Sony vs Modchips

Cryptnotic writes "Sony has decided to instigate legal action against companies distributing two new Playstation 2 modchips, the Messiah and the NEO4. Sony has previously ignored modchip makers who made products which were only capable of playing CD-R copies of games. These new modchips, however, have legitimate uses, such as playing original import games or out-of-region DVD's. Aparrantly this is what has angered Sony." If I could read Kanji I'd probably care a bit more ;)

Comments

you have that backwards

[jugg]

According to TheRegister article, its actually the opposite that has Sony "annoyed".

The article says "Mod-chips ... free users to use titles from any zone" in regards to playing games and DVDs region free. It continues on to say "However, the chips can also be used to play copied and pirated titles on the console, which is where Sony starts to get annoyed;...".

It really doesn't take much to proof read an article quickly before posting a story to make sure everything lines up...

Common Misinterpretation of 17 USC 602 (a)

[Brian Ristuccia]

How the fuck do you get off calling playing games from different regions legitimate? It is ILLEGAL, dumbass!

(a)

I suspect you're referring to 17 USC 602 (a), which reads as follows:

Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501.

But one important thing you've neglected to do is to read further. 17 USC 602 (a) (2) goes on to say:

This subsection does not apply to importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or...

There's also exemptions for government use, scholarly, religion, and educational purposes, and for libraries. You should read all of 17 USC 602 (a) before jumping to conclusions about whether it's legal to import games for personal use or to play lawfully imported games.

Re:Common Misinterpretation of 17 USC 602 (a)

[Brian Ristuccia]

The programs are different. Japanese version has japanese text. They are different "works" and so this rule does not apply at all. Only Sony's license applies.

The fact that whatever you import differs from what's available domesticly does not cause 17 USC 602 (a) (2) to cease to grant its exception allowing one to import copies for personal use. Read 17 USC 602 again; it mentions nothing of the sort. Indeed, the main reason for importing a work rather than purchasing it domesticly is that what's available by import is not currently available locally.

Imported Copies Lawfully Aquired - Use OK

[Brian Ristuccia]

Playing unlicensed software (out of region dvds and import games) is not "legitimate," if by legitimate what you mean is "legal."

You don't need a license to use software. You only need to have lawfully aquired a copy of that software. According to 17 USC 602 (a) (2), copies imported for personal use have been lawfully aquired. Also, see 17 USC 117 (a) (1), which specificly makes copies made as "an essential step in the utilization of the computer program" non-infringing. 17 USC 117 (a) (1)'s exemption certainly includes copies made while loading the program into memory, a popular excuse used by those who argue that a license is required in order to use software. Your arguments that either obtaining or using imported copies is infringing or unlawful are at best unconvincing.

The text of 17 USC 602 (a) (2) follows:

Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to

[...]

importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or...

There's also exemptions for government use, scholarly, religion, and educational purposes, and for libraries. You should read all of 17 USC 602 (a) before jumping to conclusions about whether it's legal to import games for personal use or to play lawfully imported games.

False

[mbrubeck]

Sony makes a profit on the PS2 hardware.

Re:False

[aka-ed]

A lot of what "gord" says sounds right to me; here's another take on it, though, from an article in Red Herring (worth reading for its general "take" on the game wars):

"According to most estimates, Sony's PlayStation 2 cost the company $450 per unit upon initial production in early 2000. The company had first sold the machine as a loss leader for $360 in Japan and for $300 in the United States and Europe. The strategy paid off with the first Play Station because Sony was able to reduce the product's cost from $480 in 1994 to about $80 now (it was initially priced at $299 and is sold at about $99 today). Meanwhile, the company sold about nine games for every console. That model allowed Sony to make billions of dollars over the life of the PlayStation, even if it lost money at first."

Re:Misleading?

[Jarnis]

There is a problem with PS2 regarding console running either copied games or original imports.

SONY THEMSELVES MADE THE CONSOLE SO THE TWO ARE LUMPED TOGETHER.

You *cannot* make an 'import/region free only'-mod to PS2. Once you do that, as a side effect, the console also plays CDR/DVDR copies.

There has been lenghty discussion about this in the related websites, and the fact is that when the modchip developers finally had the breakthru and got the imported originals to work, they got the 'copied games work without disk swap' as a free bonus.

There has been disk-swap-requiring modchips for over an year. They didn't work with originals from other regions - to get the game to work you first *had to make a copy of it* (and usually apply a patch or two to the CD image), and do an unwieldy swap trick to boot it up. Sony woke up the moment there was a modchip that ran everything with no disc swap - basically as soon as their 'detecting if the disc is original and from what region'-protection was reverse-engineered and everything could be played without disc swaps.

Reason for this is simple; There are *seriously* more people who just want to import US games to europe than those who want to pirate stuff. Why? Most of the new games releases come here 1-6 months later than US. I *CANNOT* buy Metal Gear Solid 2 for my PS2. I won't be able to until maybe sometime late february 2002. I have really no desire to get a pirated copy on a DVDR - I'm perfectly willing to buy it. I cannot. These new mods would have made it possible for me to import it from the US.

Naturally this would have harmed local Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and their country-specific distributors and their local monopoly to rip off anything they want and release as late as they want. Their options to prevent the loss of monopoly is either to match US prices & do a lot of work to make sure stuff is released simultaneously, or kill the modchip developers. Quess which one is easier to do?

Both known developers of these new modchips are in europe. Market for the chips is mainly in europe. DMCA has very little to do with the whole issue, as it is not an european law. Sony just wants to protect their ability to release stuff in europe as late as it wants and at a price it wants. Cheaper to release late than to spend money to make sure localizations of manuals etc are done by the time the game is ready and shipping.

Just my 0.02 euros...

NEO4 is a warez mod

[sph]

I for one think that it was definitely right to go after NEO4. Despite being hyped and anticipated by some PS2 people, it is basically a warez mod. At first I was interested in it, but later I found out that it doesn't work with original PS2-imports, only PS2-warez. PSX-imports work though, but NEO4 would be insanely expensive for that feature alone. If modchip makers don't want to get Sony after them they should make mods that work with original games only. I've seen NEO4 being advertised as the chip that makes all the warez possible, sheesh.

I'll probably get a PS2 next year, and I want to be able to play both PS2 and PSX imports with it. I still haven't seen a mod that would do both, and NEO4 isn't one either. I have several imported PSX games that haven't been released in Europe at all (like some of the best PSX titles including Chrono Cross and Xenogears), and those are the only reason I have mod for my PSX. Sooner or later there will be similar titles for PS2.

As for DVD regions, Region X package for PS2 is both cheap and well-working. I don't see why anyone would want an awkward modchip that costs several times more just to watch import-DVDs.

It's probably the DVD thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

They're probably more worried about the circumvention of DVD region coding.. if they get known to be distributing a multi-region DVD player, the DVDCCA could be down on their asses and take away their DVD decryption license. They probably already had trouble given the backdoor in the DVD software in the first Japanese revision of the PS2.

Sony do seem to have a bee in their bonnets about game imports.. which is a shame, because customers in Europe tend to have a bee in *their* bonnets about games being slowed down to run in PAL. Sony complained that Tekken 3 didn't sell well in Europe and blamed imports. They might have done better to blame the fact that the European Tekken 3 was slow as a lame dog because of the PAL conversion. What's even stupider is that the DC established that a PAL60-capable console is entirely feasible (and it's no extra work to implement, because the binary for the PAL60 version is usually just the same as the USA one), but Sony didn't copy it.

Also, somebody who should know has told me that the protection system on the Playstation 2 actually makes it harder to make an import-playing chip than a pirate-playing chip. The real protection on the PS2 is the DVD format and nothing has gotten around that yet.

Oh, and if you really want to protest, don't refuse to buy a PS2 - buy one and SMASH IT. Sony actually _loses_ money on selling PS2s which it hopes to pay back with games. If you buy one and smash it, they lose their subsidy, AND someone else can't buy that one. This could be especially good near to Christmas.. (actually, I'm surprised console firms don't do this to each other, but they'd probably get sued)

Sony MAKES money on each PS2--quite a bit, in fact

[oGMo]

More actsofgord links. People should read this site---in addition to being funny and evil, he really knows what he's talking about. In this case, console manufacturers typically do not lose money on each console. This includes Sony and Nintendo right now. Only Microsoft is losing money on each XBOX. According to his calculations, Sony is making a pretty penny, too. If you really want to hurt them, buy an XBOX (but do you really want to help MS?), or a GameCube (same applies to Nintendo, really).

They're pretty much all evil, I guess. Maybe I'll visit the bookstore. ;-)

Re:Makes no sense

[autopr0n]

there now exists legal precedent for using the DMCA. Before, it could've been hairy..

Thats all fantastic speculation there, save for the fact this is going down IN ENGLAND!!!!!!!

I cant believe you managed to type so much based on absolutely nothing

Re:The cost of leisure ...

[WNight]

As you say, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

If you sell something to me for $10 you can't stop me from going and selling it to someone else for $15, even if that cuts into your intended business plan of selling it for $40.

If you want to sell it to people in rich countries, price it low enough that it's not worth them buying it in a poor country and shipping it over.

The whole concept of "veteran's discount" and such is that stores are giving this away to generate good will even though they know there's no law to specifically support it. A veteran could buy a product from a store for 20% off and sell it to someone for 10% off, pocketing the difference. Stores know this and don't make the discount too large and don't offer it on items that have a nearly 100% resale value.

It's a completely different topic for AMD to test a batch of chips and sell them at the speed they'll all perform at instead of testing each one individually. They're potentially selling more, for less. They're selling an nMhz chips and if yours works at n+100Mhz, you've got no reason to complain.

The only time this becomes objectionable would be if AMD sold a chip that could be overclocked and then tried to sue you for doing so. Luckily though, the hardware companies (with the exception of Rambus whose CEO is about a smart as a stick of warm butter) know that there's no basic in law for this.