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Man Jailed for Selling Modchips
JoeCotellese writes "The Register is reporting that the man accused of selling Mod chips for the X-Box was sentenced to five months imprisonment and a $28,500 fine." Yet another sad abuse of the DMCA.
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This is an outrage! I mean, I have a chipped XBox here in the UK, and I use it to run XBox media player, and play a few (legitimate) games I have. At some point in the future, I will be running linux on it as well, as I can sit in bed and browse the web. Not as bad as it sounds :) I think DCMA is disgusting, it gives corporations the rights that they don't need!
How an abuse? Seems to me that here the DCMA has been applied in the normal way.
The DCMA may be a pain in the arse, but the problem is things like this are not abuses of it - they are legitamate uses.
The DCMA is gay, but this is not an abuse of it.
It's getting to the point where selling drugs is less of a risk! Not that I would, but I suppose one could always market LSD as a modchip for your brain...
Perhaps instead of buying protection in prison with the traditional box of cigarettes he can just give inmates warez'ed copies of Windows Server 2003 instead.
I agree that it is a bad law, and a bad ruling, but I don't think think this qualifies as 'abuse of the law.' This is exactly the kind of thing those bribed lawmakers had in mind when they wrote it.
Using the DMCA to lock out third party printer cartridges -- that's closer to abusing the law than this case.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
When you buy an Xbox you buy hardware. Circuit boards, microchips, a hard drive, a GPU, a CPU, RAM. You are not buying the same sort of thing when you buy software, where you are technically buying a license, not a disk with software on it.
You should be able to modify any equipment you own without fear of prosecution because the effect of that modification could possibly, in certain specific circumstances, violate copyright laws.
It's like arresting someone for putting a better engine in their car becuase "They might decide to speed", or worse, arresting the person who sold the performace parts.
because the DMCA is already abusive...it's just being applied normally. Best thing is to repeal that abomination.
Not that I would, but I suppose one could always market LSD as a modchip for your brain...
Wasn't that the point of Neuromancer?
The opposite of progress is congress
An X-Box mod chip is not an illegal copyright circumvention devices. It's an access restriction circumvention device. It gives you access to your X-Box hardware. What you do after that is your responsibility not the vendor's of the chip.
He must have had a bad lawyer. He could only be guilty if he included part of MS X-Box ROM on the chip. That would have been a copyright violation.
There is no DMCA violation here.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
That every retailer in the USA was to be jailed for selling "007: Agent Under Fire"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I need to sell this old 12x CD burner. It tears right through Safe Disc. So let's see, $15 is a fair price.
$15 + $7 (UPS Ground) + $28500 (DMCA fine)
Ok, any takers?
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Exactly. If you break a law you should expect to pay the price, even if you disagree with the law. Not agreeing with the DMCA doesn't make what he did legal. The fact is, he broke the law and was found guilty.
Thanks george w. I used to think this country served the ppl, now I realise that all it does is serve to perpetuate big business and the top .01% of the population.
I just heard news of how soldiers took one of saddam's 7 palaces, and how extravagent it is. All marble floors and 18k gold faucets (which isn't too expensive, gold is cheap over there). They were saying how horrible it is that ppl are starving and the ruling class lives in such luxury. How is this that different from the US? We might not be killing as many of our citizens, but apparently we'll use our gestapo to throw them in jail and take their money if they tinker with their own personal property, or if they interfere with some companies defunct business plan.
Last I checked, I own my PS2, if want to throw it off my balcony, I can. If I want to add microchips, I can. it's mine, I bought it, I don't remember sony lending it to me....
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
The legitimate use is that if I buy something, I do as I please with it. If I want to smash it with a big hammer, or unsolder all components and make a radio with it, it's my money.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
yeah, and if you break copyright laws, you get punished if you're caught. But by enabling others to break laws, makes you even more guilty....
I'm pretty far to the right politically (okay, I admit it, I'm *really* far to the right) but even I think this is overly harsh. I know cops who have locked up drug dealers and even they didn't get slapped this hard.
While I support the idea that people should have the right to do what they want with equipment they own, this guy made a living selling the copyrighted work of others... namely the programing in those chips (ie, the original MS BIOS which has been modified).
Now, if he wanted to rewrite the bios, fine... but he didn't. He copied the MS Bios code, modified it, and sold it. It would be no different if I bought myself a copy of MS Windows, made some modifications to it, burned it to CD, and started selling it as my own.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
David Rocci, the Al Capone of the 21st century.
The first rule of enforcing laws where making money is attached, "Make examples out of people, real bad examples to scare the rest of them". This is purely a "make an example out of someone" excercise for the DMCA, business as usual.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
This is sad.
I have a friend of mine who, way back in 1991, had dissecated his HP calculator (HP-48S). He had found a way (by chance) to read memory through one of the HP-48S functions, and, knowing the chip used, was able to disassemble the ROM of the calculator.
This allowed him to create new functions like ".." to move up the directory hierarchy of the calcultor, or even setup a password-protected login. Cool nerd things.
Anyway, he published his book in France. A few weeks later, he was contacted by HP. They wanted to know how he got those information. He told them and was no further bothered.
Now imagine it would have been in the USA with a DMCA law. This kind of reverse engineering and publishing could have been sanctionned, despite the fact that it did not harm HP a bit, nor did it reveal trade secrets. It merely gave a way for geeks to use the HP-48S in cool new ways.
Back to the topic, I would say that this case shows us how a law can be used against the people that elected their representatives, who in turn voted such a law. Sometehing did not get right here.
The law is the law, it must be applied. At the same time, people must realize that this law is a bad one, that it gives too much power to companies, and that it prevents "fair use".
Selling mod chips is not an activity I would blame. It does not hurt my values, nobody is hurt in the process, and people modify hardware they bought. Yet it is unlawful. If it chokes you as well, it means we both agree the law needs to be changed.
If you don't like that, don't buy this company's hardware. And write to your representative to have the law revisited.
I read -alot- of postsalong the lines of "What's the big deal? If it's illegal, it's wrong!"
;-)
Bullshit.
It was once illegal for non-white non-male U.S. citizens to vote, but that doesn't mean it would have been wrong for then to do so, nor is it now. Yes - some courts interpret the DMCA in such a way that things like modding your own hardware are copyright circumvention and are therefore, under the Act, illegal.
But there's more depth to this issue.
1) In my opinion, mostly, I can do whatever I want to what I own. I could put my Xbox in a washing machine, throw it off a cliff, or fill it with Jagermeister. It's mine.
2) Just because an object has the potential to violate a law does not automatically mean it does. If I work at a Wal-mart, and sell you a baseball bat, and you crack someone over the head with it, I'm not going to be charged with homicide. That's the end-user's fate.
3) Are a good deal of mod chips used for playing illegally copied materials? You bet. But that's not all you can use them for. Just because hareware has capabilities that are illegal (see #2), doesn't mean that's what it'll be used for, nor can it belabled a "circumvention device". I mean, if you're going to slap that label on, why would no the Xbox itself be a part of that group too? You need the machine as much as the chip to play a pirated game.
The point is, there simply exists too much ambiguity to assuredly charge that mod chips and the like are outright "circumvention materials". And as such, one who sells them a) should not be held responsible for selling such a product, and b) should not be held responsible for it's eventual use. Exploitation of legal ambiguity? Maybe. But that's what makes America great
[este]
I'll give you $10, you pay the shipping *grin*
Check my Karma, it's Exceeellleent! That's even better than feedback!
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
The site was isonews. Dedicated to posting .nfos and tracking all the releases in the warez scene. While they didnt link to downloads, or allow site advertising in the forums, the forums were full of people talking about how to copy this or play that on whichever console.
The site was not about 'backups', it was not about linux, it was not about fair use. It was about piracy.
And he sold Xbox modchips. He couldnt sit and yammer in court about fair use rights or running linux legally. He sold them for a specific purpose - playing illegal copies.
You can also make something of the fact that he was convicted for selling the 1st gen modchip Enigmah. Basically all xbox mods are bios hacks/replacements. The enigmah had a hacked version of the xbox bios.
Newer mods are basically blank flashroms. (Homebrew mods are blank flashroms) I don't see how you could be convicted selling those, unless you specifically make a point of saying the device is for playing pirated software.
I'm all against the government abusing its power.. Yeah yeah. But this guy abused his (and by extension everyone elses) "fair use" rights.
Screw him. He and people like him are the reason the DMCA passed in the first place.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So why isn't the Xerox management in jail?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
More or less. It is a flash memory chip, similar to the NVRAM on your motherboard. In fact, I hear that is how a lot of people flash them, putting the chips in an older motherboard and flashing them with a BIOS image for the Xbox.
But that is the catch: If this guy was selling just the chips, with nothing programmed on them, then he would have a legitimate defense. If he was selling them programmed with a hax0red BIOS image, it most likely contained Microsoft copyrighted code, which IS a copyright violation. How that falls under the auspices of the DMCA I don't know.
That said, if there was a legitimate BIOS image, mod chips probably would fall under the interoperability clause of the DMCA. IANAL, but you could at least defend it that way, with all the homebrew software out there.
(yes, offtopic, but I can't let this stuff slip by.)
I hear ignorant people say this sometimes and it never fails to surprise me. In their defense they're usually acting out some gradeschool conditioning and are not truly hateful or bigotted people. But holy cow, grow up.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
When the Iraqis realise what Bush means by freedom they'll wonder what all the talk of liberation was about!
All I want for Christmas is my Constitutional Rights
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
Make us $$$! Sue some bitches!
Many of the threads on this story - I suspect, will follow one of a few different aspects of this case. Whether this fellow "Deserved" what happened because what he was doing was allowing the illegal copying of copyprotected works. Whether or not "tool" providers should be prosecuted rather than those actually circumventing copy protections and breaking copyright law, and general challenges to the legitimacy of the DMCA.
I'd like to bring up another thread - the appropriate use of prisons in our society. It has come to pass that the answer to all criminal activities is "send them to prison". Does this make sense for non-violent crimes such as this? This guy didn't rob a liquor store, he didn't point a gun, knife or other weapon at anyone. He didn't threaten anyone. What, exactly, is the point of sending someone like this to jail?
I'm not going to argue whether he deserves punishment or not - I'm sure that will be handled in a lot of other threads. But if we are going to punish these kinds of crimes - what punishment should be used? Having a prison population is a huge burden on society, and its reformative powers are pretty dubious at best. Are we not better off assigning community service hours or similar types of punishments for these kinds of crimes?
Thoughts?
Obasan
The DOJ posted their press release about this case on the seized isonews.com website.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Hardware stores such as Home Depot, Sears, and others were closed permanently today in reaction to a lawsuit brought by Anderson Windows, Pella and other window manufacters.
A Pella representative stated: "We have asked these stores to stop selling devices that are in violation of the DMCA in relation to our window products. They refused, stating that there are other uses for the devices in question, hence the lawsuit."
When asked what products and how it was related to the DMCA, they responded: "Windows are digital. They are either open or closed. When closed, they are a security device. The stores were in violation of the DMCA by selling devices called 'hammers' that could easily remove the security of the device."
(I'll leave the open and shut case jokes as an exercise for the reader..)
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Apologies. I didn't remember I was speaking to a broader audience - it's just an everyday adjective for something that's unnecessary or frivolous where I live.
Yeah, really.. It's like I went to bed one night, and woke up the next morning, and just touching my computer had suddenly became illegal. I turned on my monitors, and hit alt-tab to switch to my e-mail program to check my mail (I happen to be running Linux, which is now illegal because it violates the DMCA), and all of a sudden FBI agents crashed throw my window and came in through my door, handcuffed me and hauled me directly to prison and took all the money out of my bank account and took all physical property that I owned including my car which happened to have a Linux CD in it. What is the world coming to? The future looks bleak...
--Drunk as in Beer
With a modchipped X-Box, you can feasibly start making copies (even if archival backups) of the games.
I can almost guarantee you that if you could buy a Mustang, mod it a little, and start producing new Mustang parts, that Ford would be knocking on your door _very_ soon.
It's like arresting someone for putting a better engine in their car
It's been illegal to do this for over 30 years.
arresting the person who sold the performace parts.
IIRC, that is precicely what happened to Berger Chevrolet, a car dealer in Long Island, during the 1970's.
Man Jailed for Selling XBox Bios Software
Not all mod chips are illegal. That one was though since they took MS code, modified it, and resold it.
The DMCA has just been applied naturally in this case. The problem is not that the DMCA has been absued, but rather that the DMCA is abuse.
New technology has not been immune to misguided legislation.
I thought all these issues had been hashed out earlier with regard to crowbars as burglary tools (crowbars aren't illegal, but breaking into a house is, etc.), the VCR case (people are allowed to make copies for private home viewing), headshops (drug paraphenalia is OK, possession of certain drugs is not OK (sorry, bad example)).
Those earlier legal precedents were seem largely reasonable and it would have been logical if recently-enacted legislation didn't try to use new technology as a tool to fix what is really a social problem. Now that's an inappropriate use of a tool if ever there was!
Don't prosecute people making or possessing tools or technologies. Instead, prosecute the people that directly use them to genuinely violate a copyright law (say, by selling illicit copies). Equivalently, they should simply install speed governors on automobiles so no one exceeds the posted limit. Removing your speed governor or selling means to defeat a speed governor would be crimes under the DMCA mindset.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The scary thing about this is that US laws are now increasingly oppressive to the point that their enforcement in an arbitrary fashion seriously degrades the fabric of society.
You can't have a rule-of-law which doesn't apply equally to everyone. I mean, I guess we knew that since well before the OJ trial, but here's a case where a seemingly innocuous crime has unreasonably harsh punishment. Kill a man, get off. Endanger corporate intellectual property, be punished eternally.
But then, I guess even something as simple as speeding could potentially be applied arbitrarily. But we know that cops would never engage in profiling, right?
History has shown that *all* governments tend to opress their citizens eventually. The US is about to learn that big-time.
So, a proud U.S.M.$. citizen was fucked again.
You're not going to jail, the guy selling the modchips is. That's 'cause, as the laws are now, those are illegal. You're still free to take a hammer to your X-Box.
Fair enough, the guy was distributing copyright material. He done bad, he should be slapped on the wrists. But prison? Are American prisons really so spacious that you need to fill them up petty, almost victimless crimes like these?
Pointless.
http://www.davetansley.com - you proba
This is plain stupid (at least from my European point of view)
If the law wants to be consistent, then these and these guys should also be arrested as they sell "protection circumventing devices".
Selling a tool which allows to break the law should not be punished, only breaking the law should be.
People don't seem to understand that this is not a Napster issue, where he's creating a means of piracy. Not at all.
XBOX mod chips contain illegally modified proprietary data. They contain, specifically, a modified XBOX bios. This is roughly the same thing as selling modified copies of windows. Sure, you can do it on your own, and he's not resposnsible for piracy at all. But he distributing hacked versions of the bios, which is strictly not allowed!
Read jack phelps dot net
He wasn't charged because of selling circumvention materials. He was charged because the BIOS he was selling was copyrighted material of Microsoft. Did you read up on any of this before posting? This is not about eventual use or any of the nonsense you're talking about. Let me try to break it down more simply for you. Let's say you decide to buy a piece of software at Walmart - some game or something for the PC. You then make a thousand copies of that game and begin selling it to people. You are violating copyright law. That's basically why the guy was arrested. Jesus, RTFA.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
DMCA and it's ilk were passed during Bill "I did not have sex wwith that woman - bomb Bosnia" Clinton
BC
-1 what? Offtopic? Flamebait? Troll? Why just plain -1 with no explanation? Please enlighten me. American Freedom is in trouble. I'm glad I don't live there.
Stick Men
Well, I don't think you can blame them for wanting the software companies that have signed on with them to get money. Sure you're using it for legitimate uses but most people are definitely not.
--Ever heard of Miranda rights?
"If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you"
In criminal cases, money is not a problem. It's in civil cases where you have to empty your wallet.--
Yes, in theory, but in reality complete B|S. Do you really want a court appointed lawyer to defend you when ther is jail time involved? In most states, court appointed lawyers get paid very little so they are not as willing to spend time defending you.
XBOX mod chips ARE NOT ILLEGAL! They never have been! I just bought one last week. The mod chip is nothing more than a regular PC bios chip with some circuitry to override the on-board bios. The bios that I downloaded from IRC and flashed to my mod chip IS illegal. It's just a slightly modified version of the COPYRIGHTED xbox bios. Now, you can argue about the legality of copyright law, but this has nothing to do with the DMCA.
Moving onto the case in question, this guy was selling mod chips with the modified (illegal) bios already installed. Big mistake. If he had been selling blank modchips like the rest of the world, he would have been fine.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play my pirated copy of DOA: Beach Volleyball...
...blank CPLDs on a suitable board and let people find the VHDL for themselves on the web? Would that be legal? I think it's the way to go.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
That's what I keep telling people, like in Schindlers list, Speilburg seemed to treat Schindler like a hero where he uses bribery to circumvent the laws that his government had put down.
And when those impudent wretches ousted Slobodan Milosovic, they were clearly in breach of Yucoslav law.
And what about the perpotrators of the French and the Russian Revolutions? Didn't they read that bit about not executing their rightful rulers?
And that goes to all the Mandelas, the Guvaras and the Gandhis out there, DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Surely someone should create a modchip which only allows users to run specified programs ... OR, one which stops working if an MS signed executable is found on the disc, so it can't be used to play games with.
Then they would have somewhere to stand in court.
... and a GameCube or PlayStation2 for games. Very simple. Just don't get something that is a computer, but only runs some types of software.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Havokmon,
I see what you're saying and i agree that a)gay is a multi-definition word, and that b)we spend too much time worrying about language and whether it will offend people.
But i know that when i went to gradeschool, calling somebody gay was a serious insult, and you were suggesting that they were a homosexual (although exactly what that meant wasn't too clear at the time.) Unfortunately for some people that word sticks in their vocabulary, and when they use it interchangably with "stupid" they are absolutely using it in the homosexual sense although they may not be thinking about it. I didn't have a problem with this either until i used the word when i was standing next to a friend of mine who happens to be gay, and realized how much i had hurt his feelings.
Try arguing that you use the word "nigger" to mean idiot (i actually know people like this) and that you just mean "idiot," with no offense to black people. You could say that "it has nothing to do with race, although it may have originated there." If I'm a black person standing next to you when you say it, will this fact make me feel better?
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
Tomorrow, we'll be reading /. posts about Bestbuy being sued for selling overclocking kits, and Stables sued for selling 3rd Party Printer replacement cartridges.
the issue is that the mod chips circumvent copy protection on the x-box, which is illegal.
I'm fairly sure that that's correct. Some people are claiming that the issue is the inclusion of a BIOS (and hence copyright infringement), but I'm quite certain that this is not the case. There are existing copyright laws to cover this, and not only is the DMCA not required to prosecute someone infringing copyright, it really doesn't *cover* it. The DMCA specifically goes after people screwing with copy protection mechanisms.
This is hardly "abuse" of the DMCA, as the story claims. Now, you may not *like* the DMCA. Lord knows, I think it's one of the most disgusting pieces of legislation ever passed ("it's more *convenient* to prosecute the few smart engineers designing tools that can be used to bypass copy protection mechanisms than the people actually using them to commit a crime, so those engineers should be prosecuted? Meh!"), but this really is the DMCA being used as it was intended. It's not misuse of the DMCA at all.
May we never see th
I realize it's slang, but that doesn't mean that it's harmless. The ever contentious N word is slang for a black person, but it's also extremely offensive to most black people, or most anyone else for that matter. In the same book, "gay" when used in a derrogatory manner is offensive to many people, so don't act surprised when people get offended or dismiss you as ignorant for using it in such a way. I'd also like to point out the maturity of the original poster in the fact that they admitted that the word choice was poor, rather than go off on a rant about "no wonder this country is so fucked up." The reason this country is so fucked up is because people don't take the time to be considerate of others. Think about that.
This is total horseshit man. It has been proven in court time and time again that once you buy something, it's yours to do with as you please. Please notice that I said buy and not license. Licensing is the current gray area, but has absolutely NO bearing on the outright purchase of a physical thing.
Look at it this way, regardless of whether it's legal or not to make copies of CDs, once you purchase one, you can do whatever the fuck you want with the physical media. Make a coaster, make a frisbee whatever, it's yours.
Can you not see how this lawsuit sets a horrible and totally unprecedented example? Come now, open your eyes and realize when your rights are being pissed on.
No Comment.
I've posted a couple of comments in this thread in response to people that jumped up not understanding why people were offended at the initial comment. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you're mature enough to recognize your error and appologize for it. It's a shame we don't see more people like you here on /. :)
After buying the third copy of Spyro the Dragon for my children, I modded my Playstation. What annoys me the most is that they market these games for children, but then put them on an easily scratched, fragile media. We all know how careful children are with their possessions.
I tried putting the cds out of their reach, but they learned to climb or stand on chairs to get to them. Now I just make a backup of the games I have bought and let them have at it. Scratch? No big deal, I will have you a new one in 5 minutes.
How, exactly, are Microsoft's rights violated by someone modding their X-Box to play games that have not yet been, and may never be, released in their country?
Is Microsoft's right to life being violated? No.
Is Microsoft's right to liberty being violated? No.
Is Microsoft's right to property being violated? No.
So now we must ask why, in the so-called "land of the free", a man must have his life ruined, and spend five months getting his shit packed, for "dareing" to sell devices that allow people to modify hardware that they bought and paid for?!
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
You can buy a mod chip and install it. That's not illegal. Selling mod chips is illegal.
Aw crap, ninjas!
He wasn't selling copies of software to people that don't own that software, he was selling the MS XBox BIOS to people that already owned a license for said BIOS, thus not selling them a bios at all.
He was really just selling mod chips that contained software they had already purchased.
Now, MAYBE, you'd have a point if they caught the guy selling his mod chips to someone that had never bought an XBox in the first place, thus didn't already own the BIOS, but they didn't because who the fuck would buy a mod chip if they didn't have an XBox to use it in?
Think of it this way: How much does a legitimate copy of WindowsXP cost? Wrong. About $10. Yes, the _license_ is much more, but anyone can purchase and own a copy for dirt cheap...just not allowed to use it until you purchase the license. So, what's wrong with him selling these chips with the bios on them when there is absolutely NO way to use it without actually purchasing an XBox, which includes a valid license for said BIOS.
No Comment.
I cannot believe this is real. I mean really a guy got JAIL TIME and a CRIMINAL RECORD for selling these devices which do not even fall under the DMCA. The mod chips do not let people bypass copywriten materials and now the guy has 5 months in the pokey with a big biker rommate named Florence.
What THE FUCK is going on here? I am so glad I love in Canada. Is the U.S. really turning into the Orwellian state that it seems to be? I have always considered moving to the States. My wife and I were discussing this a few months back. Forget it. Just goes to show that money is power. I guess the RIAA will be running your elections pretty soon. Arnold Swartzenegger for President anyone?
How do these things get so far? Well its time to start hitting them where it hurts. I was going to go buy an X-Box today. Well fuck that. You hear me Microsoft you dirty slimey bastards? You will never, ever get one flat dime out of me EVER again. Mark my words. You won't have a few hundred of my dollars to put poor saps like this in jail.
See you in hell!
"Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and they still think its funny." - Mr. Boffo
Fucking coward. Your words would carry more weight if you actually stood behind them. Actually, that's not true. You're an idiot so it is impossible for your words to carry any more weight.
Thinking something is wrong, immoral, or just distasteful is not equivalent to prejudice. I think it's wrong, immoral, and distasteful that Bob puts his dick in John's ass. According to you that makes me a prejudiced redneck. I also happen to think that Mike cheating on his wife is wrong, immoral, and distasteful.
Learn what the words mean before you use them, moron. Your little rant was so gay.
I predict that within 10 years it'll be illegal to fix your own car. Heck, it'll be worse than that. Only those authorized by the manufacturer will be allowed to make the repair. The car repair business will become a cash cow for the automobile industry. Which of course will kill any incentive to make quality automobiles. And of course this will apply to more than that it will apply to every manufactured item we buy.
And on a related note, there was an incident about a year ago where someone tried to sell a Segway on Ebay. The company Segway got involved and demanded it be removed. It cited that the product contained intellectual property that could not be resold.
So not only will we be unable to repair the stuff we buy, we won't even really own it. In about ten years (or less) garage sales and classified ads will become the new Napster and will be outlawed. And like the ignorant sheep we Americans are, we'll wholeheartedly agree because we'll accept the mantra, if it's bad for business, it's bad for us.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Sooner or later the DMCA will creep into other facets of life...
Cars, light fixtures, etc.
Why, light bulbs could be CHIPPED to make them fail within a certain time period... Fixtures could REFUSE to light the light if you don't use the light bulb of the manufacturer...
Your car could refuse to run on anything but GM Gas -tm, or refuse to start unless the tires have the manufacturer's chips in them.
The potential for abuse is LIMITLESS.
Corporatism != Free Market
That's ANOTHER thing I have a problem with. You can't say 'nigger' as part of a discussion about 'words' because you're afraid of offending someone?
That's fucking gay. :P
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
You sir, are a fuckwit.
You don't eat your cheerios in the living room do you? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
You won't play Brittney Spears on this CD Player will you? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
You won't tint the windows on this car will you? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
You won't wear that shirt without tucking it in will you? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
You won't use that microwave to blow up eggs? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
You won't drink that whole case of beer tonight will you? Because we say you aren't allowed to.
Really dude, quit watering down my rights as a consumer.
No Comment.
Simple. Custom homebrew programs. Or Linux.
Take a good look at the homebrew segment for the Dreamcast; they've done some simply amazing codeworks, including ports of Doom and Wolf3D.
I think you're missing the point. With this ruling, what stops GM from making it illegal for you (or any third party) to change your car's oil filter or tires?
What stops Dell from making it illegal to install a new power supply and motherboard to your old Dell computer?
A long time ago I had a guitar amp which I modified by placing a capacitor in it which made it distort better. Should that be illegal too? Under this ruling, it could be.
It doesn't matter if we have a good reason to muck around with the stuff we buy, what matters is that we should have a right to do so.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Wake up.
lol yeah, I know. It's a little nit-picky, but when I'm trying to make a point about attempting to avoid using words that may offend people, I think of it as a hair on the hypocritical side to go about using that language. Really, it depends on whether I think it's nessecary to make my point. If I need to actually say the word to make the point clear, I say it. If the point can be made just as clearly without it, I don't. Yeah, I'm weird like that. :)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
the DMCA passed under Clinton's watch
Clinton still could not have prevented the DMCA from becoming law because it passed both houses by "unanimous consent", that is, a voice vote. A voice vote implies at least 80.1 percent support for a bill (20 percent of a house can force a full roll-call vote in that house); only 66.7 percent is needed to override the President's veto.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Aside from the obvious (I never signed anything but my credit card receipt), you must realize that Microsoft is the entity that decides how much to charge. I hope you weren't implying that they have any inherent rights simply because of the MSRP, as that would be STOOPID (sic).
While you're at it, work on your spelling. Their iz a deference butween There and Their / Your and You're (I won't even get into it's vs. its)
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Granted, but I was a guilty party, so I figured I'd explain myself. Besides, what's the point of debating an issue if it's not to come out with a better understanding of the other side?
There are two big differences there. First, you must have an Xbox to make use of this BIOS. Second, you are confuseing software and hardware. The issues brought up by this simply point back to the absurdity of granting copyrights to non human readable files. You have really bought a bill of goods to even be thinking the way you are.
On the first point while it's not at all a given that he used M$'s bios in his own there should be nothing wrong with that. It is possible to make a whole bios and I've read that people have done this for the xbox. The FBI would still want to put those folks in jail, but that's beside the point. Because you can't use this bios in anything but an xbox and because you can only use one at a time, there is no difference between the seller physically modifying the bios your machine came with. The modification could happen at the shop, or he could send you a program that would do it for you or you could require the receiver to send back the old bios, or everyone could save themselves a lot of trouble and do just what the seller did. Because no one can offer modifications to the xbox of any kind, xboxes must belong to Microsoft and their franchise is protected by the Federal Govenment.
The second point is largly covered by the reasoning in the first point. This is a peice of hardware that is being sold. There exists no ready mechanism to modify the bios in an xbox. It was made to controlled by its owners, Microsoft, not its purchasers. If such a mechanism did exist, the bios would be software.
Why is it that we have extended copyright into hardware again? The path between this point and copyrights for binary files is a straight line. A binary file is just an aragement of 1s and 0s, much like a collection of coggs and gears, that have no meaning to humans and do not deserve protection designed for works of art and literature. Free software will remove the profit holding up this system of abusrd laws and things will get better soon.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I dunno....I think 'political correctness' is one of the reasons that the country is "so f**ked up"....people are so afraid of offending someone, that nothing gets said. I think that freedom of speech, by its definition, precludes a freedom from hearing something that might offend you....If someone says something you don't like, then just walk away and don't listen...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Schindler broke the law because of his greater moral duty
Schindler had no moral duty to take the risks he took. He did what he did because he was a good man, not because he was "doing his duty".
The violation of law that is the subject of this thread is also in a good cause, if a lesser one. The other point is that the draconian penalty is disproportionate to the offense. A few years ago, a man was sentenced to 6 months in prison (and no fine) for attempting to murder a neighbor of mine (in Maryland). He shot him in the chest with a nail gun. The victim survived, just. Of course the important difference is that the would-be murderer only harmed an ordinary citizen, whereas the mod-chip man annoyed a powerful corporation.
I'm not sure how the gun laws are relevant. Maybe I'm just too much into personal reasonability.
Surely if someone intentionally drove a GM car into someone and killed him, GM could never successfully be sued. The person who drove the car was the proximate, superceding, and intervening cause of the death.
If that is true, why should gun manufacturers be held liable for the same act?
I'm not some pro-gun nut. I've never owned a gun and never will, I just don't see the connection here.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Try arguing that you use the word "nigger" to mean idiot (i actually know people like this) and that you just mean "idiot," with no offense to black people.
I think the problem with this analogy is that "nigger" was originally used as a derogatory term used by whites in america in support of their oppression of blacks.
"Gay" on the other hand originally meant 'cheerful' or 'happy' (I think the OED has a dozen different definitions of the word, all meaning generally good) and was adopted by the homosexual community to cheerlead the fact that they were happy with their decision and their lifestyle.
The word "gay" has evolved several times in our language, I would reject the supposition that it should stop now that it has been adopted by a persecuted group.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I agree that the US government is being a bitch, but you have to be careful in making generalizations. Just because there was a case where a poor law doesn't mean that all are like this. About your statements: 1: Even if you own something, there are some things that you cannot do with it. Usually there are terms attached to certain purchases. An example of this is buying everquest, and somehow hacking the software such that you don't have to pay the monthly online fees. Generally, if you were to distribute some utility that would allow people who have everquest to go online for free, then you would be committing an illegal act. In this case, an Xbox mod chip might allow you to run DVD-R's with games on them. More indirectly, modding your Xbox to run Linux might cause MS to incurr a minor loss since you may have instead bought a PC (which often come with windows pre-installed) . 2: You're making another generalization here. A baseball bat is made to play baseball, that's the obvious intent. A mod chip is made to modify the manufacturer properties of the Xbox. What you're claiming is that if someone were to buy a gattling gun (or something that's too high power to be purchased even in the U.S. ), that it would be perfectly legal if they were intending to use it as a can opener. 3: Again, take a look at a gattling gun, sure it's mostly used to kill people, but you can't claim that it's ok for someone to have one just because they want to use it as a large dildo.
Giving up mod points here.
Killing is not blanketly illegal. Legal instances include self-defense, protecting an innocent, ensuring the security of dangerous property, &c. the legal concept here is ``justifiable homicide'' among others.
Moreover, guns have uses beyond just killing people (justified or not), hunting, punching holes in targets, collections which are didactic in nature &c.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
GPL Communists
DeCSS thieves
Modchippers
Savegame modifiers
Warez smugglers
SmartTags deniers
CPU-serial killers
Patent molesters
Activation anarchists
Kernel terrorists
And if the slimey toad who modded you down couldnt tell the difference between passion and flamebait, he can go suck ostrich eggs
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.
I know this is not going to be the popular opinion here on /. but I'll post anyway and not AC.
Who cares what you are called. There is NOTHING a single person in this world could say or "call me" that would offend me in any way shape or form. You can call me a [x]head (fuck, shit, dick etc..), cracker, faggot, flamer, polish, asshole, bitch, stupid, retard, a bad speller, or any other word in any language or slang you can think of. I might not like you because of opinion differences but I would not be offended by ANY of them. I know who I am, what my weaknesses and strengths are, and what I am capable of doing on a daily basis to cope in the world and have accepted it. A stereotypical reference is and will always be just a word to me.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
If I remember right, ISOnews.com was also shut down in 2000 because they had posted links to Dreamcast ISOs. While the claim was made that there weren't any ISOs on the site itself, the site was taken and given back under the provision that links to any pirated ISOs would not be posted on this website. I can only guess that this would be the final straw.
Let me help you with the connection.
IF GM can't really be held responsible for a car muder crime, and you (and I) agree that the gun manufacturer is not responible for a shooting murder crime, then how is it that a man selling modchips can be responsible for a piracy crime?
You could argue you that intent of the chip is for piracy 99% of the time, but the intent of a hangun is killing 100% of the time, so that doesn't pan out.
The government are happy to jail someone who sells a piece of kit that allows people to copy games, whilst trying to pass laws [bbc.co.uk] that protect gun manufacturers from being sued if their guns are used in a crime.
Ah, hypocrisy. Similar to "irony" in its misunderstanding these days - just as it's not actually irony if it rains on your wedding day, it's not actually hypocrisy for the government to enact laws inconsistently. What would be hypocrisy would be for the government to sell these mod chips themselves but still arrest others for doing the same thing, and I don't see them doing that.
You can accuse the government of being a lot of things in this case - stupid, overzealous, bull-headed, whatever... but there's no hypocrisy here that I can see. They're just enforcing the law as it's written, and it's not a hypocritical law at all. A dumb law, an overreaching law, but not a hypocritical one.
Just curious...you say you live in GA, but, I'm guessing you weren't 'born and raised' there? A lot of your perception of things, people and situations are developed by where you were raised and the conditions around you. Someone who was raised in the North or Midwest, in mostly white only neighborhoods with no school integration, middle income land, wouldn't know what it is like to live like, say in southern LA, or MS...where there is a huge, welfare population that in general, you see as having a lazy, non-working leech off society attitude. Seeing a lot of this 'stereotypical' behavior being acted out in front of you on an ongoing basis, can shape that person's attitudes and language concerning such (hence you have the 'names' for these groups, "white trash, niggers, spics, rednecks...etc") If you grow up with these terms, and it seems normal to you to describe such groups in this way, it doesn't seem like a lot of garbage, just how these people are described.....I also find that it works both ways. People everywhere have prejudices against some one, some group, or some activity. I think in a way, it is human nature to a great extent. People by nature look for patterns...even where there may be none, but, that is how we move into 'new' situations...you prejudge what you enter into based on previous life experiences and lessons. The tough part, is to go past that, and once you understand your situation better...you form new opinions on them. And you form new ways to describe them...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"...the homosexual community to cheerlead the fact that they were happy with their decision and their lifestyle.
The fact that people call things that they think are stupid "gay" doesn't get me as upset as those who go around thinking that being homosexual is a 'choice'. I didn't wake up one day and go, "You know what? I dislike the taste of pussy. I think I'll just suck cock for the rest of my life despite the fact it'll get me oppressed in my day-to-day life. Yea. Cock it is!" It's no more a choice than someone who is heterosexual. They aren't that way by 'choice'. That is just part of their existance. It's not something, obviously, that can be explained. If it were a choice, do you *really* think I'd choose to go against the majority of the rest of *Earth*!? Puh-leeze!
To those in this thread - get over it. Get a life. 'Gay' will be used to mean homosexual/stupid/happy, 'hella' will be used in place of 'very' (even though it's a larger word), nigger will still be used by 'white' people as a derogatory word twords 'blacks' and 'blacks' will use it to greet eachother, etc. that is life.
Move on. Nothing to see here.
bork bork bork!
The purpose of 'jails' is to sustain the custody of individuals who are charged with crimes or are material witnesses to crimes. The purposes of 'prisons' are to prevent convicted criminals from harming society through isolation, to provide a mechanism by which they may be 'corrected', and to provide a strong deterrent to crime.
I know you didn't want to go there, but the irony here is that the subject of the incarceration need not be corrected, but the law he violated should be recognized as inconsitent with his right to property. His actions were allegedly in conflict with the law. The court is responsible for choosing which of the three outcomes is made manifest:
- His conflict with the law did in fact exist, and since he willfully commited the crime, he should be corrected.
- His conflict with the law did not exist because the law is being misinterpreted or misapplied in the charge or the charge is not proven, therefore he is not to be corrected and (possibly) precedence is set.
- The law is inconsistent with the Constitution, therefore the law is corrected.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution establish our right to property (pursuit of happiness) and our right to the retention of property except through due process. Property is not an object itself, but the rights we exercise with respect to a certain object.
I would content that the modification of property is a right which must be taken away by due process only.
I just saw a story that the US has over 2 million people in jail right now.
By FAR, the highest percentage of prisoners to population of any country in the world, except maybe China, who has unpublished numbers.
Its pretty sad that this post is up at +5. This was a criminal trial. Corporations had no involvement in the trial. They bought the law, and perhaps they suggest who should be prosecuted, but they are not running the court case. Taxpayers foot the bill for prosecutors don't use Strategic Lawsuits, they put people in jail.
The guy probably pled because he would lose the case in court. He DID break the law, the bad, bad law.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Actually it was delayed, the first air date was a week before it actually showed, they yanked it a few hours before showtime. chances are they got the legal go-ahead from there lawyers and proceeded this week.
This is touching on a legitimate concern. Let me explain.
Premise: The general public want to buy consoles as presents for each other, and the price has to be under $500 at the very most, preferably under $200. They are prepared to pay $50 for a game that will bring enjoyment for the whole family for several months (1 year on, my friends are still playing Halo every week).
Solution: The manufacturer sells consoles at a loss, hoping to make their profits on the games sales.
Problem: Hackers will mod the console so that it can run software that the manufacturer does not make any money on.
Solution: Create 'safe harbour' legislation that allows the public to have what they want. The manufacturer can sell their hardware at a loss, and make the money back on the games, without fear of losing a fortune on consoles that will not create a revenue stream (e.g. LinuXBox media station).
I'm being serious here, what's the problem with the above situation? Without the safe market, the consoles wouldn't get made, so by buying under-priced hardware and hacking it, you're pissing in the pool for everyone else. I doubt that Sony or MS would have released their current consoles at the price they did if anyone could write games with no royalty to the console manufacturer.
Seems to me that the "unnecessary or frivolous" definition of gay falls closer to the original "happy" definition of gay rather than the "homosexual" definition, and would therefore be more likely to imply that happy people are stupid than it would be to make a statement about homosexuals.
Oh, c'mon, aren't you going to post using your user name?
You still need to look up the word "prejudice".
Born and raised here, actually. My dad's from New York, but is actually quite conservative. My mom, on the other hand, is from here, and quite the liberal. Yeah, environment is a factor, but it's not overriding. The overriding factor are parents who teach their kids to think for themselves rather than spoon feed them their beliefs. It's really rather sickening the number of people I know here who have the beliefs they do simply because it's what their parents believed, with no other real meritt. Personally, I consider the abillity to rationally look at a situation and find the root cause for yourself a key sign of intelligence. Throwing people into stereotypes and assigning labels doesn't fall into this. Actually, I can tell you first hand that the areas where prejudice and bigotry are highest in the white community are the areas that are relatively poor with poor school systems. I've personally witnessed a direct corellation between prejudice and a lack of understanding of the world in general. I've grown up with it around me, and I don't see it as acceptable. There are just as many (hell, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more) white leeches on welfare as black. I've heard just about any slur you can think of thrown around. The one pattern I notice here (yeah, patterns again)? The fact that the people making these statements generally have a skewed world view. It's just as arbitrary as the "reasoning" behind the persecution of the jews in Europe (not just under Hitler, it's a recurrent theme in European history), and in fact, many of the same weak arguments are used here for group XYZ. I don't really know what I'm getting at here. I think what I'm basically saying is yes, it exists, environment is a factor, but it's not an excuse.
Ah, you figured it out all on your own ;)
Multi-use...go figure!
No Comment.
Furthermore, slippery slope arguments are for dumb niggers that don't understand logic. I hope this guy gets a boyfriend soon so Slashdot won't have to suffer from his bullshit.
That would be a false market.
Consumerism 101:
CompanyX has productY for sale for $Z dollars. I buy productY for $Z dollars. End of transaction.
Now I take MY productY home and do whatever the fuck I want with it.
So, if CompanyX assumed that I would do [q] with productY which would generate more revenue for CompanyX, and even worse, takes a loss on productY based on this assumption, but then I don't do [q] and thus do not give CompanyX more money because I bought productY ONLY, and NEVER intended to do [q], we should force legislation making this illegal and create a false market to hold up CompanyX?
Fuck that man!
If MS crashes and burns because they sell the XBox hardware without enough markup, am I supposed to cry? Fuck that man!
Oh, I get it. Cars should be $500 new, and we should be forced to buy $1000 worth of gas, from the company we bought the car from, ad infinum. What a wonderful world that would be!
Just remember, you thought of it, not me so you can gladly have all the credit!
No Comment.
PVC pipe and WD-40 have lots of other uses than building weapons of "mash" destruction. (sorry)
selling something which ENCOURAGES and FACILITATES illegal activity - and in this case had no legal use - then you are on a slippery slope.
"honestly," your honor, "i had no idea he was going to use my ford mustang performace chip to illegally enhance the performance of his ford mustang."
"i shoot them at trees in my backyard."
just because you do not think it is right, does not make it wrong.
There's a case before the Supremes right now that may have some bearing on this--there are a variety of companies that sell "editted" versions of movies; chopping out the objectionable bits. They purchase individual copies and then edit them and distribute...This is significant in that they are paying for the intellectual property at the market rate.
There's considerable debate if this is permissable practice; we'll have to wait for a verdict to see what the state of the law really is.
Point being--if the Supremes rule that the purchase/edit/distribute loop is permissable, why could you not extend the concept to an editted BIOS--aka mod-chip?
You know, the tiny bit of info regarding the fact that he also was involved in selling DSS hacking equipment.
:) or maybe they will stop advertising them as XBox modchips and instead call them "replacement backup BIOS's" or some such BS, and only ship chips without BIOS's on them, that way, as advertised they are nothing more than a generic BIOS replacement for....whatever really. The problem comes in when you start SAYING "plays backups". And when you start SAYING your product will mod the XBox. If BMW startedmarketing their cars with the feature "High Performance breaking to help you in your bank robberies" they'd come under fire too :)
I bet that had a pretty big role to play in his arrest.
Also keep in mind that the XBox BIOS isn't, really, a copyright protection mechanism. It's primary (and I don't count using a ATA spec. hard drive lock to be a copyright protection mechanism) function is booting the PC. Not making sure you can't play copyrighted games. As a matter of fact the XBox doesnt have any real copyright protection. Which is going to screw them on this one. Because ALOT of the modchips for the XBox do NOT come shipped with a MS based BIOS, the Xecuter II lite does, the enigmah (which sucks) does, and a couple others, but the Xecuter II Pro, Matrix, and that Aussie one, donn't come with a BIOS or come with the Linux Boot only BIOS. It's pretty damned hard to imply that a modchip that, as sold, only lets you boot Linux and nothing else is a device for bypassing copyright protection (if, as I said before, you want to really call it that).
In short, the "end of XBox modding" approach some articles have suggested is far from the case. But maybe the stock the retailers carry will change a bit
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
"You could argue you that intent of the chip is for piracy 99% of the time, but the intent of a hangun is killing 100% of the time, so that doesn't pan out."
.45 for shooting bowling pins. I've a few handguns that I only have because they remind me of my grandfather I could go on about the shotguns for trap, rifles for long and short range target, or the smokepoll for civil war reenactments.
.308 Stealth for deer hunting and I feed my family with that.
How very untrue. I've multiple handguns, rifles and shotguns that have never fired on living things.
I bought my Ruger 10-22 for competitive target shooting. I picked up my Winchester 16 gauge for my wife to skeet shoot with. I have a
The only gun I purchased for "killing" is a Winchester
But as far as I know faggot means a bundle of sticks used for kindling wood. I.e. someone who is burned at the stake. I am not keen on being burned at the stake (or the muslim equivalents, being stoned/decapitated/cast into quicklime) so I find this offensive.
"Fag" for cigarette seems to be obviously from the same route.
On the other hand, "shirtlifter" seems quite innocent... :-)
It would only apply if this guy was buying chips from Ms and then editting them and selling them. He is taking blank chips, adding his own editted BIOS, and then selling them, which is clearly different then buying a movie, editting it, and reselling it. And just for the record I don't think they should be allowed to edit and resell movies, because it then can reflect on the original work. If a person sees only the editted version, they may not know it has been editted and think it's a piece of crap (while the uneditted is good). You are forceably attaching someone's name to something they have no control over.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Seriously, it was da*n funny to see a website with a vast USA audience get all provincial about the USA. We're so bad about it, and I like the 'turnabout is fair play' school of thinking.
Speaking of which, what's the correct term for this sort of a gaff/slur/self-centeredness?
...that the lawyers in this case, who are US Federal Employees, prosecuted someone for copyright infringement at the behest of Microsoft. Microsoft, a company that has been found guilty in US federal court of violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. That means YOUR TAXES paid to defend the ability of Microsoft, a company found guilty of FEDERAL CRIMES, to do business. You think this will come out in the mass media?
You should write your congressman immediately, but you won't because you are too busy watching your DVDs and playing your games to bother with that. Nevermind, move along. Oh, since you're not going to be using your vote this November, can I have it?
...So there was no trial, only sentencing.
The lesson to others here should be: If you get accused of a crime, hire the best lawyer you can afford.
My other first post is car post.
The register can really piss me off... They never print the full story.. just the inflamitory parts.
What the guy did wrong was sell the Enigmah chip. That chip was not flashable, and came with the hacked bios INSTALLED.
It's the only chip that isn't flash programmable, and the only chip that came with the bios.
I still don't think it's illegal to sell the mod chips without the BIOS. It's the BIOS software that is illegal, because most of the bios' out there are hacked versions of the original bios.
If you use the open source bios for the xbox to run things like Linux, it should not violate the DCMA.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Actually the president can veto a unamious vote. The veto means they have to reconsider it and put it to a recorded vote.
Not that Clinton was going to do anything of the sort, the Hollywood lefties were a core funding source.
Democrat delenda est
They were really good rights, too.
The problem is that the DMCA is bad law, very bad law. It certainly should be repealed.
Merely because the DMCA is bad law and allows for prison for mod sales is no reason to hold gun manufacturers liable for murders. One bad law should not begat another!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Same difference.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I'd be worried. It's getting to the point where it will be cheaper to rob the store than get pirate copies from the web.
Except he's selling an infinite number of copies of the BIOS, not the copy of the BIOS he purchased. In the case of the videos, they buy 1 copy of the movie, censor it, and then sell that single copy of the movie. If would be as if they bought 1 copy of the video, censored it, and then dubbed their censored copy and sold those. You have a case when you can claim you are modifying something you purchased legally (such as with the videos). But this guy purchased one copy and then is distributing multiple copies of his editted BIOS. The only way it could possibly fly is if he was buying an X-Box, swapping the chips, and then reselling the X-Box. Purchasing it once doesn;t give you the right to distribute the BIOS multiple times.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Read a few parents up - I'm not defending this guy at all. I was merely pointing out that the cases are similar and that the ruling by the Supreme Court could have an impact. I do see your point though.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
He sold a chip with a modified copyrighted BIOS that was only usefull to people who had already bought a fully licensed chip.
Technically selling a modified copyrighted code is illegal however in this case he wasn't costing M$ any money. Eveyrone he is selling to already paid M$ for a box to use the chip in. Essentially to me he is selling the modifications and the work of installing those modifications. Work he did not M$. He is not cicumventing M$'s money for their material because people already posses it.
Further more M$'s work is mostly derivative in nature. BIOS systems only have so many ways in which to work and for a piece of equipemt like the X-box there are limited options for how it can be arranged and handled. To me patenting a BIOS is akin to pateting a gear, or cog. I mean ford dosn't hold the keys to combustion engine design. You are perfectly welcome to buy a ford block and modify it and re-sell it. this is the stock and trade kind of sale for most mod shops. THis is NO different than modifying the existing BIOS code in a system. SO long as the code manipulated is legaly obtained there is no issue. If this guy was selling pirate X-boxes I'd say string him up by his tonails. But morally he was selling the equivalent of moded EFI control chips for EFI cars.
software design has much more in common with engineering design than it does with intellectual works. controlling BIOS code to a specific piece of hardware is tantamount to contolling the use of IF/THEN code usuage. The hardware itself largely dictates the BIOS code. All M$ did was add conditional crap that limited what you could use the hardware for. Something akin to making a hammer that could only be used outside to hammer specific nails instead of using it to hit anything anywhere you want. Why ? Becasue the X-box is essentially and X86 computer with the ability to display quality graphics on a TV for a price point of $250. If they allowed it to be used as an X86 box is would reveal the insane overpriceing of computer hardware. We think of $800 computers as cheap yet you would be hard pressed putting a box together with the specs of the X-box for that price yet ultimately it is the same thing. Or perhaps thats not overpriced and console marketing looses money on the hardware to make it up in $50 a pop game sales and allowing a 250 general purpose computer on the market would kill the PC market which can't compete that way.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
We DO have a right to do so. The guy was convicted of copyright infringement, not modifying hardware. A modified version of Microsoft's (copyrighted) BIOS was on the mod chips he sold. He was distributing copyrighted software he didn't have a right to sell. He was breaking the law.
Now the problem is that copyright infringement should in absolutely no way be a criminal offense. It should be a civil matter, but alas, our laws are fucked. Yeah, he broke the law, but at worst he should have been fined or forced to pay restitution to Microsoft. Being incarcerated for copyright infringement (computer "crimes" are becoming more punitive in this country than violent crimes are) is fucking insane.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I misread it. I thought it said "Jan Mailed For Smelling Sodchips", and I was disappointed.
Why isn't there anything about three-legged races?
Can't openly host a piriating web server and sell the hardware to use those images.
I am not defending the DMCA (Digital Melinium Control Act) but you must realize that this individual could have been convicted under standard copywrite laws either way he was toast!
Activity can create the wonderful illusion of productivity! ---Me
Face it, modchips are illegal and are primarily used for pirating. Courts have said again and again that if something is *primarily* used for illegal means, then it is illegal. Like bongs and pipes, "They're for tobacco", sure they are buddy, they are as illegal as modchips (as roundups of bong makers in oregon/pennsylvanya have shown). People all pissed off about the DMCA in any form just want to keep running around in a lawless technoworld where everything is free (as is the current case). Hmm, sounds a lot like what Pablo Escobar was doing in Columbia....
did *HE* copy the MS bios code, mod it and sell it, OR did he just sell them??
According to Chris Rock, "... there's a lot of racism going on in America, and there's two sides. There's black people, and there's niggers."
So there you have it, from a black man, that the word nigger has nothing to do with being black. For all we know, his definition of "nigger" includes white people, too.
If they are SO paranoid about this, why don't they put their BIOS into a package form that can't be modchipped? Solder it directly onto the motherboard, from underneath and on top. Make it with hundreds of teeny little connections that robots have a hard time with.
If they REALLY wanted their BIOS to NOT be modchipped, they would pay the extra nickel per board to make it nearly impossible to get around. End of story. Miro$oft LIKES to get items like this in the news. They LIKE having a lot of attention focused on them instead of Linux, Macintosh, or whatever.
As the old saying goes, talk good about me or talk bad about me, just talk about me.
As the former owner of several sports card shops, I can tell you that when a player is inducted into the Hall of Fame in his particular sport, his cards do not in fact go up very much. You see, he's been retired for five years, meaning he's not in the news every day like when he played. So, when he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, his cards are worth almost exactly HALF of what they were on the day he retired. Get a series of price guides out. They will back this up. But people buy cards in DROVES, and repeat the SAME mantra, "When (player's name) retires, I'm going to put little Billy through college."
I'm not making this up. Even negative publicity will HELP people most of the time. When Ronald Reagan was running for re-election, one of his opponents ran an ad detailing all the crap Reagan pulled. Reagan loved it. You see, it showed Reagan in front of an American flag, while the announcer voiced over the info. All those people who saw it with the sound muted only saw Reagan and an American flag. Better publicity than Reagan could buy.
Miro$oft does this on PURPOSE.
--
Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows '98
Sadly, it appears the majority of U. S. Americans would think this a reasonable suggestion.
Same kind of problem, same solution: Refuse to buy the products until the companies which make them either make the licensing conditions clear before purchase or return your money in case you don't agree with its terms. Maybe a website could be put up by consumer organizations explaining the different EULAs to normal people, and perhaps commenting on them. People don't usually wake up on their own, but some can be helped. It just takes a few very determined individuals to start, and it can become a steamroller. People in the Open Source movement should know that already...
If he really was selling them for the purpose of copyright infringement, then he's ruining it for the rest of the XBox modders who have turned otherwise useless hardware into web servers, PVRs, unrestricted media players etc.
You know, the ones who buy modchips without any microsoft code in them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If I wanted a 733mhz Celeron with 64 megs of RAM and a Geforce card and a 10 gig hard drive I'd just build one for about the same price as a modded X-box. Or even better, I'd slap in an nForce motherboard and I'd have it already with a much faster CPU and more RAM.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"