For those living under the a rock the Wii has been hacked for a while now so that you can put a mod-chip to play boot-leg games among other things.  The worse part about it is that Nintendo can't detected even when online.  My cousin downloaded Mario Kart two days ago and has been playing online just fine same with SMBB.  Will this become an issue over time or will it be just fine similar to the DS because there are just so many sold the pirates are by far a minority.  How about the online community, will you start to see cheaters in that people can't die in SMBB or people always having boost in MK etc?  What if they eventually find a way to play games without even needing a mod-chip like the dreamcast?  Again in the end this may be a moot point since pirates are a minority but the easier it becomes the more available it may become especially if there is no penalty or chance of getting caught by Nintendo. 

Won't matter. wii appeals to casuals and they don't know about things like modding and such.

Wii appeals to real hardcore players like me, who buy their games and beat them without cheating, or reading FAQS.

anyways, I don't think it will be a problem. The PS2 was pirated like crazy, and so was the GC. Nintendo will make so much money anyways, I don't think it really matters. Obviously they will try to stop it, or the 3rd parties will never want to make a game for them again, but It won't be a major issue.

two words: firmware updates

The DS is freely pirated, you can play MKDS online with infinite mushroom, stars.
I play with some people that finish the race before i finish the first lap...

I don't think they are really enjoying the game that way.

The Wii has already has quite a few motherboard changes which keeps the mod chip makers guessing, and if I recall it is an 11 wire solder so this is no easy task. As said above I expect no worse than the PS2, the most sucessful system of all time.

I think they will really worry if there is a solution like the ds. The Zelda hack is much more dangerous.

It's not like there's a huge pirate scene around the Wii, unlike the PSP. And even if they keep locking out modchips, there's a few methods that continue to stay an easier route. To my knowledge, they haven't found a way to prevent the Twilight Hack, for example, and they may well never figure a way out. Odds are that when they do, a new version of the hack will come out anyway.

 You forgot to mention the high level of modded XBox consoles from last gen, you could put a 250Gb Aladdin chip into it and store up to 50 games on the hard drive.

ps1 had the same thing and the ps2, did it hurt them much?

I would argue that the easy modding of the PS1 was one of the major reasons for its success.