Slashdot Mirror
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*
Nice flamebait. You didn't even read the summary, never mind the article, did you?
The ruling was that mod chips are OK because they're used to bypass region coding. Australia has a problem with region coding, and Australians generally don't see why they shouldn't buy the cheaper legal releases from their neighbours in Indonesia and Hong Kong. You seriously never met anyone who liked to play import games?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
It's sony's fault for integrating region enforcement into the same chip that also prevents burned copies of games from playing.
Lets face the facts here. People who buy mod chips do so to pirate games and to play pirated games. [-- ] ...the purpose of their use is to facilitate illegal activity. [--] This is a blow to the games industry ...
Me, a friend of mine, (Europeans) our modded PS2s, the complete lack of pirated "back-up" (barf) games in our collections, our sizable stashes of Japanese gray-import shooter games not available outside of Japan, the unhealthy amounts of money these collections have eaten up and our mutual pride in not having pirated games in said collections would like to kindly ask you to S.T.F.U. Thank you.
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).
Blockwars: free, multiplayer, head to head game.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'