Australia-U.S. Trade Agreement Takes First Strike

inflex writes "With the recent AU-US Federal trade ageement coming into force, the first signs of what is to come have started appearing with Sony unleashing a legal bid to clamp down on previously legal mods chips in Australia."

Comments

But...

[ducklord]

Well, what did you expect? To come and spread the chips themselves?

Modchips are supposed to make PS2s play homebrew software, demos and applications. Like what? The PS2Reality player, whos development was stopped when it managed to play about 60-70% of movies, at low quality and stuttering framerate? That's the best known app requiring a Modchip, and it's not any more developed.

SONY, and all of us, know that modchips are used, as far as PS2 goes, in 99,9% of the cases for piracy. Although, yeah, I've got a modded console -for obvious reasons- we shouldn't hide behind our finger.

Re:But...

[NoGuffCheck]

I bought my PS2 in London when I was living there the past 3 years, Ive now returned (to Sydney) and want to buy and play legit games that are sold at my local stores. WTF should I buy a new console when a mod chip will do the job? I guess im the 0.01% your talking about but thats no reason I should get shafted.

If they'd really wanted to stop modding...

[advocate_one]

they'd have encapsulated the board, chips and all, with an epoxy resin coating as part of the assembly process and then assembled the case so that it breaks when disassembled (ie one way clips) instead of using screws.

Re:Here we go again

[koreth]

I agree with you, it's silly and ultimately counterproductive, like DVD region coding. However, Sony's position does have some nugget of sense to it: if there is widespread importation of a particular game, or even the perception of it, Sony will be in a weaker negotiating position when they talk terms with foreign distributors/publishers since the potential market will be smaller. The distributors can say, "Well, the rabid fans have already imported, so we won't be able to market the game at as high an initial price." Sony may have to offer deeper wholesale discounts to make it worth the distributors' while to sell to fewer people or at a lower retail price. That may equal less money in Sony's coffers (depending on whether there's enough profit from the import orders to make up the difference.)

Whether that's what happens in real life, who knows? But it's easy to see why they might be afraid of it happening.

When you make trade agreements with America

[frovingslosh]

Funny how this mutual trade agreement doesn't make those mod chips legal in the U.S too, isn't it?

Re:Bend over Aussies and...

[sumdumass]

Offices in the US and US patten/copyrights make it in thier best interest and include them in US law.

One of the key things about this us-au trade agreement was that It sort of imposed US lawe on AU. This might make it possible for any company from anywere else in the world claim assests being sold in AU fall under these laws even if they do not have any presence in the US. This hole ordeal kind of skips the process of AU making the laws and almost importing all of americas.

Re:Personal experience (complete text this time)

[jchuillier]

I was personally questioned by the french police and my flat was raided 10 years ago when Nintendo France made a lawsuit for the SNES/SFC game copy machines (the nice thing that plugged in the cartridge port and had ram and a floppy drive). So the police searched my flat while I was away, seized around 5 copy machines, about 50 games on floppies, my 2 computers and all they thought was of interest, besides that they emptied the trash in the bathtub and let it like that, it was nice when I came back home from holidays 2 weeks after that... So I had to go to Paris to talk to the police and explain myself, of course I was importing the copy machines from Hong Kong and selling them in France, the only problem for the police was that I was doing this in an "open" way, sending the goos by FEDEX "game copy machine" written on the customs decalaration and paying the customs and VAT tax. First they told me I was questioned for "importation of material being used for illegal copying" but when I showed them the customs paper they changed this to "selling of pirated games" arguing that I HAD to give games when I was selling a unit, at the time we had a pre internet way of coimmunicating in France called minitel, basically a chat BBS with incredible speed (1200/75) and so they had minitel logs of my conversations with buyers, but since I NEVER sold games after 2 hours they had to let me go, give me ALL my stuff back and pay for the damages they had caused in my flat... Bottom line is that since the modchip or device can be used for private copying and so on, it's going to be VERY difficult to put someone who's not selling pirated games in jail, at least in France, and even with the P2P hype, the judges are starting to realise that and the situation is MUCH more calm than it was 6 months ago... Now how is the law and the judges in an hysteric environment such as Fox news-USA and Murdoch land is another question...

Oh the irony!

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Sony asked the court to interpret parts of the Copyright Act outlawing the devices that circumvent copy protection mechanisms to include mod chips that Mr Stevens was selling.

However, Justice Ronald Sackville ruled in favour of Mr Stevens after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission intervened in the case.

The competition watchdog argued that Sony was using the copy control mechanism to erect artificial trade barriers between Australian consumers and overseas games and DVD markets.

And the new 'free trade' agreement overrides Australia's Consumer Commission to make these devices illegal.

Re:Here we go again

[Znork]

Of course, these laws pretty much mean that the downtown bar that's sewing your mouth shut as you leave to prevent you from drinking elsewhere can now sue anyone selling straws because they let you drink through your nose.

UK and Australia

[theolein]

Have become part of the American Empire with the help of two very bad poieces of shit in the names of Tony "45 minutes" Blair, and Johnny boy "Keep Autralia white" Howard. I've visited both countries, and while both ARE doing well economically, it's not as if they managed to do it on their own. Their corporations look and smell like American corporations. Their media looks like it was all made in the land of the corrupt and most of their products that aren't made in china seem to come from the Empire.

This is why I like feisty little countries like New Zealand with that weird PM of theirs who doesn't hesitate to make the Emperor know what she thinks, or places like Venezuela, with a luny President who basically spends all his time insulting the US and, because he has loads of SUV food, can get away scott free.

Sony, like Nintendo...

[suitepotato]

...doesn't grasp that once you buy the machine, it is yours to use as a doorstop, calculator, whatever you want to do with it that doesn't involve something patently illegal. Anyone think that Mitsubishi should be able to stop people from "modding" their cars?

This would be like Apple trying to stop people from modifying their Mac to work with third party unapproved stuff... (hmmm...) Okay, bad example.

But we would see holy hell raised over this were a motherboard manufacturer to tell you that you were forbidden to do anything with it that they didn't want you to. Or Microsoft try to tell you that you were forbidden from writing any code they didn't want running on Windows. Etc.

BTW, you Aussies have my apologies for ever being exposed to what Americans call beer.