Mod Chips Legal In the UK 169
An anonymous reader writes "Good news out of the UK! Techdirt reports that an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and has now said that mod chips do not violate copyright laws. The case involved a mod chip seller, who imported mod chips for the XBox from Hong Kong and would sell the chips or mod the Xbox's himself. He was charged with copyright infringement and found guilty by a lower court. The appeals court has dismissed all charges, however."
This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately the 'first sale' principal has held up in most places where it has been tested, so your argument seems to hold true.
But to stretch your argument until it breaks, if you buy a gun then it's yours, but you still aren't allowed to modify it in such a way that it is illegal (eg upgrade it to semi automatic, saw of the barrel(s) to make it easier to conceal). Likewise if a law is introduced that says you cannot modify your games console to allow it to play illegal games then your argument is incorrect, and I think that is what was being tested here (although I think they were trying to make an existing law apply rather than testing a law brought in to address that problem specifically).
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:4, Interesting)
The vendors and especially the software ones cannot have it both ways. It is either a sale or a rent.
It it is a sale it is subject to appropriate financial regime for sales (VAT, can be registered as a capital asset, depreciation, etc). Income from sales can be taxed in a different jurisdiction. Even if the sale has taken place in a "nasty taxation" place like UK, Scandinavia, New York, etc, all taxation can be done in a place with lax taxation like Ireland in the EU or Texas in the USA.
If it is a rent it cannot be depreciated and cannot count for capex. It is opex, period. Similarly, income from rent in nearly all countries in the world must be taxed locally. The usual tax evasion practices of big software and hardware vendors are outright illegal and forbidden by law.
So frankly, if it is licensed and the licensing contract is valid - come on, try to prove it. All the defendant needs to bring are the taxation statements of company X. If X wins it will lose its taxation regime.
Lose-lose.
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If the cost of an xbox is a lifetime lease, then the product should be accompanied by lifetime warranty, lifetime repair as well. When leasi
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Well, that depends. There can be some serious tax advantages to leasing instead of buying.
You don't even need to go that far. Look at your receipt of purchase -- it is a sales receipt, not a lease agreement.
As far as licensing goes, that's a differe
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Informative)
You sound pretty confident for someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. Capital leases are very common... that's when you have a lease (rental agreement) and you capitalize the asset. The stream of payments for the lease is amortized, and meanwhile you depreciate the asset and record your depreciation expense.
What are you talking about?
I'd also add that licensing != leasing, I think you're confused on the topic.
I guess, to sum up, I'd say that gettig accounting/finance advice on slashdot is like getting legal advice on slashdot. Some of it seems to make sense, but I'd rather have duct tape ripped from my scrotum than have to go before the courts or the IRS using advice from slashdot as my only source of information.
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The distinction between licensing and leasing remains.
Also capital leases exist in the UK as well as in the US.
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You still need a modchip to run homebrew (Score:3, Insightful)
Old saying still applies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Law would have to be introduced that prohibits you from having the console mods required to play pirated console games.
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Are we so desperately addicted to our little consumer fantasies that we'll allow absolutely any insult from the corporate/legal molochs?
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BTW, piracy is also rampant, but, at least, police seems to go after the pirates.
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
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I once saw a conference with bill gates, where a child popped his hand up to ask a question. We never got to hear the question. He got as far as "my dad bought me a copy of windows". He interrupted to say "he didn't buy it, he /licensed/ it" before going off on a diatribe that instead of owning a tangible object (a CD with windows on it), you are licensing the 1s and 0s on it. He was about 12 years old. What a cunt.
Hey, the child was only asking a question...
'Course, some people might assume that this referred to Bill Gates. However, I'd cut Gates some slack- it's mighty impressive that he was conducting press conferences when he was just 12 years old.
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1. Download it
2. Burn it
3. Put it in the console
Otherwise, it is just a chip with code on it. Nothing more. YOU have to make the decision to play a game that you do not legally own. Not the console or the modchip.
To continue your gun example... I might go out and kill someone with my gun.
Would making my gun fire faster want t
HEY! (Score:3, Funny)
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If I leave the store after having exchanged my money for an object, which I carry away in a nice plastic bag, I bought it. "License" my ass.
How badly are we consumers going to let corporations abuse us before we decide that they are not simply amoral entities for accumulating wealth, but rather bad actors who will gladly hurt us if it means a bump in their stock price?
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Your argument
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It doesn't, but I was responding to a comment that stated 'if I bought it then I can do anything I want to it'. I wasn't aware of the US gun laws, but certainly here in Australia we have very strict rules for anything with more power than a pea shooter. I think semi-automatic weapons are a big no-no, it's even illegal to have one in your possession.
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No you're not, but it's not because you don't own the gun. Rather it's because owning a modified gun is illegal.
In other words, to get really nitpicky, it's not the modification of the gun that is illegal, it's the modified gun itself (and the parts in many areas). As long as I don't modify my gun in a way to make it illegal, I can keep on modding it all
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I'm not sure that the legal system would differentiate much between 'own' and 'you have it in your possession and behave as if you owned it'.
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Fortunately that law doesn't exist! While I do have a modded XBox (original) it's only used for the excellent XBMC [xbmc.org]. Such a law wouldn't just 'hurt' pirates, it would also hurt actual legitimate enthusiasts (XBMC is coming out for Linux soon though soon, so it will be time to retire it! :)
--
Order free Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii [free-toys.co.uk]
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"semi automatic" actually isn't illegal. It's also mostly impossible to convert a non-semi-auto to semi-auto. Not entirely, but mostly. Perhaps you meant "fully automatic"? Semi-autos can be converted to full auto, though it's not so trivial as an amateur might think.
Though I used to own a rifle that would go full-auto if I let too much gunk build up around the firing pin. Very annoying to ha
Big Time Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
There is a case winding through the courts where a man was convicted because his rifle apparently malfunctioned due to mechanical wear and went full-auto. He was convicted.
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There, fixed it for you. Possession is not illegal, possession without the proper license is. Possession of a FFL along with the proper license can legally possess both semi and fully automatic weapons and their parts. They can even possess and purchase suppressors if they so choose. These items are heavily regulated and monitored, but are not bann
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HOWEVER, due to certain legislation, in most states you cannot own a fully automatic gun manufactured after 1986 regardless.
Short barreled shotguns are also not really illegal. You have to get a tax stamp for these as well, and at that point a gunsmith can
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I agree with you (you'll notice the emoticon next to my original comment), but do a search for the stuff Cisco tried to pull when their hardware was re-sold. Their line was that you were free to sell the hardware, but the IOS (Cisco OS) software stored on the flash chip was licensed and not sold so unless the purchaser re-licensed the software from Cisco, they were using it illegally. Their case is slightly different as, for security reasons, it pays to kee
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
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I hope you don't buy a gun.
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A true case in point: a guy made a statue for a high school that was displayed out front. The school put clothes and stuff on it, and he said take them off. They wouldn't, the artists sued the school and won. Why? It modified his original design which he owns the copyright on.
Same for th
Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:4, Interesting)
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There are situations where this viewpoint is entirely valid, and some where it is not. Thats why we have the judiciary in the first place.
Re:Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh... It's hard go go after the bad guys? They shoot back?! Too bad. Live with it.
I bet nobody would seriously consider introducing new legislation just to make my job easier. Laws are not for that.
Re:Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:5, Funny)
Yours sincerently,
GWB.
Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:5, Interesting)
(I believe in Australia both are perfectly legal.)
Of course, what the law says, and what a sensible person would expect the law to say are often two completely different things. Where the law is too complex for the average person to understand, then there is something wrong with it. (Resists temptation to explain why all laws are wrong, complex or not.)
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Just keeping my great, great grandparents proud. History is a bitch to live with, you know.
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That is, after all, what most people choose to do.
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Unsuccessfully resists temptation, perhaps.
Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand why copyright infringement is illegal. What I don't understand is why facilitating copyright infringement is illegal. It's conceivable that somebody is coming to harm when copyright infringement occurs, but nobody necessarily comes to harm when facilitation occurs. If I'm not mistaken, mod chips potentially fall under the
I say potentially because mod chips can be used to play import games, which is a legal activity (the fact that Sony somehow managed to shut down Lik-Sang notwithstanding). I've long held the (totally unsubstantiated) belief that games console manufacturers deliberately tie together their region encoding and copy protection functions, where disabling one disables both, so that they can cry copyright infringement whenever somebody mods their console for the purpose of playing imports.
Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) We want to prevent copyright infringement (see why copyright infringement is illegal).
(2) Banning possession of mod chips will help achieve (1) as pirated games cannot be played.
(3) Banning sale of mod chips is easier than (2) as it is easier to prosecute ten distributors than a thousand consumers.
(4) Politicians decide, rightly or wrongly, "allowing import games and backup copies" is wanted only by a small fraction of people.
(5) Politicians judge that our collective desire from (1) to prevent copyright infringement, scaled by the effectiveness of (2) and (3), is greater than our desire from (4) for the non-piracy benefits of mod chips.
There are other examples of laws like this; driving fast doesn't harm people, vehicle/vehicle and vehicle/pedestrian collisions harm people. But we regulate vehicle speed to achieve the goal of regulating vehicle/vehicle and vehicle/pedestrian collisions because vehicle speed is easier to regulate.
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Silly me
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DRM isn't copy protection, any one (with the tech) can copy/clone the disk physically and it will work just fine. It's playback protection.
Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody protects my playback. Actually, the opposite takes place.
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Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:5, Insightful)
great point. I have been saying for some time, that as there are so many laws that its impossible for any individual to be aware of all legislation that pertains to them, how can it be possible for a well-meaning individual to obey said laws? Therefore how can this legislation be valid?
Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Please tell me where I can find a record of all the laws I need to follow. As far as I can tell, there is no actual law of the land - there's any number of laws unintelligibly recorded in a thousand conflicting laws hodgepode enacted over the course of centuries. And then there's just the statutes of civil law which even students of law cannot be aware of all of.
If it's not possible for me be able to remove my ignorance of the law, then ignorance of the law is a valid excuse.
Strangely of all the textbo
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True, but chances are your jury won't know how to speak Latin or know about the law either.
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Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, what the law says, and what a sensible person would expect the law to say are often two completely different things. Where the law is too complex for the average person to understand, then there is something wrong with it.
I think you're mixing two different things here:
1. The person has never read the law, only guessing on what he expects.
2. The person has read the law, but still don't get what it's saying.
The first one usually happens because there's a lot more cases to cover than what can be briefly summarized. For example you'd naturally assume copyright has to do with copying, yet for example public display doesn't involve copying at all yet it's one of the exclusive rights. I think it's rather presumptious to think that a person should be able to think up everything by themselves. Or if you want an example that something is legal instead of what's expected many people think the exclusive right to copy is absolute and final, not thinking up any "fair use" unless it's pointed out to them.
Neither of these are really a big problem with the law, it's rather that most people don't have time to be familiar with the entire body of law. Nor do you really have to be, I need to know stealing is illegal but not every detail about what's petty theft, armed theft, grand theft, robbery, armed robbery and so on. Nor to I need to know things like building codes unless I intend to build a building. The actual level of detail required to function like a normal citizen isn't that high.
The other issue can be a big problem, but usually it happens because the law is trying to be very, very precise which makes it full of definitions, enumerations and whatnot that reference each other and are made up of very awkward English. And that's just when they don't use terms with a specific legal meaning, which happens in all professional fields. Often it ends up being close to what the public expects, but it's hard to understand. It leads to gems like this (from the defintion of "Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works"):
"Such works shall include works of artistic craftsmanship insofar as their form but not their mechanical or utilitarian aspects are concerned; the design of a useful article, as defined in this section, shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article."
Do you understand what it's trying to say? It's trying to deal with for example an engraved sword, and isn't unreasonable. I can understand people completely mind blanking when they hit a sentence like that though. Obtuse laws are actually a greater danger IMO than over-detailed laws. If a law leaves great room for interpretation, it will almost certainly be bent to be used in the most unreasonable ways. There's been quite a few examples of that pointed out there where "terrorism" laws are being used to deal with people that in no way are, or could even reasonably suspected to be terrorists.
If the law was to be easy tor the average person to understand, I don't think it could deal with the corner cases. In a court case, people don't sit together and reasonably discuss what a natural interpretation of the law is, it's one party bent on conviction and one party bent on not getting convicted. It won't be an academic discussion, it'll be SCOs legal theories and they need to be refuted point by point using precise definitions, which are inherently hard to understand.
I think the biggest issue is the distance between recognizing that a law is bad and being able to do something about it. Not many are going to flip-flop between democrats and republicans over single laws? In europe it's generally a litle better since you have more parties so with public pressure people move to "adjacent" parties, but then there's other concerns. For example, there have
Clearing misunderstood words (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clearing misunderstood words (Score:4, Insightful)
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Every religion has good ideas and bad ideas. A stress on vocabulary building just happens to be one of Scientology's good ideas.
Disclaimer: I am not a scientologist, but used to work in an office full of them, including the president of the company.
In my experience, if scientology stresses vocabulary building, they definitely want it to be their vocabulary. Scientology literally redefines the meanings of a lot of words. I believe this to be a brainwashing technique. For example, if someone is being "
MrModChips (Score:5, Informative)
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Wider relevance (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this establish that the whole idea of it being a crime to provide a service that allows others to circumvent copyright is going to fall apart?
i.e. will they still be shutting down sites like tv-links.co.uk which was only linking to copyright infringing material, not providing it?
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I doubt it. Unfortunately the case doesn't seem to have made it to BAILII [bailii.org], but I suspect the ruling was on the grounds that there are commercially relevant and legal purposes for a modchip (e.g. personal backups, grey imports, custom software) and therefore the relevant legislation does not apply in this case.
Chips Legal but... (Score:1)
It is probably still illegal to modify it to do something illegal. I suspect if I modify my car to fire rockets that even though I may never do it I would probably fall foul of the police.
I guess dual purpose (back-ups/pirate copies) gets around this though?
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The interesting part is that there is no other place other than the internet where making a crime possible carries such insane punishments. We do a lot of things every day that could be con
Re:Chips Legal but... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bit more complex than that (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright is different. A photocopier, a camera, a computer and in fact a brain,hand and piece of paper are all that are needed to violate copyright. These are all long established to be legal pieces of equipment. The same applies to contract law. If it was illegal to possess a piece of equipment that facilitated a
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Unless of course the companies are willing to furnish a brand new copy for a damaged or destroyed old copy rather than milk the customer for another $20 for a DVD or $60 for a game.
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Max (Score:1)
And i don't say this to upset anyone, it's my personal opinion.
Of course, laws might change. (Score:2, Interesting)
The EU is just preparing more and more ridiculous legislation. Prepare for impact
GNU/Linux on hardware *you* *bought*! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't abuse labels (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it was funny a year ago (to him at least), but come on...stop abusing labels, they aren't that useful to begin with, don't make it even worse!
Re:Don't abuse labels (Now Completely OT) (Score:2)
A free country unlike the USA (Score:2)
This may be good for Psystar Corporation with ther (Score:2)
Mod chips kill (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Software_2 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.mevagissey.net/atariads.htm [mevagissey.net]
It is in the best interests of game consoles to protect their copy protection so that their content creators will continue to support the console. If they get scared off by a large mod chip community, they might quit making products for that console.
So Microsoft, Sony, et al will fight this. As they shou
Whatchyou talkin' about Willis !?!? (Score:2)
Great machine, excellent price, but except for music and maybe games, you are right that there was never enough software for it. But it had NOTHING to do with copy protection or the lack of it - just that there wasn't room for 3 680xx machines and the hardware/software geeks preferred Amigas and Macs...
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Re:I seriously doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I seriously doubt (Score:5, Informative)
They own it and operate it, so yes I agree, they do.
Whether such bannings would be considered fair by anyone else is beside the point, they can do what they want. We are not under any obligation to use Xbox live.
Provided the modding crowd is sufficiently small, they can do it without even effecting the majority of the community.
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By this I refer to switchable mod chips. As long as you NEVER connected to live with it on they didn't ban you, even though it would have been simple to put a random check into every new game to send the "I hacked my box" packet next time they connect.
Re:I seriously doubt (Score:5, Informative)
If you want use your X360 for something else than M$ approved software, you cannot use Xbox Live.
It is due to the regular and remote bios modifications done by Xbox live to your console so it is up to date for countering any software exploitation.
The convenience of using XBMC or emulators, then switching off the modchip to play on xbox live are a thing of the past as far as the X360 is concerned. A real pity.
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But yes, if you connected for a split second to Xbox Live with a modded console that was actually running a detectable mod chip, then goodbye forever. That said, I didn't really care (nor is my Xbox even banned, since I never connected to Live since I owned it). My main use for my Xbox mod chip was for XBMC.
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It is different if the EULA is already part of the AGB (Allgemeine Geschaeftsbedingungen, General Business Conditions) of the seller. But then the seller has to prove that the EULA was
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First of all, the guy was charged with a criminal offence. EULA violation isn't a criminal offence; only Microsoft have a claim against him for EULA violation, and from all appearances they haven't been involved in this case at all.
Secondly, to get him for an EULA violation, they'd have to prove first that he'd agreed to the EULA. And seeing as he was modifying other people's Xboxen, it would be kind of tricky to show there was any reaso
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Not quite true. According to the Oxford Manual of Style (IIRC: i don't have my copy with me) an apostrophe may be used for a noun plural where the noun is either an acronym (particularly if it ends in "S", e.g. "SOS's") or a number (e.g. "80's"). I'm sure many other style guides include similar advice. See here [wikipedia.org] for more info.