Australian Crackdown On Console Modchips Likely To Continue

angry tapir writes "Late last week an Australian court issued an injunction against a handful of retailers selling or importing hardware — commonly known as 'mod chips' — that allows unauthorized software to run on Sony's PlayStation 3. The court also required that the four parties that were the subject of the injunction actually hand over to Sony any PlayStation modchips they have. Sony's PlayStation 3 mod chip lawsuit could be just the first of many such cases in Australia, according to a lawyer who defended a client against Nintendo in a similar case earlier this year."

Comments

Australia: The Lucky Country

[slackarse]

Come visit Australia, "The Lucky Country". I mean, come visit Australia, We will steal your internets, then we will steal your pr0n, now we will steal your gamez".

Fuck it, don't visit Australia, because it's gone to the dogs already.

Unlawful seizure

[mykos]

This no-questions-asked demand of goods without a trial and insta-judgement favoring the plaintiff doesn't bode well for the country as a whole.

Looks like they're cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Whoever has the most money is right.

What's With Australia?

[Frosty Piss]

What is it with Australia? They want to filter the Intertubes in was that make Iran look like an island of freedom, they regulate games like some nanny from 1984 ( the book ), their proposed copyright laws cause orgasms for the record and movie cops... Are the people that propose these law actually elected and represent the views of the average Aussie?

Re:What's With Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking that about a country who had their elected prime minister axed and replaced earlier this year by his own party, and where recent elections resulted in a hung parliament where neither of the two major parties could form a majority.

Answer: no, they don't, and Australia is generally getting pretty sick of it.

Re:What's With Australia?

[mjwx]

What is it with Australia? They want to filter the Intertubes in was that make Iran look like an island of freedom,

That was a small group of religious extremists, who have since been smacked down. Getting a filter now is impossible, since the greens control the senate and the independents control the house (we had an election a few weeks back). The best they got was a "voluntary" filter from Australia's worst ISP's (most people in Australia have the choice of 5+ ISP's). In the mean time, my Amcom and iinet connections remain unfiltered.

Would you like it if I said all Americans were naive blubbering vagina's like Rush Limbagh? (I cant be arsed googling the correct spelling). Not fair using the worst example of a people as the average is it?

Are the people that propose these law actually elected and represent the views of the average Aussie?

Is Joe Biden or John McCain a representative of the average American, how about Sarah Palin (no wait, dont answer that). Polly's always live in a world of their own and always seem surprised when reality crashes in on them. Same in every country mate.

Love the last sentance of that wiki link

[mjwx]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

it is now virtually impossible for the filtering scheme to pass through the Senate.

The Filter is dead, long live the filter (I'm sure many angry ./ers wont let it die). At least I can still give the finger to an AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services) official at the international airport and not disappear into an interrogation room for 3 days.

As far as overreaching border controls go, we did not get the short end of the stick.

Also, customs are only searching for illegal porn (so that video of you and your monkey wife doing is legal, tasteless but legal) you just have to declare that you've got it, the same as prescription medication. After all, it's not like customs will hand back you porn if you so much as threaten to sue them, no wait... they did.

Besides, asking "Do you have any pornographic material" is slightly less absurd then "Do you intend to overthrow the government of the United States" as far as arrival questions go.

So dear Americans, dont Visit Australia because you'll have a harder time trying to get back into your own country (and you're not staying here forever).

Generic dongle?

[SharpFang]

AFAIK, the modchip is a generic microcontroller ( ATmega164PA ) in a simple USB-pluggable board, and the actual jailbreak code is in the wild.

It could be easily done that the microcontroller board is given some minor extras and some legal, common, generic functionality, say, a USB-RS232 converter. Then the customer can buy the dongle, and turn it into a modchip using a PC and a simple package downloaded from torrents.

If you really want to go against it

[Joakal]

Political party Pirate Party Australia

We would really appreciate volunteers! Ask in the forum how to help. You can also help by advocacy. Get people to think and talk PPAU when angry about copyright/patents/internet/etc.

Note: PPAU were not in the recent federal elections because registration wasn't complete by the time the election was called.