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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."
oh right, they're just "doing their job"
I misread this as "California Student Arrested for Console Hating."
I imagined a college student having an impassioned argument with a police officer on whether the ps3 or the xbox 360 is better. The student goes too far and insults Halo and he's lead away in handcuffs.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
The DHS wants you to think of them like this: http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm
But this is what they really are: http://www.ice.gov/
No quarter to tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
And hundreds, if not thousands, of violent crime offenders go without jail time every week. I love a functining legal system.
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This is most likely a student helping his friends, not a commercial profit-driven entity. I would hope penalties would be minimal. This case is one that will be diverted short of a conviction upon a submission to sufficient facts-- then continued for dismissal at a later date. At least this is likely what would happen in my state (MA).
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
It's terrifying to me (and a sign of the times) that we can't do what we please with the material we've paid for. Sure, violating copyright is counter productive in the long-run, which is why we have it, but tinkering with stuff has a long proud history. Imagine if the guy who invented pneumatic tyres was taken to court because it violated the bicycle company's right to sell him replacement solid rubber rims? I doubt this guy was doing anything innovating, but he sure won't be doing so now.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
more like he was jailbreaking an Iphone for idiots who don't know how to do it but they just want it done. so they pay this guy to do it for them.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
The land of the free. On less Trollish note, it's time you do something about this corporation laws, I can't understand how the freedom of a business comes before the freedom of the people.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
This is behavior you'd expect from the Mafia. It just underscores the fact that there's not much difference between our government and an organized crime syndicate.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Industry and trade associations estimate that counterfeiting and piracy now cost the U.S. economy as much as $250 billion a year and a total of 750,000 American jobs.
I mean, aside from being pulled out of thin air that is?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
And Now they expect you to only lease hardware as well?
If he owns an xbox he should be able to do whatever he damn well pleases to the xbox, it is the same as any other computer. It's fair for the company (microsoft/sony/nintendo) to make it so that their games will not work on a hacked system, they shouldn't have to guarantee the games will work unless you use their specifications, but it's not fair to take him to jail even if the modifications allow him to use unsigned software. hell, I build computers that have the capability to play pirated games all the time. How is this different?
PS: in before RTFA, he's modifying consoles for financial gain, how is this different from building a computer for financial gain?
I remember back when the WIPO copyright treaty that would lead to the DMCA was being quietly passed by member nations. Only a few of us were even talking about it at the time. But the implications were pretty clear to me even then. Making it illegal to even CIRCUMVENT copy protection measures would inevitably lead to people being prosecuted for even the most innocuous and widely accepted activities (at that time, it was mostly stuff like bypassing Macrovision, copying videotapes, copying CD's, and taping stuff on cable). It was quietly outlawing activities most people considered sacrosanct, and we let it happen. The U.S. signed onto the treaty, the Congress passed to DMCA to implement it, and everyone just sort of ignored it--figuring that the local guy in the neighborhood who copied a CD or VHS for you would never be effected. But it was always only a matter of time before they got down to enforcing it in at the local level. It may have started with the big pirate operations, but it was bound to come down to local modders too. It was only a matter of time.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is insane. This kid is looking at 10 years for modifying hardware while another story linked right at the bottom of the same article describes a cop getting a one day suspension (with pay) for running down a child with his car
on the right hand side of the article, did anybody notice the poll that allows you to rate the story?
... "We are ..." a.) Laughing b.) Furious c.) Bored d.) Sad e.) Thrilled f.) Intrigued
... cause the charges are kinda ridiculuous ... and I'd be pissed if it happened to me.
... Laughing 50%, Furious 33%, Bored 17%, Sad/Thrilled/Intrigued 0%
your options are
I voted Furious
But the current scores are
Ok, I'm going to say something that I'm certain will be enormously unpopular here - what he was doing is a crime and he almost certainly knew it was. Sorry. He got caught breaking the law.
Now, should it be a crime? Should it be a crime with a possible 10 year penalty? Should law enforcement resources be wasted on inane garbage like this while there are real, serious criminals out there that are still walking free? I think the answers to all those questions are obvious (at least I hope they are...) but the reality is what he was doing is a crime and thus he broke the law. I would hope people will be sufficiently bothered by this situation (and the ten year sentence for something so insignificant while people who commit violent crimes get much less time...) that they will be motivated to write their government and demand a change. If enough people raise their voice, maybe, just maybe, the government will pay attention. As it is, the only voice they hear are those of lobbyist for major media companies who want laws like this on the books. They got their way and now this guy is (presumably) guilty of something that shouldn't be a crime, but currently is...
The DHS wants you to think of them like this: http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm
But this is what they really are: http://www.ice.gov/
No quarter to tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Well, from Wikipedia:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ...
Of course ICE is a agency under DHS ... I don't understand what your point is. So they have a division that deals in customs and immigration. Can you just shut up? There's no need to post on every goddamn story.
How should one respond to this then?
[quote]âoePiracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers,â[/quote] Right. A kid in his basement modifies a Wii and this poses "a significant health and safety risk"??? WTF? Piracy like this is mostly a victimless crime. It's a crime created artificially by a corporate culture. Crimes are supposed to be something that hurts real people directly. Piracy doesn't do that.
"they [Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations] can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers"
Robert Schoch, ICE/DHS (from the article/link)
health and safety risk!?
wait, what - piracy/counterfeiting poses a health/safety risk because the ps3 game they buy is safe for them? then whats with all the warnings?
nintendo has warnings, playstation has warnings, xbox has warnings. not to mention the ratings for games being "safe" (laughs) for certain age ranges/restrictions.
what about the RF radiation from electronics?
the RF radiation from most consoles these days (wifi, bluetooth controllers, etc)?
It's a sad sad day when you can get more time in prison for manipulating electronic hardware than for say vehicular manslaughter...
From the article
Counterfeiting and piracy have grown in recent years in both magnitude and complexity, according to ICE.
That's nice. Now how is that connected to the "crime" of modding a console? How is what he did connected to piracy other than the strained connection that modding consoles inevitably leads to piracy which he should be held responsible for? Even if you buy that, how is any of it inolved with "counterfeiting"? No one is stamping out illegal copies of games to be sold as the real thing here. Wrong issue entirely.
Some estimates indicate that 5 percent to 8 percent of all the goods and merchandise sold worldwide are counterfeit.
Again, a completely irrelevant fact mentioned only for the purpose of trying to connect his "crime" to a larger and more obviously illegal sounding one.
I wish mainstream news outlets would hire people to do research and write informed articles, because the alternative seems to be just parroting whatever the alphabet soup of government agencies tells them about the issue. Though, I guess now I know to watch out for those counterfeit modded game consoles.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
>> âoePiracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers,â he said.
Health and Safety risks? Give me a f*&%ing break... at least with regards to Intellectual Property. Sure, counterfeit aircraft replacement parts pose a real safety problem (and it's a real problem... go after that one, guys!), but copying videogames?
If the guy was overtly doing this to enable the use of pirated games, then sure, he's guilty. But if the majority of his work is to enable homebrew or emulation software, they should set him free and give him a pat on the back. I lose all sympathy for the copyright holders when they try to use FUD about "Health and Safety" to prop up their failing business model.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure glad that the Homeland is secure from this miscreant.
Um...exactly how does a pirated PS3 game create a health or safety risk?
Joe Public will read this story and think "so what, some kid who helped destroy game company profits got his comeuppance," but the technically astute on this site will notice that this law, while currently applied to a trivial domain like game consoles, will be affecting the whole computer industry for years to come. The iPhone, like most game consoles, has a mechanism to prevent unsigned code from running. It is protected by the DMCA. The Kindle from Amazon is probably protected by the DMCA.
Your legal ability to do what you want, with the hardware you own, is slowly being eroded by new hardware with DRM baked in, and lawsuits like the one in the article. The issue is about personal freedom as much as it's about piracy.
Wait until the US and it's socialist/communist collaborators pass the ACTA.
If you think reverse-engineering is your right as a human being; you should be buying your guns and ammo now, and start preparing to use them on our tyrannical government officials should something so fundamentally flawed be passed into law.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
...then people who modified generic PCs to run "unauthorized software" would receive the same sentence.
Frightening.
This space left intentionally blank.
I'm curious if the Pirate Party will start getting enough traction in the U.S. to matter.
Cases like this only really piss-off young, highly technical persons. But if you factor in the RIAA's and MPAA's actions over the last 5 years, it makes me wonder.
From the article:
"Playing with games in this way is not a game -- it is criminal," said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of the ICE investigations office in Los Angeles. "Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers," he said.
Emphasis mine. What health risks are there? Pac Man fever?
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers," he said.
Really? Health and safety risks, from modchips? Perhaps they could elaborate on that one?
I can't understand how the freedom of a business comes before the freedom of the people.
There is a quote attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Mussolini, but he is alleged to have said "FASCISM should more properly be called corporatism, because it combines the power of the business sector with the power of the state".
I do believe America is suffering now under a kind of corporatism. The term seems more accurate than capitalism. At least since we are also a democracy there may be hope.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
That would be similar to someone putting performance parts on their car and a cop pulling up and arresting them for street racing on the basis that they would be using said modifications to do so. No crime has been committed unless it has become illegal to modify purchased devices and hardware. I know they say he was circumventing parts of the hardware that protect copyrights of games against piracy but I do not see how that is against the law unless it is proven without a doubt that he did so with piracy in mind.
No, you've got that backwards.
Downloading a game ISO has only one purpose. The playing of that game, without paying for it.
Modding an Xbox, as you say yourself, allows you to run XBMC on it. A legitimate use of the hardware, which harms nobody.
Aug. 21--A former Spokane Valley car dealer, who now sells used cars in Post Falls, avoided a likely prison term and a substantial fine by helping investigators unravel an international odometer rollback case. Instead of low-mileage bargains, more than 135 buyers were stuck with high-mileage Canadian imports with altered mileage gauges. For his part in the conspiracy, Richard "Rick" Shafer got no prison time Thursday, but must complete six months of home detention when he's not at work and repay a Spokane credit union $172,792.
There's another where a dealer got 10 months.
Anyway, last time I sold a car (In Indiana), when you sold the car there was a checkmark on the form where you could say that the odometer was not correct. (I knew it wasn't because it rolled around past 00000) Modifying your own odometer was perfectly legal, as was paying someone to do it, as long as you didn't sell the car as having that mileage.
Modifying game consoles isn't fraud, unless you don't tell a future buyer that it's been modded.
They say it's a circumvention device, but like the Sony Betamax case, if he can show that there are significant, non-infringing uses of a modded console, he could win. (If he has the resources to fight)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yeah, I hate it when people talk about things outside their area of expertise. In fact, what the hell are you doing on Slashdot. Shouldn't you be summoning Bahamut or something?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
in all likelihood they were stealing software.
Ignoring the choice of words, why are these people not looking at 10 years?
this is far less of a moral grey area than downloading is.
Correct. The idea that people can use (and modify) hardware that they own in any way they like (short of harming others) is not a moral grey area.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
I've been involved in a Civil Liberties group that reviews and lobbies legislation for appropriate changes prior to them becoming law, something quite different from the EFF. From my initial conversations organisations like this are in need of people with a technological bent to advise them on the ramifications of technology legislation before it passes into law.
It's not the first time I've done it and I've found that if you you are polite to the ministers involved they are quite responsive and will listen to what you have to say and if they see your name often enough they will ask you for advice, they asked me. It's interesting to see the changes you suggest actually either make it into law or not make it into law due to your lobbying.
Thing is, it's not a game. If you don't act then, incrementally, freedoms will be whittled away. If it's not by the lobbying of a special interest group (for example Microsoft with the Xbox) then it will be by a knee jerk reaction to something else that has happened. Once it's passed into law it's very unlikely that it will *ever* be rolled-back.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
this is far less of a moral grey area than downloading is.
I think you have that backwards.
downloading (as implied in your post) is specifically to avoid paying for content.
Modding an Xbox can lead to playing homebrew games, apps, and other very cool stuff that has little to nothing to do with piracy. Hell I modded countless Xbox 1's to run linux.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
"Would you be 'disturbed' if someone went to jail for modifying odometers on automobiles?"
I would be even more disturbed if someone went to jail for putting in new car stereos (that enables the owner to use USB-sticks instead of just CDs) in automobiles, which is a better analogy.
Both are examples of modifiying hardware in an effort to cheat someone, and both are against the law.
The article gives no evidence of what kind of "pirated games" the accused was dealing in. If I develop a game for my Wii console, and I mod my friends' Wii consoles to play it, who gets cheated? Certainly not Nintendo, who wouldn't sell me a devkit anyway because students and hobbyists don't qualify.
You don't want to go to jail? Don't break criminal laws.
And especially don't make a full-time business out of breaking the law..
It was once a crime to possess alcoholic beverages.
This is what happens when lobbyists have more influence over laws than voters.
Table-ized A.I.
If you are going to write a summary, write it non-biased. I really don't care what you find distrubing. If the guy gets 10 years, that is certainly excessive. But he wasn't doing this for himself, he was selling it to others for a profit. He should know better. And try to be a little honest. If you really believe that this would be used for anything other than piracy for the vast majority of cases, you have been drinking the Slashdot kool-aid too long.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
We are in an economic depression, lets spend millions of dollars prosecuting pointless cases.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Next time student will get arrested for picking in his nose. Imagine that some TinySoft will patent or copyright "nose content".
Well, if someone modifies, actually "tunes" the car for money, it is OK. If someone "tunes" some electronic devise - it is crime! Ridiculous!!! Incredible!!!
Guys, USA is very very strange country, isn't it? I am happy I live in Ukraine, fellows!
That would certainly be disturbing because I just had a nice man install just such a head unit in my car.
You don't want to go to jail? Don't break criminal laws.
You don't want people to break criminal laws? Don't write shit laws.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
where are my points when I need them ?
Those letting pass those treaties and laws are arsonists ; they intend to burn down big pokets of wild bush at once instead of getting dirty by doing a correct job with axes and chainsaws (ie, crafting good, reasonable laws with balance and exemptions clauses), but like fire itself, once the target has been burnt, the thing they created keeps on spreading by eating everything around, good crops and all.
That would be similar to someone putting performance parts on their car and a cop pulling up and arresting them for street racing on the basis that they would be using said modifications to do so. No crime has been committed unless it has become illegal to modify purchased devices and hardware. I know they say he was circumventing parts of the hardware that protect copyrights of games against piracy but I do not see how that is against the law unless it is proven without a doubt that he did so with piracy in mind.
Because they wrote a law (DMCA) that explicitly says it is against the law to circumvent copy protection. The way it was worded makes what he was doing expressly a violation of the DMCA. It was noted by many people when the DMCA was passed in 1998 that this would be a consequence of the law.
For those that say "What's the news here? He clearly broke the law. It's a bad law, but we knew that.", there have been many people who have said that the DMCA wasn't aimed at people like this guy, so they would never go after somebody like him. Well, now they have.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Will someone please explain to me why something that took place on US soil and was presumably committed by a US citizen falls under the jurisdiction of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to investigate?
The whole tone of your post makes it obvious which side you're on. Shoveling scorn on one side of an argument while proclaiming to be neutral is intellectually dishonest.
This stuff is part of a much bigger issue ... govt. transitioning towards fascism. We're rapidly turning into a police state, under the guise of "keeping us safe from terrorist threats".
The Pirate Party only focuses on one specific issue that interests them, so MANY people who fully agree with their stance still wouldn't take them seriously as a viable political party. (I expect a political candidate I elect to handle a myriad of issues thrown at them. As such, they better have a fairly comprehensive list explaining their positions on the topics. The Pirate Party, last I checked, really didn't even try to weigh in on topics like foreign relations and wars, economic strategies, taxes for small businesses, gun ownership rights, healthcare, public schools (and vouchers for students opting to attend a private school?), or even term-limits for politicians.)
I'd suggest that if you want reform with these issues, you look for candidates advocating smaller government and less govt. control. A "lean" govt. that sticks to the basic, vs. a bloated one with a department for everything imaginable is FAR less likely to waste their time and money prosecuting nonsense like a guy making hardware mods to game systems for a living.
He won't get 10 years. Anybody who reads any modicum of news from the press knows that the press always reports the maximum possible punishment, which is usually far divorced from reality. It makes the article more shocking, a la yellow journalism... Anyways, expect the actual sentence to be less than a tenth of that.
Just for the Wii, we have SCUMM VM, OpenTyrian, Super Mario Wars, and countless other small games, GPL or other opensource licenses. Completely illegal to install due to the DMCA, but otherwise legal, using a reverse engineered library to access the 3D hardware and OS calls ;) I tried porting StarControl II but the load times were terrible and it had some sort of memory issues or something that made it crash after a few comms interactions, or after about 20 minutes of SuperMelee, so I gave up.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Ten years for hacking consoles? He should have stuck to arson and murder, he'd have gotten less than five.
The summary made some good points, but your reply contributes nothing to the discussion. I'm not sure why you were modded insightful. If you think a discussion on this topic is going to be pointless, why are you here?
I would.
If someone then tried to sell the car claiming the odometer had not been modified there would be a problem.
Just as their would be if someone tried to sell an modded XBOX and claimed it hadn't been modified.
But if the modification is disclosed why would I care?
Yes it's illegal under the DMCA and hence not surprising, that doesn't mean people aren't "disturbed" when unjust laws are enforced.
I'd be disturbed if someone was sent to jail for three months because they cheated on their wife in New York even though that's what the law says.
When Stallworth was at this stage of his arrest/trial I believe that he was facing up to 25 years in jail. the 10 years in this article is only the most he could get, not necessarily what he will get.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Downloading a game ISO has only one purpose. The playing of that game, without paying for it.
No, it doesn't. Optical media is delicate.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I can't comprehend how this should be a *criminal* offense.
Really? This person is so dangerous we need to lock him in a metal cage for ten years?
I agree if we allowed people to completely, freely, brazenly enable piracy on a commercial scale, there might be some damage to the production of video games that might hurt us all. Confiscate the guy's hardware, take his profits, and figure out how many consoles he sold, and fine him the cost of, say, two or three video games per console.
Honestly, it's this kind of batshit-insane loss of all perspective that makes young people hate The Establishment so much. I swear, if prison times reflected actual *physical peril* that someone represents to society and fines represented *actual damages* (plus a slight disincentive (like 10%, not 10,000%)) the relationship between authority and youth in this country would be dramatically different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_paraphernalia#Legal_restrictions
And hundreds, if not thousands, of violent crime offenders go without jail time every week. I love a functining legal system.
It functions as it was built to function.
In the American federal system, violent crimes are traditionally prosecuted at the state and local level.
The federal government has no general criminal jurisdiction outside of Washington D.C., its island territories, military bases, Indian reservations, and similiar enclaves.
The Secret Service was orginally organized to fight counterfeiting - a purely economic crime with an interstate dimension. ICE is the criminal enforcement division of the customs and immigration service - and these are not guys you want to fool around with.
Violent offenders who do enter the federal system get hammered. There is little willingness to plea bargain. When the judge says twenty-five years to life, you serve twenty-five years to life.
You are sooooooooo wrong. Downloading an iso to replace the original DVD I legally own but innocently scratched is not a violation of the copyright nor of the license. In criminal law, you must prove the intent and the actual criminal facts ; you should never deduce from a neutral fact which outcomes can be both legal and criminal that it is criminal by itself. Of course there are statute laws that criminalize simple facts, because it makes the prosecution job easier, but this is a sloppy job and should not be tolerated in a free society. This type of justice has only be extensively used in red dictatorships like soviet Russia, and it's disheartening to see it invade our 'still not so long ago' free societies.
I look forward to the scintillating and insightful conversation this invitation to discuss will bring
Are you implying that Slashdot commenters just sheep with the summary? Nothing could be further from the truth - half the time, the loudest voices here scorn the summaries (including yours apparently). If the vast majority of people here are saying the same thing, maybe it's because there's some amount of truth in it. Everybody here said the DMCA would be used for this kind of crap when it was passed, and now it is. Why not scream?
mini-editorial and half-baked legal theorizing in the summary
In defense of the summary, the article itself was a bit one sided too (on the other side IMHO).
Well, it sounds like you have an opinion. But I'm not really sure since you didn't say anything substantive.
What gets me is this... all many writers in mainstream outlets have to do to get an opinion on how ridiculous their tech writing is would be call up one of their solid I.T. guys at their organization.
But the arrogance level of most reporters is way too high to admit that some tech guy (a job that holds a lowly place in their mind) might know more about this stuff then they do. They are way to self-absorbed to think that they might be getting it wrong. But they are actually good writers so they can put it into a piece and make it make sense therefore people without tech knowledge think it's legitimate white all the people with any tech knowledge are laughing their ass off behind their backs...
shit! I guess I know why I'm not a copy editor now...
Link
The 750k jobs is a dubious claim from 1986 about counterfeit goods. The $250 billion is a 1993 figure given for the worldwide market of, again, counterfeit goods.
But it seems because he is disabling a 'circumvention device' it is a criminal issue.
He's disabling an anti-circumvention device. If he was disabling a circumvention device, he'd be restoring protection to a modded system.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I don't know they may want to make an example of him
I mean what he did is worse then rape and murder to these soulless companies.
Besides the fact that this shouldn't be illegal...
The most frightening part of this is that you can kill someone and get less jail time. How can this be seen as a greater threat to society than killing someone?
Remember the case of PGP? Phil Zimmermann faced more then 15 years for just publishing in Internet source of his cryptography program, based on published in books algorithms.
As Time Robbins said in the flick "Yeah. The funny thing is - on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." I fear we'll be turning a whole generation into crooks for mild infractions.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
"Specifically, the college student is accused of modifying for personal financial gain technology affecting control or access to a copyrighted work, according to an ICE statement."
Specifically, that's not very specific. Was he selling pirated games or modded consoles or possessing and not paying for pirated games or modding consoles? I'm assuming the former, but the article is a tad murky outside of the piracy = evil stance. If it is the former, than yeah, he broke the law and was selling non-taxed counterfeit goods, something that will send you to jail. I may not agree with that sentencing, but you don't screw with Mama Gov't and her bread and butter.
If it is a latter, then this is entirely messed up, though I couldn't imagine a judge sending a 27 year old to prison for 10 years for two counts of stealing a game or ordering a mod chip. You know, cruel and unusual punishment and all. Maybe this will finally shine some light on the nuke-kills-ant mentality of the DMCA, though I seriously doubt that. I'm sure it will probably be used as another 'you act like children, we'll treat you like children' scenario.
Look, we all know that the DMCA is evil and has been repeatedly abused. This is not one of those cases. The guy was modding consoles for profit. You can go on and on all you like about homebrew, but *you* know, *I* know, and *everyone else* knows that's not why he was doing it. He was doing it so cheap bastards can play copied games. This has nothing to do with your rights. If there was no DMCA, he'd be gotten on other laws - this was just the most convenient one. He's a stupid-ass student criminal, plain and simple. Now, feel free to debate the severity of the sentence - that's legitimate. But defending him as some noble kid who got put down by "the man" just hurts our cause. Pick your battles, people.
And also, stop putting out the crap of "why aren't they working the important cases?". Ever think that some officers/agents are assigned to different areas based on their expertise? And perhaps putting these cops on the homicide or gang squad isn't going to catch a killer or shut down a gang any faster? To put it in terms you'll understand, you don't want the guy who wrote Notepad working on the kernel. Just because you have resources spent on many tasks, does NOT mean that putting them all on a particular task will get that task done any sooner or better. I would have thought technical people would have understood resource allocation better, but the amount of stupid and kneejerk reaction around here really surprises me sometimes.
Welcome to Slashdot. I must be old here...
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
So, you solution to people breaking the law is to do away with the law. What an interesting suggestion. What laws should we do away with? Just the ones you don't like? Or should we include the ones I don't like as well?
Of course, getting rid of the ones I don't like could very well be fatal to you.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
When you buy a game console, does the store have you sign some licensing document? No? Then the "you don't own, you're just licensing" theory is a steaming pile of horseshit.
These game consoles are the rightful property of their owners, who can rightfully use them in an consensual act, including hiring someone to repair or modify them.
Ah, but most of the consoles people care about these days haven't reached the age of consent...
Bow-ties are cool.
Let's be honest here; they do charge you by the button press on your game pad if they can get away with it. With the way things are shaping up of late, I would be surprise if they aren't in another decade.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
We Didn't Listen!
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
I agree that it's not a guarantee that every system was used to run pirated copies of games.
But then you would be wrong. Again, by this more informative link (http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/08/03/xbox-crime/), the guy was advertising that he modded consoles specifically to run pirated games, and made a business of it. It's guaranteed every single system he modded was used to run pirated games.
Is there some threshold below which the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA makes sense?
I'm comfortable simply taking the fact that companies insist on being gatekeepers into account when I make hardware purchases, but that doesn't make me any happier that congress enshrined it into law.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
There are limits to that. You can own and modify a coat hangar all you like until you create a tool to unlock car doors with it, at which point it becomes illegal to posses, with good reason.
I agree that people should be able to modify their own hardware however they like, but with that comes the responsiblity for those modifications. this case goes beyond that in that he was modifying hardware commercially for other people, where he was aware that the majority of his customers were using his service to enable the theft of game software. it's morally grey right up until you realize that us as geeks are pretty much the ONLY people who're going to use modified hardware for good means. we mod for XBMC, regular students and youth mod so they don't have to pay for software.
The law that they are prosecuting on is a bad law. I agree. They should have to prove that his hardware modifications were used to steal software and that he was aware or perhaps advertised that this is what you could do and will do with these modifications. prosecute on the basis that he's a copyright thief instead of the basis that he circumvented protection measures. when the DMCA was introduced it was stated they weren't going to use this law this way, now they have. this a bad thing, I agree. this man is still a thief and should be treated as such.
It is? I've never had any pressed optical media fail on me. I've got 15 year old PSone games that still work fine. Burned is a different story, of course.
By your same argument, gun manufacturers' work is the critical step in committing murder.
Cheers!
I can see guys in vans stopping next to you at a stop light saying "pssst.... hey man you want to buy a hacked console?"
I think laziness and incompetence is the culprit here, less so than arrogance, although that may still play a part some of the time. The writer of that article probably thinks he understands the issue, and never bothered to check if he was getting something wrong.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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Here you go. Another comparison for you to attempt.
Clearly that's doing a lot of good.
Game... blouses.
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he is alleged to have said "FASCISM should more properly be called corporatism, because it combines the power of the business sector with the power of the state".
I knew that was wrong, but SO many people here may not... C'mon, Mods, get with the program!
Uh, they do that. There are thousands of laws. Many not enforced in practice.
If they enforced them all, they might not even get out of their neighborhood. Might be a bit like Robocop when he was loaded with hundreds of directives :).
According to the laws in Michigan, committing adultery would get you a life sentence. Seems the courts and prosecutors there are talking about repealing the relevant law. So that's selective prosecution as well.
But you know, maybe one should take a poll of betrayed spouses (and maybe even their children) and ask them what their opinion on adultery is. Do they view it as less or more negative than being mugged at gunpoint? How about being beaten up (but resulting in no broken bones or major scarring)? I won't be surprised if many of them would get over being mugged at gunpoint far more easily.
The average sentence for robbery in the 1st degree when armed with a deadly weapon (not necessarily a gun) appears to be 10 years.
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2000/rpt/olr/htm/2000-r-0510.htm
Of course one has to factor in that a robber could in theory more easily rob more people than a person could commit adultery with. Perhaps a robber is a danger to more people and thus should be put in jail for longer?
Seriously? Are there legitimate applications for modifying an odometer other than cheating people?
There are legitimate reasons to jailbreak an iPhone, or a game console: running unsigned binaries on equipment you own.
The government shouldn't take your liberty to protect a business model.
FFIV owns.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
No, the summary didn't make good points. Did the summary talk about how the kid is really innocent? no. It talked about how the kid broke the law, but that the submitter didn't really think the law was fair, for reasons that "Might" happen. this is news for nerds, not editorials from geeks. Now if the kid was writing games, and modding his own machine to make the games he wrote play, then that would be a bit different of a case, wouldn't it? Where, besides in the editorialized part of the summary, does the kid try to run applications that are locked out?
I think we can trust the slashdot masses to make their own minds up about the law.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
True. But it is usually an effort to cheat the game programmers/studios/publishers out of their work.
Well then just like with an odometer alteration, where you have to show that fraud took place in order for it to be a crime, and the crime is fraud not odometer-diddling, here they should have to demonstrate that he actually made unauthorized copies of games, and then that would be the crime. Not modifying game consoles.
But because we have a shit law in the DMCA, even if nobody was copying games illegally, it would still be a crime.
The enemies of Democracy are
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The exercise is to demonstrate an actual, legal use for the modifications. If there is no legal use for the modifications, then by making the modifications one is being an accessory to a crime before the fact.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It is quite popular to make homebrew games for consoles. Just, say, google for "homebrew wii games"
Here's a
Linux distro for the Wii:
To run it, you would have to mod the console violating the DMCA.
QED.
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Thanks. I am not sure how that would play though.
While that is a possible use, I am not sure it could be argued that it was a common use. And, all it would take would be for the prosecution to show that the one of the consoles was not used for that, or even that the consoles were used to play pirated games.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I disagree. The exercise is to first justify the law.
Hardware would still be able to refuse to run unsigned binaries without the DMCA.
Anyway, XBMC fits the bill.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So where do you buy your Xbox games nowadays? How about Playstation or Saturn games?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
But, there would be no penalty for removing that function with modification chips, ergo a law to prevent such modification.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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you mention a very important distinction. There is a huge difference between marketing the modding service to simply run unsigned code, even for legal uses (XBMC comes to mind), and telling people that his for-profit service will allow them to play pirated games. I wouldn't want to be him if the plaintiffs decide to call his customers to the stand and ask why they wanted their xboxes modded.
To continue with the jailbroken iPhone analogy, there is a world of difference between jailbreaking with the intent of running SwirlyMMS or Winterboard, and jailbreaking to run Crackulus. The former are simply unsigned apps that Apple won't let me run. The latter is designed to simplify the pirating of official apps. The former are officialy distributed via Cydia directly from the writers, the latter is not. Pirating applications using crackulus is and should be illegal. Making jailbreaking illegal because of this is pointless, because iPhone app pirates are already committing an illegal act, thus adding another to the list isn't likely to dissuade them.
Maybe someone here can explain this statement in the article because I just don't get it!
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers."
"significant health and safety risks to consumers"??? You've gotta be frikin' kidding me!
What purpose does the penalty serve? You comment as if it is self evident that hardware companies should be able to enlist the government to enforce their business needs (the signing, law or not, serves the business need of giving the manufacturer significant control over most of the consoles, I doubt penetration for mod chips would be particularly higher if they were clearly legal).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
As a starting point I would suggest that "shit laws" would include any law making actions that are not harmful to others (or their property) illegal. I would think that this isn't a controversial choice. Preventing people from rewiring a computer that they own (or paying someone else to do it) would fit this definition nicely.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
I'm curious if something like Wiibrew counts as circumvention. I used the Twilight Hack to install the Homebrew Channel. Mostly I use it for listening to my favorite radio station on the nice stereo in the living room. Though, I have downloaded some of the free applications from the website. I bought the Space Quest collection and play it under Dosbox* on the Wii on my TV. In the future, I might consider playing Gauntlet on it, though I might buy a used NES version to make myself feel better about it.
Is that so wrong?
-l
* I tried the ScummVM port, but it was crashy. The only problem with Dosbox on Wii is the mouse emulation for the Wiimote.
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The problem there is that we all seem to have this sense of entitlement. Many people apparently don't consider it an option to simply do without these things.
I can't think of a car analogy, so I'll think of a soft drink analogy. Imagine a market for cola in which 50 million people drink Pepsi and 50 million drink Coke. If a million Pepsi drinkers stop drinking cola, Pepsi's market share drops to 49.5 percent. But if instead a million Pepsi drinkers switch to Coke, Pepsi's market share drops further: to 49 percent. So letters to PepsiCo stating "I'm switching to Coke" would appear more effective than just stating "I'm not drinking Pepsi anymore".
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
The 'corporations' referenced by corporatism does include business groups, but also includes trade unions and guilds, military organizations, religious groups, farming lobbies, etc...
So Mussolini's conception of corporatism involves rule by unions. In that case, is there a place for a consumers' union?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
from:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/fascism_should_more_appropriately_be_called/163211.html
Unless, of course, the re-wiring job resulted in overheat and a fire killing people. But, that is just crazy talk, right?
Here, let me make your post more clear:
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I mean what he did is worse then rape and murder to these soulless companies
this sentence has no syntactical meaning, I think you meant:
"I mean what he did is eorse THAN rape and murder to these soulless companies.
Please folks "then" is a sequence, "than" is a choice.
Why bother
It appeared in a translation of Mussolini's work Enciclopedia Italiana. More here:
http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html
We question the ethics of the arresting officials, but we understand the issues. Do we honestly think whoever processed this warrant comprehends what it means to "hack" a console? That sounds evil and nefarious. Compare it to if someone said your car was boosted - that could mean it was stolen or that you put a new turbo in it. Yet we blissfully embrace ignorance, choosing to perpetuate these loaded terms. Not only the popular media, but Slashdot too apparently. (Console "modding" carries with it a much different perception.)
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
No it doesn't. Read it again... it says "Krause says Matthew Krippen advertised online and had a large clientele."
That's presumably a fact, but it doesn't say anything about advertising specifically to run pirated games.
I said delicate. Heh. I have lost optical media. Sometimes because it's my fault, but not always. I recently had my XBOX eat one of my games. Ask anybody with kids their stories about games and DVDs.
In any event, I've never had a enough interest in downloading images from cartridge based systems to even find out what's involved.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
For bonus points, when I blew away "PC Angel"'s hidden partition full of restore data, was that a violation of the DMCA? How 'bout when I changed the BIOS passwords? When I flashed my firmware?
Next they'll arrest me for installing (or even just having an executable copy of) nmap.
His involvement will follow him forever, conviction or not. Basically, his life is over.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
when we don't like a law, a violation is described in the most vauge terms possible so as to make it sound even more inane than it really is.
I don't believe the DMCA anti-circumvention clause is a good law. I'm also disinclined to believe that this guy's clients were on the up-and-up, though I'd have a hard time finding evidence that meets the criminal standard of proof to convince me one way or the other. As it stands, the criminal law doesn't hinge on that quesiton, though.
Regardless of my personal view of the law, what I really want to rant about at the moment, is this ridiculous description of the act in question - he just modified some hardware! Gee, O.J. Simpson probably just flailed his arms around a bit, and he was found liable for wrongful deaths. Bernie Madhoff just provided a financial service, and look what happened to him!
The details and the context are everything. Don't discredit those who oppose the current law by misrepresenting what the law addresses.
I love how people here take his side..but he was SELLING his service of circumventing disk protection. If he was not selling the service I would have supported him too. I would still say no more then 6 months jail time and maybe a stiffer fine however...
You know, with cases like this, I sometimes wonder : do these people facing incredible charges - thinking also of that woman who had to pay quadrizillions for downloading one album on bittorrent - actually exist, or are they faked just to scare people ?
I was trying to suggest laws that ban actions that have no effect on anyone else (I admit that phrasing it as harm rather than effect was probably a mistake). I thought it would be uncontroversial because people can't really have too many objections to things that don't harm (or affect to use the better phrasing) them.
Unless, of course, the re-wiring job resulted in overheat and a fire killing people. But, that is just crazy talk, right?
Failure to do things safely can affect others and wouldn't fit into the suggested criteria for shit laws.
self-serving asshole.
Who else would I serve?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue
There are now three keys to the Constitution:
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So yes, it is definitely a legal grey area. Basically, it is illegal to sell/make modchips and provide modification servcies in the United States IF their primary and only real purpose is to get around a copy protection measure.
Console modification has the primary purpose of enabling the play of legal imported games and fair use backups, as well as enable the use of homebrew code that GREATLY expands the capabilities of the system (a perfect example of this is Xbox Media Center for the original xbox) and thus isn't just about bypassing a copy protection measure to enable piracy. In fact, if you have an original xbox and your hard drive dies, the only way to replace it is with a chip or with a TSOP flash, as the stock bios doesn't recognize non-locked hard drives (and the drives don't just have to be locked, they need to be locked with the key stored on the onboard eeprom). A modchip/tsop flash with a modified bios lets you bypass all that nonsense and just use any standard IDE/ATA hard drive with the system.>
The DMCA is a seriously terrible law to begin with. It fundamentally changes the way traditional copyright has always worked, and violates consumer rights in the name of helping big business. To quote one of my law textbooks on it:
As a side note, nowhere does the DMCA say it is illegal to USE or BUY modchips, just to make and sell them. So that leaves the end user (you) in the clear so long as they're not using it for piracy.
The sellers and makers of "anti-circumvention" devices and services on the other hand seem to be where the law is aimed at, and while I honestly don't believe the DMCA applies to chips and modding servcies, apparently the US government and the gaming industry disagree.
The only precedent for chip sales and the DMCA I could find was a September, 2006 case in which Sony sued Divineo (SCEA vs Divineo Inc, et al(457 F. Supp. 2d 957; 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74878; 81 U.S.P
Does this count as Godwin's Law?
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers"
Ok, WTF? If I use a mod chipped console then how will that effect my "health and safety"? It seems like whenever the government wants to pull the wool over citizens eyes for ulterior motives they tell us that whatever they are doing is for our own "health and safety". No doubt the MAFIAA would like to have Joe Sixpack believe that using mod chips causes blindness, brain cancer and impotence but why should the public money be spent tracking down console modders? If the MAFIAA wants to bust these guys then they should foot the bill, not the much beleagured American taxpayer who is already reeling from the prospect of paying for ever increasing bailout deficits and a US Government take-over of the health care system.
I think the best use-case for a modded console is provided by XBMC. It let your XBox1 play movies of almost any format. The XBox1 have 1080i component output and TOS link sound, it doesn't handle H264 movies well, but is an awesome player of SD content with a nice upscaler. The XBox1 v1 and v2 could be completely soft-modded(no soldering or extra components). The XBox Media kit was far less functional and cost $50.
Another good use-case is making the PSP more usable. The spinning UMD optical drive was a poor design decision. Modified PSPs can run games off memory sticks which makes the hand-held much more robust and cuts load times to a fraction of what they were.
Player HATER.... doh!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
This is bullshit, but it's one person who made himself obvious. As much as I'd love to see these awful laws overturned, it's easier to make breaking them a natural habit for everyone so that one day the laws will be forgotten to all but the most pragmatic.
Of course, that won't actually work, because we all know that Orwell was right and the government is destined to have the all-seeing eye and will eventually have the resources to pacify every thought-criminal. Instead we should focus on la revolution.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I can really go for a starbux right now but i dont think we have time for a gentleman's late........ only in america can a man be prisoned for for interupting someone from watching ouch my balls!
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There are legitimate reasons why you may wish to "circumvent" the copy-protection on your game console. For instance, suppose you have a XBox, and you want to run the XBox Media Center (xmbc.org) on it. Guess what! The XBox won't run unsigned code. XBMC is not signed. The only way to run XBMC (the "award winning free and open source software") on the XBox (which you **own**) is to either install a modchip, or use a "softmod" -- both of which actually do "circumvent" the copy-protection scheme in the XBox. A Federal Crime. That's a sad state of affairs, and why the DMCA is bad.
Modding your console for your own personal use to run F/OSS software (or something else) is not going to attract the attention of the feds.
Running a business (that's the "for personal financial gain" in the complaint) modifying game consoles so people can run bootleg (or other stolen) games -- well, that is criminal behavior. This guy had it coming to him.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
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I admit I'm probably over-generalizing "you." Maybe a tiny handful of you, Slashdot users, actually did. But most of you voted for keeping DMCA. I did too. I hate DMCA, but when I was in the booth, for all seats in Congress in all the time since DMCA became law, I voted exclusively for Democrat and Republican candidates. No one else was running, in my state. Presidents have been the only positions where I've voted against the worst of the bad guys, and I'm not even sure my presidential candidates actually favored repealing DMCA. I don't remember them talking about that particular law.
Name a candidate for any office, legislative or executive, that ran on repealing DMCA. If you can name one, then: did you vote for him? Three presidents and hundreds of congressmen can't be wrong, especially when the voters continually say they are right.
If we want government to not be evil, then we need some serious candidates for government. Who is willing to actually step up and run on a non-evil platform?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Industry and trade associations estimate that counterfeiting and piracy now cost the U.S. economy as much as $250 billion a year and a total of 750,000 American jobs."
Where is this money going?!? Are pirates burning the money or something? I cannot understand how this money disappears.
To me it would seem that this actually introduces money to the economy. This guy hacks consoles for a fee, thus creating "money." Since there is a monetary transaction, this is good for the economy, at least in the short run. But why are people paying this student for his services? To save money that they would have otherwise spent on games!
What's happening to that money that they have saved? That must be the money that the pirates are burning, since it isn't going back into the economy, that is, if we are to believe the "Industry and trade associations." In reality, that money is either being spent or saved. If these console hacker customers are spending the money, then the economy benefits in the short run, and, indirectly, the long run. If it is saved, it should still benefit the economy in the long run, as it makes more money available for loans, which would then be used to make business more efficient, allowing for job creation, or just spent outright on a house or car or something.
So how is this piracy costing the economy jobs? I just donâ(TM)t get it. I get that this is costing the âoeindustry and trade associationsâ money, and thus costing money to all those who are along the supply lines of the video games, but really, this money is just being spent elsewhere, not disappearing.
Now donâ(TM)t get me wrong. I think that this guy deserves to be punished. He broke the law and should be punished. I do not agree with piracy and understand the harm that it does to the creative process. Less money for video game makers means worse games, etc. I just hate this specific argument.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
"Did the summary talk about how the kid is really innocent?" But he's not, he broke the law. Not only did he break it he was selling them too, which I see no mention of anywhere here. He didnt get caught cause he modded them, he got caught because he was selling the service and profiting from it. THATS the illegal part.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
This is just so outrageous. This was from the article from an ICE agent âoePiracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers,â he said. What? There are LOTS of reasons to mod a system that do not cost any jobs, any loss in revenue or any health and safety risks to customers. To backup a copy of a game I bought, I shouldn't have to buy it again. To create homebrew software to run on a system (It's just a computer in a fancy case) I shouldn't have to open a huge development studio, to learn about how circuits work and possibly be the guy who develops the next gen system, you shouldn't have to go to jail. The DMCA has been twisted in to all kinds of garbage. Its original purpose is good and all, to prevent people from illegally distributing digital goods, but the things it's been used against customers is appalling. I'm already boycotting the RIAA, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo and Sony will follow.
"Guess it's time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF."
I don't know how effective the EFF is at lobbying, but perhaps it would be more efficient to contact your congressional representatives who have the actual power to vote on these matters.
I guess its time for me to destroy all evidence of my modded xbox. I can hear the feds coming now.
by jumping into Chinese, Russian, Mexican, or Swedish embassy where these countries respect IP laws.
New Economic Perspectives
I've unlocked car doors with an _unmodified_ car antenna. And no, there's no good reason for car unlocking tools to be illegal.
I believe that both parts are illegal, but only the "for profit" part is likely to attract the attention of the law.
The whole thing is absurd, though. People should be able to do anything they like with their own property, so long as it doesn't directly hurt anyone else.
It's rather silly to blame yourself for not voting against the DMCA when you literally did not have the option.
The Nuremberg defendants were charged with crimes against humanity - and, and among the specific changes, the crime of institutionalized murder on an industrial scale. That is why the defense of "just following orders" does not work. They were the ones giving the orders.
(Emphasis mine).
This makes no sense.
Does the "just following orders" defense not work because the magnitude of the crime, or does the defense not work because "they were the ones giving the orders?" You need to pick one. Or, if both are the reason, you need to put the second clause before the phrase "that is why" or it doesn't make any fucking sense.
(Incidentally, the people claiming to have been following orders during the Nuremberg trials were not the ones giving the orders. I mean, just how fucking stupid is that? "I'm sorry, your honor, but I was just following my own orders.")
Of course! Didn't you watch Live Free or Die Hard?
I think you completely missed his point. Try rereading his post.
What is next 10 years for loading Linux?, 10 years for using a non dell video card in a dell system when you can get the same card for $100 less at a on line store vs dell BTO, 10 years for not using apples over priced ram?
What if you got 10 years for non using the car dealership to change your oil as the car has a light only they can turns off and they call it hacking if you trun it off or jiffy lube does it for you.
If the people at pystar are not looking at 10 years why is this kid?
Unfortunately you're incorrect, the way the DMCA is written, it is in fact illegal in the case of a console like the XBox as it is bypassing the DRM that is built in. I certainly don't agree this should be the case but at the moment it is. With that in mind, the argument at this point should not be whether or not the student in the article committed a crime (he did), rather what should be done about the fact that as things currently sit what he did is illegal and could result in such a ludicrous amount of jail time.
You can already run unsigned binaries on an XBox 360, just go download the XNA dev kit. You can run unsigned binaries on a PS3 too, go install Linux.
There seems to be a mass delusion on Slashdot that there are armies of wannabe home-brew console developers out there, when 99.9% of people who get their console modded want to play pirate games. End of story. And yeah, I think inconveniencing a tiny minority of people from selling (!) modded consoles is alright to encourage better and more numerous games, so sue me. If you want a 100% open platform, buy a PC.
Unless I already paid for a game that I lost.
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
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Would you be "disturbed" if someone went to jail for modifying odometers on automobiles?
Extremely, since modifying an odometer is not a crime. Trying to defraud someone by lying and claiming it is true when you know it isn't is a crime. The odometer being wrong is not. You modifying it is not.
So yes. Being put in jail for doing something that is not a crime, would disturb me.
In fact, the DMV has a specific form to fill out if your odometer is off and by how much and how you determined that.
One common case is changing out the odometer with a 2nd hand part. Another common case is driving for more than a couple weeks on different sized tires than the current odometer is calibrated for.
Another common reason is changing an engine. Miles is only tracked PER ENGINE, not per car. You are not required to sell your odometer with the engine.
In fact, if you never plan to sell the car, you can almost ignore all of those laws. They only come into play when you hand off ownership and inform them of the total millage on the engine.
Never sell it, it never matters.
Both are examples of modifiying hardware in an effort to cheat someone, and both are against the law.
In this case, I will admit that is most likely true. But it is so far from a given that the way you state it is always true sickens me.
My 3 xbox are modded. Not a single pirated game on them either. I use it for xbox media center and watching video files on my TV.
Since you are clearly arguing that a mod has no other intent than defrauding game programmers, you are trying to claim the fact I pirate no games, is the very and only reason game developers are going out of business.
I guess you share the blame with me, since you purchased some eggs at the store thus defrauding the game companies (Eggs and TV have the same lack of relevance to game companies here)
You don't want to go to jail? Don't break criminal laws.
You seem to be under the impression that going to jail has anything to do with breaking laws.
lawls!
Modifying hardware for compatibility reasons is LEGAL. The DMCA you haven't read specifically says so.
Now, while the crime that he did (copying games) is no doubt the Only charge that will stick here, the fact remains is that is the only crime he comitted. When the cops claim he broke one minor law, and did all this other crap that isn't illegal, then one tends to disregard everything they are accusing him of.
And especially don't make a full-time business out of breaking the law..
Tell that to Sony, or Nintendo, or the banks, or car manufacturers, or pretty much most of the top 100 companies in this country.
Breaking the law is factored in under 'expenses'.
Your advice would have prevented them from becoming worth billions, and would be extremely poor advice today. They would laugh at you.
The 10 years is simply the maximum sentence.
If he has no prior convictions, he will likely be sentenced to something substantially less.
But his crime was on a computer.
The magic words 'on a computer' with the rest of the ignorant FUD means he will get slammed with a max sentence.
And you might want to talk to the thousands of people sitting in jail for months still waiting for their trial, or the few people that shared a CD or two and now are in debt for multiple millions of dollars. They would disagree, and anyone who's actually paying attention would say their 100% track record of using the max penalty by default has held true.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My opinion is that this was the sorriest excuse for a summary I've seen in a long time. I think that was pretty clear. If he wanted to comment on it, he can submit the story with the facts and post comments like everyone else.
Although apparently I'm wrong there, and I was a troll!
Anyways, expect the actual sentence to be less than a tenth of that.
I still wouldn't want to be locked up for even a year for soldering a few mod chips, unlocking another GPS, phone, device, etc so I can use better open source software. Let alone get dragged through the mud in the process. This sort of thing screws peoples lives permanently, and IMO it is just bullshit scare tactics trying to force populations into corporate greed driven compliance.
Just think. The cops spent money arresting him and now the jails are spending money. Soon the courts will spend money on him followed by some nice prison expenses. Maybe the tax payers could keep a bit more of their money if law enforcement stops winning in these stupid arrests. Maybe the prison can put some real beast on the street to make room for this guy who has done nothing at all!
I'd understand the kid getting arrested if he was putting in modchips to play pirated software, but was it for that? Or import games?
How come the cops/elected officials/DA, whoever (lets just call them "law enforcement") can track this guy down, but can't find those responsible for stealing my stereo/car/bike?
I guess I should save up for some lobbyists.
What he's doing does not hurt me. What does hurt me/us/the whole country is when a vendor welds their device closed so that it cannot be modified by the rightful owner *or their agent*. He has the wrong approach. IMO, if the product is locked down so that I don't have the rights to do whatever the hell I want with it, I'd rather not buy it.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
The Libertarian party has always been the Pirate Party.
Modding a car to go faster is not illegal, but other modifications (such as removing the Cats, tinting the front windshield, installing radar jammer, etc...) are illegal.
But cops don't wear Level IV body armor. Level IV body armor is usually a heavy metal/ceramic "impact plate" that covers only the most vital organs in the center of mass. It is generally only found on military infantry, or occasionally on very few SWAT teams. Level IV impact plates are really heavy, bulky, and uncomfortable. They are completely impractical for a patrol officer, and even rarely found in SWAT/Entry teams.
Level III or IIIA soft vests, which is what 99% of cops actually have, is only effective in defending against handgun calibers and shotguns. This is usually 'good enough' for cops since handgun calibers compose the majority of their threat. But don't think cops are trotting around in level IV impact plates, because they're not. The worlds best IIIA vest can't even hold up to 'small' centerfire rifle calibers like 5.56 NATO, 7.62x39mm. And even Level IV impact plates can only take a couple shots from big game calibers like .30-06 or .300 Win Mag before failing.
(Especially the OMG MAH FREEDOMS replies sure to follow this comment, despite the fact I took neither 'side.')
Don't you mean "Especially the OMG DON'T FUCKING BREAK THE LAW THEN CUZ MODIFIED CONSOLES ARE ONLY USED FOR BAD THINGS replies, despite how 'neutral' I'm pretending to be."
Just callin' it like I see it.
Ok us, 30 year olds that grew up with computers, through the bbs years, and warez scene.... with our nes, and our c64, and first macs, and 286s pcs....
We're still a minority relatively speaking.
Give it 40 years...
Those in their teens the past 10 years will have grown up with a better understanding of sharing information due to youtube, torrenting, napster... etc
They will grow up into the leaders of tomorrow. Granted relatively few... but we will have a better chance winning this war once the "infected" are in power :)
Right now... its still the Bush's, the Clintons... and older...
They dont get it and they never will.
This is a new world view that the old will never understand.
The question is... will power and corruption alter the leaders of tomorrow in the same way that it currently does now?
Just maybe we have a chance... that one day someone who grew up as a file sharer, a youtuber, a slashdotter, an anonymous member, etc... just maybe the kids of today will retain some sort of sense of what free information and fair use means to them.
Right now, its hard to be of our generation and in power because so many still are of the old world. So much that we look bad standing up for these issues. BUT.... give it 40 years and we will see many adults around us... who understand because their idea of information will be based on what they do today as a teenager/young adult. On that day we can look around and see others who understand.
Right now its like trying to explain to grandpa how email works.
I think there is this American fantasy that because you can all vote and own property, there is no such thing as privilege and power. Feudal kings didn't have the sort of relative wealth that these people do - whatever made you think that your legal system wasn't going to be just as rigged to make their behaviour legal and yours not?
Take the money away from them, or get used to being a serf. But please stop complaining that their wealth makes them powerful, as if the world was some sort of game where they have to play fair.
Modifying hardware or software in any manner that makes it function differently than it was intended has long been illegal (unless specified), and with good reason. What if this 'student' created a bomb out of the components instead? Should they allow that too? What if his modified XBOX blows up in the customers face. Who is responsible? And why the hell should this individual profit from thousands of people's real hard work in researching and developing the games and consoles? What right does he have to deprive these people of their profits? Just because he knows how to? He deserves the punishment he's getting.
All my teens I grew up hearing that America is a free country but what I see today is exactly opposite. A guy can loose 10 years of his life for modifying a circuit ? And the homeland security is after a college guy instead of chasing a criminal ? Clearly this seems to be an act written by a manger who is trying to spoil others lives just to save his high paying job... or homeland security guys are getting scared of being laid off in times of recession so they are running after low hanging fruit like college kids to rake up brownie points in the eyes of seniors ? I cannot understand how can people accept DMCA, something that takes away your freedom. You paid full price for the hardware and you are not allowed to modify it, why ? If this violates the guarantee/warranty I can understand but sracthing the itch becomes a crime can only be classified as blunder by the lawmakers. Each innovation is a modification of an existing design/solution and now laws are being passed not to allow anyone to touch the stuff... If I am not allowed to modify the device that means I am renting the device and I should not be paying full price... this also means manufacturer should take the device back when I am not interested in using it... Looking at so many copyright/DMCA related issues I seriously thinking if the dark age is returning ? You pay full price for something but you dont own it... This is outright stupid... the matter of fact is innovation is dying from US and business are trying to hide behind stupid methods to keep themselves profitable. What is more shocking here is that lawmakers are helping these rich guys and blocking innovation. As if we did not have enough stupid patents to prevent development of lots of new technologies in US, we now have DMCA, RIAA, MPAA and what not. Is the era of freedom ending ? Are we moving from freedom to control ?
The Corporation by Joel Bakan. It goes into great depth about how the corporate system works, details all of the issues in this thread. I found it to be a real eye-opener, and will never trust the corporate model again.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
But isn't violating a "business model" a seriouser threat to our homeland security?
"Credit Fraud? My God, that's worse than murder!"
--A line from Max Headroom, a television series about an uploaded personality and his human counterpart that aired in the early 1980s.
What was once hilarious spoof is now reality. The show should be required viewing for anyone living in the developed world of the 21st century.
Other great lines include "I know, let's fire someone" and "Security Systems. In your home, in your place of work, wherever you go, there we are." I used to look forward to science fiction becoming reality--pity our culture seems to have only opted for the dystopian visions becoming reality.
I still don't have my flying car.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It seems I jumped to conclusions there, in downloading an ISO only having one purpose. I'm not even sure why, seeing as how I've done exactly the same thing myself, to replace lost games.
However, at the most that makes them equally grey areas.
defense is looking for new recruits but this guy gets 10 years in prison :p The american way ?
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
We always have the option, it's just that the option is exercised long before election day. We can sometimes abandon our duty and miss an election cycle, but DMCA has been on the books for over a decade now. If we still don't have candidates to even run and lose, I can't blame Hollywood.
I don't take all the responsibility, just about a hundred millionth of it. So it's not like there's a lot of self-loathing here. But it's something. I hope everyone reading this, feels their share of the shame, too.
We know what will happen if we wait until November 2010 to act. We can choose that destiny, or try for something else. That's voting. Tonight I'll probably go home and drink beer: another vote to keep DMCA.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
What are our other options? If you're into the "box" thing, we tried the soapbox but theirs was bigger. We tried the ballot box but they owned all the candidates. We tried the jury box but were excluded from the jury. There ain't any boxes left. And the EFF threw in the towel years ago, with 2600 v. MPAA.
I'm not going to have any self-loathing for losing to a juggernaut.
The 9th Appellate court recently ordered the State of California to come up with a plan to reduce their prison population by at least 27% over the next 2 to 3 years. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/us/05calif.html?hp
The order recommends, among many things, a drastic reduction in sentencing non-violent criminals to prison terms. So far the CA AG has taken the position that he will force an appeal to the Supreme Court to fight this ruling. Most Republican/Law and Order mouth-pieces in the State are screaming about the Fed over-reaching it's authority and meddling in State's rights.
Let's see, State violates well established Federal prohibition on cruel and unusual treatment of prison inmates due to gross negligence, over crowding, and over-zealous enforcement/sentencing. Previous order in 2005 is upheld on appeal, but CA GA and Governator pretty much succeed in undermining attempts by court appointed stewards to reform the state prison system.
Now the State has been ordered again on the same cases that appeal failed to stop in 2005. CA GA and the Governator again refuses to cooperate.
The DMCA is pretty clear.... good law or bad law, it is the law.
This kid is probably going to get convicted, mostly for being a stoopid git. Hopefully the 9th Circuit order will lead to this kid getting no more than fines and home detention; a more reasonable sentence fitting of the 'crime.'
The Lesson here is not to be intelligent, learn, and share. Consoles are for being stupid. You are supposed to rot in front of your proprietary hardware. Never learn from it. Think of all the great things society could fail to accomplish by going to prison for 10 years instead of being innovative. What would be the alternative? We could all just wise up and stop buying proprietary hardware, start purchasing open source hardware and tinker with that. Then we could learn, share and sell ideas for things like the Arduino and Lemote Yeeloong laptop. Naaahhhh, give all his money to lawyers, and make him rot. After all, he did spend his money on a proprietary counsel, and no one should do that unless they are willing to waste money and time.