[ohthehugemanate]

Anyone have more detail about the case against Bowser? Was it purely a DMCA copyright circumvention case? Did he sell pirated material? On the face of it the damages awarded is ridiculous for a private middle class individual. Reminds me of the old RIAA downloading lawsuits, where they requested outrageous damages in an effort to scare defendants and hopefully set precedent.

[xh-dude]

Twitter says he distributed pirate ROMs that would brick Switches unless he was paid a monthly ransom.

[pfych]

I can only find one source on this that isn't extremely recent[1]. It seems like it would only brick the device if you pirated and used an illegitimate copy of the custom firmware.

[1]: https://wololo.net/2018/06/25/nintendo-switch-team-xecuters-...

[ohthehugemanate]

Well that definitely makes him an asshole, but not a prison-and-then-life-of-crushing-debt asshole. Is copyright law really this fucked, that someone was extradited and made an example for selling a ransomware chip?

[drewcoo]

I didn't see mention of bricking here. It sounded more like everyone (Nintendo & DoJ) was upset about piracy.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499297/team-xecuter-sel...