Mod Chippers Ordered to Pay $9 Million in Fines

GameDaily is reporting that that ESA is announcing a major victory against game software piracy in California. A judge has handed down over $9 Million in fines to Divineo Inc., some employees, and international subsidiaries. From the article: "The defendants had apparently violated the DMCA by trafficking mod chips and the HDLoader software application that enables users to copy whole video games to a console's hard drive ... Mod chips then can be used to allow a console to play illegally obtained/pirated games. Both the mod chips and HDLoader application therefore circumvent the copyright protection technology built into video game consoles and video game software and are in direct violation of the DMCA."

Comments

I'm surprised...

[Gadzinka]

I'm surprised that no one picked up the fact that it is Japanese company suing French company in US court.

They won. SFW? How are they going to enforce this ruling in France? From the coverage of this ruling on Ars Technica I know, that the company is still offering those modchips on their web page. And they will. The only thing they can't do now is to visit US. And maybe Iraq or Afghanistan. All of the international treaties about enforcig court rulings abroad have one basic assumption written into them: no party to such treaty shall enforce a court ruling for something that's perfectly legal in the country of residence of defendant party.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Robert