Mod Chip Chill

A sentence was handed down in the case of David Rocci, a Virginia man caught selling Xbox Mod Chips off ISONews. He got 10 months in prison and a $28,500 fine (not the maximum possible sentence, that was 5 years and $500k).

For two months, he sold chips for people to fix their Xboxes to play non-Microsoft sanctioned disks. He was held to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's provisions against the sale or distribution of circumvention devices.

In online flea markets, I've seen people selling bootleg Xbox disks, so I can see that there might be console privacy concerns. But I've travelled between Japan and the United States, trying to play games in each place, and so I've wanted to be able to circumvent region encoding protections to keep me from having to buy a new machine in each country I play games in.

Is there some way to distinguish between people illegally copying games and people wanting some flexibility with their console? The DMCA's oppressive potential has been well covered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The game publishers' lobbying group is psyched by the DMCA though: "IDSA Applauds Federal Prison Sentence for Mod Chip Trafficker." Applauding a prison sentence, that seems a bit crass to me. I guess they are happy that people might start to perceive mod-chipping as risky, instead of empowering.

From Computer and Video Games: "The Long Arm of the Law Reaches out to Xbox Mod Chips"

Comments

[Wendy]

There was nothing wrong with his site at isonews as it didn't actually provide pirated software nor access to it. There was also nothing wrong with selling modchips, as these chips come with no bios programmed on them and are useless as they are sold. It's up to the end-user to supply the bit of software that actually circumvents the protection on the xbox.

[Fivecent]

According to copyright law people are supposed to be able to create and use backups of things which they have purchased. Unfortunately, the XBOX does not allow this with it's hardware. This chip only served to allow people to play backups of their games which they are COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY LEGALLY FREE TO DO.

The fact that this man was imprisoned is bullshit. nuff said

[Shig]

Actually, because of the loophole that is the "end-user license agreement" when you use the software apparently you are bound to thier rules set forth in that agreement. Most of the end user license agreements state that you are NOT allowed to make back up copies etc. So they have a way around that too. However since people are going to do it anyway, a common rule of thumb is that no one's going to care/know about it unless you're selling or distributing the copies.

[locky]

This is tantamount to jailing people who 'circumvent' the security on AMD processors, allowing the CPU's to run overclocked. It's absurd that the so-called Land of the Free has imprisoned a man that the courts of Australia would have found perfectly innocent.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2119914,00.html

[mepem]

mod chips are for hacking your x-box so you can play pirated games. There's lots of variations on defense against their use... but why examine a fallacy when you can just look at what it accomplishes?

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