Move a channel to a different wii

I attempted to save a channel from one wii onto an SD card, and then load it on a different wii. The new wii says it cannot load the channel.

Turns out that every channel behaves that way -- even things like "Mario kart channel" or "Netflix". Or "WiiMC".

I could understand the stuff that you pay for being protected -- but this is stuff that is free. (Or, for one demo, no longer available).

So, is there any way to move a channel from one wii to another?

Not legally, no.

Any app that would allow you to copy channels from one Wii to another would promote piracy.

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bg4545
Any app that would allow you to copy channels from one Wii to another would promote piracy.

That's not a valid claim.

Some channels -- virtual console games, etc -- would be locked.

Others? Netflix, Homebrew Channel, WiiMC, WiiFit channel -- that's just off the top of my head. Heck, add MarioKart channel.

Although, actually, MK and WF are primarily for their save data.

Channels that are copyrighted by Nintendo? Sure.
Channels that are copyrighted and "Do not copy"? Sure.

Channels that are convenient quick-loads for something?
Channels that can be freely downloaded from the internet, but maybe you've got a real slow connection, or a charge per MB connection? Or maybe you had a connection at home, but not when visiting your friend?

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Saying that a channel will be marked as "Encode with a specific wii's keys", so you can copy it to an SD card but only use it on one wii makes sense.
Saying that every channel will be encoded?

Next thing you know, you'll be saying that no Mii can be transfered to another wii (still working on that), or no save game can be copied (Mario Kart, Everybody Votes -- thank you Geko!).

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keybounce
Some channels -- virtual console games, etc -- would be locked.

Others? Netflix, Homebrew Channel, WiiMC, WiiFit channel -- that's just off the top of my head. Heck, add MarioKart channel.

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keybounce
Channels that are copyrighted by Nintendo? Sure.
Channels that are copyrighted and "Do not copy"? Sure.

Channels that are convenient quick-loads for something?
Channels that can be freely downloaded from the internet, but maybe you've got a real slow connection, or a charge per MB connection? Or maybe you had a connection at home, but not when visiting your friend?

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Saying that a channel will be marked as "Encode with a specific wii's keys", so you can copy it to an SD card but only use it on one wii makes sense.
Saying that every channel will be encoded?

Who's to say those would be locked? are you making a suggestion?
You wouldn't be able to distinguish between channel types. Any app that lets you copy channels between Wii's would allow for piracy (and they do).

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keybounce
Next thing you know, you'll be saying that no Mii can be transfered to another wii (still working on that), or no save game can be copied (Mario Kart, Everybody Votes -- thank you Geko!).

What are you talking about? Those are completely different things. We're talking about pirated content, not Miis or save files.

Copying channels to the SD card is meant as a method to free up space on a wii's NAND, not as a transport mechanism from one wii to another. If you want those channels on another wii use the same method that was used to install them on the first wii.

Boy, can something be misunderstood.

1. Any item X can be marked as "do not copy". If it doesn't have that mark, then it can be copied without any problem.

Right now, most savefiles are clear; all Mii's and Channels are not.

If you want to get technical, fine: Mii's are not marked as "do not copy", they just store enough information to tell if they are copied or not. Still the same thing -- you cannot move a Mii to a new machine as "Mine", but as "Other, you can't play with it as much".

2. The idea of saying, "We will restrict what you can do with your legal stuff", well, this gets political. There's no authority in the constitution for these companies to be private police. There's no authority in the constitution for the government to permit these companies to be private police. There is a restriction in the constitution that these companies are subject to federal regulation, but somewhere, someone said "No regulation means do anything you want", not "No regulation means do anything that the federal government can permit you to do".

The idea of saying "We won't let you do something that is perfectly legal because you might use it for something illegal" is to hold someone guilty without trial, without a chance to confront the accuser. The government of this country (USA) would not be able to do this itself, but it can look the other way when companies do it.

Sorry. As I said, political.

3. There is nothing to prevent a "protected" item from being put on an SD card for space saving reasons, encrypted with the machine's ID key. This solves the "piracy" issue. But that isn't the approach Nintendo took. Even if everything is currently encrypted with the key, there's nothing to indicate which wii goes with what. You might have three copies of a given channel if you have three wii's, for example. Wii's do have console nicknames, yet there's no concept of "This wii's directory" on the SD card.

Now, to address what people said here:

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Copying channels to the SD card is meant as a method to free up space on a wii's NAND, not as a transport mechanism from one wii to another. If you want those channels on another wii use the same method that was used to install them on the first wii.

Yes, what Nintendo provides is a system that assumes you have no permission to make a copy.

The idea of "Use the same method" isn't always valid. As I mentioned last time, you might not have the network connection at another time. The program might no longer be available for new people, but you have your copy.

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Sif Jar
Not legally, no.

That's *NOT* universally true.

That will be true, in some jurisdictions, for some channels, but not for all channels in all jurisdictions.

That's the problem.

If you mean "You have no permission to break the encryption and protection method because a user agreement says so", well, that assumes that that user agreement is valid.

Some jurisdictions have the concept of "Meeting of minds", and "You cannot be forced to give up a right", and "You have the right to use something that you purchased". If you've got all three of those, then no such "you cannot copy" is valid.

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Next thing you know, you'll be saying that no Mii can be transfered to another wii (still working on that), or no save game can be copied (Mario Kart, Everybody Votes -- thank you Geko!).

What are you talking about? Those are completely different things. We're talking about pirated content, not Miis or save files.

No, *YOU* are talking pirated content. I was using sarcasm.

The same mechanism that prevents me from easily transfering my channels to another system also prevents me from transferring my Mii's or my save games.

Gecko lets me transfer save games, but it's not obvious. It required downgrading system menu to 3.4. That's the sort of thing that should be in a FAQ, but isn't.

Nothing that I've found so far lets me transfer Mii's.

Nothing that I've found so far lets me transfer channels.

If I have a license to use a software, then I have a license to use that software. Unless the license said "but only on one specific machine and may not be transferred", and as far as I know, none do. If any did, it would fail the "Meeting of the mind" test -- which is valid in USA, as it comes from pre-1776 British common law -- and would fail the whole "I have permission to use X" of a license. That leaves only "forced to give up a right", and I don't know how USA courts would rule on that.

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Saying that a channel will be marked as "Encode with a specific wii's keys", so you can copy it to an SD card but only use it on one wii makes sense.
Saying that every channel will be encoded?

Who's to say those would be locked? are you making a suggestion?
You wouldn't be able to distinguish between channel types. Any app that lets you copy channels between Wii's would allow for piracy (and they do).

Alright, this is a fair misunderstanding. (And, backing up to a prior message:

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Any app that would allow you to copy channels from one Wii to another would promote piracy.

That's not a valid claim.

Some channels -- virtual console games, etc -- would be locked.

Maybe I crossed the line between hypothetical systems and real systems here. You could have a system where some channels are locked, and some are not. Nintendo didn't implement that. Should we be punished for Nintendo's bad actions?)

What I'm saying is that a system that is based on "Items that are marked as protected have restricted abilities; items that are marked as not protected have non-restricted abilities" makes sense.

I'm saying that if you have a system where a channel that is protected is copied out with a console specific key encryption, then you can put it on an SD card for space, or for backups, and prevent it from being copied. Fine.

But that's not the same as saying that every channel will always get that same treatment. The very idea of saying that you cannot have the free ability to copy a program is broken. What happens when someone tries to sue Nintendo for preventing the free use and copying of a GPL'd program? (Other than the person trying it going broke.)

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You wouldn't be able to distinguish between channel types.

Sure you could. You've got some save games marked as "do not copy", you could have channels marked the same way.

This current system assumes that everyone is a thief.
That's not valid, legally, in some jurisdictions.
Sadly, we've got horrible judges running the USA right now.

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I am going from using a roommate's Wii to using my own wii from EBay.
I specifically wanted an older Wii to have both bootmii brick protection and DVD playback.
I've got that. Now I just want to move my stuff to a new system.

Does that look like piracy? Maybe. I'm not trying to make duplicates of the disks -- heck, that might actually be easier. I've got mine, they've got theirs.

I just want my Mii's, and my channels, and my save games on my machine.

Gecko lets me move my save games; is that illegal, piracy? It could be used to flood the net with unrestricted copies of Mario kart equipment, for example. It lets me copy my "Everybody votes" information to a new machine, as well as my "Check Mii Out" information -- which lets me indicate which Mii is me, even if that Mii is a copy and Check Mii Out won't let me say that Mii is me. Legal? Valid? Fair?

What about Mii's? How would the world be affected if everyone could claim "That's my mii"? < sarcasm explicit > Clearly, that cannot be permitted -- copying mii's myst be restricted like Nintendo wanted. < / sarcasm >

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Lets say I had purchased downloaded games while using my roommate's wii. Is there any way, without breaking software restrictions, to re-download those games on my machine? The statement, "Use the same method you used to put them on the first machine" may involve having to purchase something twice -- suddenly, it's a long-term rental, not a purchase, and my right of backup (ok, some jurisdictions will say yes, some will say no) is violated.

I'm not looking to do that.
I don't want to move a virtual console game.
A system that has separate permissions for things that are clearly copy protected and things that are not is one thing.
Nintendo happened to choose a system where they are not separated.

There are tools to let me copy save games. Yet some of those save games are tools to break software protection, and permit piracy. Those same save games can also be used to break software protection for legal home use -- we call that "bannerbomb" or "Twilight hack", or similar.

Is it reasonable to assume that all virtual console games will have a similar pattern that can be identified? (The VC emulator, and the ROM). (Just realized: probably can't tell WiiWare titles apart.)

Is it reasonable to assume that a tool can be written that will look for that pattern, and only permit making copies of things that don't have that pattern?

I guess I may just be confused about what you mean but I've got some things to say.

For one, Nintendo kinda failed with the whole transferring content. If you break your Wii and need to get a new one there's no easy way to transfer your purchases. Also, once you lose your Shop Channel account you lose everything you purchased and you'd have to buy them again. (That happened to me.)

Even so, Nintendo makes the software and they decided how it would go. Channels are stuck to one Wii to prevent people from easily pirating VC/WiiWare and other purchased channels. Because of that, you can't really compare channels to saves or Miis. Saves and Miis are products of software whereas a channel is the software itself. That is why we can share saves and have exploits such as the Twilight Hack.

The bottom line here is that the Wii is what it is. With homebrew you can get around it using tools that allow you to copy channels, saves, and Miis to another Wii. We can't tell you how to copy your channels though because that could allow piracy. I'm not implicating you or anything, that's just the rules of these forums.
Also, sure you may be justified in wanting to transfer your purchases from one Wii to another but it would still be in a legal grey area because Nintendo is the one that implemented software protection.

EDIT: A thought occurs; I think Giantpune made some tools that could help you out. They allow you to look at BootMii NAND dumps and I think one of the programs lets you take stuff from one and put it in the other.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2011 06:20AM by bg4545.

THe way I see it, nintendo and the wii encrypts EVERYTHING they send to you with no exceptions (save games, demos, other channels, wiiware). I have almost all the demos that where released on the shop channel and there is no way to bring them to another person's house for them to play them. Maybe nintendo will release wiiware demo dvds or something but currently you are out of luck.

Probably the only exceptions are pictures saved to sd cards by various games. Probably in the future ninty will fix this but they may not see it as a big problem.

I think these replies are just way too long for what can be answered with one line from the "Prohibited Content" section of this forum's rules:

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- Information about how to obtain ANY kind of copyrighted material without proper licensed permission.

If Nintendo don't let you do it, you're going against the licence agreement you have with them. Arguing about the legality of that agreement here is pointless because none of us are lawyers nor do we work for Nintendo.

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tueidj
I think these replies are just way too long for what can be answered with one line from the "Prohibited Content" section of this forum's rules:

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- Information about how to obtain ANY kind of copyrighted material without proper licensed permission.

If Nintendo don't let you do it, you're going against the licence agreement you have with them. Arguing about the legality of that agreement here is pointless because none of us are lawyers nor do we work for Nintendo.

saying that means everything we do in homebrew is illegal.

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zeveroth

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tueidj
I think these replies are just way too long for what can be answered with one line from the "Prohibited Content" section of this forum's rules:

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- Information about how to obtain ANY kind of copyrighted material without proper licensed permission.

If Nintendo don't let you do it, you're going against the licence agreement you have with them. Arguing about the legality of that agreement here is pointless because none of us are lawyers nor do we work for Nintendo.

saying that means everything we do in homebrew is illegal.

No. If you actually read his post, he said it is pointless to argue whether it is legal to break the agreement or not, because none of us are lawyers.

He also highlighted that what was asked for in the thread was against the Forum rules, which is what we abide by here. Some things against the rules may be technically legal in some places, while things allowed by the rules may technically be illegal in certain countries etc. That is irrelevant to the forums, the important thing is the rules.

I think this thread is going nowhere fast. As mentioned above, there is no "Nintendo" way to move channels, and the homebrew methods aren't to be discussed on the WiiBrew forums (whether you like that rule or not).

Topic Closed.