The story and work of Gary Bowser is pretty badass and would make for an interesting ama and event on lemmy. Here’s a recent article on Gary Bowser https://torrentfreak.com/gary-bowser-how-a-1980s-hacker-became-nintendos-nemesis-decades-later-230702/
Ok what should be done then?
Throw him in jail for a few months, give him a painful but reasonable fine (something mid 5 to low 6 figures) that he can possibly afford to pay off, and then leave it be ffs.
The rich and powerful steal literal billions of public money, cheat their way out of paying their fair share in taxes as a hobby, and they don’t get close to such a sentence ever. Why is this low to mid tier huckster deserving of indentured servitude for the rest of his life when people who cause economic damage and steal public money get off with a resignation, a severance package and two months house arrest?
Sounds like the problem is lack of enforcement then right? Making the punishment a slap on the hands only makes it easier for rich to get away with their theft. If you have a problem its not woth his punishment but rather the lack of equality in the enforcement.
Even in a fair justice system the punishment would be extreme in proportion to the crime. He caused the made up number of a global corporate giant to be a bit smaller than they had imagined.
I find the whole premise ridiculous, society or in this case an individual doesn’t owe a company its profits. If a person can be sued over this, then why don’t they sue Sony over competition? Why can’t I sue someone because my projected income isn’t what I wanted?
Because this loss was over explicitly stolen product and information. If this was old games they didn’t sell any more it would be one thing, but this was current hardware and games, which piracy on a grand scale has killed consoles before. I defend piracy as a means of preservation or to escape shitty DRM programs every time, but this was strictly harmful. This isn’t even tpuching on his laundering, which is what got him the jail time he did, not the piracy.