The guy was clearly modifying these consoles specifically to enable piracy. I'm quite sure he would have been fine if he was just installing the Homebrew Channel on Wiis, or XBMC on old X-Boxes for people. I'd bet that he was making a good chunk of change selling burned games as well. In which case: GOOD. This kind of business is highly irresponsible and damaging to the game industry as a whole. Modding a few friends' systems for novelty is one thing, but profiting by enabling piracy for the masses is just plain stupid, and the guy deserves a hefty fine at the VERY least. People like this guy are making games more expensive for ME to buy, and that is incredibly irritating.
At the very, very least, if people are going to pirate, they should need to have the skills and time to do it on their own. At least piracy would be limited to hardcore tinkerers, hackers, and people with way too much time on their hands, instead of reaching out into the masses of folks who barely even know how to run their damned microwave, but don't want to shell out $40-60 for games that cost, in some cases, millions to make.
That said, I've modified nearly a dozen Wiis for friends (for FREE... modding is not a legitimate business). Most of them get the Homebrew Channel only, but there are a select few who I've given the USB Launcher, knowing full well that they can be trusted to try out the games, and then BUY them if they're any good, deleting those that they find unworthy. Nobody gets ripped off, and if anything, the developers/publishers make a little extra money from games that these folks would have otherwise most likely never even tried, let alone BUY, if not for the convenience of the USB loader. And for the record, I'm not the least bit worried about the police knocking down my door. That's ludicrous.
