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

How to Speak Austrailian.

[gir]

mod chip. austrailian for fair use.

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...