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ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Console Modder
Donkey Konga writes "A San Diego man was arrested after a raid turned up over a thousand counterfeit games, modded consoles and mod chips. Frederick Brown 'had allegedly built up a thriving business selling counterfeit games and installing mod chips, having advertised his services on Craigslist and other web sites. He allegedly sold pirated games from his Vista, CA residence as well, including both discs and hard drives preloaded with games that he would install into customers' Xboxes and Xbox 360s.' After the ESA learned of his activities, they contacted San Diego law enforcement and the San Diego Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Unit led the raid on his home. '"CATCH was very receptive to the evidence we brought them and were able to put the investigation together in very short order," ESA VP Ric Hirsch told Ars.' Brown now faces 10 felony counts related to selling pirated games and modding consoles."
You can live inside an operating system? Now that's virtualisation. It must be hell.
If he's selling pirated stuff, that's one matter but why should it be illegal to modify your console? If somebody wants to copy their own personal copy of a game onto their hard drive, that should fall under fair use (note I said should, not does). The headline makes it sound like modding consoles is all he's guilty of.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
In typical /. fashion, headline is designed to get people impassioned about a poor console modder. A fairer headline would be "ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Games Counterfeiter." Yes, it says that in the summary but how many around here even RTFS nevermind RTFA?
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Will take note of this, and start raiding Autozone. Although on the plus side, if they started going after modders, there would be fewer cars with really unnecessary spoilers...
I understand that this guy was also selling unauthorized copies of games and HDDs preloaded with games, and he should have to face penalties for that, but why should I be disallowed to by a mod chip simply because I "could" pirate games with it? Should I be disallowed from buying a computer simply because I could copy music, games, or applications with it? I have two Xboxes in my house that are modded, but only so I can use them as media centers and to let me and my daugter play games we own without risking damage to the original DVDs.
The DMCA sucks nuts.
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Never had a chance.
"You door is about to be kicked in, Cancel or Allow?"
The Modchips alone are either just your typical bios chip (like the Xbox and PS2) or they're you're standard PIC/AVR microcontroller (PS1, Wii, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc.)
The use of modchips is a very gray line and using a modchip in and of itself is not a crime even under DMCA... most are sold blank or with "legal" firmware that does nothing to aid in circumvention of protection mechanisms. Xbox 1 chips specifically come pre-loaded with "Cromwell" bioses that are based on Linux and don't actually allow the playback of backup discs.
The bioses that do allow the playback of backup discs are hacked version of the original bioses or development bioses, and themselves are considered pirated material (like the Evox and X2 series of hacked bioses for the Xbox 1).
Seeing as I know someone who was recently arrested for selling pirated Xbox games "and installing modchips" He was only ever charged with the piracy issues... It's my understanding that most of the time they'll report about the installation work in the papers but it's so far over the heads of the police and prosecutors that they don't even try to make a case for the modchip stuff... it's just too much work to make a sound case for it when they've got X hundred counts of piracy that they can easily nail them with.
Collector's Edition
In my little college town, there was a guy who owned his own small business, doing mostly PC repairs / upgrades. He acquired a reputation in my geeky-friend circle as being a little shady and a lot overpriced.
Apparently he also started modding XBoxes on the side. I met a neighbor that had one that he'd worked on, and as a result of the mod you'd get an extra splash screen when booting your XBox. I'm futzing the details, but the splash screen said something like this:
This console modded by Bob's Smalltown PC Shop!
I'll mod your console too for $35!
Contact me at 1234 Main St, (999)-999-9999.
I was dumbfounded that he'd leave such evidence on something that he had to have known was illegal. It made me want to buy one and forward it to Microsoft just for spite, because it seemed a tragic injustice that someone could do something so stupid and never have to deal with the results.
I never got around to it, though, because then he skipped town without paying the last X weeks of back wages to his employees. As far as I know no-one ever found him, but I didn't pay much attention after the first bit of news.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
So in principle I am not allowed to use a door as a table in the USA. Great law. I'm glad I live in Europe.
-- Cheers!