IANAL
(12 year old me always wants to add a heart_emoji between the first I and A.)
not illegal to do stuff to hardware you own. Sharing the things you find will get you in trouble if they are someone else’s IP. Likely outcome would be a takedown notice. You can see how well that works by searching for prod.keys On the Internet. Tough to find, huh?
There are tons of documents that talk about the details of the hardware and how it works. Documenting ways to get around protection measures gets you closer to the grey areas but there are DefCON presentations for example that go into great detail. Based on events surrounding things like RCMLoader and Dragon Injector I would say if you built tools to make use of the exploits you document you’re likely to attract the Ninjas.
…while avoiding DMCA.
Ungh. I don’t think it will be possible to avoid a C&D. It’s very likely this threat is why the original Dev noped tf out. Spreading the word and getting it out in the wild is certainly possible, but setting up a storefront with a traceable address in a country that respects Intellectual copyright? Naw dawg.
Better to follow my 3 step plan:
1 be Chinese citizen
2 ???
3 profit (by selling on AliExpress)
Again, we have the successful shuttering of DragonInjector as a prior demonstration of what Ninty will do.
https://static.wiidatabase.de/DragonInjector-Abmahnung.pdf
It was the circumvention of TPM that brought the Ninjas. This caused collateral damage to other project such as DragonMMC.
My
unqualified opinion?
It will be hard to shut down casual sharing of howto information (see exploits available for…heck, EVERYTHING!). As long as you don’t set up shop and start selling from a storefront with a business address and a money trail you should be fine.
tried my best to reference other real world actions (except for the last paragraph) but again…IANAL
Let’s wait for
@Ericzander to bring the facts.