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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.
Video games down - next step, region-encoded dvd's? If only...
Australia led the way instead of being the global village idiot. I wonder what effect (if any) this will have on xbox-linux etc.
Yes, at least if you don't buy Sony. Pioneer used to mark their region free DVD players with a green dot sticker on the box. no advertising, just the sticker. Don't know what happens lately though. BTW. This judgement is almost certainly short lived as a result of the free trade (sell out) agreement with the US. Don't get over excited, it aint going to last.
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.
... 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?
But Britain, Germany, and Japan, three countries with wildly different rules and regulations about content and three different ratings/censorship systems, are all in the same DVD "region"!
Not necessarily. A lot of DVD players (notably the PlayStation 2, which was the most popular DVD player in Japan when it first came out) are incapable of converting between the 480i signals of NTSC and PAL60 and the 576i signals of PAL50 and SECAM. This has the effect of segmenting Japan (480i) and Britain/France/Germany (576i) into two separate markets. It isn't perfect, but it is a step.
So, uh, exactly how is region coding supposed to have anything to do with helping governments enforce their local content regulations
Region lockout on movies and console video games might be designed more to protect exclusive territorial licensing, which tends to follow the map of regions and TV systems used by the DVD CCA, than to strictly enforce government abridgments of freedom of speech.
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