US conducts nationwide raid on mod chip shops
Mods like this Sega Saturn mod-chip allow consoles to play pirated games and violate the Digital Millenium act of 1998.
ICE, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, has refused to reveal the names of those who have been targeted in the nationwide raid but has confirmed that the raid involved more than 32 search warrants and that these warrants targeted those who are "allegedly responsible for importing, installing, selling and distributing foreign-made devices smuggled into the US."
The raid was not targeted at a specific console device or mod-chip and has involved the Wii, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360.
The mod chips used in consoles are classified as illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and it is estimated that the piracy business costs the games industry around $3 billion a year, without counting internet piracy.
Nintendo are especially active against console piracy and the Nintendo of America anti-piracy unit has helped law enforcement seize more than 61,000 modded Wiis since April, despite only being a five-person team.
The recent raids were the result of a year-long investigation which saw the co-operation of the US Attorney's Office, ICE and several companies and private trade groups who are attempting to combat piracy.
"Illicit devices like the ones targeted today are created with one purpose in mind, subverting copyright protections. These crimes cost legitimate businesses billions of dollars annually and facilitate multiple other layers of criminality, such as smuggling, software piracy and money laundering." Said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for ICE, in an official statement.
Microsoft has publicly applauded the raid, though they refuse to disclose the losses caused by piracy of Microsoft products. Our guess? Microsoft is losing more than anyone else.
Use mod-chips? Angry about copyright law? Tell us about it in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyYou aren't renting the console, you own it. You should be able to solder whatever you want in it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the playing of pirated games, but it should be the games that are illegal, not the chips.
Disclaimer: I don't use consoles or mod them.
A very similar example is modifying your car to increase performance. Even though many of the potential uses for the extra power are illegal (speeding, reckless driving, street racing, etc.) there are still legal uses for the power (bragging rights, trackdays, etc.) and as such the modifications themselves are legal as long as they are used appropriately.
I've got a chip in my XBOX (1 not 360) & use it just for XMBC - I don't have any pirated games on it.
Section 1201 proscribes devices or services that fall within any one of the
following three categories:
1. they are primarily designed or produced to circumvent;
2. they have only limited commercially significant purpose or use other
than to circumvent; or
3. they are marketed for use in circumventing.
It goes on further to ban the import of or sale of devices or services which are designed to circumvent copyright, or other IP protections.
You could still mod your console, so long as your intent was not copyright circumvention. If copy right circumvention was a "unintended consequence" of your modification you would be ok-ish. So long as you didn't advertise that that was a feature or intended use of your modification. So home brewers are still ok, as are people who mod with out trying to circumvent copyright.
What with falling prices and increasing size of RAM/ROM based memory, maybe we will eventually see consoles fall back on solid state media. Actually, scratch that, by the time it could (theoretically) happen, we'll probably have machines that stream game content direct from game servers. Even then, there'll be someone, somewhere, reverse engineering the process and figuring out how to run 'backup' copies streamed from their home PC.
At the end of the day, piracy will always exist, no matter how tough the copy protection system is.
they were fast... but they were expensive compared to optical disks........ not that it translates to reduced price to us consumers....
Makes me proud to be an Aussie!
Just because you could pirate, doesn't mean you will
hell, every PC on the planet is capable of pirating music, does that mean we should all have our PC's taken away ?
I don't use them for playing illegal copies of games, I do however, load owned games onto the consoles.
Cheers to your failed political leaders. I'm surprised at how Americans haven't migrated to places of far better adult living.
First, I don't have to accept flaws. If a product is flawed, I can either return it to the merchant, or I can complain to the company that made it. If the flaw comes up after some use, I can fix it myself if that's within my abilities, or I can demand the company repairs it for me if the damage is reasonable and the warranty is still valid. Technology is no different from anything else, and you can't ask me to accept flaws. I'm certainly not going to turn my head away and ignore problems, because that shows the companies that I'll accept these flaws, and then they'll continue releasing flawed products.
However, that's completely irrelevant because the XBox isn't flawed. I just wrote the paragraph above because I really, really don't like you telling me that I have to ignore flaws for some arbitrary reason you've just come up with relating to the fact that it's technology. A pacemaker is technology and I'd be pretty pissed if there were flaws in that.
More importantly and more to the point, modding an XBox is not aimed at correcting flaws. It is aimed at increasing the capabilities of a device beyond what the manufacturer intended. If you think this is such a bad thing, I think you may have come to the wrong site, as Bit-Tech is all about modifying computers to do and be more than they were intended by the manufacturer. I own my console. I bought it with my own money. I, not the Microsoft Corporation, own it. If I want to add a chip that allows me to use it as a networked video player, I'm well within my rights as a consumer to do so. They wouldn't mind if I painted it, and this is fundamentally no different.
The trouble arises when the same chip allows me to pirate games. It's not a feature I use, but because it's available Microsoft is understandably concerned about the existence of the chips. However, my complaint here arises not because they're concerned about their software but because they are trying to make it illegal for me to customize my possessions for fear that I will use my customizations to do something illegal. They feel that my ability to break the law is by itself illegal. I feel that my ability to break the law is no different from many other situations - speeding is illegal, and yet it's perfectly legal to add a turbocharger to a car as long as it still passes emissions, even though the turbo makes it easier to speed. This is because there are legitimate uses for a turbocharger (accelerating to the speed limit more quickly, higher performance at private racetracks) and because they trust me to use my best judgement and not speed. Granted, if I'm the type of person to add a turbo, I'm probably the type of person to speed as well. That's not an issue, though. The turbo is still legal, and the police will be happy to give me speeding tickets whenever necessary.
The mod-chip is the turbo. It should be legal, even though it has illegal uses, and they should only complain when I delve into the illegal uses.
Completely agree with you!
It's like Bit-Torrent and YouTube. They have legal uses, illegal ones too, but most certainly should be allowed!
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