Bloke, 22, in knockoff Microsoft Xbox ring gets 18 months in the cooler A 22-year-old member of a games-hacking ring that sold counterfeit Microsoft's Xbox One consoles could spend the next year and a half behind bars in America. A US court sentenced Canadian David Pokora to 18 months in the slammer for his involvement in a group accused of stealing an estimated $100m to 200m worth of source code …
If the property in question was worth $100 to $200 million, did the beancounters mark that much down as a loss on the books in the time between the 'theft' and the arrest? Methinks not, given that it was copied, not stolen.
PS, note to author re: 'intellectual property'; you might find this interesting: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
If a company spends $200 million on research and you break in and steal a copy, then you have stolen $200 million worth of research. It doesn't mean the company has lost $200 million worth of research. Though the research being in the public sphere will devalue it.
Using the cost of the research as the value of a copy of the results of that research is misleading on its face. Why, if Xbox One software is $200m worth of research, are the machines sold for hundreds of dollars?
They didn't steal $200m worth of research, they made an unauthorized copy of the results of $200m worth of research. At no time was the company deprived of anything - a fact which makes this type of crime fundamentally different from what is colloquially called 'theft'.
I don't know the legal definition of theft, but since most information is digital nowadays, anyone obtaining an illicit copy of information is not depriving the original owner of their information. They are instead depriving them of control of the use of that information, which for a business could result in lost sales or give an advantage to a competitor. In this instance, the value of the loss is substantially more than one retail unit cost of a console or game, but will be less than the total development cost - which likely is hundreds of millions of dollars.
Copying the source code is like finding the secret recipe of a renowned soft drink, rather than obtaining the drink without payment.
So, bottom line- we're finally entering an era where possession of intangible IDEAS are considered wealth and not the possession of tangible money. This puts us only a heartbeat away from the practical observation that a human mind is a priceless asset to any nation and that nation should do all in its power to amplify the cognitive functioning of its citizenry- better methods of parenting, better schools, better testing, better routing of talented kidz, making smart people media stars, national scholarships. What have YOU done in this direction today?
This really is the strangest thing I've ever read about console piracy, it surely is a mistake. Either the person that wrote this article is really out of the loop, or the people supplying this information are really out of the loop. I don't even see how it would be profitable, shit you can't even get the DDR5 by itself reasonably (if at all, same with CPU and GPU).
Also, I like how the software could be worth $100 million, or say....double that ($200 million). Sounds like they just picked a number then doubled it for good measure of guesstimation. Try doing this shit with your insurance company after your house burns down..."Yes agent, it was worth $200,000. You know what, make that $400,000".
It seems they sold one console for $5000. This goes into more detail...
http://www.itworld.com/article/2694992/it-management/how-hackers-accidentally-sold-a-pre-release-xbox-one-to-the-fbi.html
The hardware is pretty easy to find but I'm still not quite sure how they did the OS considering the Xbox's private keys are supposed to be private.
Thank you Dan 55 for that link. It makes things clearer - the accused accessed information destined for 3rd party developers. These developers would have used fairly standard x86 AMD machines to develop the XBOX One games. This makes sense - they start developeing these games many months if not years before the actual console hardware is finalised,
Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like a handful of gamers who couldn't wait for product releases managed only to roll their own & build their own plus some for a handful of friends. Not that big.
If I'm wrong then where did the capital come from to manufacture and sell knock off boxes?
Nobody but a lunatic would build and sell and knock off console that worked exactly like the real one. It would cost a fortune. More likely is if someone had the blueprints and skill to build one, they would just hack the hell out of the OS. Then they would make and sell modchips or hardware to crack the real thing. As nobody to date has hacked the new gen consoles this is just bullshit. It's all about New Nazi USA extending it's laws to control the world. What was the name of the country that did that last time around 100 years ago? This is just the beginning.
Considering the number of commodity parts in a current gen console, they probably used parts that performed better but at greater cost, modified to fit a compact chassis and then applied the firmware. While not being tailored to run in that exact hardware having more powerful kit would compensate for non optimised code and games.
If they managed to get a working knock-off then I'm hugely impressed, that's really no small feat but I suspect that what they managed to get going was a laptop/notebook board with separate Radeon compatible GPU board with heavily modded firmware. Again no small feat but slightly less impressive.
I'm duly impressed that they could mock up an XBox One.
As for the value oft the docuemnts, there's a long tradition in the US of ridiculously inflating these figures. The example I am aware of is the 1990 case where AT&T sent the Feds after some LOD/H (Legion of Doom/Legion of Hackers) members for pilfering a confidential AT&T document. First, AT&T claimed the document was worth $75,000. Then $35,000. Then, they had the feds drop all charges when it came out that a) This document was available -- for free -- at various public libraries, including the defendent's local library, it was not confidential at all. b) AT&T would ship it in printed form to any and all for like $50 shipped.
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