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

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.

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.