Nintendo used the TX court case to "send a message", Gary Bowser's health potentially at risk in prison
Gary Bowser, of Team Xecuter infamy, is still serving his three-year prison sentence. The storied court battle may be over, but a new court transcript was released, and uploaded online, courtesy of Axios. In it, is further official comments from Nintendo's lawyers. According to the document, Nintendo's legal team wanted to use the TX case to send a message to other would-be hackers or those in the piracy business. During the proceedings, US district judge Robert Lasnik asked Nintendo's lawyers, "What do you think? What else can we do to convince people that there's no glory in this hacking/piracy?", with Nintendo's side responding, "There would be a large benefit to further education of the public."
Lasnik agreed with the sentiment, though he did not sentence Bowser to the full 5 years that Nintendo was seeking. "I always tell the jurors, 'Your role is not to send a message. Your role is to decide guilt or innocence on the facts'. But my role sometimes does entail sending a message." In response, Bowser said that giving him a longer sentence wouldn't be a deterrent to hackers, stating, “There’s so much money to be made from piracy that it’s insignificant.”
Additionally, the legal documents also reveal that Nintendo blamed hackers for the release of the new Nintendo Switch model, saying they had to design new hardware to circumvent the losses caused by TX. Nintendo's legal team also claimed that those using hacked systems could cheat, thus scaring off children who would lose to the cheaters and feel upset. “Parents should not be forced to explain to their children why people cheat and why sometimes games are not fair, just because one person wants an unfair advantage.”
2) According to the hacker Gary Bowser's lawyer, much of the time Bowser already served while awaiting sentencing was spent in de facto solitary confinement due to Covid and other health issues pic.twitter.com/BezqOq2oeZ
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) June 7, 2022
Regarding the means of "sending a message", Bowser's lawyers sought a shorter 19-month sentence, to which Lasnik disagreed, and eventually sentenced Bowser to serve 40 months. The amount sentenced would have initially been 60 months, but was shortened due to the fact that Bowser suffered health issues as he awaited trial in jail, which caused him to be alone in solitary for 23 hours a day over the course of six months. As this also took place during the height of COVID, Bowser would only be allowed out of his cell to shower once every three days. He also had lost 90 pounds over those six months, and was confined to a wheelchair, as a result of his illness going untreated.
This was Bowser's statement regarding the above: "It has been a very traumatic experience for me getting arrested, coming here, going through this. This is my first time actually in a jail going through the court process and everything. And the amount of time I've spent already, 16 months in custody, a lot of that time - I spent six months, basically, locked up due to Covid. I went through all three of the Covid waves before there was even a vaccine available. I personally haven't got the vaccine [as] I am skeptical with my medical condition, how it will affect me, and I haven't been able to actually have proper medical treatment because I haven't been able to have a one-on-one with a doctor to see if the vaccine would be possible with my health conditions. When I first got arrested, I was 410 pounds. I had to use a wheelchair. I spent my life drinking, since I was age 15, after my mom died, and this is the longest time I have been sober in my life."
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