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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

"Nintendo can spot the duplicated cart."

I think they cannot spot the duplicated cart specifically, they just see the same "cart" (or key) used twice or multiple times at the same time and block it and possibly all devices involved.

Not defending Nintendo, but I believe it is technically impossible for them to distinguish between the pirate and the victim.

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How are you so confident about this? It seems like the random YouTube video I saw on this topic [1] had dumped their own games and ran into trouble by using those dumps.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgYTA18_vo

This can't be a new thing, right? For decades there have been entire businesses dedicated to buying and selling hard copies of video games, and online play has been common for at least one decade. I think it's on them to figure out how to make copying hard copies difficult or to distinguish between the legit copy and illicit copies. Banning people for using a legitimate hard copy of a video game because someone else has a illicit copy of it is in no way acceptable.

Yeah, if they were able to directly identified a duplicated cart then the easiest solution would be to update the console software to just not play duplicated carts. There shotgun approach is just biting them in the ass since the market has apparently already been flooded with duplicate carts and all they are doing is antagonizing people who believe they bought in good faith a legitimate game

If they can't distinguish between the pirate and the victim, they shouldn't be punishing either. Banning people for playing legitimately purchased software on an unmodified console is draconian IMO.

That means they're happy to punish the victim. The moral choice would be to punish neither in this case.

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