Slashdot Mirror
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."
It is called civil disobedience, and it is often the only way to get injustice corrected (and the DMCA is extremely unjust).
If enough people are arrested for outrageously stupid reasons, public awareness of what is happening will be raised. I remember telling a non-technical friend of mine, who is a pilot for a major airline and served in the airforce (and saw combat in Yugoslavia), about the arrest of Dmitry and he was outraged. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him as angry as he was that day. He took that injustice very personally, as do most people who believe in the ideals of democracy and not the rule of corporate oligarchs, cartels, and monopolists.
The more lay people that are made aware of these injustices the better, and this guy is going a long way toward accomplishing this. The excesses of copyright have only succeeded these last decades because the awareness of what has happened (chronic copyright extentions, and now fundamental changes in its nature from a civil to a criminal law, and from a largely commercial regulation to a profoundly invasive personal one) has been absent. Copyright law, in its current form, will likely not withstand public scruitiny very well, which is something that would be good for every one of us (returning it back to its pre-1970 duration, if not repealing the notion altogether and replacing it with a gentler, non-monopolistic regime for compensating authors and artists, but that is a discussion for another day).
Raising public awareness of these issues is probably one of the most important things we can be doing, and if we as technically knowledgable people do not do so, no one will. This guy should be applauded for stepping up to the plate and putting his personal liberty on the line for the greater public good.
If we had more people willing to do this sort of thing when the despots seize personal liberty after personal liberty we would live in a much better world. He is a man who clearly feels strongly enough about software freedom to risk jail time, up to 5 years, which is a hell of a lot more grave than the $17,000 fine mentioned in the article (I wonder why they played that down. That makes his actions even more impressive).
There are many ways even the awful recent laws could be interpreted out of existence, so to speak. To really get what they want (which is impossible, but regardless), the big media industries not only need these draconian laws and worse, but they need very "conservative" enforcement in the courts.
Strictly speaking, I tend to agree with the Australians; security on the consoles (and proposed security in other systems) is far from being "primarily" a tool to prevent theft. It has many other purposes, stated and unstated.
We often call fair use a victim of the media industry's war on customers (or perhaps a war on civil liberties, or on sane contract and criminal law). Region coding aside, one thing in particular that frequently gets swept away in the "copy control" race is the notion of backups.
Yes, just simple backups. I'm in the habit of keeping things backed up when I can, and you should be too. Of course, don't take my word for it. You'll be a believer after you lose your first important batch of data, just like I did.
The media guys just want the backup issue to go away. They ignore it at every opportunity, and they hope you will too. But why can't we make backup copies of our CDs, DVDs, and, yes, playstation (etc etc) games? They get scratched, they wear out... even if you buy into the most apocalyptic notions about time shifting and space shifting, backups are still legit. And not only us, why can't _libraries_ and _rental places_ make backups? 100x as important for them as for us; they get a lot of wear and tear.
The "security" systems, as exemplified by the PS2 and other consoles aren't just for preventing theft. They're for preventing backups. You damage "your" property? Buy another copy. But is that legitimate?
This debate is filled with similar examples. Where's the "security" in region coding? It's entirely arbitrary! And the list goes on.
You see, there's a continuous conflict here, between big media's power grab, and fair use (making backups, quoting, time shifting, space shifting, etc), basic freedoms (like privacy, for DRM systems which "happen" to report what you do back to HQ), and elementary contract law (parties explicitly agree, implied contracts, no "surprising" fine print conditions, you own what you buy, etc - actually comes pretty close to the rule of least astonishment).
They want to abolish fair use altogether (along with getting special status for contract law and enforcement, etc) - that's the only way they can try to stop all theft. While they're at it, they're going to get fringe benefits that far outweight the value of their stated goal - control over all media devices? Carte blanche to dictate any kind of terms they want whenever they sell you anything? The ability to asses and collect taxes? Yet right now all the pieces aren't in place yet, and if you have to rule on the law, you still have the option to look objectively at the facts and conclude that mod chips and other game copying tools have legitimate uses and must be legal. I don't even think it's a stretch.
Until they explicitly eliminate fair use at the legislative level (which they might - who knows! anything's possible, apparently), that's always a possibility. Of course, controlling the courts isn't impossible either, perhaps... One thing the last few years should have taught us is that when it comes to corrupting influences in politics, politicians have a unique appreciation for the power of those who control the media.
We're on the road to Tycho.
A long time ago, when I was innocent and mostly unaware of DMCA, I got my PSX modchipped. This was one of the earliest mod chips (this becomes important later in the story). I was in Virginia working for my cousins software company (a defense contractor) and they had this cool video game store there that sold a lot of imported games. Well, they had just gotten in Samurai Spirits 1 & 2 for the Playstation. I bought it and brought it home, and tried to use the "swap method" to play it. (The swap method is where you prop the Playstation open while keeping the closed button under the lid pressed down. You then put an American game in your Playstation, and after it starts to boot swap it with an import.)
Well, this was a failure, so (long story short) I mailed my Playstation to a friend of mine and had him install a modchip. I finally got my Playstation back and spent many happy hours playing Samurai Spirits.
Well, a while later Sony got Capcom to tweak their software so it wouldn't work in modded Playstations. I found this out after buying two games. The first was Rockman III, a very expensive game that I can only play using Bleem! (I'm unwilling to rechip my Playstation with a newer "stealth chip" and I certainly won't ever buy another one.) The second was the American version of Dino Crisis! I solved that problem by getting my friend to ship me a patched CD-R of Dino Crisis, which worked fine in my modded Playstation.
So, essentially, Sony had convinced Capcom to tweak their software so that legitimate copies of their software wouldn't run on my chipped Playstation, but "pirate" games would work fine.
After this experience, I decided Sony was run by the Devil incarnate, something which was only confirmed by their later behavior.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Not True.
If you gain a mod chip for a PS it generally does three things for you:
1) Allows you to play non-'original' disks. (A semi-dodgy area, fair use says a backup is permitted)
2) Allows you to play discs from other regions (No illegality here.)
3) Allows you to play DVDs from other regions. (Perfectly legal)
One of the selling points on a PS2 is that it plays DVDs, and hence you can factor in that cost of a DVD player when buying a PS2, and as pretty much ANYBODY in a country that does not fall into region 1 knows DVDs are somewhat more expensive there... Not mentioned the staggered release dates, region 1, then 6 months later the rest of the world.
Games are also 'zoned' in a similar manner, brought out eariler, different pricing, and in fact different games (well features I guess)..
Why companies playing in a global market should attempt to segment, purely for the purpose of increasing profit... If you import DVDs from the states to the UK you still pay the VAT, and hence the tax arguement doesn't really cut it with me. Some items really are value added for the zones, but so far I've only noticed this on cars, not Computer related items.
And so to sum this up, there are perfectly legal and legitimate reasons for installing / purchasing a mod chip. I'm not saying that everyone has these goals in mind when they buy or sell them, but I am saying that to tar everyone with the same brush is a little harsh, and wrong.
To reply to the quote in the parent: This was totally unrelated to the first sale principle, it was the selling of mod-chips (oh and those copied games). Once you have bought the hardware there is nothing illegal about altering it. Sure the DMCA may come into force if you circumvent copy-protection, BUT I'm not sure if that applies if you don't distribute the 'crack'. At least nobody will know since there will be no publicity.. If you buy a ps2, crush it and use it as a doorstop, you can, and there is NOTHING Sony can do about it, even if you publish it, hell that probably violates the DMCA since the copy-protection is circumvented... Hmm I wonder what happens to scrapped machines??
Sony (and Sega, MS, etc) want to stop this because traditionally Europeans (and other areas, sorry about the view - I'm from Europe) will tolerate much higher pricing than their American counterparts, thus better profit margins..
Z.
P.S. I believe PS2 Games are zoned, although I'm not 100% sure.