Two Leaders of Videogame Piracy Group Arrested
from the not-stealing-a-car dept.
On Friday America's Department of Justice announced:
Two leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups, Team Xecuter, have been arrested and are in custody facing charges filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle... The indictment alleges the defendants were leaders of a criminal enterprise that developed and sold illegal devices that hacked popular videogame consoles so they could be used to play unauthorized, or pirated, copies of videogames. The enterprise targeted popular consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic, and the Microsoft Xbox.
"These defendants were allegedly leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of U.S. companies," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "These arrests show that the department will hold accountable hackers who seek to commandeer and exploit the intellectual property of American companies for financial gain, no matter where they may be located."
"These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers — even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games," said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington. "This conduct doesn't just harm billion dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry."
"Theft of intellectual property hurts U.S. industry, game developers and exploits legitimate gaming customers, all of which threaten the legitimacy of the commercial video game industry," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Eben Roberts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, Seattle. "We are committed to working with our international partners to find criminals like these who steal copyrighted material and bring cyber criminals to justice...."
According to the indictment, Team Xecuter at times cloaked its illegal activity with a purported desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own videogames for noncommercial use. However, the overwhelming demand and use for the enterprise's devices was to play pirated videogames.
Posted by EditorDavid 3 hours ago
crime games nintendo usa government
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Oooohhh
nospam007 3 hours ago
They want us to be very scared.
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Re: Oooohhh
Methuselah2 an hour ago
It's about time they took these dangerous criminals off the streets, all that rioting, damaging, and stuff just cannot be tolerated in a democracy. Same for all that looting of the Federal government. What's that? They allowed some people to play video games? Off with their heads! Good thing someone is thinking about the poor children.
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Oooh... they used the magic word
gavron 3 hours ago
> ... cyber criminals...
Cybernetic criminals. Wow, I guess if you add cyber to it and claim to be protecting American interlectural propatty, you win.
Next up - the lynching!
E "Cyber doesn't mean everything it's used on"
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Did something change (+3, Interesting)
Cylix 3 hours ago
When did mod chips become illegal? I thought backups were covered under some litigation years ago.
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Re: Did something change (+2)
fennec 2 hours ago
Never heard about DMCA? You can try to make backups, but you are not allowed to break protections...
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Re: Did something change (+1)
tiananmen tank man 2 hours ago
You are not allowed to share how to break the protection
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Re: Did something change (+1)
xavdeman an hour ago
When did mod chips become illegal? I thought backups were covered under some litigation years ago.
Since the DMCA was enacted in 2001, mod chips (and other circumvention methods - cracks etc.) are prohibited by 17 U.S. Code 1201 ("Circumvention of copyright protection systems. No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.").
About that word 'effectively': US courts have decided that even if "DRM" protection has been broken before, it's still considered circumvention to do it again. It is still considered an effective measure for average, normal (non-technical) user.
You can think of exceptions like the compact disc DRM that completely relied on autorun.exe, so you could bypass by holding SHIFT to prevent autorunning anything on your PC. But article 1201 is still the rule.
I guess as a consumer, "If you don't like it, don't buy the game" - BFV developer.
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NOT a piracy group (+4, Informative)
BenJeremy 2 hours ago
They did not release pirated games - they marketed devices that let you gain control of your consoles.
Piracy was certainly the main reason people did this, of course, but that's a side effect. Describing Team Xecutor as a "piracy group" is a dishonest, blatant lie.
I feel bad for those guys, they did a lot for console modding, including the homebrew scene, from those early days on the original Xbox.
Yes, I am the same guy who was a moderator at xbox-scene and created MXM.
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Re: NOT a piracy group (+1)
Rockoon 2 hours ago
Are we sure they werent also selling pirated roms and discs on the side?
Which came first with these guys. Havent they come from an era when there were no protections? The copying roms came first in their life is my guess, and not this subverting protections thing.
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Re: NOT a piracy group (+1)
Dutch Gun 2 hours ago
The indictment states otherwise.
According to the indictment, Team Xecuter at times cloaked its illegal activity with a purported desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own videogames for noncommercial use. However, the overwhelming demand and use for the enterprise’s devices was to play pirated videogames. To support this illegal activity, Team Xecuter allegedly helped create and support online libraries of pirated videogames for its customers, and several of the enterprise’s devices came preloaded with numerous pirated videogames. According to the indictment, Team Xecuter was so brazen that it even required customers to purchase a “license” to unlock the full features of its custom firmware, the SX OS, in order to enable the ability to play pirated videogames.
We'll see if this holds up in court, I guess.
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Re: NOT a piracy group (+1)
fazig 2 hours ago
In my eyes it's dancing around the issue of whether end users own the electronics they buy and therefore are free to modify them, repair them, and resell them, or if the devices are never fully owned by end user.
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Re: NOT a piracy group (+2)
BenJeremy an hour ago
If any of their products were packaged with pre-loaded games, it wasn't by them.
Team Xecutor was willing to skirt some gray areas in the past - for example, hacked BIOSes for the original Xbox were derived from the original BIOSes, and homebrew software was built using Microsoft's XDK, outside of developers' agreements and such. They never sold games. They tried to be scrupulous to avoid the direct ire of companies like Microsoft. Their real problem was that Nintendo doesn't make the same distinctions - Nintendo is almost pathologically averse to anybody exploiting their systems. They aren't even friendly to indie developers (I can easily port the PC games I write to Xbox and Playstation, but for Nintendo, I need to do a dog and pony show just to get an SDK and dev box)
As I said, they certainly created tools and supported users' ability to copy games into other media - but you could easily argue this was in service to providing backup support where the game companies provided none.
As far as piracy itself goes, well, there was a time I did such a thing, but I also owned more games than the average non-pirating console owner. Today, I don't pirate, but I still refuse to consider it a horrible crime. In my mind, this continues to be a matter of big companies meting out disproportional justice - more out of spite than their bottom dollar. I would even say that the effort to bring "piracy groups" to justice costs far more than the actual losses incurred.
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Re: NOT a piracy group (+1)
wisnoskij an hour ago
I grew up on a modded original xbox and watched hundreds (thousands) of hours of movies on XBMC. So much nostalgia. But I would not feel too bad for them, this case seems very cut and dry from the detailed released so far, they will gained millions in notoriety and new subscribers from this and it sounds like this was their career, not a hobby, so some legal hurdles are expected.
Looking online I see a website with a similar name selling a switch dungle. So they do not even touch the hardware, all they offer is some non brand name hardware.
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Mod chip development != piracy (+5, Informative)
Powercntrl 2 hours ago
This news release is disingenuous as claiming Home Depot is a “homicidal weapons dealer” because some people used their tools as murder weapons.
Team Xecuter sold DRM circumvention devices, which is outlawed by the DMCA unless granted a specific exemption.
As with the legal battle presently transpiring over “walled gardens” on mobile devices, gaming consoles also lock you out of the hardware you’ve paid for. I suppose the Ministry of Truth can’t have people realizing that Team Xecuter were actually the good guys, fighting against an unjust law.
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Locked down hardware forever. (+1)
Malays2 bowman 12 minutes ago
"As with the legal battle presently transpiring over âoewalled gardensâ on mobile devices, gaming consoles also lock you out of the hardware youâ(TM)ve paid for. I suppose the Ministry of Truth canâ(TM)t have people realizing that Team Xecuter were actually the good guys, fighting against an unjust law."
And the real bad guys have won. We are going to get buttfucked forevermore. Where are you going to run, to Nintendo's competition? Ha! They are doing the same thing. Run to the Kickstart console that may or may not be vaporware that just about nobody knows about? Yawn, just an insignificant dent there.
Locked down hardware is here to stay, and it's only going to get worse instead of better. Soon they will igure out a way to make 'jailbreaking' just about impossible. Keep this in mind while the industry tries to push everyone to "The Cloud", and "Trusted this and that", and so forth. Once we are "pwned" by the big man, there is no going back, except for a very small minority of device users.
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Mealy mouth cunts (+3, Insightful)
Malays2 bowman 2 hours ago
That's what our glorious "leaders " have become with this drek that they spewed out. That, and they willing to whore themselves out and get things like the DMCA passed which not one American citizen voted for.
Fuck them, and I bet plenty of the people who are going after this "ooh scary INTERNATIONAL hacking group" have child porn and other illegal material on their own computers.
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Re: Mealy mouth cunts (+1)
reboot246 34 minutes ago
American citizens NEVER vote directly for national laws. The DMCA was passed by Congress (all of whom are American citizens) and signed by the President (also an American citizen).
So your "not one American citizen voted for" is bullshit. Your own Senators and Representative voted for it. If you don't like the law, vote in somebody who will vote to repeal it.
Do they even teach civics in schools nowadays? If they do, you must have flunked the course.
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Re: Mealy mouth cunts (+1)
Malays2 bowman 4 minutes ago
And these same people are supposed to represent the interests of the American people, not just companies. By passing the DMCA, they told most of the American people to go fuck themselves. If it were really up to a direct vote by American citizens, how many do you think would've voted for this? (I should've been more clear in my post as to what I meant by "nobody voted for this") I would say close to 0, provided they were not brainwashed with scary slow motion B&W images of faceless hackers working in a pitch dark room with sinister music played over it.
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Re: Mealy mouth cunts (+1)
Malays2 bowman in a few seconds
"So your "not one American citizen voted for" is bullshit. Your own Senators and Representative voted for it. If you don't like the law, vote in somebody who will vote to repeal it."
WAY easier said than done. Provided we could even find one that can resist accepting a generous "gift" by 'special intetest groups' that want to get DMCA type laws passed.
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Hacking device for 3DS (+1)
LenKagetsu 29 minutes ago
Imagine paying money for something like that and not just installing Luma CFW
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