Mod Chip Raids In Perspective

GamePolitics has extensive coverage on the aftermath of this past week's Federal raids on suspected modchippers. There were numerous negative reactions to the action here on the site, and your comments were not alone. Many commenters at the site Dvorak Uncensored expressed similar frustration and disbelief at the federal government's priorities. As stated on the site's original post: "Are you kidding me? With drug dealers everywhere, murder, porous borders, terrorism the Feds are concerned about game mods?? Holy crap. Next I supposed they will be cracking heads over unlocked phones. Great." Meanwhile, one of the raided men is now without any electronics whatsoever as a result of the search and seizure, and feeling very much alone. Another man has (more seriously) been barred from seeing his girlfriend and daughter, and has been reduced to sleeping in his car. As he puts it: "I would like to formally thank Microsoft and Nintendo for cracking down on the little guy with a soldering iron in his garage, rather than going after the people that are responsible for the bootlegs being available."

Comments

Not allowed to see family members?

[karnal]

Because of what happened Im not allowed to see my girlfriend and our 4 month old daughter, and last night, I slept in my car They took my life away.

Not sure that that means that some judge and jury said "you can't see your gf and daughter" - just sounds like the situation caused some tension???

Sen-Sational!

The US democractic system is broken.

[Inoshiro]

"I would like to formally thank Microsoft and Nintendo for cracking down on the little guy with a soldering iron in his garage, ..."

As long as people with money have more influence over those who make laws than people without money, the system will continue to represent the interests of those who have money. Look at the rejection of the justice system of allowing people on welfare to object to random searches of their houses; that's a rather large difference from what the US constitution has to say on the matter, but it is done to serve the interests of those who pay taxes against those who lack the ability (for whatever reason) to pay taxes. MPAA and RIAA crackdowns and suing actions (including those against the Swedes in their own country via the US gov't!) are similar reflections of the concept that money is power, not personal choice.

If you wish to not be in a situation where money decides power, move to a country with a representative democracy, where the representatives are purely chosen via 1 vote per 1 person, and where lobbying money is not allowed.

hmm

[nomadic]

"Are you kidding me? With drug dealers everywhere, murder, porous borders, terrorism the Feds are concerned about game mods?? Holy crap. Next I supposed they will be cracking heads over unlocked phones. Great."

Because people can't be concerned about more than one thing at once. While I can sympathize with the thought behind this, the argument "they shouldn't enforce crime X until they've completely eradicated crime Y" is a ridiculous one.

How do I train my audience...?

[tepples]

As a game player, I say write some games worth buying or fuck off. As a hobbyist game developer, I say I do, but how does my audience play them on a 27" TV without a modchip? If you mean TV-out, how do I train my audience to disconnect the PC, move it to the TV room, and connect it to the TV? And how do I train my audience to buy a GP2X so that they can play games on the bus or train without having to buy Datel's "Games n' Music" modchip for DS at Best Buy?

Yeah, he *is* a victim

[KingSkippus]

He isn't exactly an innocent victim and life does tend to suck after you've been caught breaking the law.

Do you ever speed? I mean, really, when everyone else is going 65 to 70 (or higher) miles per hour, are you really going to diligently only go 55?

Do you have any idea what the possible penalties for speeding are? I mean, sure, most people who get caught by the police get a slap-on-the-wrist fine, but do you know what you could face for speeding? Check your state laws; in involves losing your license to drive, facing hefty penalties, and jail time. If you've gotten speeding tickets before, that means that you're a repeat offender and they can really throw the book at you.

Yet still, I'll bet that when you get on the interstate, you go 70 right along with the rest of the cars. By your logic, that means that if a police officer pulls you over and arrests you, throws you in jail for a few months, you lose your license to drive, and have to pay thousands of dollars in fines, even though that may not be the normal punishment that fits the dinkiness of your crime, hey, you're not exactly an innocent victim, and your life sucking from now on is justified, since after all, you were caught breaking the law.

As far as I can tell, this guy was guilty of breaking a law that is just as silly as the one that says I'm supposed to drive 55 miles per hour on a straight road that is 10 lanes wide (I live in Atlanta, we really have interstates 10 lanes wide in 55 mile per hour zones), even if it's a lazy Sunday afternoon with perfect visibility and very low traffic volume.

I don't see anything in the article that says he was selling the modded boxes. I don't see anything that says he was using the modchips to steal games illegally. I don't see anything that says he was using modchips to distribute illegal copies of games. If he's guilty of some or all of those things, then maybe he does deserve a stiff penalty, but that should only happen after he's tried and convicted in court, after that little annoyance called due process runs its course. Right now, all I'm seeing is that he violated the DMCA, which says that regardless of your intent, you do not have the right to modify hardware that you purchased and own to suit your own needs. It says that corporations have the right to tell you what you can do with your own property. It says that if you're suspected of modifying your own property, regardless of intent and without due process, you will lose that property and more, and that's just not right.

Years from now, this law will be looked back upon as one of the most shameful and disgraceful that this country has ever had on the book. (At least, until the DMCA v2.0 is passed and Richard Stallman's dystopian future really does come to pass.) In the meantime, I hope you rethink your ideas that just because something is illegal it is immoral, and that people deserve whatever comes to them for breaking laws that, frankly, need to be broken.

First they came for the filesharers, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a filesharer;
Then they came for the modchippers, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a modchipper;
...

(I think you can guess the rest.)

Re:Yeah, he *is* a victim

[KingSkippus]

you think the law is silly because you would like to break it, because doing so lets you get free games.

You, sir, are an ass. (And an anonymous one at that, the best kind.) That's what you get for thinking you know me. I don't have any illegal games. Zip, zero, zilch. If any official-type agencies want to come inspect my computers, they could do so to their heart's content and I would be free and clear because there's simply nothing there. Of course, I would do everything in my power to defend the right to not have my equipment searched, even though I have absolutely nothing to hide, and once they were done, they'd be facing a very costly lawsuit for doing so.

I don't think the law is "silly," I think it's extremely destructive. Not because I can't copy games, but because it tells me what I can and cannot do with my own property, a dangerous precedent with a repugnant slippery slope. My personal freedoms trump the profit-making capability of game developers and publishers. If that means that you or someone else can't make money because of my fair use rights and my right to do what I please with my property as long as it doesn't interfere with other people's rights, too damn bad. Find something else to do in which you can make money without destroying other people's freedoms.

As for your comments about speeding, they just go to show how much of an idiot you are. If you think that driving faster than the speed limit is not giving a fuck about people who get killed by speeding motorists, then I guess that 99.99% of all of the people in this country (including every cop I've ever seen on the interstate) doesn't give a fuck about road safety. Or maybe the simpler explanation--you're an idiot--is right instead. Believe what you want; given your assinine response, I don't really care about your opinions.

Re:Yeah, he *is* a victim

[KingSkippus]

First of all, calculating braking distances isn't a "little math and physics." You say that as if any sixth grader should be able to churn out the numbers without any problem. It actually requires calculus and mechanics to figure out, something that even most smart people don't really know or care about. (But since I spent over two years as a physics major in college and took mechanics and second-year calculus my first quarter--and got A's in both--I might know a little about it.)

Second of all, I guess that means that technically, since the stopping distance-to-velocity equation holds even for very small values of velocity, we should really all just stay home. Anything else is just grossly unsafe.

Third of all, traffic fatalities have actually be steadily decreasing per miles traveled. I know, it's an inconvenient little statistic, given all those maniacs out there like me who apparently don't give a rat's ass about safety.

Fourth of all, if you're going to present yourself as some sort of authority on math and physics, at least know what the hell you're talking about. Increasing your speed doesn't give diminishing returns with regards to travel time. If car A's average speed is exactly twice what car B's is, car A will arrive at its destination in exactly half the time as car B, period. Obviously, on surface streets, there's a practical limit as to how fast you can drive, but if you're able to increase your speed over a distance by x times, you will reduce your time to cover that distance by exactly a factor of x, no diminishing returns.

Also, the increase in stopping distance isn't an "expotentional" increase. It's not even an exponential increase. If it were, the stopping distance would vary as some constant to the power of the velocity. It doesn't. It varies as the square of velocity, which is a quadratic increase, not exponential.

But don't let that from keeping you from driving 55 miles per hour and feeling good about yourself. Around here, people who do that aren't making the roads safe, they're a nuisance, a road hazard that needs to take the bus instead (which, incidentally, also drives faster than 55) so that normal people can actually get where they're going.

TM, (C), Pat exist. "IP" does not.

[tepples]

there's no such as 'intellectual property'. Oh the irony of posting that on a website that lists this on the bottom of the page:

"All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2007 SourceForge, Inc." There is copyright law. There is patent law. There is trademark law. There is trade secret law. The letter of the law in the United States does not recognize these four areas of law as some sort of monolithic "intellectual property" regime. They remain separate, and for a good reason: they are more different than similar in rationale, in scope, and in duration.

Re:drug dealers everywhere

[thegnu]

First problem - finding NORMAL people. By this I assume you mean people that aren't immediately addicted or become overly dependent very quickly.

Actually, I meant people who are not criminals, demonized, or marginalized for their choice of chemicals. I think that pharmaceuticals are far far worse than my first two categories (except cigs, maybe). People are completely trusting of their doctors, who are completely trusting of the sponsorship of the drug companies. I'm far, far, far more selective about what I put in my body than most people, even though it includes illegal substances, and things child-drugging alcoholic valium-popping H3-driving soccer moms consider dangerous.

The second problem is there are certainly people that can handle drugs but there is a large number of people that cannot. How do you separate them out? The people that will utterly freak out on PCP or LSD. The people that after three doses of coke will do literally anything for the next, including sell their children, rob relatives, etc.

We could continue as a culture suggesting that people not do drugs. For categories 2 through 4, I'm suggesting at the very least NOT throwing some 19-year old in prison because he was at a low point when someone offered him some coke. I'm suggesting that if someone does acid, he shouldn't have to worry about asking for help if he gets freaked out. I'm not saying people SHOULD do drugs. I will not ever do any of my class 4 drugs. I think that the current system of what is essentially abstinence-only education is bullshit and non-functional. If I had been better-educated about drugs, I wouldn't have called a whole bunch of people the first time I did mushrooms.

I'm merely suggesting that a more permissive society lends itself to children coming to the proper people for answers for difficult questions, rather than having to learn about drugs from drug dealers. Try learning about a Ford from a Ford dealer. Or a computer from a computer salesman (why yes, it DOES play with your balls!).

As far as I know, there isn't a test you can give someone that will say they can handle some drug.

An educated and judicious acid-user (not abuser) can tell if someone will have problems when they take it. Educating people about the drug, again, is the safest plan. I am now very very very educated. After a few bad experiences, I found erowid.org, and it has kept me healthy when I did drugs I was going to do anyway (though I may have taken some of those trips back now), and it kept me safe and sane knowing what was going to happen to me and knowing that I'd done everything I could to keep safe.

Ever seen any of the above behavior? It's not pretty and current laws pretty much prevent them from being confined in any way until they actually do something to harm others.

I have seen my best friend from childhood end up hooked on crystal meth. It was a lack of education, and a lack of hope. The inexistence of support structures, the pressure from land developers to get poor mexicans off their prime golf-course real estate, and finally, him being careless. I went back to Mexico, and he wouldn't smoke weed anymore because it made him feel sick. He smoked with me once, and got sick and lashed out at me so violently that I almost fainted. I tripped with him, pleaded with him, tried to get him to get his motherfucking visa so I could pay for his ticket up to the US so he could get out of his toxic environment. I tried everything short of duct-taping him to a tree. Now, in retrospect, I would have. He had an alcoholic father, and a family that used to ride our asses about weed before we ever smoked, and they were friendly to us when we finally started. His mother ended up fucking his dad's best friend, and his dad moved back to Sinaloa, and he was stuck being the asshole head of family that his two sisters and his mother berated. Nobody gave a fuck about him. So yes, I have seen the problems with drugs, I just don't see where any of the above would have been made any worse by him not being considered a criminal and a piece of shit, and a little bit of straightforward education.

Re:Video games go out of print

[Brian Gordon]

What does it matter what people do with your product? You make a mod chip to learn about the hardware and show off your skillz, maybe make some money. You're customizing the hardware. The old Altair and Atari PCs absolutely depended on people building their own mod chips.. and it's still perfectly legal of course to design your own hardware components for your computer... but somehow these gaming companies have made it illegal to modify your own hardware if you bought it from them! It's really a ridiculous situation, and as a promoter of common sense I say **** off.