Chip a Playstation, Go to Jail

perogiex writes "A man in Ottawa was convicted of selling and installing mod chips out of his computer store. Sony is overjoyed, man is less than thrilled. This is the first time such a case was tried in Canada." From the article: Garby said he didn't know he was committing a crime and would have never gotten involved in selling mod chips if he had known the law. Update: 07/24 21:53 GMT by M : Headline corrected; it's clearly mod chips for the original Playstation, not the Playstation 2.

Comments

Umm, there's more than just the chips...

[dennism]

according to the article, he sold "a line of 413 pirated video games" -- that's a little more than just selling modchips.

tell the whole story

[frovingslosh]

The /. version of this says he was convicted of selling and installing mod chips, but makes no mention of the pirated video games he was also selling. Since the original story is often unavailable moments after a slashdot article goes up, this was truly a disservice to the readers. The story gives no clear indication of what the hoser was really convicted of, the mod chip or the illegal copyrighted software, but I expect there would have been a lot more trouble of getting a conviction without the illegal software. For that matter, the guy was only fined 17k and giver a year of probation after selling (at least) 30k of illegal software, doesn't sound like he made out too bad or that this will seriously curtail the piracy issue.