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California Student Arrested For Console Hacking
jhoger writes "Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It's much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a 'circumvention device' it is a criminal issue. Guess it's time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF."
Ever heard of a thing called "intent"? This guy was modding consoles so people could pirate games. The cop was doing his job ("responding to a disturbance call") and hit a kid who was riding in the street AT NIGHT. It is a shame what happened, but the only thing the cop did wrong was not turn on his lights. Sadly, the only thing the kid did wrong was ride at night. Shit happens, and you don't crucify people for it.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware.
Yeah he could lose 10 years of his life because he lost the gamble that he wouldn't be prosecuted for something he probably knew was illegal.
I don't understand the righteous indignation of law breakers caught breaking the law.
And before the anti-dmca idiots can say so, we live in a state that is governed by the rule of law.
Don't like the law? Then change it by any legal means available to you. But please quit bitching when someone gets arrested for breaking it.
Set up a fund for this guy's legal defense and try to take it to the supreme court but please enough with the crap.
Why bother
No, he's being put away because he profitted helping people play pirated games.
This guy was hacking systems, to make money for himself, so that people could allow their systems to read pirated games, because they are thiefs and don't want to pay people who worked hard to create the games. No ifs ands or butts about it. If you wrote a book, and someone went out and copied all those books and sold them and reaped the profit for it when they did jack sh*t, don't you think that would be illegal? What you are going to say is that this is a bad analogy, because the guy wasn't copying games. But he was allowing the systems to play copied games, without which the people copying games would have no job. And he is therefore an accomplice. And should be punished. Pot smokers support drug dealers supports the drug trade which results in countless deaths and costs each year. The drug user is just as guilty in creating the drug trade. This guy is just as guilty in the piracy. Boo Hoo.