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Australian Commisssion Defends Playstation Mod-Chipping
newt writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is intervening in a court case to defend Sony Playstation owners' right to modify their consoles to play imported games. The ACCC is submitting a friend of the court brief, arguing that Sony's regional playback controls are unlawful. This has implications for DVD region zoning too: The ACCC has previously
published its concerns about DVD regioning, and its latest press release about this case reiterates the problems presented to Australian consumers by Sony's practices."
A good description of (psx) mod chipping can be found here:
http://www.vguys.com/modchip.htm
Basically, modchips allow the console to boot discs from another region, by changing CD subcodes to a universal format. It makes it so that other region disks boot, with the side effect of allowing CD-R copies to be played. So it's a region and copy protection go around.
Other consoles (Gamecube, Saturn) have simple switch mods that allow region changing, and some (Xbox, Gameboy color/advance) have no region checking.
BBK
Exactly - it's important not to confuse government policy (currently stupid and restrictive) with the ACCC - a government-funded but independent body that never gets listened to, except by the media.
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Imagine if your car would only accept gasoline from your homestate (let's say California).
When you take a vacation to Arizona, the gas is much, much cheaper, but alas won't run in your car because the signature chemical is missing. You have to buy special "California" gas at a premimum.
Techincally, there's no difference between an AZ car and a CA car, except that artificial price controlling mechanisms have been put in both cars making the fuel from one state non-interchangable with the other. It's a way to create an artificial market and shut out competition.
Do you get it now?
Instead of making laws, why don't governments simply educate the general population as to how much they are getting ripped off by DVDs, Playstations and Microsoft. If I was in charge I would fund a series of adverts that showed people exactly how much profit these companies make, how cheap it really is to press a CD, and how production costs aren't that high when split over millions of customers.
I would show them how they could live in a world where DVDs could be watched anywhere, where they weren't restricted as to when they could fast-forward, or copy, and how these massive companies bribe governments to restrict freedom. I would introduce them to the idea of operating systems other than Microsoft Windows(R) that were free and open so you couldn't hide malicious code in them.
You would think people would know this already, but you would be surprised how many non-slashdot readers honestly think that it costs _that_much_ to make a DVD, even though the studio has already made a massive box-office profit. People actually don't realise how much they are being ripped off and controlled. They have been completely conditioned.
Obviously I would probably be sued if I had these public-service-announcements made and showen, but thats how the world works.
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