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More on Microsoft vs. Lik Sang
Levendis47 writes "CNET's News.com is running an article on Microsoft's legal manuevers which have successfully shut down the Lik Sang ecomm store where they've been selling various game system mod chips including the OpenXBox Mod Chip. This leads me to two questions (and I'll admit my ignorance, faux or not, in order to get discussion on this topic): 1) When a customer purchases an XBox (or any game system for that matter) are you intrinsically "signing" an end-user agreement in the purchase that makes modding the device illegal? 2) Could a non-profit org setup an effort to have mod chips produced and "distributed" at the cost of production w/o legal repurcussions? (i.e. would not making a profit on XBox's hardware mods protect you from their wrath?) 3) I understand the whole DRM aspect of mod'ing for playing copied games, BUT, what about legit gray-hacks like the Mandrake Linux XBox project and such? It would seem to me that in the long haul, Microsoft would support such efforts because they could sell more devices (and potentially more software if they licensed an opensource validation library)... "
But if you modify cars to _intentionally_ make it easier to rob banks or steal ATMs, then you're assisting people in committing crimes. Even if some folks just use your cars to pull out tree stumps.
the original author is basically engaging in a slippery-slope fallacy without insightfully addressing any of the subtler aspects of the relevant technology policy decisions that need to be considered.
MOD THE PARENT DOWN!
If I use it to play pirated games then I am breaking the law because the vendor has copyright on the game, not because I have done anything illegal with the console.
Get your head out of the clouds there, kid. You're spewing the same garbage that every software pirate in the world uses in his defense. What you're saying is quite simply NOT TRUE because the DMCA is LAW. Unfortunate as that may be, it's still the truth, and modding an XBox is illegal as long as the DMCA remains in effect.
So quit deluding yourself. If you mod something, it's illegal. Of course, that's not going to stop me from doing it, but at least I admit that what I'm doing is in fact against the law.
He must be from Iraq.
Yeah, right.