The United States Department of Justice has shared some news regarding Team-Xecuter, which doesn't appear to be a good sign for the company. Gary Bowser, known on GBAtemp as garyopa, Max Louarn, and Yuanning Chen have all been arrested in Seattle, Washington. The US Government classifies these men as "leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups", and will be facing a federal indictment charge, for the selling of illegal hardware that facilitates piracy.

“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.”

The FBI has also been involved, with each defendant to be charged under 11 felony counts, ranging from wire fraud, trafficking circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. One of the defendants, Louarn, has not yet been extradited, though Bowser has, where he was seen in the court hearing that took place today.

In September 2020, Louarn and Bowser were arrested abroad in connection with the charges in this case. The United States will seek Louarn’s extradition to stand trial in the United States. Bowser was arrested and deported from the Dominican Republic, and appeared today in federal court, in New Jersey.

Each defendant is charged with 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Source

 

[Teletron1]

Atmosphere isn't selling products with a sole intent of circumventing copyright protection like TX, Atmosphere devs will be just fine since creating CFW itself isn't illegal and they can't be arrested for it.

Sure they can in a NEW ORDER you got money to fight them ? Team X will get hit with punitive charges harder for profiting my advice it’s a new Corporate Strategy ever since Nintendo was able to have Japanese citizens arrested for modding now this .. next are scaring the little developers so hide your $hit cause the ninjas are coming

 

[MadonnaProject]

Maybe someday we'll realize it's a people problem. Oh well, I digress.

In america rapes are up. Murders are up. Crime of all sorts is up.

And the feds are going after hackers to appease the multi-millionaire japs.

 

[GatoFiestero]

They had already been warned. The only solution for these guys to be saved is for Nintendo to take over SX OS.

 

[SkittleDash]

Welp. Would be lying if I said I didn't see this coming. It was going to happen sooner or later. Once a Switch update kills the CFW, SXOS will be no more. And these Switch updates are pretty common to kill CFW.

 

[fvig2001]

Welp, I wanted a modded Switch lite so I guess I probably won't be buying it unless someone leaks TX's source code and continues it.

 

[HideoKojima]

Almost thought that ninty closed Gbatemp following SX arrest.

 

[AngryCinnabon]

I thought the same lmao. for us with v2's and cores installed are we fucked?

 

[ombus]

They most likely won't. They would have sent a C&D ages ago if so.

They would have caught the sxos people ages ago by that logic too...they where fine just till now.

 

[linuxares]

They would have caught the sxos people ages ago by that logic too...they where fine just till now.

Crime vs a hobby project?

 

[ombus]

Crime vs a hobby project?

your "hobby project" users are 95% for piracy too with simple patches and dont give me the excuse one comes with nintendo code and the other not.. atmos breaks nintendo security.

 

[weatMod]

...k?

They weren't arrested for creating SX OS though, they were arrested for selling physical devices purely designed to circumvent copyright protection. AKA their modchips and flashcarts. Creating those devices and selling them are in fact illegal, and is the only reason they were arrested. Atmosphere devs haven't created any such device, they're not selling you anything, they simply created a free open source CFW, which is technically legal so long as you're not using any kind of copyrighted code in the creation of that CFW.

"purely designed to circumvent copyright protection"
again no , TX didn't do anything illegal
those chips are NOT "PURELY DESIGNED TO CIRCUMVENT COPYRIGHT PROTECTION"
they have other purposes you can load linux you can load Android ,they can enable homebrew, same for most of the flashcards
by that logic CD DVD BR burners should be illegal too because you can use them to make copies of copyrighted music,movies,software

 

[Flying Scotsman]

I thought the same lmao. for us with v2's and cores installed are we fucked?

Unless they secretly update the firmware running on the hardware or someone else manages to do that - yes.

 

[Smoker1]

cut one head, two more will pop up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hail Hydra? LOL

 

[mesmeriize]

Sx cfw should still work fine without updates if emunand is on version 10.2 or below. Even if you update the sysnand past 10.2 to play online and leave emunand as it is because they're seperate.

The only thing I don't see working on the emunand are future game updates and newer games requiring a newer firmware until there's a patch tool that makes the game get rid of the messages.

I think this is going to make modded lites that much more rarer and valuable.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

your "hobby project" users are 95% for piracy too with simple patches and dont give me the excuse one comes with nintendo code and the other not.. atmos breaks nintendo security.

Atmosphere is not being advertised as able to bypass the anti-piracy measures, SX is.

Atmosphere does not come pre-bundled with sig patches. SX has them baked in.

Atmosphere does not include a paid option - SX does and the paid option specifically is advertised to users as a way to play pirated games (via XCI support).

If Atmosphere:

• Included sig patches in the download.
• Had an option to pay for extended access to features.
• Specifically advertised themselves as piracy enabling.
• Included Nintendo code.

then yes they would have been sued a long time ago, but they don't so Nintendo hasn't got any legal standing when it comes to issuing a C&D. Clean room projects (such as Atmosphere) are in a copyright bubble. This is also the reason why projects like ReactOS (which is reverse engineering and reimplementing the Windows kernel) are still up even though they technically would break copyright/trademark law if they included copyrighted code (i.e code from the Windows XP leak).

 

[Subtle Demise]

Crime vs a hobby project?

Bypassing copy protection is itself a felony under the DMCA, which needs repealed like yesterday.

 

[SodaSoba]

Gary Bowser irony nintendo managed to bag a guy named after a enemy they created

 

[GatoFiestero]

your "hobby project" users are 95% for piracy too with simple patches and dont give me the excuse one comes with nintendo code and the other not.. atmos breaks nintendo security.

where did you take that percentaje?

Is GBA Temp a hobbie project like that? Or are we all devs

 

[AngryCinnabon]

Sx cfw should still work fine without updates if emunand is on version 10.2 or below. Even if you update the sysnand past 10.2 to play online and leave emunand as it is because they're seperate.

The only thing I don't see working on the emunand are future game updates and newer games requiring a newer firmware until there's a patch tool that makes the game get rid of the messages.

I think this is going to make modded lites that much more rarer and valuable.

why would they be more valuable if CFW on them is gonna be well, dead unless someone manages to crack in and make updates? it's purely collector's at that point wouldn't you think?

 

[HideoKojima]

Sx cfw should still work fine without updates if emunand is on version 10.2 or below. Even if you update the sysnand past 10.2 to play online and leave emunand as it is because they're seperate.

The only thing I don't see working on the emunand are future game updates and newer games requiring a newer firmware until there's a patch tool that makes the game get rid of the messages.

I think this is going to make modded lites that much more rarer and valuable.

lemme.guess u do have a modded lite right?