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When 54-year-old Gary Bowser pleaded guilty to his role in helping Team Xecuter with their piracy-enabling line of console accessories, he realized he would likely never pay back the $14.5 million he owed Nintendo in civil and criminal penalties. In a new interview with The Guardian, though, Bowser says he began making $25 monthly payments toward those massive fines even while serving a related prison sentence.
Last year, Bowser was released after serving 14 months of that 40-month sentence (in addition to 16 months of pre-trial detention), which was spread across several different prisons. During part of that stay, Bowser tells The Guardian, he was paid $1 an hour for four-hour shifts counseling other prisoners on suicide watch.
[...] Nintendo lawyers were upfront that they pushed for jail time for Bowser to "send a message that there are consequences for participating in a sustained effort to undermine the video game industry."
[...] Bowser also maintains that he wasn't directly involved with the coding or manufacture of Team Xecuter's products and only worked on incidental details like product testing, promotion, and website coding. Speaking to Ars in 2020, Aurora, a writer for hacking news site Wololo, described Bowser as "kind of a PR guy" for Team Xecuter. Despite this, Bowser said taking a plea deal on just two charges saved him the time and money of fighting all 14 charges made against him in court.
[...] Now that he's free, Bowser says he has been relying on friends and a GoFundMe[https://www.gofundme.com/f/garyopa-restarting-his-life] page to pay for rent and necessities as he looks for a job. That search could be somewhat hampered by his criminal record and by terms of the plea deal that prevent him from working with any modern gaming hardware.
Despite this, Bowser told The Guardian that his current circumstances are still preferable to a period of homelessness he experienced during his 20s. And while console hacking might be out for Bowser, he is reportedly still "tinkering away with old-school Texas Instruments calculators" to pass the time.
Alternate source with GoFundMe link (added to the story above): Nintendo Sued a Man So Severely That He Can Only Survive on GoFundMe
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Monday February 05 2024, @01:17PM (5 children)
So in about 50000 years he will have repaid them at this rate if they don't charge him any interest. The amount is so ludicrous it's not even funny.
Why even bother paying. He is at the bottom of the barrel and have nothing they can take. Even after serving time in prison he is sentenced to a life at the bottom.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday February 05 2024, @03:25PM (1 child)
It's only a 14 month sentence. The bigger thing here is that he paid the money with the proceeds from working as a slave. So, Nintendo is apparently OK accepting slave labor money.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday February 05 2024, @03:28PM
Oops, I mean 40 months, but same basic thing.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Monday February 05 2024, @05:01PM
His sentence isn't about what makes sense. It's about revenge and deterrence.
From the article:
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday February 05 2024, @08:00PM
It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 05 2024, @08:46PM
I suspect the payments serve to validate the debt and probably accelerate his release by showing he acknowledged the debt..
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Opportunist on Monday February 05 2024, @01:28PM
Nintendo should be happy if he doesn't sue them for using his name as the villain in their games.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 05 2024, @02:59PM (4 children)
If anybody can convincingly tell others that it's possible to keep living and not commit suicide, it's someone being paid a slave wage to work in a prison he's doing time in for hacking a fucking Nintendo console, and having to give away his meager earnings to Nintendo for absolutely no good reason other than making sure the guy feels the spite.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @03:14PM (3 children)
As far as I know they have not actually arrested or caught anyone that did any of the actual code or hardware side. They managed to nab the talkers and the organizers. There are already new projects out that are assumed to be from the same people that was behind this. So all they did manage to do was ruin this poor sobs life. For more or less running some webshops and a couple of online forums. Was what he did illegal? Sure, all things point to yes by current laws. They can talk all they like about backups or homebrew or whatnot, but it's software piracy for sure. But the people caught was the low hanging fruit that amount to nothing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 05 2024, @04:51PM
Just and legal are two very different things.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 05 2024, @10:36PM (1 child)
>They managed to nab the talkers and the organizers.
IMO the talkers and the organizers are the most culpable in the whole deal. The code jockeys should have known better, but quite possibly had no idea how their work was being used to defraud / subvert / profit / etc.
Fraud is fraud.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 07 2024, @03:00PM
The "code jockeys" as you say are doing this for fun and/or profit. There's no coincidence that they've not been caught and are likely located in countries that don't have an extradition treaty with the USA.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Monday February 05 2024, @03:05PM (14 children)
How come courts even approve such plea deals? It doesn't make sense to extract such insane amount of money from a person who didn't even profit to such a degree. It doesn't make sense to send people to prison for theoretically reducing a corporation income for 1% or so. Court of law shouldn't abuse government's facilities to help a corporation shape the way people use computers to their liking.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday February 05 2024, @03:46PM (10 children)
> Court of law
The court does not make the law nor sets the punishment. It is the legislature that sets the law.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday February 05 2024, @04:14PM (8 children)
they instituted the plea deal system, which I believe is entirely evil and unconstitutional. with this method you are not judged by 12 of your peers but an almost certainly corrupt judge and gaggle of bureaucrats. an actual jury would bring common sense into the process and allow the populace to disregard laws they feel are unjust. as was intended.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday February 05 2024, @04:56PM (4 children)
Fair point; although one is not required to make such a plea, it is always a possibility to fall back on the court.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday February 06 2024, @10:06AM (3 children)
Consider the fine print in those "contracts of adhesion" that many businesses demand agreement to ( usually in the "Terms and Conditions" behind the "agree" button when visiting a business on the web ) where you agree to "binding arbitration" aka "Kangaroo Kourt" and waive any right to a jury trial.
When I see that kind of business talk in a contract, all sorts of red flags go up, almost as if they were flat telling me they have already prepared for my disappointment should I buy their offering.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday February 06 2024, @10:22AM (1 child)
Hmm, I have never noticed that and I do (sometimes) read the T&Cs. But perhaps it is one of those USian things? I couldn't find much detail about it from a UK point of view.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday February 06 2024, @10:25AM
ps: OTOH TFA refers to US case so UK or elsewhere law is somewhat irrelevant.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday February 07 2024, @12:18AM
A lot of those, hilariously, have been getting removed from contracts. To ensure the correct ruling, it's written in there that the corporation will pay for the arbitration.
....turns out if you get a class-action amount of people demanding that the company pay for arbitration, that costs the company a whole lot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday February 05 2024, @10:55PM (2 children)
Those usually picked for juries wouldn't know "common sense" if it came up and smacked them in the face. Both the Prosecution and Defense usually excuse any juror that shows any kind of intelligence or critical thinking ability. They want the jury stacked with those who can be easily manipulated by a good emotional argument rather than a factual one.
And sadly the Right of a juror to nullify [wikipedia.org] is, to the best of my current knowledge, only in the United States of America, and even then most of the US population are unaware of that power as knowledge of it is no longer included in the briefing/instructions given to jury when they are sworn in and the subject never gets taught anywhere outside law schools.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by tekk on Tuesday February 06 2024, @12:06AM
As far as I'm aware that'd be possible in any system of juries. "Jury Nullification" is simply another word for passing a not-guilty verdict regardless of the person's guilt. In Scotland they have a 3rd option which is a bit cleaner: Not Proven. Basically "We weren't convinced by the prosecution."
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 06 2024, @03:55PM
In fact, supposedly that "do you have any beliefs that would prevent you from ruling in accordance with the law" (or however they phrase it) question when questioning the potential jurors is specifically to nail you if you say "no" and then bring up jury nullification later as perjuring yourself.
CGP Grey - The Law You Won't Be Told [youtube.com]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday February 05 2024, @07:07PM
Judges are no longer required to follow the sentencing guidelines, if memory serves. There's also, according to Popehat, lots of room for vigorous argument about where someone lands on the sentencing guidelines in the first place. Judges decide which side is right.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 05 2024, @05:01PM (2 children)
That's one of the differences between the US justice system and most European countries' for instance: if someone wrongs you in the US, you can sue for punitive damages well in excess of what you suffered financially. That's how the two Georgia election workers' lawyer managed to extract millions of actual dollars out of Trump for a defamation case. In most of Europe, damages are primarily calculated to compensate you for your loss, not to punish the loser.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday February 05 2024, @08:22PM
Giuliani, not Trump...
Trump hasn't yet faced any repercussions for his lies, though it is a part of the pending Georgia case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @08:34PM
Actually in most civilised countries, even if there are punitive damages, they are paid into consolidated revenue. Compensation for the loss is paid to the victim, but the State reserves the right to inflict punishment.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Monday February 05 2024, @03:53PM (3 children)
But if I was in his boots, I'd be penniless and bankrupt when it comes to Nintendo.
And selling Nintendo hacks through a shell company on the side.
Screw Nintendo. With a stolen dick if necessary.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 05 2024, @05:17PM (2 children)
A well-know movie studio that shall rename nameless threatened to sue me a few years ago because I had downloaded some shitty movie of theirs from the 80s with a torrent, that couldn't even be found or purchased legitimately. They lawyers sent me a "Pay $500 or we'll drag your ass in court" letter. I paid up, because they definitely had proof, and I have better things to do with my life.
However...
That pissed me off so bad I've been downloading and distributing the LIVING SHIT out of all their movies since then - of course covering my ass much better than I did when I got caught. I made it my duty to pirate the hell out of everything they have and make sure as many people as possible get it without paying a cent to them.
They got $500 from me, but they sure didn't win any money by doing this - quite the contrary.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @06:37PM (1 child)
The last time I got one of those letters I just put it in the trash where it belonged. I can't even recall what I had downloaded but I'm sure I had done it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 07 2024, @03:04PM
Litigating every single one of thousands, if not more of those that have downloaded pirated content would be a huge waste of money. On the other hand, sending a 35 cent letter to every "pirate" and only getting 10% of them to give you $500 each is probably still worth it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday February 05 2024, @07:11PM
This may have been under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, which the BOP says is voluntary and which they punish people for not signing up. https://federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com/prison-life/inmate-financial-responsibility-program-ifrp/#encouraging-inmates-to-participate-in-the-voluntary-program [federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com]