Slashdot Mirror
Mod Chips Legal In the UK
An anonymous reader writes "Good news out of the UK! Techdirt reports that an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and has now said that mod chips do not violate copyright laws. The case involved a mod chip seller, who imported mod chips for the XBox from Hong Kong and would sell the chips or mod the Xbox's himself. He was charged with copyright infringement and found guilty by a lower court. The appeals court has dismissed all charges, however."
After I buy something, it is _mine_ ! Case closed. I can do whatever I want to do with it. If I had stolen it then I am guilty. I don't see a case otherwise.
Don't expect them to give up. Just like Bush was recently lost his third case in the US supreme court for the third time over Gitmo prisoners, they keep coming back and is considering new legislation to "solve" the problem.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
At least, not by any sensible person's definition or understanding of the term "copyright". That is, there may be some legal jurisdictions where a piece of hardware can be considered a violation of copyright law, even if that hardware is not in and off itself a violation. (If you know what I mean.) However, in no sensible place could it be considered to break copyright, anymore then region free DVD players could be considered tools to break copyright.
(I believe in Australia both are perfectly legal.)
Of course, what the law says, and what a sensible person would expect the law to say are often two completely different things. Where the law is too complex for the average person to understand, then there is something wrong with it. (Resists temptation to explain why all laws are wrong, complex or not.)
I wank in the shower.
I couldn't find anything on a news site I trust yet, but from the defendants front page it looks like they are happy! Not that I don't trust slashdot or anything, but a little confirmation is nice...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
At the risk of being accused of trolling Microsoft have the right to decide whatever rules they like about access to Xbox live.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Does this establish that the whole idea of it being a crime to provide a service that allows others to circumvent copyright is going to fall apart?
i.e. will they still be shutting down sites like tv-links.co.uk which was only linking to copyright infringing material, not providing it?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
At the risk of being accused of trolling Microsoft have the right to decide whatever rules they like about access to Xbox live.
They own it and operate it, so yes I agree, they do.
Whether such bannings would be considered fair by anyone else is beside the point, they can do what they want. We are not under any obligation to use Xbox live.
Provided the modding crowd is sufficiently small, they can do it without even effecting the majority of the community.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Generally the modchip itself is not illegal (Well, me being in UK), but often to play copied games they use a modified version of the original bios/software/whatever which is the illegal part. As far as xbox modchips go I saw a general trend for them to be sold with the cromwell bios, which contained no proprietary code, and allowed various linux distributions to be used, but would not allow for the running of copied games (or even genuine if memory serves correctly). They also came with a simple way to reflash the chip and often instructions on how to obtain these other bioses from various sources.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
... or WILL, when it comes to all this "copyright stuff".
:(
The EU is just preparing more and more ridiculous legislation. Prepare for impact
It's overboard to dissalow GNU/Linux to fully use the hardware you bought by default. Mod chips are here to insure proper balance. Actually, I think explicit locking of hardware with an OS is illegal in many countries. Maybe mod chips are part of their business model: they say mod chips are bad, but behind the scene if you look carefully, they actually sell them! Because at the end, that makes people spending more money on their hardware...
Just wait until you get a 3 year old stepping on your video game/dvd case then you'll see why you need 'backup' copies...
Unless of course the companies are willing to furnish a brand new copy for a damaged or destroyed old copy rather than milk the customer for another $20 for a DVD or $60 for a game.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
You have to keep up with times though, we are in the X360 era.
If you want use your X360 for something else than M$ approved software, you cannot use Xbox Live.
It is due to the regular and remote bios modifications done by Xbox live to your console so it is up to date for countering any software exploitation.
The convenience of using XBMC or emulators, then switching off the modchip to play on xbox live are a thing of the past as far as the X360 is concerned. A real pity.
From what I've heard, EULA's aren't very proven in court (in the US specifically, but also elsewhere). While it may be more applicable, it could be very dangerous-- if EULAs were held to simply be invalid, then a lot more than mod chip litigation is screwed over. Copyright is more proven, and indeed, cases like this are more likely to be won, or can be lost without as much devastation (copyright in its entirety will not be thrown out over such a case). It actually was won, of course, so the logic for copyright did have some foundation (even if not as much as using the EULA and contract law)-- just not enough for the next-higher level.
-Devin Jeanpierre
Mod chips dont pirate games, people do.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Copyright is different. A photocopier, a camera, a computer and in fact a brain,hand and piece of paper are all that are needed to violate copyright. These are all long established to be legal pieces of equipment. The same applies to contract law. If it was illegal to possess a piece of equipment that facilitated allowing you to break a contract, we would have to get rid of our brains as well as our computers.
You can get through your entire life without ever needing access to a rocket launcher or a gun, (My grandfather, a Methodist, was in a reserved occupation during WW1 and lived to 90 without ever so much as holding a shotgun), but it is now extremely difficult to get through life in a modern society without ever using a photocopier, camera, or a computer. Since a computer can be used to violate copyright or break a contract out of the box, it is hard to see how modifying it to change slightly the ways in which you could potentially do so would be illegal.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sorry, but in the US, just having the PARTS to convert any firearm to a full-auto is a felony. It is most certainly NOT legal to do that one.
There is a case winding through the courts where a man was convicted because his rifle apparently malfunctioned due to mechanical wear and went full-auto. He was convicted.
Who's the idiot that labels everything 'suddenoutbreakofcommonsense'?
Maybe it was funny a year ago (to him at least), but come on...stop abusing labels, they aren't that useful to begin with, don't make it even worse!