a huge Robin Hood complex (and evidently so do some people in this comment section).

Don't waste the energy on replying the deconstructive ones who claim crime is right because Nintendo is the Devil or something because they don't give out their products for free. Just keep reporting their non-constructive messegages, they will be the only ones wasting their time that way.

@ThomastheTankEngine
Stealing is never justified. It's just people making excuses for their desire of something for nothing. If you buy games digitally you know the price that comes with it. You are owed nothing and you are entitled to nothing. If stealing was justified by your logic then if you have more money than me I would be justified in walking into your house and taking whatever I want and you can't complain or scrutinise.

If more people pirated games then it would lead to a slow death of the medium you love. It means less money for developers, which leads to less investment in their next project, which leads to mediocre games and eventually a shutdown of the developer which leads to you having no games.

Buy your games. I love games and support the hard work these people do to entertain me, if you're not willing to do that you deserve nothing. So many people are over entitled these days.

@MysticX about the same sometimes more but a lot of times the police shoot, and you can tell what happens but our government judicial system is whack, a man was sentenced to 25-life for stealing a pair of socks priced at 2.50$.

Let’s hope this lovely fellow joins Mr.Bowser in the near future.

Piracy is never justified despite what some of the people here masking their stealing as noble say.
Just admit you’re too cheap to pay $60 and I’d have more respect than you framing it as some kinda Robin Hood situation.

@ThomastheTankEngine Just admit you’re too cheap to spend $60 rather than making yourself seem like a freedom fighter.
Congratulations you illegally downloaded a Switch game, that’ll show Nintendo.

@GADG3Tx87 why are Nintendo fans so bad with their analogies? Piracy isn't stealing. It's piracy. Or do you really think a copy of Pokemon XD that they aren't selling magically disappears into thin air when someone downloads the rom? If you're going to accuse people of doing something bad, at least be right about it.

Your assumption is based on the fact that it's a new game that's being pirated, and that when that game is pirated, the physical copy vanishes. Do you really think that's what happens lol?

I hope you also know developers don't get paid based off of sales...so you buying the game supports a company and the corporate parasites at the top who are trying to eliminate game ownership.

You made a comment about wealth. I literally said, Sony and Microsoft are richer and it's not justified to pirate their products. It's justified based on a companies lack of principles and malice.

Why are you defending a company that's on an all out war against game ownership and is doing everything they can to get rid of it? Should people not call them out on it?

@HeeHo that would make sense if I ever pirated a Switch game, which I haven't. Classic Nintendo fan, logic isn't your strong suit, but making faulty assumptions is.

What about games they aren't selling? Where the profits don't go to Nintendo at all?

What's your excuse there? "WhY DoN't YoU pAy ScAlPeR's PrIcEs FoR uSeD gAmEs AnD fAuLtY hArDwArE"?

@Yorumi I don't think it's always that easy as "it's just a way to control prices". Like, the ideal price of those games for a lot of people is 0 dollars. If it wasn't, people would wait for a sale rather than pirate it. And if a game never goes at a sale that means that a lot of people are buying for the price that it currently is, meaning that people do actually want it at that price. Specially if the game is avaliable physicaly, when that demand can be much more potent (specially on the 2nd hand market).

Also, the music industry was basically destroyed by streaming. I already made another comment about this but basically, the prices became so low that artist actually suffer a lot more to make a profit and the big winners are the companies that host those streaming services. That's why we see a lot of big videogame companies creating their own streaming services, to get on the streaming push but without losing control and profits.

He equates pro Liberty, to stealing. Guy is an outright thief.

@ThomastheTankEngine Sony and Microsoft, known to defend game ownership with their... subsciption services? Sure, I guess?

@BoilerBroJoe I hear you, but what do you do when the people keep doing it and have no respect for the criminal justice system?

@jowe_gw PS Plus, GamePass, NSO. Which of these three services forces rentals and doesn't let you buy games?

Nintendo's "service".

so a private jet is the way to go if i need to run from the usa undetected. makes sense. tho unavailable to most who arent loaded with cash. dam. good to know tho.

i mean tbh do what you got to do to escape prison/long jail time. yolo. ig. once your colleage is sentenced, what can yado.

@ThomastheTankEngine But piracy is stealing. The word piracy means exactly that. Your whole argument becomes baseless after your opening statement 😅 so I stopped reading and moved on with my life.

@ThomastheTankEngine I disagree with you there, I like to own my games as well, however stealing them from a company because you don't like their policies does not make stealing ok.

@ThomastheTankEngine Genuine question, can you buy the classic PS games avaliable on the new PS+ service without a PS+ subscription?

@ThomastheTankEngine Also, I personally said that for older games I totally get emulating them and ilegally downloading them since there is no other choice in a lot of cases.

Now, piracy on the Switch exists and it's the reason why Bowser was prosecuted in the first place, because he was profiting on pirating on current gen Switch consoles. What about that then?

@jowe_gw yes. Just not the PS3 games because those are stream only.

Other consoles, PS1, PS2, PSP, you can buy their classic games.

@Dorry77 the official definition of piracy is "the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work".

Where's the word stealing there?

Or do you think the physical copy of a game vanishes into thin air when someone downloads a rom?

@jowe_gw I don't condone or participate in piracy of current gen games.

However, when the company on the receiving end is trying to get rid of game ownership, forgive me for not being sympathetic.

Why should I care about Nintendo's bottom in the slightest?

Have no sympathy for guys like him. He tries to justify himself that he steals because “they are making billions anyway” as an excuse to leech off others. Why don’t you get a honest career with your skillset? He won’t because he wanted the easy dollar at the risk of the law according to his own words.

The fact that he already got imprisoned already and still tempting fate shows he has no remorse. This isn’t about being pro Nintendo this is about showing no sympathy to literal parasites to society. People like him shouldn’t be idolized like he is some Robin Hood giving the company wealth to the poor/needy. Dude literally lives in a fancy apartment with a Russian model and doesn’t have a single care about anyone outside of his immediate circle. He is no better then the corporations that he tries too hard to paint as the “real enemy”

@Yorumi I mean... Look at the money the music industry had at the early 2000s and compare it to the late 2010s or this decade. I don't think I'm fabricating that fact. So, why could that be if you think my theory is really that wrong?

@ThomastheTankEngine You know what? That's actually cool if true that you can buy the PS1 and PS2 classics without needed a subscription.

So, you don't condone current gen piracy then? The very think Bowser made a profit of? What about people making money in general from the piracy scene?

@Danrenfroe2016 As I said above, I think there are plenty of punishments we can use that don’t involve locking someone up. Of course the argument can always be pushed to “well what if they don’t pay their fine/show up for community service/etc.?” but it’s not like we’re all perfectly self sufficient creatures that don’t interact with a highly complex society in a variety of ways. If people continue to defy laws you can freeze their accounts, flag their travel documents and so on. Of course every rule has an exception and I’m sure there is some hypothetical where someone who’s not violent will need to be detained or jailed, but I think we could be more creative and deal with 99% of offenders out there. The point is we don’t try. We just fetishize prison as a punishment for people we are angry at, and sadly that leaves a lot of people hurt for doing a lot less than this guy.

I don't think this guy's attitude is helping his cause or hurting Nintendo's at all. He sounds like a wannabe Leninist but without wanting to put himself in harms way for an armed uprising.

Piracy is illicit duplication i.e. like renting a DVD, ripping it and returning it the next day. Theft is taking something and having the original object gone. Piracy is no less illegal, but there is a difference.

For all the people defending the guy, pretend this was Sony he was doing it to, and let's see how the "Nintendo" fans in here would change turning on him.

@mikegamer they don't care about the legality of it in the slightest.

They just care because it hurts Nintendo's bottom line. The fanbase is a cult.

Nintendo can never do any wrong.

@ThomastheTankEngine Sony protects their IPs too. People kept getting copyright strikes over people using Earth Bound music.

@ThomastheTankEngine Nintendo does do wrong. But, protecting their IPs isn't one of them.

@michellelynn0976 trying to axe game ownership and going the Adobe route with classic games is the wrong thing to do.

Nintendo fans would rather cheer on the company whose trying to axe game ownership then ever contemplate if Nintendo is the bad guy. They are.

So predictable that piracy defenders claim others are corporate bootlickers when they get called out on piracy.

@ThomastheTankEngine LOL No they aren't. They are a company. Do I think it's a bad idea to not bring their classic games out, but people like him aren't helping. The only thing people like him do is make Nintendo double down. I don't feel for them. For decades, they know Nintendo is like this, why keep doing it?

@jsty3105 I know. Piracy is wrong. You are taking without paying. Products don't pop up out of thin air. Funny thing, they love pirating to their computer bootlicking their favorite PC company. Lol

@ThomastheTankEngine Nintendo isn't trying to ax game ownership. It's that PC bootlickers want the game without paying for it. They want to take from the hard labor put into these games. They want the game without paying for it.

I concur, stealing from billion dollar corporations isn't really stealing at all. Especially when it's a digital medium that literally costs $0 to make more copies of. I don't think I've paid for a movie since Matrix 2.

@Savage_Joe Of course mega record labels keeping all the sales money was bad. But now we get big music streaming companies doing the same while paying the artists less. I don't know if that is much better honestly. The only good thing I can see is lowering the bar to actually get music on those services while before you had to sell yourself to a record lable, everything else is a downgrade.

Right now an artist needs more merch and concert sales in order to break even... well, what about those indies? Sure, they can get their sounds out much easier but, due to the nature of the market nowadays, actually getting money for it isn't easy. Big artists can do merch and concerts much easier than indies after all.

@michellelynn0976 😏I actually disagree with the use of the term bootlicker because it tends to shut down constructive discussion. 😊

@jowe_gw too true. Spotify etc have been great for music distribution but far less great for artist remuneration.

So so many news stories of artists getting paid peanuts for a song played millions of times.

And this is the man you people admire because evil Nintendo doesn't give you games for free?

That unethical, cynical, hypocritical man?

REALLY?

@Mikmoomamimocki Same. I emulate a GBA game off of a website and I don’t lose sleep over it. That console’s been out of production for years now. But pirating games that are currently available to buy for modern platforms is another thing entirely.

@DK-Fan have you read half the comments here? Pretty sure that's an emphatic "No!" For most of us.

Max Louarn you did the crime and now need to do the time and what is sad trying to use his father and children as shields .. he should have thought of them when he did the stealing..

@Super_Eli_007 i disagree stealing is stealing

@NWC Fine by me. But if a game company isn’t giving me any way to buy their games that I want to play, then I’m perfectly fine with playing it on a website with all the features of actual, competent emulators. That’s my reasoning for it, at least.

In my opinion, the appropriate punishment for videogame piracy should be a fine that is less than the price of Mario Kart 8.

@jowe_gw the music industry was dying long before streaming. Streaming was the only option left. Record sales were in the gutter and piracy was never gonna be stopped. Yeah the artists get screwed big time with streaming revenues but they were still getting screwed long before that by record labels when it came to album sales.

@jsty3105 not like artists were getting a good deal before streaming. For example a rapper would generally make 0.66 dollars for every $10 album sold. That's blatant robbery! Artists are robbed by record labels today just as bad as they were in the past.

Reality is that if there was no streaming artists would be worse off though as the public decided long ago that the Ease of getting free albums too good to turn down.

I get that the love for things of the past and the drive to preserve them are major factors for why people sometimes resort to illegal means such as what these people did, but sooner or later we have to accept the following:

1. Laws, though we may disagree with them, have to be followed, unless they overstep morality or basic rights.

2. Over time, some things will cease to exist. Try as we may, nothing in this world can last forever, and we have to be able to accept that and move on.

@Super_Eli_007 No judging here. Not my cup of tea but all cool

@Moistnado Even if that person made thousands of dollars in profit the punishment should always be a small fine? Ok...

@kobashi100 Saying that "artist were screwed up before but for different reasons" doesn't change anything that I said. Streaming made it easy for more people to enter the industry but it made the payment EVEN WORSE than before and reduced the money that industry moves in total. That's a fact.
Again, there is a reason why every big company wants their own Spotify instead of publishing their media on a Spotify they don't own.

@Yorumi Ok then... What's the reason the music industry was cut so much right arround the time music streaming services hit it big?

Also, GoG is still a small service. It's growing but it's not HUGE or anything. And Steam technically has DRM, just saying.

Simply offering better services and prices doesn't automatically reduce piracy. It helps, don't get me wrong. But to assume a company should just let pirates make profit out of things they don't own when they are selling it right now on the market seems... off to me. Of course they'll try to combat it, specially if they make money out of it.

A reminder that Bowser in particular was accused on piracy on current gen Nintendo systems so I don't think the reasoning of "Nintendo didn't offer any other option" works here.

@mr_somewhere so I have to work 8 hours a day 6 days a week while he can steal from Nintendo? Y'all are so detached from reality it's disgusting

@wanghosom Because that is exactly what I said when I stated that I found the nature of his punishment egregious, was it?

@jowe_gw yes.

@Moistnado Then I guess I should not work anymore? If I can sell pirated software and only get a small fixed fine that does not make a dent of the money I made and it is not linked to the amount of ilegal sales I did, then what's the point?

I know Nintendo is very extreme with piracy but some people here are saying some very stupid takes.

@jowe_gw the solution for Nintendo is offering value for money and convenience. They lost nothing from pirates and have nothing to complain about.

@ThomastheTankEngine People need to stop worshiping big faceless corporations. I love their game as much as the next guy, but come on, people.

@Yorumi Blowing the effects of piracy out of proportion doesn't make it a good thing tho. And it doesn't change anything I said earlier.

I said it earlier and I'll say it again, the only place where I can justify piracy is for game preservation and maybe if the game is exorbitably expensive (like living in a place like Brazil where imports from videogames can be... difficult sometimes unless it improved recently). Everything else is just people being cheap.

Also, the dude from this article literally profit about other people's work. And he literally said that was the whole reason why he did it too.

I'll repeat that again. Steam has DRM. Still has it to this day. And GoG didn't changed that.

Also what are you saying about that last paragraph? I just said that streaming did harm to the general music industry and made it even harder for artists to get paid for their work (despite being easier to publish it). I didn't mention anything about the music industry's attemps to fight piracy.
I mentioned that as a rebuttal about how the convinience of the current music industry was all perfect. I just don't get that when it decreased the money in the industry and made it even harder for artists to be paid for their work.

@mikegamer Apperantly people should defend a guy that is blatantly profiting of other people work and framing it as fighting for "freedom" because corporations bad.

@jowe_gw It's not about defending the pirates or claiming that what they did was somehow right, but years in jail and a fine they won't ever be able to repay for what isn't even a blip on the financial radar for Nintendo seems a bit excessive.

It's purely making an example of them, excessive punishment as supposed deterrent, and that sort of thing is, for this kind of petty crime at least, pretty medieval, but i suppose all these privatized prisons need to be filled up somehow, right?

@MysticX Oh, yeah, sure. Prison is a bit harsh. At most I'd do fines that make them pay for the money they made with piracy with punitive damages or something. Like, the one on this article blatantly said he went in for the money and made money out of it.

@mikegamer People need to stop white knighting those who are out to make easy money using someone else's work/property , particularly blatant ones like those in the article.

Perhaps I should start making money from redistributing other people's work like this guy. Would be nice to be a hero

@TedGundy precisely. dude is full of himself and thinks he's doing a public good when he's literally become a millionaire himself from theft. theft from victims who aren't really hurting, but the point is he doesn't really have moral ground to be grandstanding, unless he's using those millions to actually fund the causes he's acting like he's advancing instead of his own luxurious lifestyle.

also, yeah, jail sucks. In fact as an American who sees how horrific the prison system can be at least in this country, I'm not a big fan of it altogether. but homie isn't gonna get any extra sympathy from me for this or that situation in his life. that's literally what every human being deals with when confronted with the possibility of imprisonment, and most of them aren't millionaires.

i will say this headline is a bit misleading, making it sound like he's callously leaving his teammate to rot, when "what do i care" was about the impact on Nintendo, and it was bowser who was trying to snitch on him.

He's 100% right.

Love how people talk about IP as though anyone can take but forgets they don't own it. That's why we ended up with CopyRight Laws to begin with. Theft is Theft-regardless of the entity involved. He profited off pirated ROMs/Software how is that benefiting anyone besides himself. So tell me whom has he giving that money to? HIMSELF. Don't kid yourself playing the victim card is a insult to REAL LIVE victims here. Anyone thinks pirating is legal let's pirate your banking account and say that's the price of business. I doubt at that point you be thinking differently. Lookup what is IP and CopyRight before making dumb comments you have no background on.

5k a month sounds rather nice to be fair. No need to be greedy.

@jsty3105 Stop acting like Nintendo's going to go under next year.

@mikegamer it's puzzling why known convicted criminals are being put on golden pedestals. Crime definitely does pay it seems

@jsty3105 I hear ya. A lot of consumers think games, movies, and music are created with magic and there is no hard labor, costs, and payments that have to be made.

I feel bad for singers and songwriters who dont make hardly anything off a hit song.

@mikegamer It is about what is right. If someone works hard and pours their heart into something, people who steal it should pay the price.

@michellelynn0976
Again, piracy is not the exact same as outright theft. It's more akin to renting a Bluray and copying the disc, then returning it. Original disc is not stolen, but illegally duplicated. Semantics.

@mikegamer No, you're obtaining it without paying for it. That is theft. it doesn't hurt the big corporations, it hurts the workers.

@BoilerBroJoe gotcha, I was just wondering.

@mikegamer I seriously doubt you'd avoid using the term 'theft' if you personally patented an invention (It costs tens of thousands or more depending on the scale of protection) and someone else 'pirated' it - there's a reason the standard industry term is 'IP theft' not 'IP piracy'. You may exclaim that someone 'stole' your idea - not exclaim that someone 'copied/pirated' your idea.

While the action is certainly copying something, the effect/result isn't. In fact, with IP theft, you'd suffer material loss through reduced profits/revenue from someone else using your idea before you. That's probably a bit easier to measure because you make estimates based on the monopoly you'd have on the patented invention versus the current state when others have 'pirated/copied' the invention