Dear Bushing,

I find your comment “Dear Nintendo” quite strange.

Instead of playing nice with Nintendo, I believe you should release that bug to the public domain so that we can make a program for the homebrew channel to run backups – a softmod.

In Norway, where I live, it is perfectly legal to sell modded systems and it is reasonable under fair use. Furthermore, making copies of software to close friends and family is not only legal – it is seen as legit and normal behavior.

If you live in the U.S. (I don’t know where you live so it’s just to support my chain of thoughts) you might get problems from releasing such software, and you might have a different world view from many other people in the world in regards to these things. However, you would be in your full right to publish the details about the circumvention method, and also ethically on fair ground if you were to encourage Scandinavian modders to make the softmod and release it.

Apart from that I would like to say that I really appreciate all your good work to bring homebrew to the Nintendo Wii. I’m using ScummVM and Gecko loader and loads of other software and I really appreciate homebrew enthusiasts like you that enable all this.

However, I don’t see any separation or any strong need for the homebrew secene to differentiate itself from the copying scene. It’s a non-issue to me. They are different, but the need to prove it isn’t there IMHO – particularly because in most parts of the world ethics are different from what big corporations have brainwashed people to belive in America.

N.B. Thanks for sending me one of the few respectful emails, although you still lose points for taking advantage of the email address I posted. As one of the “brainwashed”, I’m subject to the DMCA.

[...]
There are lots of other reasons than running pirated games to open up the system.

- Backups

- Software that is not controlled by Nintendo. Games with adult content, for example. Should Nintendo have a monopoly on free speech on their systems? Like a video player that is locked so it can only play videos sanctioned by the maker of the player….?

Now I DO see the wider picture. If softmods come out, Nintendo might get aggressive and delete all Homebrew with a system update. But they already started going down that path. I seriously doubt that you warning them of this glitch enabling backups will make them change their mind and think of the homebrew scene as something “better” – they are a huge corporation, there’s lots of money involved. I don’t think you’ll get anywhere by doind dialogue with Nintendo. I just don’t think so..

I don’t really feel like getting into word games (“copy” vs “backup”). As for your last point, you may be right. At the same time, AFAIK nobody else has actually tried to engage Nintendo on a mature, professional level, so we feel obligated to try.

(No, I won’t be posting any other correspondence with them.)

Dude you have to release how to play pirated games on an un modded wii,
the fact that you posted that on a homebrew site means that your fine with hacking the wii
so why not release this hack so we can play backups.

Return-Path: <support@nintendo.com>
Received: from mail.deadfake.com (xult.org [85.17.173.10])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id u6si2107929uge.8.2008.07.18.13.00.18;
        Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:00:20 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning support@nintendo.com
      does not designate 85.17.173.10 as permitted sender) client-ip=85.17.173.10;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=softfail (google.com: domain of
      transitioning support@nintendo.com does not designate 85.17.173.10 as
      permitted sender) smtp.mail=support@nintendo.com
Received: from Spooler by mail.deadfake.com (Mercury/32 v4.52) ID MO0001B1;
    18 Jul 2008 21:00:18 +0100
Received: from spooler by xult.org (Mercury/32 v4.52); 18 Jul 2008 21:00:04 +0100
Received: from VPS107 (85.234.143.173) by xult.org (Mercury/32 v4.52) with ESMTP
    ID MG0001B0;
   18 Jul 2008 21:00:03 +0100
x-mailer: DeadFake Mailer (http://deadfake.com)
x-originating-ip: 24.72.28.204
mime-version: 1.0
from: support@nintendo.com
to: bushing
date: 18 Jul 2008 21:00:07 +0100
subject: HackMii Response

Hello Bushing. This is a response regarding your troubleing announcement on hackmii.com. We would appreciate all of your help in preventing the public release of the exploit of the Wii software that you have found. We understand, through reading other posts on hackmii.com, that this may be in the form of a wii elf homebrew executable file. To help deal with this in a private matter. We will wish to chat with you via IRC on efnet. We will be under the username NB64W. We would like it if you could tell us about this bug and if we may be able to find an elf binary. This way, we should be able to release a Wii update to patch it and prevent from code inside this file from running.

–
No, this email’s not real, it’s
http://deadfake.com

A little later…

[13:01:05] <NB64W> Did you receive our email?
[13:05:26] <NB64W> Bushing
[13:06:29] <NB64W> We are here regarding your recent bug found in the Wii software.
[13:08:45] <NB64W> Are you available for discussion
[13:08:46] <NB64W> ?
[13:15:34] <NB64W> Look, we don't have much time right now.  We'll be back on this IRC
                server sometime next week.
[13:16:01] NB64W left IRC. (mibbit.com: Bushing!)

how is this possible could you tell me how?

hello bushing,
i am not a nintendo engineer and i am not asking for how to run pirate games on the wii as i am COMPLETELY against piracy of all kinds. i am also a coder working on a project for the wii (not willing to disclose yet!) and i am intersted to know what the bug is. i would never use it and if you dont want to release this information i completely understand. i would never relese it and i would never disclose it. i am just interested to know what said bug is? i was under the impression that inorder to boot non nintendo discs there must be a harware modification? you see, i am writing a dvd playing program for the wii and at the minuit am am having trouble getting it to read the discs. so if you are willing to disclose it could be very useful. thankyou.

regardes,
Adam