Wii Homebrew Sites Supporting Piracy ? - The Back Up Loader is Bad for Homebrew

[BlueMonkey]

There's too many casual gamers for much lost money. Let the target audience pay for everything.

[souLLy]

Hmmm, this is obviously going to result in Nintendo coming down hard on the scene, I've no doubt Brakken knows this so I can't see why he would draw attention to this other than to get a few more hits from the pirate kiddies.

A shame as I think his sites are generally some of the better sites out there normally.

[geise69]

Hmmm, this is obviously going to result in Nintendo coming down hard on the scene, I've no doubt Brakken knows this so I can't see why he would draw attention to this other than to get a few more hits from the pirate kiddies.

A shame as I think his sites are generally some of the better sites out there normally.

Hey I loved your review of the Wlip! http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97689

This is really not that much different than a modchip. We all need to just let it go. It's going to come out and it's not going to affect the scene anymore than modchips and flashcarts.

[souLLy]

Hey I loved your review of the Wlip! http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97689

This is really not that much different than a modchip. We all need to just let it go. It's going to come out and it's not going to affect the scene anymore than modchips and flashcarts.

Heck, I know it's trolling but I'll rise to that. At the time it was the only method of playing Gamecube homebrew on the Wii and if I recall it was pre-native Wii homebrew too so there was the possibility that it would have been necessary for Wii homebrew.

At the end of the day making a stand against piracy will always get you flak, as the little pirate kids always want something for free. Sometimes it's unfortunate that, to run homebrew, you need to use the same devices that you can use for piracy; like a DS flashcard, this is not one of those times.

Waninkoko's loader purely exists for piracy, nothing else. It's an interesting development, but not one that should be posted on a reputable homebrew site, it retracts massively from the legitimacy of the scene and the warezers will be the first to bitch and moan when their favourite sites get shut down because they've been leaned on by Nintendo (shock horror, emu sites don't have deep pockets!).

[Moose2000]

Heck, I know it's trolling but I'll rise to that. At the time it was the only method of playing Gamecube homebrew on the Wii and if I recall it was pre-native Wii homebrew too so there was the possibility that it would have been necessary for Wii homebrew.

At the end of the day making a stand against piracy will always get you flak, as the little pirate kids always want something for free. Sometimes it's unfortunate that, to run homebrew, you need to use the same devices that you can use for piracy; like a DS flashcard, this is not one of those times.

Waninkoko's loader purely exists for piracy, nothing else. It's an interesting development, but not one that should be posted on a reputable homebrew site, it retracts massively from the legitimacy of the scene and the warezers will be the first to bitch and moan when their favourite sites get shut down because they've been leaned on by Nintendo (shock horror, emu sites don't have deep pockets!).

But what makes the backup loader such a bad thing when the most popular homebrew here are the emulators and the wad installers, both taking away revenue from Nintendo anyways? Is it because its cheaper? or perhaps because people think its unfair they may have to buy the game twice? or they do not want to purchase 15yr old titles? Whatever the reason you can not have your cake and eat it. Homebrew is a buzzword for piracy, its illegal. Modding your console and creating games is one thing, but creating methods to steal games should either be looked down upon completely or supported. You cant say in one case its alright and in another its not.

Also the Back Up Loader does have a legitimate use, to, ironically enough, back up real games. My copy of Harry Potter is barely readable due to scratches and a backed up version would be nice.

[Darksaviour69]

Homebrew is a buzzword for piracy, its illegal

actually its been prove in court its not (Sega vs. Accolade), and so its also legal to use emulators to run public domain roms. Running backups of your own roms is more problematic as is legal in some countries and not in others.

You do have a point, but we are more concerned about the survival of the homebrew scene and if Nintendo (and others) see homebrew as a threat to profits then we have a big problem.

[souLLy]

Also the Back Up Loader does have a legitimate use, to, ironically enough, back up real games. My copy of Harry Potter is barely readable due to scratches and a backed up version would be nice.

I'm not disagreeing that it could technically have a legitimate use, but regardless it's illegal and therefore not welcome here.

[kaferenza]

First and foremost let me say that I am sick and tired of hearing, from both sides, about the piracy battle.
Both sides want to spew the information out and twist it in a manor in which it is made to look like black and white only. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but life just doesn't work like that. In short (or more correctly long, lol) here's how I see it:

First up is the concept of copyright in the first place. Copyrights are an okay concept. They are there to protect the originator(s) of the material(s) from loss of possible income. That's perfectly fine and just. However forcing the end user to only be able to do certain things or use certain functions of a purchased device due to licensing or copyright protection is horsesh*t. "Congratulations on your purchase of the nicest toaster on the market! We sure hope you enjoy eating nothing but toast made with white bread toasted in this machine. Please be aware that the use of any other style of bread constitutes a violation of the End User Agreement and will be subject to penalties including: fines, jail time, the death of your family, and castration." I'm sorry, but if I just plunked down $300+ on a piece of hardware, I CAN and I WILL do with it WHATEVER I please. I put used grocery bags in my trash cans as liners, which is not their intended usage, am I to feel guilty of some crime because I found a better use for them than just what they were intended for? Kiss my @$$ if you think so. I'm being perfectly honest when I say this, if it wasn't for the Xecuter3 that is in my XBOX right now, I would have relegated the XBOX to the backroom junk pile after I finished playing Halo 1. Instead, because of the modchip that is in it, it has a permanent place in my entertainment center as a streaming media box thanks to XBMC. Same deal with my PSP. Without custom firmware I probably would have never even purchased the thing.

Of course, it's hard not to violate copyright law unless you've got an annual income somewhere around the Bill Gates level. Ever make a mix tape for your loved one off of the radio? Copyright violation. Ever record a TV show while you were away so that you could watch it later and end up not erasing it right after? Copyright violation. Etc, etc.

When it comes down to it, piracy has a good side and a bad.
First the good:
-Emulation. Well, if you don't own the game AND the device then you are committing one form of piracy or another. There is however the question of availability. Piles of games and devices never make it out of their country of origin, or never get translated (i.e. Mother 3), and are essentially left to the emulation community to make available to those of us unfortunate enough to either not live in Japan or speak Japanese as an example. Furthermore emulation helps to preserve these great games and systems, MAME being possibly the flagship of this concept. If it were not for the MAME project all of those great games from our childhood would be tossed to the distant corners of our memories. Where I live, with the exception of 4-5 newer arcade games at the local movie theater, there are no arcades anymore so I'm left with either the choice of never playing pretty much anything or I could grab a ROM of the game I'd like to play and a copy of MAME and be able to spend a couple hours reliving my childhood. Not really a choice as I, and I'm sure others, see it.
-Security. Whether or not companies are willing to admit it, piracy helps push the envelope. This is true in both the software/firmware and hardware departments. If nobody could bypass any hardware protection schemes or find loopholes in software then the technology would most likely grow at a much lower rate if at all, at least in the field of encryption.
-Hardware Sales. As I've stated earlier, and as others have stated, some devices are just crap without being "cracked". The XBOX is a GREAT system when it's cracked as is the PSP and I'm really interested in seeing where the community takes the wii and eventually the 360 and PS3.
Then the bad:
-Price. Since piracy is somewhat rampant, some companies tack on a little extra to the final cost of the product to make up for the perceived loss to maintain what they believe to be their desired profit. Considering how a lot of game titles now cost in the $60 range new, this is a bit rediculous. It should be noted though that a certain percent of the total cost of the software goes towards debugging because, god knows, people that get paid in the $56000-$82000 range should be allowed to suck so hard at what they do that the consumer should be punished for it. I don't know about you, but I wish I had a job where if I had a bad day people had to pay me for me messing up.
-DRM and other annoyances. You've got a crappy job, you can't afford internet access, and you've just purchased a game you've been wanting to play for a while. So you bring it home, unwrap it, go to install it only to find out that you can't actually play it because you need to have an internet connection to register it with the company. Sorry, but FORCING people to have internet access AFTER they already shelled out the bread for the software in the first place is complete BS. I paid $150 for an OEM version of Windows XP pro and after I installed it I was forced to register it with Microshaft because they don't want me using it on anymore than however many computers the license is valid for. They already got their damned money, they do NOT need to know where I live, what I do, how many computers I own, etc. Considering how many computers I have all that I have to say is thank god for Linux!

Homebrew is a whole other topic. The software itself for the most part should be perfectly legal. The question of how to get the homebrew code to execute is another matter. If it contains any code from the system's development kit it's more than likely illegal. If it bypasses, alters, or contains a bootstrap from the device it's more than likely illegal. The only reason that no company actively pursues charges against most homebrew developers is because there's no real loss of profit though it could be argued that if the developer(s) don't pay for the license then they are not paying the company what they "owe".

When it comes down to it, no matter how hard the hardware manufacturers push, they are NEVER going to eliminate piracy. I'm not going to say that they should ignore the problem because they shouldn't but they do need to adopt a new perspective on it maybe similar to how the PS3 can have Linux sitting right next to the PS3 OS so that people can still have their homebrew and emulators (though with certain restrictions currently).

Sorry Wraggster, I love you man, and I hold a massive amount of respect for you and have been an avid reader of yours since the Dreamcast days, but I have to agree with a lot of these posts that this site taking an anti-piracy stance is hypocritical in more ways than one. With that being said I do however understand that to protect both the scene and the community a statement of a similar nature had to be made so I'm not going to state anymore on the subject than I already have.

Honestly, I'm not trying to start anything with this rant, just putting my $0.02 out there. My apologies also for rambling on for such a long while, just tired of hearing both sides crying all of the time and had to get it off of my chest. I'm also sorry for any spelling errors, mutilation of proper grammar, and violations of punctuation laws

With love and respect to the homebrew scene and independent developers who continue to amaze us without trying to $#@! our wallets. -Kaferenza

[Baboon]

So using a psp custom firmware, umd rippers/dumpers, iso compressors etc is ok to post on here then? Also advertising direct links to modchips for wii, 360, psp etc etc is allowed. ...but talk of a possible backuploader for the wii is bad?

Sorry but I don't see the difference?


Could an admin on here clear up my fuzziness on this please? Ta

[Moose2000]

Sorry Wraggster, I love you man, and I hold a massive amount of respect for you and have been an avid reader of yours since the Dreamcast days, but I have to agree with a lot of these posts that this site taking an anti-piracy stance is hypocritical in more ways than one. With that being said I do however understand that to protect both the scene and the community a statement of a similar nature had to be made so I'm not going to state anymore on the subject than I already have.

Honestly, I'm not trying to start anything with this rant, just putting my $0.02 out there. My apologies also for rambling on for such a long while, just tired of hearing both sides crying all of the time and had to get it off of my chest. I'm also sorry for any spelling errors, mutilation of proper grammar, and violations of punctuation laws

That man has hit the nail on the head, I was not trying to be pro or anti piracy, just really point out the hypocrisy that seems to be flooding these forums.