[Chronosplit]

Here's a pretty good overview: https://youtu.be/0nSfnyGPqqM

And the aricle in question: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-members-notorious-videogame-piracy-group-team-xecuter-custody

Not much to do with ROMhacking and more with console modding, but Nintendo's really playing some hardball here.

[tc]

I'm all for being able to program for old, unsupported platforms. Selling devices to pirate today's newest games is an audacious risk.

[Jorpho]

A "French national of Avignon, France", a "Chinese national of Shenzhen, China", and a "Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic".

I would have expected operations like this to be run entirely out of Hong Kong or thereabouts.  I guess times have changed.

[Spooniest]

I'm all for being able to program for old, unsupported platforms. Selling devices to pirate today's newest games is an audacious risk.

Emphasis mine.

That's really the key to this entire story; they were making lots of money, which the law says it was illegal for them to make, and doing so intentionally and without concern for the fact that they were taking sales away from the company that owned the rights to the systems they were making devices to enable piracy on.

That's a one-way ticket to getting arrested, and no mistake.

[SleepyFist]

It seems like the public has largely just taken the whole thing as another case of Nintendo Bad, but in this case they were completely justified, iirc Sony set a precedence back in the day for this when they sued Geohot over the PS3 jailbreaks that allowed people to steal shit from the PSN Store.

[KingMike]

Isn't the thing that not only were they selling a console mod, but one with its own console-bricking "protection" built in?
That sounds pretty shady and I wouldn't feel bad for Nintendo going after that.

But still what I read of people on youtube comments defending when console modders get hit "jailbreaking is legal."
Isn't it only legal to do it to your own console, that you paid for?
Pretty sure that since modding would usually involve firmware hacks, selling modded firmware would amount to selling any other unauthorized modification of commercial software (pretty sure firmware still falls under software copyright protection), in that, yes, the seller can get bopped for it.

[Jorpho]

Isn't the thing that not only were they selling a console mod, but one with its own console-bricking "protection" built in?
That sounds pretty shady and I wouldn't feel bad for Nintendo going after that.

I think the 3DS Gateway did something like that, yes, but that was years ago and no one would recommend using a Gateway or any other 3DS flashcart anymore.

But still what I read of people on youtube comments defending when console modders get hit "jailbreaking is legal."
Isn't it only legal to do it to your own console, that you paid for?

Perhaps it is an exaggeration, but the link in the OP suggests that they were quite deliberately selling commercial game dumps.