I believe there was a topic about this over the summer that Gekko made, and we were all talking about how GCN was hacked before it was even released in Japan. Nintendo KNEW the GameCube (or any hardware console, for that matter) could be hacked, but they knew it wouldn't be feasable due to the rarity of 8cm burners and HD kits.
But hackers are always one step ahead; there were ways to hack GCN thru Panasonic Q, thru a separate CD drive (that connected to the GCN serial port), and modding GCN's to read RW/DVDRW laser classes. It's sad, but true- even the PS3 will have games availble to download from the hack scene before it arrives.
At any rate, this has been going on for awhile now, and will continue until the hacking groups in China are diluted.