Australian Federal Court Finds Mod Chips Not Illegal

Friendless writes "In contrast to the story earlier this week about the Ottawa man who was jailed for selling and installing mod chips, the the Australian ABC reports that the Australian Federal Court has found that installing mod chips is not illegal, because Sony failed to prove that a copyright protection measure was installed in the PlayStation in the first place. Here is the full judgement."

Comments

And in other news...

[CLIT]

The man convicted in Ottawa says he plans to move to Australia once his sentence is finished.

How to Speak Austrailian.

[gir]

mod chip. austrailian for fair use.

Re:Why should it matter?

[Hope Thelps]

I put it to you that if anyone actaully does make backups of their PS game, they are an anal freak.

But being an anal freak is not in itself illegal yet.

There is a massive difference between "the only reason to mod a ps is to play pirate games" and "the only reason to mod a ps is to play pirate games unless you have a personality that I will sneer at".

Re:What a set of cajones on this cat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cajones=drawers (that place where people keep socks and such). On the other hand, cojones=testicles.

Re:What a set of cajones on this cat!

[x1048576]

The court doc says that he represented himself! The guy took on a huge international corp, & won... what a guy.

Yeah but his defence was maximally lame: "He acknowledged that he supplied and installed a considerable volume of chips for PlayStation consoles before March 2001, but claimed that any chipping of consoles thereafter was done by his flatmate, whom he reluctantly identified as "Ted".

And this guy's name was Eddy....

Re:Besides...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Exactly, voiding the warranty is the manufacturer's ONLY recourse.

And technically, you can add a "fart pipe" if you want. You just can't operate the vehicle if that would mean you would violate a noise ordinance. It's not the modification that gets the fine, it's the violation of the noise ordinance.

Same thing with the chip. You can install it. you can use it for legitimate purposes (backups, imports) you just can't play pirated stiff with it.

Re:It is called civil disobedience

[quantaman]

So if I rob a police station am I only performing civil disobedience :)

Arrest me officer? But I was just making a political statement!!!

Very interesting

[DaveWood]

I appreciate the spirit of your argument. However, as a consumer and a citizen, I simply say, I do not accept that analogy. It has no intrinsic legitimacy and no utility for myself or society as a whole. I consider the attempt to make it an unnecessary favor to the media businesses at the expense of much larger and more important concerns.

There are many reasons for taking this point of view on the matter. Others are at this moment elsewhere on this topic making far more detailed arguments to the point than I care to here. But I will leave you with an example.

In 100 years, after Sony is long bankrupt and we're all long dead, the only way we will see a lot of what's been copy-protected today is from the "pirates" who broke the protection and allowed it to be stored in general purpose, redundant media.

I often chuckle at the crackers, and their demos and intros that I see today, because in generations to come, we may see their work enshrined in the nations libraries and museums...