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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."
The correct ABC link is here.
Wasn't the Ottawa case more about copied games then teh mod-chip? If he was just arrested for a mod-chip then the comparison would be valid, but selling burned games is an entirely different matter.
Secondly, the story about the Ottowa man who was jailed for "selling modchips" was actually jailed because he had 417 pirated games that he was selling to customers. Christ, people, read more than the headline next time!
Finally, I don't see how it could possibly be illegal to modchip a Playstation. I bought a piece of hardware (PSX). I bought another piece of hardware (modchip). When I buy them, I buy the rights to modify them in whatever way I want. There is no EULA on hardware. There is no contract that says "I will not modify this piece of hardware." What I do with my toaster/PSX on my own time is my own business. Is this one of those stupid "DMCA illegalities" that we keep running into?
The judgement cites the following Web site as the source of some games acquired for "chipped" Playstations:
:-)
http://superia.iwarp.com
But don't bother going there, unless you want to "mod" or "chip" a certain popular body part.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
that may be true but he got supporting breifs from the ACCC (our competition watchdog down here) which i'm sure helped considerably
Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied. -Otto von Bismarck
The Federal Court is the court of original jurisdiction for this case and hence this case hasn't passed even one appelate court yet.
:) so don't get too excited
Also our High Court (our highest court of appeal) has the nifty habit of disagreeing with lower courts (as most high courts do
Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied. -Otto von Bismarck
The DMCA (arguably) forbids making, owning, or even discussing how to make mod chips.
The law is convoluted, badly written, and in practice self-contradictory. But the net effect may be that your mod chip could get you in trouble.
The media guys know it's a shaky defense; that's why they're not rushing to test its limits right away. Rather than sic the feds on everyone (as they certainly could), they're going for what we like to call a chilling effect; they want practices to change as people are _afraid_ of prosecution, and they want the law to age a bit. Recent laws always look like potential victims to a high court, so the theory goes. But once its 10 years, 20 years old, it starts to take on a certain "legitimacy."
Don't ask me. I only live here.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Australia rules that selling pirated games is illegal.
:-)
The guy in Canada was mostly burned for selling the pirated games, not for installing the mod chips. It just looks better in an article to emphasize the mod chip aspect. We have no laws against modding equipment, even if it breaks copyright. Hell, if you can find a good Canadian server that will let it on, you can have DeCSS online up here.
~ kjrose
i would post a link to the playstation message boards, but i am at work and the site is blocked here...its not to hard to find with google tho...
basically, playstation 2 has a *huge* problem with the laser unit actually scratching the disc (the evil circular scratches too, not the easy-to-fix straight ones), especially if you stand up the unit. other problems involve the laser unit becoming "decalibrated" and unable to read discs until fixed, but that doesnt cause scratches.
after buying gran turismo 3 for the second time, i have started making backups of all of my games and using those instead of my originals as it seems that sony has somehow gotten away with engineering a product that will eventually destroy your games. maybe that last part isnt true, but im a paranoid freak about these things.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
The opinion is not lowering the threshold on what can be considered a "technological protection measure". All these last few paragraphs say is that it is irrelevant whether the mod chips are truly circumvention devices because the access code was not proven to be a protection device that was circumvented.
The main points of the case are as follows:
1) The access code does not protect the copyrighted work from being copied, 2) the access code merely causes the copied work to be unplayable, 3) the mod chip makes the copied work playable, and 4) the key here is that the work is already copied, regardless of the presence of the mod chip.
Even further, the text also supports the notion that even if the access code WERE a technological protection measure, the mod chip may still not have been considered a circumvention device because the protection measure would have also prevented the legal playing of American games and backup copies.
Sony was in fact two hurdles away from winning this case. I don't think this lowers the hurdle on what can be considered "technological protection measures" Rather, it clarifies (according to Australian law, unless they have an appeal process from this level) that mod chips are legal because they are not circumventing a protection device.
Clearly Sony must take additional steps to protect their games.
Mod chipping is still legal in Canada.
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