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Australian Commisssion Defends Playstation Mod-Chipping

Posted by chrisd on from the region-coding-is-bad dept.

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."

2 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This mod chip... by bbk · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Re:This mod chip... by 8string · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?