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Mod Chips Legal In the UK
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jun 13, 2008 04:40 AM
from the mod-fish-still-under-scrutiny dept.
from the mod-fish-still-under-scrutiny dept.
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."
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Submission: Mod Chips Legal In The UK by Anonymous Coward
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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).
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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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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Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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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)
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.
Re:This is ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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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Re:Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Expect anti-modchip legislation in 3, 2, 1... (Score:5, Funny)
Yours sincerently,
GWB.
Parent
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.
Parent
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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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Parent
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?
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Re:Of course they don't violate ... copyright ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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Clearing misunderstood words (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Clearing misunderstood words (Score:4, Insightful)
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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?
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:I seriously doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
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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)
Parent
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.