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Testing Microsoft And The DMCA

Posted by timothy on from the gosh-that-sounds-like-freedom-of-speech dept.

sproketboy writes "I found a great piece about an MIT student and his XBox hacking over at news.com. Apparently he can't get his how-to book published do to fears with DMCA. I hope he at least can get it publish in China or Russia where people have some freedoms left. ;)." The student is doctoral candidate Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, the same hacker Microsoft declined to stop last August from presenting a paper on insecurities in the Xbox hardware.

4 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. A link... by Nethergoat · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...to help understand some of the legal mess the DMCA has created around reverse engineering:
    Chilling Effects Clearinghouse's Reverse Engineering FAQ

  2. Re:I'm wondering... by DarkZero · · Score: 4, Informative

    Geeks that hate Microsoft and put Linux on their XBox are not likely to buy XBox games and play them. Microsoft loses money on every XBox sold and only makes a profit from you if you buy more than four or five games over the life of the system.

    So no, this isn't a ploy by Microsoft to sell XBoxes to people that aren't going to buy games with them. That doesn't make sense.

    As for the price of a modded XBox, check the last story on XBox modding. We went over it with a fine tooth comb and found that modding a used XBox is somewhat cheaper than buying a fresh, weak Linux PC, but only if you don't need more functionality than a modded XBox can offer (games, server, media player, Xbox game machine, fun toy, and nothing else).

  3. Re:Looking back... by PerryMason · · Score: 4, Informative

    The poor sod was actually OCR (or Optical Character Recognition for those acronymically challenged). The book, PGP Internals (which interestingly enough was published by MIT along with Phil Zimmerman) contained the source code in an OCR friendly font.

    --
    "I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
  4. U can pre order the book from Bunnie's website by abhikhurana · · Score: 4, Informative

    A quick googling reveals that even though Wiley has refused to publish the book, you can still pre order it at Bunnie's website[http://www.xenatera.com/hackingthexbox/ind ex.html]. You can even see a sample of the chapters on the site. Whats more, he is even using the rejection by Wiley as a plank to sell the book.
    To quote from his site:
    "A book so controversial that publishers are afraid to print it!"
    "Hurry and get "Hacking the Xbox" before Microsoft does!"
    According to the site, the book is shipping in May ( year not specified though :-) )

    --
    What's under yellowstone?