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PS2 Mod Chips Legal In Australia
Buccaneer-American writes "Over here on Groklaw, PJ is reporting that PS2 mod chips are now legal in Australia. The highest Australian court decided in Stevens v. Sony to overturn a lower court ruling that PS2 mod chips were 'technological protection measures' which would run afoul of the Australian DMCA-equivalent. Because they do not protect copyrights per se, but are rather region coding devices, they were ruled to be regional coding devices. In short, we have Sony to thank for being a loser yet again and establishing some of our rights in case law, albeit sometimes inadvertantly." The High Court's decision is online, with some legal commentary from the Australian court. More coverage of this story available at The Age and SMH.
And why, exactly, is region coding something that should be protected? *insert "buy a book in New York, read it in Paris, sell it in London" arguement here*
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Karma whoring
While this is a pleasing decision, as an Australian I am still appalled by the lack of even fair use rights in our copyright laws. It's technically illegal to backup our CDs or tape shows off of TV. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Video games down - next step, region-encoded dvd's? If only...
Nobody thanks me for being a loser yet again! :P
(j/k)
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Lets face the facts here. People who buy mod chips do so to pirate games and to play pirated games. It's a reality that no slashbot could deny. How many people do you know mod a system to play "homebrew" games or do something that doesn't involve piracy? You can argue mod chips are in of itself legitimate, but almost nobody uses them for legitimate purposes.
Mod chips may be legal there, but the purpose of their use is to facilitate illegal activity. I'm surprised by this ruling. This is a blow to the games industry and legal gamers like myself who pay the price for all mod chippers.
Anyone know if region-free DVD players are also openly sold in australia?
It's fairly easy to thus deduce that large retailers can also sell region free DVD players, and in fact even have those same large retailers sell pre-modded consoles, not just the small shop on the corner.
In other matters, it also looks like precedent is set that merely "using a copyrighted work" does not constitute infringement, a tactic that some have used before against others (as in "copying to memory is infringement").
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Australia led the way instead of being the global village idiot. I wonder what effect (if any) this will have on xbox-linux etc.
Yup, they can as can people in Nwe Zealand (no, thats not a state in America) where region coding is illegal as well.
I'm not at all familiar with the legality (or illegality) of modchips. Are they legal in the U.S. and Canada? How do companies like Modchipman operate if these chips are illegal? I remember seeing Lik Sang sued a few times for the products they were selling.
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Actually, in Australia, region-coded DVDs have already gone. That's the precedent that was used in this argument. Multiregion DVD players are definitely legit in Australia.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Its currently illeagal in AU to sell a DVD player that is locked down to a region. By law, even PC DVD players must allow the AU consumer to "unlock" region's and play any dvd they want. I know "liteon" supply a patch on their website to unlock the dvd players they put out.
:>
I've bought 3 dvd players in the last 5 years in AU, I've got dvd's from all over the place (different region dvd's etc), no problems playing them yet
God bless Australia.
Seriously, the best damn country in the entire world.
Eat your hearts out.
I think you miss the point.
If Sony *hadn't* tried to tie multiple things together (region coding + copy protection) and only used their chips for copy protection then they would have won.
What the court said is that if there is a legitimate use for mod chips (and bypassing region coding is legit) then they're legal even if they also bypass copyright protection as a side effect.
By my reading of this (IANAL) all the games industry has to do to get around this ruling is to remove all the extra nasties, like region coding, with a new system and then sue the mod chip maker who gets around this new system. Then the chip would *only* be for copyright protection and so the modchip would have no other valid use.
Thats quite a nice solution the court did. Without that DMCA lets any company create its own laws, simply by attaching them to a technical measure for enforcing copyright.
"Sony to stop distribution of PS2 in Australia, citing quality control issues"
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Regional lockouts and restrictions always struck me as a potentially risky idea for the companies precisely because there is quite a reasonable argument that they prevent people from doing perfectly legal acts. Therefore circumventing them shouldn't be a crime. It's nice to see the Australian court more or less agreeing with me.
I wonder if this may make them reconsider regional lockouts for the next version of their console. Piracy must cost them a lot more than grey imports. At least the grey imports count as a sale, and it's a lot more hassle to get hole of them than copying a disc from a friend.
Two separate issues:
Region Coding has to do with price discrimination, i.e. the desire of the media companies to charge different prices in different countries depending on what people will pay by preventing you from buying a DVD in Africa, and reselling it in the US. It is a techonology that they apply for economic reasons, and has nothing to do with the consumer. It is perfectly legal to buy a DVD that will ignore the coding (though they are much more expensive than regular ones). Computer programs that play DVDs ignore this coding too.
Making personal copies (warning: link discusses the copyright regime of the USA) has to do with copyright law. It's not about giving your copy to someone else, but about creating more copies. Just because you're allowed to modify your PS2 (for example, to play games bought in other regions) doesn't mean you are allowed to freely copy the games without paying for them.
Here down under, region free DVD players are quite legal AFAIK. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has stated previously that region codings are anti-competitive and should be banned.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
... person with a legitimate reason to own a modchip? I am Australian and I bought my PS2 in Australia. I've never owned pirated games or DVDs. This year I moved to Finland and if I want to buy new PS2 games I would have to get a friend in Australia to send them (it's not easy to get online companies to deliver region specific things internationally). Also, I can't watch DVDs I buy here on my PS2. I'm pretty sure I didn't break any laws by moving to Finland, Why am I being punished?
Yes, mod chips can overcome region encoding. But they also overcome measures to prevent the booting of copied discs.
If the mod chips sold only play original games and overcome region coding then there's no problem with them in my book.
Except that it's from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the watchdog responsible for matters that are our equivalent to that of 'antitrust'.
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
Actually, I know at least a couple of the dvd playing software packages do NOT allow you to ignore region coding. My version of PowerDVD only allows 5 switches between regions (so if I want to watch my North American dvds that I brought with me here to Dublin, I have to be careful about it). Kind of a pain in the arse, really.
This is a case where it's very important to at least read the press release, since the posting is somewhat misleading. This ruling and the jurisprudence it represents are fundamentally different from US court's views.
To start with, it's important to note that the guy was mainly selling illegally copied games, and was selling the modchips together with them so that these games would play. Thus the appeal was about whether the sale of the modchips was legal, even though they were sold to allow pirated games to play on the system.
Next, the brunt of the ruling is that while the act of copying the games was illegal, the modchips have no effect on that. The modchips only affect the loading of games to the console memory. And now comes the important bit:
Note that in the US, running a program is thought to include an act of copying it from storage to RAM, and hence fall under the purview of copyright law.Now, companies are allowed to use technology to restrict the loading of programs (this is about price discrimination), but you are allowed to modify a device you own, so modchips are legal even though they allow you to play copied games, indirectly helping you violate copyrights.
Curious. Apple seem to only let you change the DVD region several times in their PCs. I wonder if I could complain somewhere?
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
The poster didn't understand what the story is about.
...". That's totally wrong, the court decision and story on groklaw are saying that the chip inside the PS2 , the one that enforces the protection, was known to be a 'technological protection measures' until now. This chip and the modchip are two very different things ;)
In his post hee says "... PS2 mod chips were 'technological protection measures'
Your reading, while a sense making interpretation, worries me.
Sure, removing region coding, etc, would be great. But that doesn't mean that the only use for a mod chip is bypassing copy protection. What about homebrew apps?
I have a modded Xbox. I use Xbox Media Center on it. XBMC is great, I can stream music/video from my PC, get news/weather, view my digital camera pics on my HDTV, along with a host of other cool features.
Even as far as bypassing the copy protection is concerned, yes, it also allows me to copy my games onto the HD. But this is legal. I own the game and I can make a backup copy. I just elect to play my backups and leave the discs on the shelf as much as possible. It lets me access my games faster and not risk the DVD's as often (which is good when you have kids in the house!).
Could I copy games? Sure. Do I? No. I like playing on LIVE occasionally and you need the real disc to do that. Besides which, I write software for a living. Do I want people copying what I write? No, so why should I do it to other developers?
Even hating the developer (cough EA cough) isn't a good enough excuse for that.
Though, music, is different. Why? In Canada I have to pay a levy to the music industry for every piece of recordable media I buy. Given that I use tons of discs for non-music related things it seems I'm already paid up. Besides which Canadian copyright law has some interesting allowances for personal copies. Anyhow, a whole other rant.
The point here is: the mod chip allows for much more than just region code bypassing, and it's all legal. The chips shouldn't be illegal, using them to pirate software should be(and is!). Just as I can legally own a radar detector in Canada, I just can't use it to try and dodge speed traps (which makes them pretty useless I grant).
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Try DVD Region+CSS free It is not free as in beer, but for $40.00 you can remove the software+hardware region locks.
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Sony looks to already be doing that. Games for the PSP (while stated what region they are for), are not region locked. The only downside is that your Japanese copy of Wipeout Pure doesn't work with your friend's US copy of Wipeout Pure for game saves or multiplayer. Sony warned about this sort of stuff when they mentioned the PSP would not be region locked for games, just movies. So while it isn't perfect, it does a couple things: Encourages grey imports of game titles (although Sony seems to hate it when it means places like the UK can get PSPs and games before the EU launch because of it), discourages grey imports of titles about to be brought over to a particular region. Personally, I think other than the Sony lawsuits against UK retailers selling import PSPs, this system works just fine. Sony has also stated that the decision is from deciding to move in a new direction with their systems and content protection, although some of what they hinted towards has yet to materialize for various reasons.
PS3? My guess is from what Sony has said, region free for games, locked for movies. Don't quote me on that, though.
Of course, fair use would be better than what we have now, when there's hardly an Australian who doesn't violate the law by loading songs into their iPod. Heck, I wonder how many members of Parliament have one...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Because they [...] are region coding devices, they were ruled to be regional coding devices.
Next time a court will decide (unanimously, I hope) that a cow with constipation is indeed a cow with constipation.
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See this post at Weatherall's Law.
Troll?! I'm not criticizing Slashdot for the lack of good news. It's certainly not Slashdot's fault most of the world's governments are anti-consumer rights!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
My pioneer drive is region locked :(
Who do I talk to about getting that one fixed? :P
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
If only the high court would make it bloody legal for me to have MP3's... I'll finally be clean. (well, sorta)
Out of this, there is a good chance that games may become cheaper.
Already in place Australians are allowed to parallel import. To put it more clearly; shops like JB HiFi even EB (yeah right) but if they did, could import games from overseas; bypassing the local distributors and source games from cheaper locations.
It also means Australians can also import games from other regions like Asia or Canada which can turn out being way cheaper then buying it local.
On average new release games cost $AUS 99.95, thats roughly $US74 - 75. Depending on the strength of the dollar.
Modchips that bypass these region locking processes just give power back to the consumers.
productivity in Australia skyrockets, health improves as children receive larger doses of sunshine and exercise, popularity of "hot coffee" diminishes
Makes me want to run out and buy a Sony product. NOT! I was going to buy a P2P and likely a Sony HD camcorder- but not anymore! I own several Sony products - a DAT and high end camcorder - but that's it - no more. For the same anti-monopolistic reason - I will never buy another Apple product nor a Nike product. It's time for consumers to start voting with their feet. Is their a website that lists "socially responsible/anti-monopolistic" corporations? I don't mean investment houses that call companies producing long range nuclear missiles - socially responsible.
It's all because game companies want to make an extra buck or two.
It's also because things might be considered copyrighted (e.g. Peter Pan in Britain), hateful (e.g. Nazism in Germany or France), or otherwise prohibited in one country but not in another. For instance, owners of entertainment franchises often license a particular franchise exclusively to one company in a given territory and to another company in a different territory. Jump Superstars for Nintendo DS, a game along similar lines to Super Smash Bros. but using characters from several different manga/anime series, could never come out in North America for precisely that reason, as one company owns all the franchises in Japan, but they're fragmented in North America.
What is up with the mods? How is this possibly a Troll? I've used all my points fixing things like this early in the discussion, but I ran out.
What about homebrew apps?
The major console makers' official position is that you're not supposed to do homebrew at all on their consoles. Instead, learn video game development by developing games for PCs and PDAs, learning the Allegro, OpenGL, and DirectX APIs along the way. The GameCube, Nintendo DS, and PSP all use OpenGL for graphics, and the Xbox uses DirectX. Once you have already made commercially successful games on PCs and/or PDAs, then you're deemed worthy to be hired by a licensed console game developer. If you can't become commercially successful on PC because PC gamers tend not to buy the kinds of same-screen, overhead- or side-view multiplayer titles that are popular on consoles, instead preferring titles with LAN play that require parents to purchase one computer and monitor per simultaneous player, tough shit. I don't agree with that, but that's their position.
I have a modded Xbox. I use Xbox Media Center on it.
Microsoft would claim that you bought the wrong Microsoft product. In Microsoft's view, you're supposed to buy a PC with Microsoft Windows Media Center, not an Xbox console.
Besides which, I write software for a living. Do I want people copying what I write? No, so why should I do it to other developers?
Sony and Nintendo say that you're supposed to "write software for a living" for a PC and then graduate to consoles.
Which raises the question: If I have lawfully purchased a copy of software, why do I need a license?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Of course, both and a lot more are covered by the DMCA. The DMCA protects:
1. Region coding
2. Prohibition of fair use
3. Use restrictions (no ff, unskippable sections)
4. Intentionally crippled output
5. Infinite copyright extension
6. Monopolize playback devices (illegal to make alternatives)
(7. Incidentally, also copyright)
Of course, we now have the EUCD which does the same here in Europe. Welcome to the brave new world.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
when it comes to infringing on the copyright of games (ie copying or downloading them) I do it as a method to try them out first before buying. And then I tend only buy the games that i have to have the original to play online or system link with others. Legally there should be no repercusions as i would never (im a broke bastard) have the money to buy or even rent all the games i have downloaded to try out. The game companies are losing no "potential" revenue from me.
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
When will I be able to mod my PS2 to run OSX86?
If I'm reading them right, a Club With Nail In [tm], when applied to the head of a copyright infringer, could equally be considered a technical prevention measure, and hence selling hard hats should be illegal.
Before anyone comments: this analogy works because the above commentary seems to suggest that a regional encoding system which would coincidentally block some pirated games from being played should be considered a copy protection measure on that basis. Which seems kind of tangential to the actual purpose of the chip, as with the CWNI [tm].
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
nerve of those assholes.
saying you can't take steps to ensure you own your property.
if you paid for the chips, you have a right to access them any way you please.
fuck sony, fuck microsoft and fuck nintendo.
under the guise of "fighting piracy" they !steal! your access rights to your own property.
get a clue... it has nothing to do with "piracy" but with control. their business model requires them to deny you the customers the ability to control your property so they can convince developers to pay them for the privilege of making games. but the problem with this is that IT'S YOUR PROPERTY because you paid for it and it's ILLEGAL for them to prevent you from accesssing your property.
fucking incompetent and bought judges/legislators.
their business model requires them to rent you machines under the premise of buying it outright. but if you buy it outright, you have every right to have unrestricted access... car dealers/manufacturers don't require you to get permission when you want to take a drive. and this is a physical product so the analogy holds.
fuck off and die you leeches. i fully endorse people taking back their property using any means necessary.
if you want to rent consoles, call it renting and then behave accordingly. what you are doing is unethical, immoral and illegal (bribed officials don't count). and you can go bankrupt for all i care. you treat your customers like shit and take away their lawful property rights.
the console business model almost makes the RIAA/MPAA's model look valid by comparison.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
I live in Finland, and I have modded my consoles because I want to play games that havent been released in Europe. Us Europeans are treated like an afterthought. We get lots of games really late, some are inferior in quality, and lots of games dont come out at all. No Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden III, Castlevania - Symphony of the Night....
I live in Europe, and us Europeans dont get all games that you people in US get. Not even all classics. I have modded my PS1 and PS2, and here is a list of games that I have bought because of them: Arc the Lad collection Castlevania - Symphony of the Night Chrono Cross Final Fantasy Tactics Xenogears Xenosaga Growlanser Collection Final Fantasy Chronicles These are just some of the games that havent seen a light of day in my home country. I dont own a single pirate game for my modded consoles.
But I went to the store and bought a copy, transaction over. Why can they slap a EULA on it after the fact and say I didn't buy it? If I don't agree to the license, I'm not a licensee am I? What did I just buy? Why can they take away my property rights just by writing a document that says I need to agree to their terms?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
From both visiting Aus and hearing from my friends there since, I can say that quite often movies etc are *extremely* behind (showing in theatres there, out on DVD here). So an Aussie could probably import a bunch of DVD's and selling them whilst the show is still in theatres. Now they wouldn't play for those with regionalized DVD players, but would said enterprising businessperson be legally culpible if he/she included a reburned disc without the encoding (along with the original)? As the original item is being included with the burn, technically the 'license' for the DVD could be considered to be purchased
As for other countries, what is the legal situation on deregionalized players? Are chipped PS2's legal in Canada, how about software to play a disc despite region encoding, or copy it without (as a Canadian I wonder).
Quite a few of the cheaper DVD players I've seen happily ignore the region encoding. I've heard it's because implementing such is just another cost to the producer, who is trying to shave as much as they can.
If region-encoding because illegal (or anti-region-chipping legal, at any rate), wouldn't it save money to just not include any region-locking crud?
It's not that the ruling Liberal Party has started advocating more rights for consumers, it's that the courts have made a common sense decision to not artificially restrict market choice.
Still, the Australian Attorney-General's Department is undertaking a review of fair use laws, so maybe we will have more rights to use the things we've purchased.
Seriously.
:)
It's hard enough getting games here in Aust. without having to deal with all the region encoding bullshit. That and they all come out at like $94.95 AUS, when I can get them online and delivered for $84 AUS, or wait a few weeks and pick it up for closer to $70 AUS delivered.
That and a fair portion of the games / movies I would like to play never make it to our shores (Raiden 3 for example I just ordered from Hong Kong), or get here about 12 months after the DVD is released overseas (Hero springs immediately to mind, Total Recall, some of the Rambo movies, Terminator 2 wasn't available here in R4 format until T3 came out etc etc), or spend a fortune bidding for the few R4 copies that exist on ebay.
Anyways, I chipped my PS2 back when it was legal the first time - good to know it's back to being legal again
One of my friends has a couple of dozen games imported from Japan. None of these games work on a typical region 4 player (Australia) and none of them were ever slated for release outside of Japan and some in the US.
This is one of the biggest reasons region free players and consoles are so popular here. We not only get DVDs and many console games at a much later date than the US, UK and other parts of the world, there are many games and DVDs that never make it to our shelves at all. The only way to get these is by importing them and the only way to play these games and DVDs is by moding the console or buying a region free DVD player (or hacking it so it does multiregion).
Technically, but not explicitly, region encoding of DVDs is not exactly legal under Australian competition laws. This is why the arguments of companies like Sony revolve around the copyright aspects of the region encoding. They know if they presented it as what it really is, artificial market control, DVD region coding would not exist at all in Australia and we wouldn't have to rely on 3rd party mod chips and we wouldn;t be paying the inflated prices from a reduced catalog. Thankfully our courts and some members of parliament are waking up to this and are ruling in favor of people who have legitimate use for mod chips and hacked players.
The result in the High Court turned on the interpretation of one word - "inhibit". The device did not "prevent" copying because it acted after the copying took place. There was no attempt to deny that one of the purposes of the device was to make the unlawfully copied game unplayable. The question was whether that would "inhibit" infringement. Sony argued that it inhibited infringement because it made the copy useless, and because it prevented it from having commercial value, thereby "inhibiting" the sale of infringing copies (itself an infringement).
The Court ruled that the inhibition must put a barrier in front of the infringement, not merely make the infringement pointless. It seems to me that preventing profit from a sale will prevent there being any value to the seller and thus put a barrier in front of the infringement. The language of the court at the point where they reached this part of their conclusion is somewhat muddled, reflecting, IMO, the fact that this is a place where their certainty was not quite as strong as with other parts.
The computer geek part of me wants to high-5 everybody in sight. The law geek part of me is somewhat uncomfortable with the way this decision was reached.
Elsewhere in the decision, the court more narrowly constrained an earlier decision by a lower court that said computer games are also protected as cinematograph films (movies), and hinted that they might be willing to overturn that decision if it were brought to them. That is promising since the protection of computer games as films could prevent imitation of other games if the "plot" of the new game is too close.
There was no such "precedent" used in this argument. There was some discussion of policy considerations and of region coding being anti-competitive and beyond the rights comprised in the copyright, but no precedent was involved at all.
No, the ACCC has ruled that region-locked DVD players are anti-competitive, and encouraged all retailers and manufacturers to region-unlock them. I've bought 3 DVD players in the past two years, and all have been region-free. Two of them (both from Pioneer) had the boxes opened and taped back up with a piece of tape labelled "This DVD Player has been modified for Australian conditions".
The ACCC isn't exactly a court, but they have set a precedent of sorts.
My version of PowerDVD only allows 5 switches between regions (so if I want to watch my North American dvds that I brought with me here to Dublin, I have to be careful about it). Kind of a pain in the arse, really.
Do some Googling on your brand. The restriction and counting is done in software, so therefore you can simply fix some data somewhere and either eliminate the problem or at minimum reset it back to 5 fresh region switches as often as needed. You probably just need to change a value in the registry.
Just another case of stupid DRM security through obscurity.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Lost in the midst of all this is a huge bundle of reality checking. The guy in question is a pirate. He was selling pirated, locally available, software. He was modding PS2's so that he could sell his copies. He got off on a legal technicality. I, personally, don't know ANYONE who has had their PS2 modded to play IMPORTED games, but I know plenty of people who've had their PS2 modded so that they can go to their local video rental store, rent a game, copy it and just play the copy. Before the case was brought I could go to my local market and see 4 stalls with someone with a soldering iron modding PS1 and PS2's while someone else sold dodgy pirated copies of games next to them. Sure, it is possible that modding a PS2 (or XBOX) enables you to get around a restrictive, big business driven, region protection regime. I wish it was not the case that Sony and M$ had to region code their software/hardware. But it IS the case and if you're not willing to put up with it, DON'T BUY THEIR MACHINES! DON'T BUY THEIR SOFTWARE! Don't buy their product and then complain. It is a legal grey area as to whether or not Region-free DVD Players are legal. I live in SW Sydney and I can tell you that if I buy a DVD player (I have bought 4 so far)then it is region coded 4. If I want to de-code it I have to source a de-coder hack off a website. It is not a given. All DVD players sold in Australia may very well be multizone-able, but not out of the box. Don't get me wrong. I think that it should be possible to backup your games. I do backup all my PC software. But the pitch is set when it comes to consoles. You know the game rules. Don't get into the game and then complain. That's not the way it works. And, as a final reminder, by opening the console you tear up your warranty. I have a friend who had a new PS2 modded and now it won't play anything but PS2 DVD-Rom games. (i.e. it won't play PS2 CD-Roms or PS1 CD-Roms or DVDs) He's lucky! If you give your PS2 (or PS1 or XBOX) to someone to mod and they stuff it up, what are you left with? If you must mod to play import games and feel your life is incomplete without a game that involves rolling objects into a large ball, then, hey, today in Aus, you can. Just don't whinge too much when it all goes pear-shaped!
Does this law relate to xbox chipping as well??
That does not constitute a precedent - only a court can set a legal precedent. The ACCC also does not "rule", not being a court.