As a (not-so) friendly reminder that Uncle Sam still dislikes those that dance around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, federal customs agents went to town on over 30 businesses and private residences on Wednesday, citing what they view as cracking down on purveyors of illegal devices hell-bent on circumventing copyright protections. The raids followed a yearlong investigation crossing 16 state lines, and involving 32 separate search warrants.
According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division's Secretary of Homeland Security Julie L. Myers, raids such as this are part of a plan to stifle the illegal/counterfeit gaming market that is said to cost the gaming industry about $3 billion a year, globally.
"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."
As the Entertainment Software Association likes point out, using mod-chips can be a risky endeavor. However, if you do a quick search on the Internet -- the endless pages of hyperlinks that show up might lead some to believe otherwise. Do mod-chips serve a legitimate purpose, or are people just trying to rationalize their wrongdoing? For a lot of people, Australia must be looking better and better all the time.
[Via Physorg -- Thanks, Samit!]
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Contest:
2:55 PM on 08.01.2007
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Btw, Gameboi, awesome Photoshop job there...their facial expressions are priceless!
Just mod your xbox1 for XBMC, probably mod your Wii for regionfree games (outside JP/US). Modding a PS3 will be useless, until there is a way to rip bluray games to dvd9. Which will happen just like xbox1 dvd5 games got ripped to cdr in the early days.
Action Replay isn't exactly a mod chip, but it's still wrong.
PC gamers it could be consoles, console gamers it could be PC.
It's spit or swallow, either you're for piracy and freedom of choice, or you're not. Simple.
But what gets under my skin, is that the customs secretary of fatherland home security is involved with this. I was actually awaiting the word terrorist, I was.
Oh shit... Black choppers overhead....NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Sorry, seeing numbers like that annoys me. I consider it to be misleading.
Also, if you're going to worry about something like that, I'd worry more about the previously owned game market. With the pirated games market, there's at least a higher barrier to entrance, because you have to know what you're doing to work most pirated games. Previously owned titles require no such knowledge or modification, but the companies that produce them still see no profit from it.
If you think the UK have it tough, wait till you get here ;)
Have fun busting me for my PS2 HDloader, because all the games on it are sitting on the shelf right next to it. Assholes.
To claim that modchips are solely for piracy is asinine, especially in the case of the Xbox (old or new) or PS3 where there are plenty of legitimate uses of a modded box- homebrew/free software being one of them. Importing games is of course the time honored reason, and it's silly that games/movies are subject to artificial region restrictions that CDs/CD-ROMs are not. And unfortunately the DMCA makes circumventing "effective" piracy controls a crime, regardless of whether piracy has occurred or not. Now I'm just parroting Cory Doctorow and the EFF (and badly.) The DMCA is a bullshit restriction on how citizens may use technology so graciously allowed to pass into their hands; it's a legal truncheon to keep private business models in place and keep dollars flowing from consumers to the established interests and powers that be.
Add to that the fact of the three big titles for christmas, Galaxy, Prime 3 and Smash Bros, we're only going to be getting two, well, there's hardly a choice in the matter is there?
I chipped my Wii because Nintendo simply couldn't take care of the market and I'm going to have to import. It hurts local sales but I don't give a shit. You know what else hurts local sales? NOT HAVING ANY DAMN GAMES TO BUY!
Why? I dunno, but taking cloud & Co to the toilet with you is pretty satisfying.
My PSP does have custom firmware on it but that is so that I can create games to play on the PSP (in Lua at the moment) and play other homebrew stuff.
And from what I hear, my friend's dad chips them just to see what he can do on the console.