Slashdot Mirror
UK High Court Rules Modchips Illegal
PhotoBoy writes "The Register has an article about the UK's High Court ruling PlayStation 2 modchips to be illegal. This means all homebrew and hobbyist coders in the UK can no longer modify their consoles to run games they have written. Gamers who like to mod their consoles to play games on import early are also out of luck. It's like saying you can't modify your car or your house or your clothes! Would Ford sue you for removing the rev limiter from your Focus?"
Making it is illegal to bypass copy protection mechanisms
I have a sharpie that could be used to circumvent the copyright protection. My shift key also would be a violation. The courts won't go after Office Depot or Logitech because you want to go after big fish with money but not enough money to properly defend their selves.
Shouldn't the courts just go after the copyright violators rather than going after all mechanism that could be used to violate copyright? Of course not you know that judge doesn't want to youth playing those nasty region 3+ games; he is doing it for the good of public morals... right?
While yes, there are people who use modchips to play their own, homebrew games, and play imported games, let's not overlook the obvious. People put modchips in their consoles so they can play stolen (ie, burned) games. If people did NOT use modchips for that purpose, this law wouldn't be necessary. But the fact is that the UK high court is not 'ruining your rights' - it's the people who copy and sell games illegally that ruin the fun for everyone. The UK is merely taking steps to stop that. Whether the steps are too far, I don't know and won't argue. But don't think that this is a cut and dried case of trampling of rights. Go bitch at your friends who have a bunch of "Backup copies" of games.
I believe that there are jurisdictions in which car mods (or some kinds) are illegal. (California comes to mind).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Not that I agree with this law, but lawmakers probably see mod chips as analogous to mounting guns on your car. There are many legitimate uses for mod chips, but since they don't want to deal with the exceptions, they probably want to completely illegalize the usage.
Earlier this year, the Italian court ruled that mod chips are legal on the basis that it's up to the user, not Sony, how they use their PS2. It even went so far as to name mod chips as crucial tools to "avoid monopolistic positions".
Thumbs up to the Italians, though :)
My dog ate my sig
Given that the judge ruled that mod chips are illegal due to the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and that other EU nations (Italy, Spain) have already ruled the chips to be legal, is there any scope for this ruling to be challenged in a higher court because of misinterpretation of the directive?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I wonder if this ruling also affects Gamecube modchips? After all, the GC copy protection hasn't been cracked by modchips and the only thing the chips do is circumvent the region lockout (can be done with a certain disk too). I wonder if region lockout is also considered a "copy protection" under the EUCD.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I have a Focus. How do I get rid of the rev limiter?
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
Once I buy something, it's mine. Oh wait! So not true anymore; now I don't buy, I *lease* under whatever terms my corporate and government masters deign to grant me. God forbid that I should actually *own* something to be used in whatever fashion I see fit. Oh no, I'm just a consumer peon, I can't possibly be allowed such a right!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The Slashdot blurb for this article is wrong and makes an incorrect analogy. The blurb says, "It's like saying you can't modify your car or your house or your clothes!"
But if you read the article, the description of the decision is substantially different: "The UK High Court has judged that the sale, advertisement, possession for commercial purposes and use of PlayStation 2 modification chips is illegal in this country."
The distinction is huge. It means that you are allowed to "modify your car" (to use the proposed analogy). You just aren't allowed to commercialize your modifications. You can tinker all you want, but you can't sell the results of your tinkering.
It's still a significant limitation, but we should at least be arguing about the actual limitation, not the incorrect one.
Realtor: "This is a modern luxory home built by Home2.0. Pricing for Family Unit Licenses vary based upon geographic location, Regional Demographics, size of Family Unit and estiamted annual income for the course of your License. Base Per Family Unit Licenses start at $750,000.00 in the California Bay Area."
/. down as trolls." *sigh*
Home Buyer: "Base Per Family Unit License????"
Realtor: "Yes, your mortgage provides you a Family Unit License authorizing you use of the Home2.0 product for 1 Family Unit until transferance of that license to another Family Unit."
Home Buyer: "Use? But I'm here to buy, not rent."
Realtor: "But, you do buy! You buy the Family Unit License to use the Home2.0 product for your Family Unit."
Home Buyer: "So if I'm buying only a license, who owns the home?"
Realtor: "Home2.0 of course. They retain the exclusive right to monitor your home usage and make regular maintenance inspections and install upgrades as needed to insure standards of living compliance."
Home Buyer: "And I always modded those "1984" Posts on
As the father of two young children, I took what I thought was adequate precautions to protect my game collection. I placed the PS2 games up on a shelf out of their reach and changed the disk for them when they wanted to play. One day a friend was over and while I was out of the room he gets a game down off the shelf to look at the cover art or manual and places it on the coffee table. In a matter of minutes the toddler is attracted to the bright, shiny packaging and the even brighter, shinier game DVD inside. Almost instantly a $50 disk is scratched and unplayable in spite of all the precautions I had taken. I contacted the company to see if I could get a replacment disk for a discounted price and was told that I would have to buy the whole package again for full price. After that I made DVDR backups of the games I had bought and modified the PS2 to play the backups. While I am sure many use modchips to copy games they do not own, don't condemn the technology when it has legitimate uses as well.
Yes, I made up all of my numbers, but the proportions are generally right.
Thanks for contributing in your own small way to the death of Science. Keep it up, and remember to vote Republican this fall.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Except your revision is incorrect. The rights of all citizens are being infringed upon.
Rights are innate even when they are not being acted upon. A monk who has taken a vow of silence still retains whatever rights to speak any citizen has and a law forbiding speech, even though he has already chosen not to, infringes his rights.
KFG
The sentence is ambiguous. Does it mean "commercial use" is illegal, or does it mean "use" is illegal?
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"This means all homebrew and hobbyist coders in the UK can no longer modify their consoles to run games they have written, and criminals who violate copywrite laws can no longer play the games they illegally downloaded and burned ."
We all know that these mod chips have limited legitimate uses, but it is intellectually dishonest of the Slashdot crowd to intentionally ignore the primary purpose of these chips.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
How is this a big blow to piracy? Piracy was _already_ illegal. What does making a potential piracy tool illegal accomplish? Is piracy somehow now "more" illegal now that the digital equivalent of a lockpick has been outlawed?
It doesn't make it "more" illegal, but I'll bet it makes the mod chips much harder to find, thus making the illegally-burned games that much more difficult to play.
It also means that careful pirates, who keep their bootlegs hidden, can still be busted just for owning a modchipped console. To use your analogy, if you're caught with a lockpick, you can still be arrested, even if you're not breaking into a house at the time.
And those who get caught with the games can have an additional charge added on (posession of the modchip). So while it isn't more illegal, it might mean stiffer fines for those caught.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
One of the main differentiations between a game console and a home computer is that a game console has a restriction on the software installed on it.
Games consoles imported into the UK from outside the euro zone attract a large import duty. I hope that Customs and Excise will now be retrospectively collecting import duty for every PS2 sold in the UK and interest on the late payment of that duty going back over time.
rd
While I don't know a lot of people using modchips in order to play customized or homebrew games, there are quite a few that use them for copied games of owned originals.
I myself just finished dumping a bunch of my old PS1 games to ISO images. The images will go on a single DVD, and I can use them on my emulators etc without the original. I still own the original so I haven't deprived anyone of a sale (and no bitching about legality of emulators, I have a PS2 it's just not as portable as a laptop).
Unfortunately, I'm too late for two of the disks as a few bad sectors bork the extraction on them - however I'm getting a copy of those off emule.
Gee, look at that. I'm downloading copyrighted material, ripping copyrighted material, using an emulator... I could even use a modchip for that - and ya know what NO "PIRACY" HAS OCCURED because I bought and paid for the original media.
If half the people with modchips do any of the above, I'd say there are a lot of legitimate cases of use. So unless you've got proof that everyone using these is definately pirating, I'd suggest that your eyes might be clearer if your head wasn't up your rear end.
Everything.