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.

Comments

Region Coding

[ViX44]

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*

Australian Copyright Laws Are Still Bad

[aaron_hill2]

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.

Re:About time that somebody started fighting back.

[meringuoid]

Video games down - next step, region-encoded dvd's? If only...

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.

Region free DVD players are legal

[the_raptor]

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.

Landmark case

[l2718]

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:

"... computer programs are not reproduced in a material form in RAM and copies of cinematograph films are not made in RAM when games are played."

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.