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I've been enjoying myself with the tools you guys have developed and have also been sharing some with my friends, like the regional exclusive items and some of the DLC and HDLC. Now they're asking if hacking the gale is legal. I really don't know, it seems to me that I should be able to do whatever I want, I paid for the game. I know that I can get a totally objective and unbiased answer here on a site dedicated to hacking. :D Anyway, I was just wondering what your opinion was.
I'm pretty sure homebrew only cancels the warranty of the wii. Save editing is not piracy, and as far as I know, does not break any laws. I could be wrong about this, but that's my understanding.
Short answer: 100% legal in most countries.
Longer answer:
re: Warranty.
People say that installing WiiBrew cancels your warranty. I have yet to see a documented case (ie. someone buys a Wii, sends it in for service within the first 3 months, and Nintendo sends it back unfixed because they found WiiBrew on it)
However if you have WiiBrew, it is always good to remove it and back up anything that matters before sending it in for service. There is a chance they could lose any software you have on it and/or update the firmware to the latest version.
BTW: Nintendo can cancel the warranty for a number of reasons:
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/man...tytext_eng.jsp
For example using a non-Nintendo SD card. Once again there aren't rules for what violates the warranty - it is up to a Nintendo person to decide.
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re: reverse engineering
In most countries reverse engineering is legal (depending on what you are reverse engineering it for)
In the USA, under the draconian DMCA, there is an exception that lets you reverse engineer for "compatibility" with some other program
http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi
In the case of AC:CF, the gamesave format has been reverse engineered as well as the running program itself (for runtime "codes").
This is legal since you are reverse engineering the game to make it compatible with other things (eg: ACToolkit, PattView, NPC_Tool or the GeckoOS/Ocarina code engine)
There are some minor things that arguably are copyright violations (ie. small bits of Nintendo graphics or data used by some of the tools, expecially NPC_Tool and the upcoming ITEM_Tool templates).
Copyright is something that happens in civil court (in most countries). Ie. it is up to the copyright holder (ie. Nintendo) to sue you and win in civil court.
Pirating the entire game is a different matter and is illegal in most countries. In the USA and EU it is a criminal matters. You sometimes see news story of people who pirate DVDs and games. They can get jail time.
wowzers thanks DsPet